Manhunt | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Created by | Rex Firkin |
Starring | Alfred Lynch Peter Barkworth Cyd Hayman |
Theme music composer | Ludwig van Beethoven |
Opening theme | Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) |
Ending theme | Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven) |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 1 |
No. of episodes | 26 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Rex Firkin |
Producer | Andrew Brown |
Running time | 26 x 50 minute episodes |
Production company | London Weekend Television |
Original release | |
Network | ITV |
Release | 2 January – 26 June 1970 |
Manhunt is a Second World War drama series consisting of 26 episodes, produced by London Weekend Television in 1969 and broadcast nationwide in the United Kingdom from January 1970. [1]
British pilot Jimmy Briggs (Alfred Lynch) has crashed his aeroplane in occupied France and immediately finds himself on the run from the Nazis. He comes across a resistance cell whose leader is code-named Vincent (Peter Barkworth). Nina (Cyd Hayman), a part-Jewish agent with important information of resistance figures and addresses, also appears in the town, upset and terrified after her own Paris cell is destroyed by the Nazis. Vincent is ordered to get her back to Britain or to kill her if he has to. The three are pursued across France by SS Obersturmbannführer Lutzig (Philip Madoc) and Abwehr Sgt. Gratz (Robert Hardy), a complex psychological character who, it is implied, falls in love with Nina. Unlike many previous war dramas, the story presents the key Nazis with some nuance. Though Lutzig is a cold and relentless SS officer he can be intelligent and creative in his job; Gratz is a deeply flawed and contradictory character who fully understands his personal shortcomings. Manhunt also portrayed in detail the rivalry between the SS and the Abwehr .
Although the overall plot is driven by the need to keep Nina out of the hands of the Germans and return her to England with her secret information, the series ended in an anti-climax. Gratz is sure that he has all of Nina's information anyway, mostly through pillow talk and carelessness on her part. Nina and Jimmy, despite their closeness while on the run, live in different worlds in England. Their relationship does not endure.
Character | Actor |
---|---|
Jimmy Briggs | Alfred Lynch |
Vincent | Peter Barkworth |
Nina | Cyd Hayman |
Adelaide | Maggie Fitzgibbon |
Abwehr Sgt Gratz | Robert Hardy |
Lutzig | Philip Madoc |
In addition, Manhunt has many notable guest appearances, such as by Paul Darrow, John Savident, George Sewell, Julian Glover, Nerys Hughes, Tony Beckley, Yootha Joyce, Stephen Lewis, William Marlowe, Brian Cox and Richard Hurndall.
Episode no. | Title | Director | Writer(s) | Original broadcast date | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | "Fare Forward Voyagers" | Bill Bain | Bruce Stewart | 2 January 1970 | |
After Nazis break up a meeting of French resistance leaders, murdering her comrades, "Nina" flees Paris. She meets with the British agent "Vincent", along with RAF pilot Jimmy, whose plane has crashed nearby. Vincent is ordered to escort Nina, who has the names of key resistance figures in her head, to safety, or kill her. | |||||
02 | "Break-Up" | Rex Firkin | Derek Ingrey | 9 January 1970 | |
After witnessing the rape of a farm girl by a Vichy policeman, Nina is shocked by the scant sympathy shown by the others and breaks away on her own - with dire results. | |||||
03 | "Only The Dead Survive" | Cyril Coke | Roy Clarke | 16 January 1970 | |
With the Gestapo closing in on them, Vincent takes Nina and Jimmy to his family château where they are hidden by a loyal gamekeeper. | |||||
04 | "What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?" | Bill Bain | Arden Winch | 23 January 1970 | |
Jimmy, Vincent and Nina hide in a disused room at the top of Vincent’s family château, but the refuge becomes a prison when the Gestapo occupy the lower rooms. | |||||
05 | "One More River" | Cyril Coke | Bruce Stewart | 30 January 1970 | |
Vincent, Jimmy and Nina have 50 miles of occupied France to traverse before they reach the River Cher, where Free France begins. | |||||
