The Secret Service - Reception

Reception

The Secret Service captures the English whimsy that was making The Avengers such a hit in America, but adds to it the charm of Four Feather Falls, the irony and wit of Fireball XL5 and the technical accomplishments of the later Supermarionation shows. It is the forgotten gem in the Anderson canon, with highlights almost too numerous to mention.

Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn (2002)

Critical reception of The Secret Service has been mostly negative. Gerry Anderson, however, has said that it is his favourite of all the series that he has produced. Leo Eaton, who directed four episodes, has referred to The Secret Service as "just a bit weird" and questioned the effectiveness of Unwin's humour. Production manager Desmond Saunders' verdict was "strange. I suppose it was the gobbledegook and the mixture of live action with puppets. It never seemed to me to be a very good idea." Simon Wickes, in discussing the production of the series on the website TVCentury21.com, judges the premise "very strange" and suggests that The Secret Service was made first and foremost to bridge the Andersons' Supermarionation series and their subsequent efforts in live action. Kif Bowden-Smith of the Transdiffusion website concurs with this latter point, describing the mix of puppetry and live action as "an experimental format for the following live-action series".

The puppets and special effects had always worked well together because they existed in the same artificial universe ... By contrast, no such forgiveness is extended when you see a puppet in a car, then cut to a human getting out of the vehicle and walking across the road. The viewers simply find themselves removed from the storytelling, as the brain knows that the shots do not match. It is one thing to ask the viewer to believe in an aircraft doing incredible things; it is quite another to try to pass off a human and a puppet as the same person.

Stephen La Rivière (2009)

Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn, authors of What Made Thunderbirds Go! The Authorised Biography of Gerry Anderson (2002) register a divergence from earlier Supermarionation productions stemming from The Secret Service being less "American-orientated" and comprising fewer action sequences. They consider it the "most eccentric" of all the Supermarionation series up to 1969, and the fusion of puppets and live actors the "natural conclusion" to the filming technique. The writers bestow particular praise on the characterisation of Mrs Appleby, whose ignorance of Unwin and Harding's involvement with British Intelligence adds to the comedy: for example, when Father Unwin speaks into his communications device that is disguised as a hearing aid, the housekeeper thinks that the apparently senile vicar is muttering to himself. The episodes "A Question of Miracles", in which the miniaturised Matthew is dwarfed by articles of food and drink from a picnic basket, and "Last Train to Bufflers Halt", whose plot concerns an unstoppable runaway train, are also well received. Stephen La Rivière, author of Filmed in Supermarionation: A History of the Future, favours "More Haste Less Speed": describing the series finale as "wonderfully quirky" and "glorious", he sees the counterfeiting plot as being reminiscent of the "gentler, earlier days of Supercar", also praising Keith Alexander for his voice acting of the part of the elderly Lady Hazlewell.

However, in his evaluation of The Secret Service as a whole, La Rivière argues that the premise of a secret agent masquerading as a priest while driving an antiquated car could not have appealed much to children, and that older viewers would have been disappointed with the series' unoriginal "traditional espionage format". Ian Fryer concurs, writing in FAB magazine that "very little about The Secret Service has obvious appeal to the traditionally young Supermarionation audience." Discussing the opening theme music, he remarks that "the younger me would have run a mile from any series which sounded like that." He also notes that the opening credits "broke with the tradition of having a thrilling or suspenseful promise of what was to come, and made the series look suspiciously like it might be about the life and work of an elderly vicar." For La Rivière, the blending of puppetry and live action "simply doesn't work. It requires more than the audience can give in terms of acceptance." In the case of "More Haste Less Speed", he points out that the character of Lady Hazlewell is portrayed in live-action distance shots by a stunt actor dressed in drag – an "unintentionally hilarious moment that illustrates beautifully why the live-action inserts didn't work." He further argues that the contrasting light levels of shots that alternate between one format and the other shatter the illusion of "artificiality" that previous series had been able to sustain in the absence of live action.

The clerical vocation of the main character also introduces the issue of faith – the series doesn't so much preach any religion as such but rather demonstrates people putting faith in each other. In trusting the eccentric Unwin (blind faith as it happens, as appears to be talking utter nonsense), Professor Graham helps to avert the disaster. Unwin circumspectly passes it off as "a miracle of science", avoiding any awkward questions. In several other episodes it's interesting that he implies that his successes (achieved using the science of the Minimiser) are down to divine intervention.

