The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove

As I post this entry, every one of the other four preexisting reviews make reference to this episode being reminiscent of Patrick McGoohan's subsequent series 'The Prisoner'. In this Wizard of Oz style episode, characters from real life (ambulance crew, et al) are juxtaposed into a dreamlike fantasy that leaves Drake wondering which end is up. Somehow he copes.

But it's true. This is the most Prisoner like episode of the entire run of the Danger Man series. Besides the similarities pointed out by the others (like a #6 on Drake's apartment door), what jumped out at me, beyond the whimsical funhouse-gone-wrong motif, is the scene about halfway through with Drake banging his fist on the desk of his supervisor Mr. Lovegrove in frustration. Prisoner fans of course know this scene is mimicked in the opening credits of that show. The anonymous but soon to be 'Number six' angry man is fed up. The unnamed agent has had enough and tenders his resignation.

Now, we don't have to look very far to locate any number of Danger Man/Secret Agent episodes to find a John Drake disenchanted with his superiors. Just watch the ending of "It's up to the Lady", with Drake standing frozen at the airport terminal after the escaped bureaucrat he just recovered is snapped out of his grip to face the trial that was promised not to occur. Or the end of "Yesterday's Enemies", when the spy who came in from the other side is assassinated by M9 rather than returned to England as promised. And of course there is the masterpiece "Whatever Happened to George Foster", where Drake's entire organization abandons him when he attempts to dislodge a corrupt industrialist from the country whose government the man is trying to overthrow. It's just business you know.

Drake was in fact *just* the kind of spy to be to be intercepted and sentenced to a term on a remote island when he had finally had enough of that demoralizing system!

So did the theme of this episode become something of a template for The Prisoner? Is fist-pounding Drake launched from here into the Village as Number 6? In later interviews McGoohan insisted that Number 6 is NOT Drake. That assertion is mitigated though upon learning that due to the legal ramifications of the show's creator Ralph Smart owning the name "John Drake", Patrick may not have been in a position to confirm the connection between the two characters.

None the less, we the audience *know* the answer, don't we? Number 6 IS Drake! So, just as McGoohan was inspired to shoot The Prisoner at Portmeirion Village in Wales after discovering the location in the very first Danger Man episode "View from the Villa", did the mind that spawned The Prisoner also create The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove' episode? It would seem unlikely. It certainly can't be any more than mere inspiration taken from Lovegrove because after all, McGoohan didn't write that episode.

Or did he? The writing credit goes to a 'David Stone'. But who exactly is David Stone? If you check IMDb, Stone has almost no writing credits, EXCEPT seven 1 hour Danger Man Episodes (including "Whatever Happened to George Foster"). Who is this guy that wrote mostly for Danger Man? My take is that David Stone may well be Patrick McGoohan. I posed this question in the IMDb forums, and someone pointed out that McGoohan did in fact write, and that when he did he would often use a pen name. So is Patrick McGoohan to David Stone something of an analog of Samuel Clemens' Mark Twain?

Perhaps instead of asking; 'Is Number 6 Drake?' (of course he is), we should instead be asking; 'Is David Stone Patrick McGoohan?' If so, we would indeed have a direct connection between the two series.

Be seeing you... ;>

"The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" is a very strange and surreal episode and it doesn't fit in with the style of the series at all. Interestingly, it IS a lot like a show from Patrick McGoohan's next series, "The Prisoner". As an episode of "The Prisoner" it wouldn't have been too bad, but for "Secret Agent" is was awfully weak.

Drake is driving along the English countryside on his way to London. However, when a kid's ball flashes into the road, Drake is distracted and crashes. What follows is an odd nightmarish story where Drake finds himself staying at a gambling casino and a man is trying to blackmail him, as he KNOWS Drake is a secret agent and he's threatening to expose his real identity. But the story is much more--as people later appear and disappear and the story has a strange other worldly feel to it. What's happening? Is Drake losing his mind or is he on LSD or what?!

"Secret Agent" was a very good series---a very literal series. This strange episode just doesn't fit at all and is weak because of this (though the stunts were very nice). However, if you want to see 'Q' from the "James Bond" series, he does make an odd guest appearance.

Speeding on his way to the airport, secret agent John Drake (Patrick McGoohan) swerves to avoid a couple of young boys chasing a ball and loses control of his car. After a devastating wreck, the camera lingers on his shattered dashboard clock, stopped at exactly 12 noon.

The rest of this story is supplied by Drake's subconscious: A duel of wits in which the hobo he passed on the road right before his accident morphs into the suave, sinister (and much better groomed) music lover and casino owner Mr. Alexander (Francis de Wolff), whose unsavory deeds range from attempting to blackmail Drake to passing secrets via microdots on gambling chits.

What's impressive about this episode is the way it's framed from the first as a dream, and evokes the alternating logic/illogic of a dream state quite nicely, without succumbing to the temptation of going wildly overboard. Just a subtle, gathering wrongness (like every clock you see during the episode shows twelve o'clock) and unsettling discontinuities (such as the title character, Mr. Lovegrove, who -- to put it mildly -- wears many hats in this story) leading to an appropriately bizarre and manic crescendo.

Adrienne Corri is Alexander's sleekly sexy and unfailingly sarcastic assistant, Elaine; the inimitable Patsy Rowland plays "Mrs. Farebrother", a casino habitué who supplies comic relief, as well as some timely help and advice. And Desmond Llewelyn ("Q" from the Bond movies) brings his perpetual air of disapproval to his role as the casino's doorman.

In both style and substance, this is a fairly unique entry in the "Danger Man" series. In fact, it strongly reminded me of the sort of mind games and skewed sensibility which would become a standard for "The Prisoner". (Incidentally, the Australian band Dead Can Dance appropriated the title of this episode for a track on their 1993 album "Into the Labyrinth".)

One of my favorite shows as a youngster, I found "Danger Man" on Charge TV accidentally and immediately recognized the musical score, and intro and closing credits ("High Wire", officially named), although it had been 50 years since I'd last seen the show in the U.S. as "Secret Agent". In this episode "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove", we see the appearance of Desmond Llewelyn, or "Q", of logistics and product development in the James Bond movies. He appears recurringly as the doorman to the casino, and later as one of the emergency responders to Mr. Drake's car accident when Drake finally comes to. He had only appeared in one or two of the James Bond movies by that time, "Q" being somewhat disdainful of the playful nature with which 007 treats his inventions, but otherwise quite a list of credits in English TV. His face under the doorman's top hat and long overcoat is quite unmistakable.

This episode certainly has elements that remind one of the future "The Prisoner" short series. This isn't quite unique, in the episode "Don't Nail Him Yet", Mr. Drake tries to get in the head of the culprit and wear him down as he does to one or more of the many "Number Two" characters in "The Prisoner".

There is sometimes speculation that the theme song "Secret Agent Man" was written with the follow on series "The Prisoner" in mind. The sentence in the chorus, "They've given you a number, and taken away your name", would seem to lead one in that direction. However the songwriters P.F. Sloan / Steve Barri composed a quick lead in when several studios were approached by CBS TV, and this short version with the famous guitar riff was expanded into the full length song "Secret Agent Man". It became the series theme song in the United States only, as by that time the series Danger Man in England had already run its course. At the time several James Bond movies had been released and "spy" themed TV shows were quite the rage in the United States and in England by ITC, and the phrase "giving you a number" is thought to refer to Agents being assigned numbers to hide identity, such as 007. There isn't any evidence or statements by the late Mr Sloan that the future "The Prisoner" had even been raised at the time they wrote the intro for "Secret Agent".