Danger Man

Apparently Patrick McGoohan was Ian Fleming's first choice to play 007 in the movies, but McGoohan turned the part down due to the promiscuity of the character. He was then offered the part of Simon Templar in The Saint and refused for much the same reason. In a sense he trumped both Connery and Moore and was the quintessential agent on tv in the early sixties. What either of those two series would have turned into with him as the lead is anybody's guess, but him turning them down did lead to an extended tenure as John Drake in Danger Man and eventually to the almost-sequel The Prisoner. In any case Danger Man remains one of the best tv series coming out of the ITC stable and one of the high points of sixties tv. Slightly more gritty than The Saint, The Baron and the rest of them, and slightly more believable (mostly). McGoohan barks his way through the series with an intensity that would put Daniel Craig to shame. The following clip is just a brief snippet of an episode, but go get the excellent box set from Network DVD if you want more. Start with the 1 hour episode and then go back to the first series of half hour episodes later.