Man in a Suitcase - Vol 6

The final series of this very popular 1960’s crime TV-series once again sees Richard Bradford in the role of discredited ex-CIA agent McGill, reduced to working as a ‘gun for hire’ and living out of a suitcase.

Unable to return to the United States, McGill is nonetheless a proud Texan, a fact he never ceases to emphasise when asked whether he is American. In this final series, McGill sees himself confronted with five cases which bring him across Europe where he has to fight against criminals and occasionally authorities!
In ‘Which Way Did He Go, McGill?’ crook and hijacker Keith Earle (Donald Sutherland) gets out of the slammer after having spent five years in a tiny cell… and his first mission is to track down his former associates who had him over for his share. Hell-bent on revenge, Sutherland seems on the right track but wait a minute, McGill also gets assigned to track down Earle and recover the missing gold – never mind trying to stop more bloodshed. Alas, finding the right links isn’t easy and McGill hopes that wealthy stable owner Joy Howells (Jennifer Jayne) might be of help – a gross miscalculation as he is about to find out…. Yes guys, keep on digging!

‘The Revolutionaries’: This intriguing episode is set in Sweden where political exile Dr. Maza (Hugh Burden) assigns McGill and gets him over from London on a return flight. His mission? Escorting daughter Chantal (Sonia Fox) to London and thus to safety, for Dr. Maza is about to publish a book that will expose the leader of a new totalitarian regime as a traitor. This doesn’t sit well with Colonel Haider (Ferdy Mayne) and his henchmen, who try everything to get their dirty hands on the script before it goes into print. Murder and sabotage soon follow and as per usual, McGill gets knocked about a fair bit though as we all know he too is pretty handy with his fists! Help is at hand in the shape of publicist Toni Olsson (Marga Roche) who turns out to be a woman and a boxing-clever one too. Together with McGill she sets about to outsmart Haider and his assassins – will the pair succeed in saving Dr. Maza and Chantal from a brutal fate? You betcha!

Things turn decidedly French in ‘Three Blinks of the Eyes’ which brings McGill to Paris, where he’s supposed to establish whether Bernard Duzac (Drewe Henley), the aristocratic yet seemingly penniless younger husband of super-rich and super-jealous Eleanor (Faith Brook) is having an affair. His investigations lead him to the decadent Club La Guillotine where the nighty cabaret sensation includes a staged and frivolous re-enactment of the French Revolution. Our detective soon finds out that Bernard has indeed an affair, with the sassy Janine Dufont (Dora Reisser) who happens to be the owner of the club – and hungry for more money! Putting his considerable charms to practice, McGill chats up the lady – much to the chagrin of Bernard – in the hope to find out how serious the affair might be. Reporting back to Eleanor in Ole Blighty, she instructs him to make sure that Bernard will not be seeing Eleanor again and for that she’s prepared to pay McGill an additional proud sum! Just as McGill ponders over how to separate Bernard and Eleanor in the most diplomatic way, the latter is found dead in her apartment – shot dead with McGill pistol that has been stolen from his hotel room. He reckons that Bernard is the culprit as he visited McGill in his room to tell him off for having chatted up Eleanor, but it all seems too simple… Who is the real murderer, and why try to frame McGill?

‘Castle in the Clouds’ is quite hilarious really and one of the most entertaining episodes of the entire series. When philandering British Civil servant Sir Dennis Galt (Gerald Flood) takes his young mistress, an Austrian girl called Magda (Gay Hamilton) to a Chinese restaurant he does so for a reason: his wife Lady Carol (Rachel Herbert) is expected back from holiday and Sir Galt makes it clear to Magda that “it was fun while it lasted” but now that his wife will be back the affair has to come to an end. Magda, a compulsive liar and daydreamer obsessed with a life of luxury, storms out of the restaurant and takes off in a black cab. Sir Galt should consider himself lucky but realises that Magda took with her a very expensive brooch which Sir Galt lent her - a family heirloom belonging to his wife which he now desperately needs returned in order to avoid a scandal. You’d swear that Magda, who comes from a very wealthy estate in Austria, makes no fuss over handing back the jewel… but of course she was lying all along because she comes from a very poor background and the brooch is her financial safety net. She can’t even be bothered to return Sir Galt’s phone calls. Who do you guess he calls for help? That’s right, McGill! It takes our man about ten minutes to suss out Magda and – realising that she is the female equivalent of Billy Liar – needs to take extra care in his plans to coax Magda into returning the brooch. In the meantime, a mysterious jeweller called Mr. Reynolds (Sydney Tafler) keeps knocking on Sir Galt’s door and also demanding the brooch – apparently Lady Galt has asked him to repair the jewel during her absence… but where is it? While Magda keeps stringing McGill along with empty promises of returning the darn brooch, she announces her looming wedding to Gentleman Jim (Edward Fox), an apparently wealthy young man who, in truth, is nothing more than a compulsive gambler sky-high in debts and now hopes his wedding to the wealthy Magda – plus the brooch she gave him as a token of her love – will change things for him. If only he knew… This almost plays like a classic screwball comedy and has a twist at the end that no one sees coming. Great fun!

It gets real tough again the McGills last assignment, ‘Night Flight to Andorra’ in which McGill has no other choice than to assemble a bunch of burglars with the apparent aim of stealing a valuable art collection from a villa in Spain – which resembles more like an impenetrable fortress rather than a villa. Taking up residence in an old farmhouse, they are testing a silent glider plan with which they hope to enter the villa. Of course, McGill has his own agenda and it’s not stealing artwork but a top secret microfilm for the British Government! The ruse seems to work according to plan when suddenly and out of nowhere, a tourist called Anne Weeks (Luanshy Greer) turns up at the farmhouse, claiming to have lost her way. Has she really? A worthy finale episode for an excellent series, and in Blu-ray format as well!

Please note that MAN IN A SUITCASE – VOL 6 is a Network Exclusive and can be obtained only via www.networkonair.com
While we’re at it, take a look at the website which also offers MAN IN A SUITCASE 6 as a Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray presented in a rigid, suitcase shaped box plus an informative and new paperback book on the making of the series as well as a new and exclusive hardcover 50-page b/w comic in the style of a newspaper strip! Wow!