SAINTS AND AVENGERS

One of the things that I sometimes do on those frequent nights when I find that I just can't sleep is to try and recast the favourite television shows of my youth with modern-day actors and see whether anyone strikes me as utterly "right" for the part.

Surprisingly enough (you may think), two of the shows with which I most struggle are "The Saint" and "The Avengers" which, given the generic "action/adventure" nature of these almost iconic cornerstones of nineteen-sixties television, you might think would be a doddle. After all, you might very well be thinking, all that Simon Templar needs to be is a slightly tough guy who can wear clothes well, and all that John Steed needs to be is a slightly posh bloke who can carry off a bowler hat.

And as for Mrs Peel... Well, we'll come to her later.

"The Saint" is difficult, however, because, despite the reputation he gained in later years, not least from his own down-playing of his own abilities, the kind of effortless charm that Roger Moore puts across on screen, coupled with that knowing sparkle behind the eyes which brings you in on the gag, takes a lot of hard work to achieve. He was not the first to portray the Saint, given that George Sanders had played him in a series of films back in the 1940s, nor was he the last, but it was his avuncular take on the character which is the one which most gelled with international audiences and left any of the actors who followed him, Ian Ogilvy, Simon Dutton and Val Kilmer, with mighty big shoes to fill and none of them really managed to make quite the success of it that dear old Rog did.

And when you try to pick someone from the modern crop of television and film actors, it's very difficult to come up with someone who you could quite imagine ticking all of those boxes. Quite a few could probably persuade audiences with their good looks, and quite a few might be physical enough, but that kind of old-school, almost Cary Grant-like, wit is very difficult to achieve.

Pick any of them and somehow they're just not a good fit. There's either something too stand-offish about the posh ones and something too coarse about the rough diamonds, possibly because those are the way that action/adventure series have gone in the intervening half century, away from the realms of fantasy and back into the brutalist reality.

Not, of course, that there's anything wrong with that, but even some of the "posh" blokes from "Spooks" would struggle to convince me as Simon Templar.

It's very much the same with the role of John Steed in "The Avengers". For me, Patrick Macnee is very much the one and only and, whilst he has been portrayed on stage by Simon Oates and on film by Ralph Fiennes, neither of them have really managed to "get" the dapper elegance combined with a knowing "nod and a wink" to the audience which Patrick Macnee managed so easily and with such apparent humour.

Ralph Fiennes is undoubtedly a fine actor but in the little-regarded late 1990s movie version of "The Avengers" he does come across as something of a cold fish who's taking it all far too seriously and, unfortunately, for some reason he really, really, just looked uncomfortable wearing a bowler hat.

Which brings us to Mrs Peel.

Uma Thurman may be a very respected and fine-looking actress but, unfortunately, she was no Diana Rigg.

Again, it's difficult to quite pin down what made the character of Mrs Peel work so very well when she was being played back in the 1960s. Whilst Diana Rigg is utterly brilliant and captivating, she's not really a "conventional" looking actress in the traditional sense so prevalent at the time, especially to play the "M(an)-Appeal" aspect of Emma that the producers of the series had decided they required.

And even those very producers of the series had to have two tries at the character because they'd already started filming with Elizabeth Shepherd before deciding that she just "wasn't working" for them.

So, trying to select a modern actress to get the humour, dignity, grace and charm that came across so effortlessly on screen back then is very difficult. So many have some of the elements, but few have got it all, and so we can only marvel at the luck we had back then that the lightning was able to be caught in a bottle and the magical alchemy which brought us those performances was allowed to happen.

Meanwhile, it's back to the sleepless nights and the pondering...

One day I'll work this one out, although by then, the choices I make will have already got too old and I'll have to start thinking about yet another generation of no-hopers...