06 | "Open House" | Bill Bain | Jonathan Hales | 6 February 1970 | |
Vincent, Jimmy and Nina seek refuge in a "safe" house. Vincent's controlling behaviour provokes a fight with Jimmy. But who are the mysterious figures outside in the shadows? | |||||
07 | "Better Doubt Than Die" | Cyril Coke | Harry Green | 13 February 1970 | |
As the German military roars south to Toulon, Vincent, Jimmy and Nina hide in an old toll-house. Vincent risks their lives by trying to contact the local Resistance. | |||||
08 | "A Different Kind of War" | Rex Firkin | Jonathan Hales | 20 February 1970 | |
Jimmy and Nina shelter at a farmhouse. At once, they realise that they have walked into a bizarre and sinister situation. | |||||
09 | "Betrayal" | Cyril Coke | Elwyn Jones | 27 February 1970 | |
Sergeant Gratz, a skilled Abwehr interrogator, takes charge of the hunt with orders that undermine SS Obersturmbannführer Lutzig. Gratz closes in on Vincent, Jimmy and Nina as they hide in an armaments factory. One of the workers is an informer, but which one? | |||||
10 | "With a Sort of Love" | Bill Bain | Vincent Tilsley | 6 March 1970 | |
Gratz interrogates Nina; his methods are offbeat but persuasive. Lutzig also wants her information, provoking conflict between the SS and the Abwehr. As the interrogation goes on, it is Gratz who begins to crack. Vincent attempts a rescue, but Nina is unwilling to leave. | |||||
11 | "The Price of Resistance" | Cyril Coke | Hugo Charteris | 13 March 1970 | |
To the annoyance of Lutzig, Nina has been released by Gratz. The three are hidden in the small town of Boiziers by Doctor Moussac and his wife. Lutzig takes three local worthies as hostages, one of whom is Madame Moussac's brother, and orders a battalion of captured Russian Tartars to search the town. | |||||
12 | "The Enemy You Know" | Bill Bain | Jonathan Hales | 20 March 1970 | |
Vincent, Jimmy and Nina flee westward and seek help from a local resistance leader, who tells them escape to the south is now impossible. In an attempt to protect them by putting them in full view, he puts all three to work in his sleazy nightclub, a favourite haunt of Nazis. But Lutzig has an informer at the club. Gratz puts himself in danger when he meets Nina again. | |||||
13 | "A Way to Die" | Cyril Coke | Andrew Brown | 27 March 1970 | |
Jimmy and Vincent learn of an impending SS raid on a junk shop where a major Resistance meeting is planned. They visit the building to warn the Resistance, but the group has already been tipped off and the Nazis close in with Jimmy and Vincent trapped inside. They decide only one of them can escape, and Vincent tosses a coin. | |||||
14 | "One Way Home" | Bill Bain | Jonathan Hales | 3 April 1970 | |
Narrowly escaping the SS round-up in which Vincent was shot and caught, Jimmy has been found by Francine, the club waitress who has fallen for him. Also in the house is Francine's weary mother, and her brainwashed younger brother, a potential informer. Vincent makes contact with Allard, the local Resistance head, who arranges a plan for Jimmy's escape to Sweden. But Jimmy is determined to find Nina. | |||||
15 | "Little Man, Big Gun Pt 1" | Robert Tronson | Vincent Tilsley | 10 April 1970 | |
Gratz captures a young British agent, David Mainwaring, codename Cadet, and exploits Nina's attraction for the agent in order to extract information from him. But the agent is wary of Gratz's offer. | |||||
16 | "Little Man, Big Gun pt 2" | James Ormerod | Vincent Tilsley | 17 April 1970 | |
Nina and David are hiding in Gratz's apartment. Playing a series of mind games, Gratz proves that David’s affection for Nina is weaker than his sense of duty. | |||||
17 | "The Ugly Side of War" | Cyril Coke | William Martin | 24 April 1970 | |
Jimmy, hiding in the Bordeaux bar where Adelaide works, is picked up by the new local Gestapo security officer Hochler. Because he has no papers, Jimmy is sent to work at the Nazi-controlled metalworks where a new secret alloy is being tested for the Luftwaffe. In order to get out of the factory to the Resistance, Jimmy pretends to act as informant for Hochler. | |||||
18 | "Confessional" | Bill Bain | Hugo Charteris | 1 May 1970 | |
