The Persuaders! 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. The show has been called 'the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that began 11 years earlier with Danger Man in 1960', as well as 'the most ambitious and most expensive of Sir Lew Grade's international action adventure series'. The Persuaders! was filmed in Britain, France, and Italy between May 1970 and June 1971.
Despite its focus on the British and American markets, The Persuaders! became more successful elsewhere. It won its highest awards in Australia and Spain, and Roger Moore and Tony Curtis were honoured in Germany and France for their acting.
The Persuaders! used many of the resources of Moore's previous show, The Saint. These included locations, and the idea of reusing many of the visible vehicles from episode to episode. The series' synth-laden theme music was composed by John Barry.
Premise
The Persuaders are two equally-matched men from different backgrounds who reluctantly team together to solve cases that the police and the courts cannot.
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. He later became a millionaire in the oil business, subsequently making and then losing several fortunes as a Wall Street investor. Curtis himself had suffered a tough childhood in the Bronx, and also had served in the US Navy. Curtis was 46 when he made The Persuaders, but he performed all his own stunts and fight sequences.
Lord Brett Rupert George Robert Andrew Sinclair, played by Roger Moore, is a polished British nobleman, educated at Harrow and Oxford, a former British Army officer and an ex-racing car driver, who addresses his colleague as "Daniel".
A pair of globe-trotting millionaire playboys, the men are brought together by retired Judge Fulton (Laurence Naismith) in the French Riviera. They instantly dislike each other and destroy a hotel bar during a fist-fight. They are arrested and delivered to Fulton, who offers them the choice of spending 90 days in jail or helping him to right errors of impunity. Grudgingly, Wilde and Sinclair agree to help Fulton to solve a case. He then releases them from any threat of jail.
The men develop a sparing affection for each other and soon stumble into more adventures, sometimes by chance, sometimes on commission from Judge Fulton. Although the Judge recurs in the series, he has no formal relationship with his two agents. Eleven episodes depict his finding a way to convince Wilde and Sinclair to act on his behalf. For instance, in "Angie, Angie" he easily convinces one of the pair. In "The Man in the Middle" he endangers his agents so that they must act on his behalf. When they are short of cash he lures them with money. In "Powerswitch" he manipulates events from the shadows, and Sinclair and Wilde do not know that he is involved.
Some episodes rely on Danny being mistaken for other people, usually by some bizarre coincidence. In "Element of Risk", he is mistaken for a criminal mastermind named Lomax, played by Shane Rimmer. In "Anyone Can Play", he is mistaken at a Brighton casino for a Russian spy paymaster.
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. Wilde never reveals or explains his motives.
Title sequence
The Persuaders! titles and synthesiser theme, by John Barry, establish the background and current identities of the protagonists via split-screen narrative technique: two dossiers, one red, one blue, labelled Danny Wilde and Brett Sinclair simultaneously depict their lives. The younger images of Tony Curtis are genuine, whereas the images of Roger Moore (with one exception) were mock-ups created for the credits. 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 conclusion shows them together enjoying a life of sport, drink, women and gambling. 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.