The Contessa

When the show begins, there is an accident at the docks and a man is injured. At the hospital, they discover that his jacket is stuffed with cocaine! So, Drake is called in to investigate.

When snooping around the dock doesn't work, he sees another courier wearing the same jacket--so he dons the jacket and sees where it takes him. Not surprisingly, bad things happen to him, so Drake has to think fast or he won't survive this mission.

This is a fair episode of "Danger Man"--fair in that it is worth seeing and mildly diverting but it also lacks some of the nice twists I like in the shows. Actually, it's pretty ordinary and I couldn't believe how often he fell for the mickey finn.

By the way, there was a 10000% stupid scene early in the show. After discovering the padded jacket is filled with little white packets, the doctor rips open one and tastes it!!! What if it was filled with Strychnine or Cyanide?!?! I hate it when TV and movies use this cliché. Cops, doctors and FBI men do NOT routinely taste a suspicious powder to see what it is--this is really dangerous and stupid!

Pat, his acting extremely poor, goes undercover to break up a cocaine smuggling ring operating between Genoa and New York in this lousy segment, stuck with an awful script and incompetent direction by B-movie veteran Terry Bishop.

Beyond the cliches and the totally unconvincing creation of a fake Italy on the British studio sets, the incidents depicted never ring true. Pat is slipped a mickey not once but twice, and for all his secret agent expertise didn't see it coming either time. And his two sets of unconsciousness neglect to have the bad guys kill him -just on to another scene.

Only saving grace here -almost, is casting three beauties opposite Pat, though they are poorly used. Hazel Court looks regal in the title role and acts rings around Pat, but she is sloughed off in the show's requisite rushed and unsatisfying ending. A Hammer favorite Jennifer Jayne pops up for just a few seconds, and her dialogue is suppressed for no good reason. Coming off better thanks to her very sexy decolletage is best-selling novelist Jackie Collins, but again, her character remains undeveloped.