After Gratz leaves the flat, Nina is contacted and given a message to meet Adelaide and Jimmy in the church of St Xavier. But is it a Gestapo ruse to get Nina away from Gratz? | |||||
19 | "The Death-Wish" | Robert Tronson | Arden Winch | 8 May 1970 | |
In Paris, after intense but fruitless physical and mental torture by Lutzig and the SS, Vincent is offered his freedom. How can he be sure it is not a trap? | |||||
20 | "Machine" | James Ormerod | Peter J Hammond | 15 May 1970 | |
A Gestapo agent in the metalworks terrorises Jimmy into revealing his identity and an innocent Polish worker is executed. | |||||
21 | "Degrade and Rule" | Cyril Coke | Harry Green | 22 May 1970 | |
Gratz tries to trick British Intelligence by the use of a captured transmitter and a British agent. His plan backfires and he is arrested. | |||||
22 | "Intent to Steal" | Robert Tronson | Jonathan Hales | 29 May 1970 | |
Vincent, Jimmy and Adelaide, with a strong force of the Bordeaux Resistance organisation, infiltrate the German-controlled metalworks in a last desperate attempt to seize an aircraft component. | |||||
23 | "The Train May Be Late" | James Ormerod | Alfred Shaughnessy | 5 June 1970 | |
Vincent, Nina and Adelaide embark on a highly dangerous train journey. | |||||
24 | "Little Man, What Next? Pt 1" | Bill Bain | Vincent Tilsley | 12 June 1970 | |
Lutzig arrests Gratz, who is tortured in an effort to force him to betray Nina. He resists and survives, but is finally confronted by someone he is shocked to see. | |||||
25 | "Little Man, What Next? Pt 2" | Robert Tronson | Vincent Tilsley | 19 June 1970 | |
As the price of his freedom, Gratz makes a promise to Lutzig: he will lead the SS to Nina. | |||||
26 | "The Losers" | James Goddard | William Martin | 26 June 1970 | |
Encouraged by Gratz and aided by the Resistance, Nina, JImmy and Adelaide hope to escape to England. Can they really make it to freedom? |
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, however, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during the war.
SS-GB is an alternative history novel by Len Deighton, set in a United Kingdom conquered and occupied by Germany during the Second World War. The novel's title refers to the branch of the Nazi SS that controls Britain. It was first published in 1978.
Odette Marie Léonie Céline Hallowes,, also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Sansom, code named Lise, was an agent for the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during the Second World War. She was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross by the United Kingdom and was awarded the Légion d'honneur by France. The following information relating to her war service uses 'Sansom' as this was her surname during this period.
The Milice française, generally called la Milice, was a political paramilitary organization created on 30 January 1943 by the Vichy régime to help fight against the French Resistance during World War II. The Milice's formal head was Vichy France's Prime Minister Pierre Laval, although its chief of operations and de facto leader was Secretary General Joseph Darnand. The Milice participated in summary executions and assassinations, helping to round up Jews and résistants in France for deportation. It was the successor to Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL) militia. The Milice was the Vichy régime's most extreme manifestation of fascism. Ultimately, Darnand envisaged the Milice as a fascist single-party political movement for the French State.
Hugo Bleicher was a sergeant in Nazi Germany's Abwehr assigned to the Geheime Feldpolizei in German-occupied France during World War II. Described as a "super spy-catcher," Bleicher infiltrated resistance networks in France and was responsible for the arrest of more than one hundred French resistors and British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents. Most of the SOE agents he captured were later executed.
Vera May Atkins was a Romanian-born British intelligence officer who worked in the France Section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) from 1941 to 1945 during the Second World War.
Hans Paul Oster was a general in the Wehrmacht and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr, Oster was in a good position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work.
