The early Saint episodes reviews
Taken from the book The Saint: From Big Screen to Small Screen and Back Again by Paul Simper.

The Talented Husband
Review: Dennis Potter, The Daily Herald, 1 Oct 1962
THINGS ARE BEGINNING TO LIVEN UP
Last night the new offering was The Saint, a delightfully sleek and promising series featuring Leslie Charteris' famous sleuth, the handsome hero figure with a portable halo and a fast sports car.I have been a fan of the Saint ever since discovering that he was not, in fact, the prig his name suggested that he might be. Roger Moore played the Saint with just the right well-tailored dash. His good deed last night was to prevent a wastrel of a husband from murdering his third wife. The plot was wildly improbable, with the wicked husband stirring rat poison into the lamb stew with all the gleeful viciousness of an army cook feeding new recruits.

The Talented Husband
Review: Clifford Davis, The Daily Mirror, 1 Oct 1962
Roger Moore made a big impact in the first of ITV's new Saint series last night. He isn't exactly my idea of the tough, hard-hitting adventurer created by Leslie Charteris - but all the same, he made a very likable hero. He had the right touch of charm and devil-may-care approach. In the past Mr Moore has never quite made it as a TV hero - obviously he's never been given the chance. This series should put him right at the top.

The Talented Husband
Review: J.F.W., The Daily Telegraph, 1 Oct 1962
A QUEER ACCENT AT COOKHAM
The furrowed brow, the righteously moved expression, on the face of Roger Moore, playing Simon Templar: that is doubtless what we shall be getting at the end of each of the 39 episodes of The Saint, which Associated Television began last night. The first story was about a man's thwarted attempt to poison his third rich wife. No criticism on production: it was all presented in the slick and easily digestable way we have come to expect from television. But the stated setting of the old-world village of Cookham caused annoying distraction throughout. Everyone, with possible minor exceptions, had that semi-American accent often denigrated as mid-Atlantic, which is known to help sell TV series in America.

A Daily Express review by Laurence Marks, 15 Dec 1962
IT'S TIME FOR THIS SAINT'S HALO TO SLIP
Leslie Charteris's (sic) hero spent a large part of my boyhood keeping humanity safe from the machinations of international gangsters. He was tough and ruthless. But Mr Moore looks like a thoroughly scrupulous member of society. Is this the man who stood by while Ivar Nordsten, one of the richest men in Europe, was killed by his own black panther? No, sir. Mr Moore with his simple, honest, Li'I Abner face and open smile wouldn't have lasted one chapter among the gangsters. And last Sunday's episode (The Man Who Was Lucky), I'm afraid, was just about as exciting as a shipping forecast. It needed more incident and better dialogue to sustain a full hour's television. The basic rules of this kind of entertainment are simple enough: you shouldn't know what is going to happen next, but you should definately want to find out.

© DC Publications Ltd, 1997 

« BACK