is a British action comedy television series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, produced by ITC Entertainment, and initially broadcast on ITV and ABC in 1971.
[2] It won its highest awards in Australia and Spain, [citation needed] and Roger Moore and Tony Curtis were honoured in Germany and France for their acting.
Danny Wilde, portrayed by Tony Curtis, is a rough diamond, educated and moulded in the slums of New York City, who escaped by enlisting in the US Navy.
[4] A pair of globetrotting millionaire playboys, the men are brought together by retired Judge Fulton (Laurence Naismith) in the French Riviera.
In episode 12, "That's Me Over There", it appears that Sinclair has had a longstanding interest in crime-fighting, as he has had a dedicated telephone line installed for an informer on a master criminal.
In episode 17, "Five Miles to Midnight", Sinclair tells Joan Collins's character that he is working for the judge because it has given him something worthwhile to do after his failed motor racing career.
titles and synthesiser theme, by John Barry,[5] establish the background and current identities of the protagonists via split-screen narrative technique:[6] two dossiers, one red, one blue, labelled Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair simultaneously depict their lives.
As the biographies approach their current ages, a series of four short sequences combine live footage with torn newspaper clippings, connoting their excitingly peripatetic lifestyles.
The titles were specifically designed so that neither actor would appear to have top billing, something both Moore and Curtis stipulated when they agreed to co-star.
In 1995, Peugeot released an advertisement for the 306 car, with the theme of the opening title sequence, the split-screen process and even the voice of Michel Roux, who dubbed Tony Curtis in the French broadcast of the original series.
In 2007, France 2 satirically used it to introduce a report about relations between the newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his first Prime Minister François Fillon.
Brett Sinclair drives a UK-registered Bahama Yellow right-hand-drive 6-cylinder Aston Martin DBS (chassis number DBS/5636/R) with V8 wheels and markings.
As with Simon Templar – Roger Moore's character in the television series The Saint – Sinclair's car has personalised number plates of his initials: Simon Templar's were "ST 1", Brett Sinclair's are "BS 1" (except for one scene in the episode "The Gold Napoleon", where the car is seen with its real UK registration number PPP 6H).
The Aston Martin from the show was sold by the factory after filming ended, via HR Owen in London, to its first private owner.
It was restored in recent years by the Aston Martin factory, and is presently owned by divorce lawyer and art collector Jeremy Levison.
Danny Wilde's Dino bears Italian registration plate MO 221400 (the 'MO' component represents the province of Modena, which happens to be the headquarters and manufacturing base of Ferrari).
originated in one of the final episodes of The Saint, titled "The Ex-King of Diamonds", wherein Simon Templar (Moore) is partnered with a Texas oilman (Stuart Damon) in a Monte Carlo gambling adventure.
Baker states that he convinced Grade that the dynamic that Moore and Curtis had worked out was unique, and it was better to leave the series as it stood.
And we'd been roped off our little thing, and there were crowds all around watching us film and everything and Tony Curtis came down to do his scene and he was just carrying on at the wardrobe saying 'you didn't do this and you should have done that... and in Hollywood you would have been fired...' And dear Roger Moore walked over, took him by the lapels, looked him straight in the eyes and said 'and to think those lips once kissed Piper Laurie.'
But we were asked to do another... we got the award that year for the best TV series, I think it was, and they wanted to do a repeat and I remember Roger saying 'with Tony Curtis, not on your life.'
And he went on to become James Bond, so he did all right.In his autobiography, Still Dancing, Lew Grade noted that the actors "didn't hit it off all that well", because of different work ethics.
According to Moore's autobiography, Curtis's use of cannabis was so extensive that he even smoked it in front of a police officer while filming at 10 Downing Street.
[citation needed] The series has remained popular in Germany, Denmark, France, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Hungary and Italy; episodes are still regularly repeated throughout Europe.
When the pilot episode, "Overture", was screened as part of Channel 4's nostalgia strand TV Heaven in 1992, that series' host (comedy writer Frank Muir) said in a Radio Times interview that The Persuaders!
in S01/E05 at 44:36 or 'Du musst jetzt etwas schneller werden, sonst bist Du nicht synchron' ('You have to speed up [talk faster] now, or else you won't be in sync').
The language use in the translations is characterized by a greater degree of sexual explicitness and verbal violence, as well as an unveiled pro-American attitude which is not found in the source texts.
For instance, the nuanced differences between the accents and manners of Curtis, the American self-made millionaire Danny Wilde from the Brooklyn slums, and Moore, the most polished British Lord Sinclair, would be hard to convey to foreign viewers.
Danny is mistaken for a blackmailer who is the target of both a cruel French Count (Patrick Troughton) and the beautiful daughter (Anna Gaël) of a disgraced politician.
In 2006, because of its popularity in Britain, a nine-disc DVD special edition boxed set was released, with extra material to the complete, uncut, re-mastered 24-episode series.
[citation needed] On 10 September 2014, it was announced that Visual Entertainment had acquired the rights to the series in Region 1 and would re-release all 24 episodes on DVD on 4 November 2014.