to the story I've heard in the past--namely that this show was originally conceived as a continuation of Dangerman/Secret Agent? The story goes that it was intended to have starred Patrick McGoohan--the creators figured he'd never get The Prisoner off the ground--but was then tweaked slightly to star Bradford, when it became clear that McGoohan was not going to return as John Drake. Anyone else ever hear this, or know anything about whether it's true or not?
shareI have read several sources that said this show was meant to replace "Dangerman". McGoohan split from the production, and most of the people involved in "Dangerman" stayed on to continue with "Man in a Suitcase".
shareThanks. I always felt the show was pretty obviously meant to be a continuation of Dangerman, with Drake now on the run from his former bosses. (The later Dangerman episodes clearly imply that Drake is becoming persona non grata among his employers.) I guess Patrick McGoohan had his own ideas about what happened 'after the fall', so to speak, and created his own show about it; and the MIAS idea must have been felt to be too good to be dropped just because McGoohan wasn't going to be part of it.
shareAs I understand it, the US networks weren't going to carry on purchasing Danger Man. Without a US sale the budget would have to be slashed and the quality would suffer. McGoohan had The Prisoner which he wanted to make instead and Lew Grade agreed to this.
Danger Man producer Sydney Cole (an ITC regular) was left without a series and without a leading man. Cole then produced Man in a Suitcase. It's not clear to me whether MIAS existed at all as a concept prior to Danger Man being cancelled or whether it was created specifically as a new series for Cole.
There are obvious similarities between the series in that they concern a single character who was/had been a spy and it was fairly straightforward to rewrite some unmade Danger Man scripts as Man in a Suitcase episodes, but MIAS wasn't a straight sequel to Danger Man.
I've never heard any suggestion that McGoohan might ever have played McGill and it seems unlikely that, even if The Prisoner hadn't been shooting at the same time, the US networks would want a series starring McGoohan which would then have seemed too superficially similar to the one they had just declined to buy.