Garry Halliday

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Garry Halliday
Starring Terence Longdon
Terence Alexander
Elwyn Brook-Jones
Bill Kerr
Maurice Kaufmann
Country of originUnited Kingdom
No. of episodes50
Production
Running time25mins
Original release
Network BBC Television
Release1959 (1959) –
1962 (1962)

Garry Halliday is a British television series for children on the BBC from 1959 to 1962. The show starred Terence Longdon as airman Garry Halliday. Some episodes were also novelised as books by 'Justin Blake': Justin Blake was in fact a pseudonym for the scriptwriters John Griffith Bowen and Jeremy Bullmore.

Contents

Plot

Reminiscent of Biggles, Halliday was a pilot for a commercial airline, Halliday Charter Company, and flew to his adventures in an aircraft with the call sign Golf Alpha Oboe Roger George. He was assisted by co-pilot Bill Dodds, played by Terence Alexander, who was later Charlie in Bergerac . [1] The airline's control base station was Lima Foxtrot. [2]

Their enemy was The Voice, played by Elwyn Brook-Jones, so called because he was never seen by other characters, so that at the end of each series he could escape and reappear in the next. Invisible even to his own gang, The Voice at first shone a powerful light in their faces to disguise his identity; later he used closed-circuit television.

Production

During the run of the series actor Bill Kerr, playing new co-pilot character Eddie Robbins, replaced Terence Alexander. Maurice Kaufmann played one of The Voice's henchmen. In early 1962 Brook-Jones fell ill and could not take part in the series, necessitating his replacement as The Voice for several episodes by Hamlyn Benson. [3] Although Brook-Jones did subsequently return to the role, his death in September 1962 meant that The Voice was written out of a planned appearance in the programme's final episode that month. [4]

Location filming took place at Ferryfield Airport in Lydd, Kent, with the offices and planes of Silver City Airways transformed for the first few serials. For later runs, flying and airport sequences were credited to Skyways Ltd [5] and finally to British United Air Ferries. [6] For that final series, star Langdon co-wrote one of the episodes; [7] this final run consisted of each episode being a stand-alone individual story in and of itself, rather than the serialised format the programme had previously employed. [8]

Only one episode survives in the BBC archives. [9]

Garry Halliday makes an appearance in The Black Dossier by Alan Moore, his name slightly altered to Gary Haliday, encountering Mina Murray and Allan Quatermain in a new spaceport in Birmingham. The Voice is mentioned in passing in a fictional document detailing The League's activities during World War II (When They Sound The Last All Clear).

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References

  1. ↑ "Tv Cream: The Gaffer To Gilligan'S Island". Archived from the original on 25 February 2008. Retrieved 18 March 2008.
  2. ↑ Garry Halliday
  3. ↑ "Telebriefly". Leicester Evening Mail. Leicester. 12 January 1962. p. 6. Fans of "The Voice" in the Garry Halliday series on BBC will soon welcome back Elwyn Brook Jones. He was ill when rehearsals for the new series began, so his place was taken by Hamlyn Benson. Elwyn will be back after the first three instalments
  4. ↑ "'The Voice' of TV Series Dies". Birmingham Post. Birmingham. 5 September 1962. p. 11. The Garry Halliday series was pre-recorded, and children saw Mr Brook-Jones in Episode 3 last Saturday. A BBC spokesman said: "Mr Brook-Jones was not due to appear in Episodes 4 and 5, and Episode 6, the final one, in which his voice was due to be heard, has been rewritten slightly so that his voice will no longer be used."
  5. ↑ "Garry Halliday and the Secret of Omar Khayyam: Episode 1: Live and Die". BBC Genome Project . BBC . Retrieved 22 January 2024.
  6. ↑ "Garry Halliday: Kidnap". BBC Genome Project . BBC . Retrieved 22 January 2024.
  7. ↑ "Garry Halliday: Two for the Price of One". BBC Genome Project . BBC . Retrieved 22 January 2024.
  8. ↑ "Garry Halliday". Radio Times . London: BBC. 16 August 1962. p. 10.
  9. ↑ "Garry Halliday", lostshows.com
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