Secret Army is a British television drama made by the BBC and the Belgian national broadcaster BRT created by Gerard Glaister. It tells the story of a fictional Belgian resistance movement in German-occupied Belgium during the Second World War, an escape line dedicated to returning Allied airmen, usually shot down by the Luftwaffe, to Great Britain. It was made in the UK and Belgium and three series were broadcast on BBC1 between 7 September 1977 and 15 December 1979.
Virginia Hall Goillot DSC, Croix de Guerre,, code named Marie and Diane, was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II. The objective of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. SOE and OSS agents in France allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. After World War II Hall worked for the Special Activities Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Enemy at the Door is a British television drama series made by London Weekend Television for ITV. The series was shown between 1978 and 1980 and dealt with the German occupation of Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands, during the Second World War. The programme generated a certain amount of criticism in Guernsey, particularly for being obviously filmed on Jersey despite being ostensibly set on Guernsey. The series also marked the television debut of Anthony Head as a member of the island resistance. The theme music was composed by Wilfred Josephs.
Englandspiel, or Operation North Pole, was a successful counterintelligence operation of the Abwehr from 1942 to 1944 during World War II. German counter-intelligence operatives, headed by Hermann Giskes of the Abwehr and Joseph Schreider of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents' radios and codes to dupe the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), into continuing to infiltrate agents, weapons, and supplies into the Netherlands. The Germans captured nearly all the agents and weapons sent by the United Kingdom (Britain).
Warlord was a comics anthology published weekly in the United Kingdom between 28 September 1974 and 27 September 1986.
Gertrude Mary Lindell, Comtesse de Milleville, code named Marie-Claire and Comtesse de Moncy, was an English woman, a front-line nurse in World War I and a member of the French Resistance in World War II. She founded and led an escape and evasion organization, the Marie-Claire Line, helping Allied airmen and soldiers escape from Nazi-occupied France. The airmen were survivors of military airplanes shot down over occupied Europe. During the course of the war, Lindell was run over by an automobile, shot in the head, imprisoned twice, and captured and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Her son Maurice was captured and tortured. Her son Octave (Oky), also captured, disappeared and presumably died in a German concentration camp.
André Marsac was a member of the French resistance organisation known as the CARTE network or circuit, based in Cannes, organised by André Girard. Marsac acted as a courier.
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage: an organizational role that later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
Carrion Comfort is a science fiction/horror novel by American writer Dan Simmons, published in 1989 in hardcover by Dark Harvest and in 1990 in paperback by Warner Books. It won the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Poll Award for Best Horror Novel, and the August Derleth Award for Best Novel. It is based on a novelette of the same title, published in 1983 in the magazine Omni. The first half of the novelette makes up chapter 1 of the novel, while the second half forms chapter 3.
Days of Honour is a Polish World War II television drama series, broadcast on TVP2 from 7 September 2008 to 23 November 2014, on STV Glasgow from 2 June 2014 and STV Edinburgh from 16 January 2015.
SS-GB is a 2017 British drama series produced for the BBC and based on the 1978 novel of the same name by Len Deighton. It is set in a 1941 alternative timeline in which the United Kingdom is occupied by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
Helmuth Groscurth was a German staff and Abwehr officer in the Wehrmacht and a member of the German resistance. As an intelligence officer he was an early proponent of the Brandenburgers, commanded unconventional warfare operations in the Sudetenland, and was an active conspirator against Hitler's agenda. He was later reassigned to the regular army following his criticism of war crimes committed by German forces in Poland. After commanding an infantry battalion in the invasion of France he assumed a variety of staff roles. He was involved in the events of the Bila Tserkva massacre where he attempted to avert the killing of Jewish children.
Heinz Michael Pannwitz was a German war criminal, Nazi Gestapo officer and later Schutzstaffel (SS) officer. Pannwitz was most notable for directing the investigation into the assassination of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich on 27 May 1942 in Prague. In the last two years of the war, Pannwitz ran the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle, a combined Abwehr and Gestapo counterintelligence operation against the Red Orchestra espionage network, in France and the Low Countries.
Early programmes from LWT included a 26-part drama series set among the French resistance in World War II called 'Manhunt'