Danger Man Secret Agent Complete Set 6 DVD | Classic Spy TV Series | Perfect for Collectors & Fans of British Espionage Shows

I'm another Prisoner fan who wanted to see some of McGoohan's other work, and in many respects Danger Man / Secret Agent showcases his acting talents more than the later series. Why? Because he often takes on cover roles on his assignments, a tactic increasingly evident once the show goes to the hour long format. (In 'The Prisoner', he's essentially just one character.)I concur with many of the other reviewers: The video transfer is awfully good for a show this old (although there's an annoying white thread across Drake's nose in the one version of the opening titles). Audio is marginal at times and muddy, but good enough for viewing. For most of the episodes, the audio is actually decent.The 30 minute episodes are very, very fast-paced, and one can sometimes tell they were trying to cram a little too much plot and dialog into the time available. Everybody talks fast, and sometimes McGoohan seems to be playing up his supposedly American origins a bit much, almost Cagney-style. They clearly eased up a lot when going to the hour-long format (and Drake was said to be British), and I think the extra time allowed for much better story development.Absolutely: The show was produced cheaply. Stock footage. Rear-projection. Re-used sets. Indoor studio sets standing in for outdoors. Re-using the same actors in multiple roles across shows (William Marshall is especially conspicuous). Caucasian British nationals done up badly in make-up to make them look African, East Indian, or Chinese. (On the other hand, there's less of this in the hour-long shows; probably reflective of larger budget and the fact there was a fair amount of social progress between 1960 and 1964.) Yes, everybody drinks like fish and smokes like chimneys. In fact, offering people cigarettes is one of John Drake's particular affectations, and he's constantly using his smoking as a cover for taking pictures with his miniaturized camera disguised as a (functional) lighter.But I can overlook all that when there's good acting and writing. As I said, McGoohan really shines when he pretty much ditches his Drake surname and becomes someone else. A prim, unflappable butler. A neurotic novelist. A drunken ne'er-do-well. A tennis instructor. A playboy. A just-released prison inmate. An unemployed nebbish schoolteacher. An Army major. A professional spy-master. The whole "taken away your name" line from the American version theme song actually has some meaning here, in that Drake spends so much time being someone else, one could easily imagine him losing his real self.Then there's the writing. I am very particular and highly critical of bad writing. I hate it when I can figure out how a story is going to end in the first five minutes -- and these shows almost never reveal where they're going until the last scene. Often Drake will concoct a complicated plan...only to have something go very wrong, and then he has to improvise like mad. Moreover, his foes -- "the other side" as they're often called -- are rarely stupid. Drake has to outsmart and outmaneuver them, and even then the outcome isn't always as he wants it to be.I also like the way Drake doesn't lean very heavily on his gadgets (all of which are totally plausible given 1960s technology), and he almost never uses a gun. His chief weapons are his wits and ability to improvise. Whatever the assignment, he has a moral code that is so strict, he'll sometimes bend his orders to achieve what to him is a better outcome. Or try to -- again, sometimes he doesn't win 100%. Most of all, he comes across as genuine and real.Anyway, for the current Amazon price of a little over forty bucks for the entire set, spanning 86 episodes, it's hard to go wrong. With the slimline-packaging version, it won't even take up much space on the video shelf.