Adam Adamant Lives!: A Vintage Year for Scoundrels [23/06/66#1 BBC1]

Edwardian gentleman adventurer and British hero Adam Llewellyn de Vere Adamant (Gerald Harper) is frozen in a block of ice by his arch-nemesis The Face in 1902, but awakened to fight espionage, crime, and general evil-doing again in the swinging London of 1966. While disorientated shortly after his revival, Adamant wanders into - and then down the escalators at - Leicester Square station, expresses his bafflement as to where he is to a commuter, and then manages to get back up to the surface, and out onto the pavement again, followed by young Georgina Jones (Juliet Harmer), destined to be his sidekick for the rest of the series.

The actual location was used, specifically the 1930s Charles Holden-designed entrance and ticket hall, and the escalators down to the  Northern line. A series of fast-cut images in the ticket hall highlight various directional and other signs, as well as the free-standing  fixed-fare ticket machines. At the very end of this sequence, the camera pans, given a fleeting view of the original Leslie Green-designed entrance building on the other side of Cranbourn Street.

Some commentators have suggested that Adamant's unfamiliarity with the Underground is anachronistic, since some parts of the network had already been built by the time he was frozen in 1902. It should be remembered, however, that by the time Adamant went into enforced hibernation in 1902, the only deep-level tubes were the section of what is now the Northern line between Clapham Common and Angel stations, and the Waterloo & City line. The beginnings of the Piccadilly line - including Leicester Square station - did not open until December 1906, and while it was later revealed that Adamant seemed very clued up about the construction of the Waterloo & City (see below), it's more of a stretch to think he would have been aware of the bills before Parliament in 1902 apropos various Tube schemes including the Piccadilly, let alone that in his post-revival confusion he would have made a connection between those theoretical plans and the strange building he finds himself in. 

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Adam Adamant Lives!: A Ticket to Terror [29/09/66#14 BBC1]

Adamant's butler, Simms (Jack May) boards a Waterloo & City line train leaves Bank but it mysteriously vanishes en route. Waiting for his arrival at Waterloo, Adamant learns of a new central control system run by Dr Klein (Max Adrian) and his assistant, Launa Caldwell (Ann Lyn). The missing train suddenly reappears, but is completely empty. A second train departs Bank and also vanishes, only to finally arrive at Waterloo full of skeletons. Adamant eventually discovers that a diabolical plan to rob the Bank of England itself is afoot!

Sadly, out of the sixteen episodes of the first season of the series, this is the only one that is missing, a particularly unlucky twist on the situation covered in Appendix 1, in that it was the only installment made on - and broadcast from - video tape, all the rest being produced on film. The script of the episode shows that it made extensive use of location filming at Bank showing the exterior of the station, the ticket hall, the Trav-O-Lator™, and a train departing from one platform, and also at Waterloo of the escalators, ticket hall, and the arrival platform. Filming took place at Waterloo on the evening of Tuesday 19 July 1966, and at Bank the following evening. In the studio, mock-ups of a platform and a section of running tunnel stood in for various locations.

Curiously, dialogue in the episode treats the W&C as part of an integrated London Underground as a whole, which didn't really happen until 1994! The opening date is erroneously given as 1899 (actually 11 July 1898), and the narrative makes use of the hoary cliché of a fictional disaster eight years previously, in which over 200 workers were killed in the collapse of a "test tunnel," which was then bypassed by a new tunnel in which the trains now run, the bodies being left in situ (the source of the skeletons).

The London Underground in Films & TV

PAGE HISTORY:
07/03/10 First upload
22/10/17 Hosting transfer & amendments