Paul O'Brien on "Recall to Service"

La Rivière also cites external influences that, in his view, did not work in favour of The Secret Service. He expounds the continuing popularity of earlier Supermarionation productions as far back as The Adventures of Twizzle (1959) and the frequent repeat runs that they had on ATV throughout the 1960s: "... as with anything that is phenomenally popular, the time must come when the audience is satiated and drifts away to something else." Fryer suggests that the espionage theme may not have been attractive to potential foreign buyers, noting that the American spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. had been cancelled in 1968 and that the last episode of The Avengers had aired in the UK the following year. Fryer considers the "making a spy series just when the fad for the genre was waning" the biggest problem that faced The Secret Service in finding an audience. On the other hand, it is argued that, in light of the release of Century 21's Doppelgänger (1969), a live-action film that preceded UFO, the Supermarionation format had become outdated. Archer and Hearn express similar concerns about expectations for a new Supermarionation series in 1969, writing that Anderson and his colleagues had become "a bit too successful" in producing a winning format.

Science-fiction author John Peel, in his episode guide to the Supermarionation productions, labels The Secret Service "dismal", describing the combination of puppetry and live action as "completely pointless" and Unwin's recruitment not only "bizarre in the extreme" but also ill-considered, in his opinion that Unwinese "was hardly funny to most people (let alone children)." Addressing Lew Grade's concerns that American audiences would have been left baffled by Unwin's mannerisms, he argues that the character was equally incomprehensible to UK viewers. As with La Rivière, Peel considers the central premise uninspired, writing that the Minimiser was the "single gimmick" of the series, which as a whole "marked the death knell of Supermarionation." It is his opinion that every Supermarionation series after Thunderbirds "had made one mistake after another", such that "From the heights of Thunderbirds, the Anderson team had slipped to the depths with The Secret Service.

Of course, the burning question is, does it work? – And one has to answer with an uncomfortable "yes". It does work. But in succeeding to make the puppets "real", the show has lost much of the reason for being a puppet series in the first place. The series might have worked even more successfully had it been a fully-fledged live-action production.

ToonHound.com on the mix of puppetry and live action

Writers Chris Drake and Graeme Bassett put it that "On paper, at least, the premise seemed irresistible", yet view the blending of puppetry and live action as "uneasy". Prior to his death in 2002, Unwin himself praised the off-beat nature of The Secret Service, defending the inclusion of elements such as Unwinese dialogue as "an attempt to add a new dimension to the puppet field ... It was a bit bizarre, but then aren't many new ideas a little odd at first?" On the subject of the cancellation, he commented that the series was possibly "a little bit before its time". Contrary to Peel and La Rivière, John Walsh of The Guardian challenges the idea that the gobbledegook devalued the series, arguing that "British audiences quite like not understanding things."

In an episode review published in the Andersonic fanzine, Paul O'Brien writes that the AquaTank plot of "Recall to Service" is "an obvious allegory about the hazards of complete automation", suggesting that the depiction of a military super-weapon gone rogue reflects episodes of earlier Supermarionation series such as Thunderbirds in terms of its subtext, which warns of the dangers of over-reliance on technology. The vital plot development of the episode occurs, according to O'Brien, when the character of Matthew returns the AquaTank to manual control: "in other words, the machinery is now subordinate to its creator once again, as it should stay." O'Brien is critical of the limitations of the puppet cast, arguing that the recurring absence of female characters makes Unwin and Harding members of an "all-male club" and that the one regular character of the opposite sex, Mrs Appleby, "contributes precisely nil to the plot."

Exploring cultural influences, historian Nicholas J. Cull describes The Secret Service as an "idiosyncratically British product" and, in reference to BISHOP, writes that the series honours "the 1960s vogue for stories set in secret organisations with extravagant acronyms." He points out inferences to the Cold War, noting that the spy Sakov in "The Cure" is Russian and concluding that The Secret Service is one of several Century 21 series that "unashamedly capitalised on the Cold War cult of the secret agent whose skills defend the home from enemies unknown." He labels The Secret Service overall as the Andersons' "one flop".