Back in The Golden Age of Television Drama (as some would have it) 26-hour drama series were relatively common on British television. The basic template was American – the big US networks, until quite recently, used to churn out these series year after year expressly for eventual syndication. The best-remembered British examples nowadays are the Lew Grade ITC confections produced in the 1960s such as
Jason King, The Champions, Man in a Suitcase etc. but the BBC also used the format for high-brow adaptations of epic Victorian novels such as
The Pallisers plus historical dramas.
Manhunt is quite different to these. The brainchild of producer Rex Firkin, it's an epic original serial set in Occupied France. Produced by ITV, it aired weekly without break from January to June 1970 and hasn’t been seen since then (I think). The serial is fondly-remembered by many and rightly so because it's quality stuff, very influential and the viewing commitment required over 26 episodes is well rewarded. The story opens in September 1942 with Jimmy, an RAF officer played by Alfred Lynch, bailing out over Nazi-occupied rural France. The principal plot concerns his Odyssean attempts to return to the UK accompanied by two Resistance leaders, 'Vincent', an Anglo-French aristocrat superbly portrayed by Peter Barkworth, and 'Nina' a part-Jewish student played by Cyd Hayman. Nina was the record-keeper of the main Resistance cell in Paris and, following a Nazi raid, has to be smuggled to the UK as her knowledge of the Resistance is encyclopaedic and useful to both the Allies and the Nazis. It is decided in the first episode that Vincent will escort Jimmy and Nina to the UK via Free France, negotiating their way through enemy-held territory via a series of safe houses and contacts only he has knowledge of. As the three make their perilous way they are doggedly pursued by Obersturmbannfuhrer Lutzig of the SS, played with silky malevolence by Philip Madoc, the chief antagonist of the series. However he does take second billing to the other ‘villain’, Captain Lutz of the Abwehr (Military Intelligence), played (or rather under-played) by Robert Hardy. Those of us used to seeing him blustering and swaggering his way through
All Creatures Great and Small will be surprised to see just how much he throttles back for this particular character, a 'little man' of great intelligence and cunning.
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=71173
Manhunt - 26 episode World War II drama series from 1970s finally on DVD
