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Category:    Home > Reviews > Action > Adventure > Spy > British TV > Hardboiled > Man In A Suitcase – Set One (1967/Acorn Media DVD Set/U.S. Release)

Man In A Suitcase – Set One (1967/Acorn Media/U.S. Release)

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Episodes: B+


After Patrick McGoohan’s departure from Danger Man in order to commence work on The Prisoner (a program he starred in addition to being its co-creator), a replacement for the show was called for.  Thus, Man in a Suitcase was born.  The new show, conceived by writers Richard Harris and Dennis Spooner, saw a selection of crew members carried over after their work on Danger Man.  Richard Bradford stars here as the man known only as McGill – a CIA agent responsible for so badly botching a mission, that he has now been exiled from the U.S.
 
Living literally out of his suitcase, McGill often finds himself in unusual predicaments with each episode of the show.  Some of these situations involve his past, while others simply involve deadly plots that he manages to get involved in.  The show holds up well for the most part, but some of episodes buckle under the weight of the hour-long format of the show.  Only 30 episodes were produced, and here we are given the first 15 of them in this DVD set from Acorn Media.
 
The show has finally come to the actual U.S. on DVD, while it has been available for a while on in this way in both the U.K. and Australia and we have covered the Umbrella Australian edition, which was a Complete Series set you can read more about at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8551/Man+In+A+Suitcase+-+The+Complete

 

 

I liked the show even more and it is so popular, it is already being planned for Blu-ray release and one episode has already found its way to the second of three volumes of Network U.K.’s retro-Action Blu-ray series that samples all the major 35mm film-produced Lord Lew Grade/ITC action series.  Somebody Loses, Somebody… Wins? is the episode not included here, but should be on the next set.

The 1.33:1 image has good color and is pretty decent and consistent throughout. This is another good looking series that had been shot on 35mm, to be safe for possible theatrical release (the two-parter, Variation on a Million Bucks, actually did see European theatrical release under the title To Chase a Million, a common occurrence then).  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is clean and clear for its age, but not as loud and clear as the isolated music and sound effects tracks.
 
Bonus content is all but absent on this edition, with the only extras given being photo galleries, which accompany each disc.  While it is a good thing to see it finally reaching our shores, it remains sad that the many extras from the Network UK and Umbrella editions of the title did not carry over to this release. Nonetheless, Man in a Suitcase is fine show for more than just spy show completists, and is worthy of rediscovery.

 


 David Milchick


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