DAVID CALLAN

After a quite successful run with his creation Callan, first as a teleplay and then as a weekly series, James Mitchell was obviously not finished with the character. This was understandable because Callan was an intriguing and interesting man, especially well played on the small screen by Edward Woodward. The author looked around for other ways to make use of the unhappy assassin and luckily for us readers, he found it.

Taking the teleplay he had written for what amounted to the pilot for the tv series, A Magnum for Schneider, he would expand on the character and fill him out considerably without changing the man from the operative that had been so popular. He created the first book which came out as the second season was drawing to a close.

The show would go on for two more seasons, one fairly short and the second a good length but it eventually concluded in 1972. The next year, Mitchell kept the character going with the second of his eventual four books. The third and the last came out in successive years.

While Callan would come back a few years later for one final adventure, this time in another movie, there were no more printed novels.

The numerous short stories that Callan creator James Mitchell produced came in several spurts.

In 1967, the British television directory magazine TV Times put out an extra Christmas special for which Mitchell was asked to come up with a story, which considering Callan was a government assassin might seem incongruous with the season.

Three years later, the British newspaper Sunday Express published stories during five consecutive weekends in September/October of 1970.

It would repeat this pattern of sets of weekly stories over the next few years with five in the summer of '71, five in the spring of '72, 4 in the spring of '73, 3 in the early summer of '74 and 3 more in the fall of that year, 5 in the summer of '75, 5 in the winter of '76, and finally 4 in the summer of '76.

I first learned of some of these by finding the Michael J Bird website where he made available for download pdf scans. I enjoyed them a great deal.

A couple of years later, Mike Ripley of Ostara Publishing (a man I proudly call my friend), along with James Mitchell's son, Peter, compiled these and a few more they had found into the collection Callan Uncovered. Subsequently, they learned of even more stories and were kind enough to release a second collection titled Callan Uncovered 2.

Two years after the show left the small screen, the creator and writer of the series, James Mitchell, decided a remake of the original show, done in color and expanded to better tell the story, was in order. The original episode had been A Magnum for Schneider and a few listings of the movie used the same name but for the most part, the movie was just named Callan.

Another seven years would pass before James Mitchell would again knock on actor Edward Woodward's door to invite him to take up the Callan role for yet another adventure, this time a one-off taking place several years after the character Callan had retired. Callan learns from the newest Hunter that retirement is not an actual thing but just a thought and there is one more little job that needs doing.

In February of 1967 a television show called Armchair Theatre provided Britain with weekly tv plays, each one unconnect to the other much like the movie-of-the-week concept in the States. One such episode was A Magnum for Schneider written by experienced screenwriter and producer, James Mitchell. It was not intended necessarily to be a pilot and at the end it looked like the main character was set to be eliminated by his own department. Public reaction was quite favorable, however, and the production company was asked for an additional set of six episodes.

Still popular, Callan was extended for another set of 15 episodes though it would be nearly 18 months from the airing of the last set to the first of this new group. These, too, were well received but at the end of this lot, it was still undecided whether to continue and there were even two different endings to the season finale, one in which the character would die, ending the show literally with a bang.

Callan would not, however, go meekly and a year later he came back with 9 adventures followed by another 13 episodes a year and a half later. This time when the season came to a close, the show ended for good albeit without the drama of killing off the main character.

While Edward Woodward would continue throughout the series run as the main character and Russell Hunter would play his skittish, off-smelling underworld contact, Lonely, the role of the head of the Department, a man named Hunter, would be played by different people at different times. This was explained by letting the viewers know that the name 'Hunter' was not really a name but a title given to the head of the branch. As one died or retired or moved on, the next man in the position would assume the name along with the desk, making the changing of name plate unneccesary.

Two other characters of note are Tobey Meres and James Cross, fellow agents to Callan, often friendly and often antagonistic and almost always competitive. Callan both likes and tolerates them but would seldom go out for drinks with either.

Fans can watch the episodes of Callan by purchasing two DVD sets. The first is called The Monochrome Years and, according to Amazon, has all 21 episodes from the first two seasons (this despite the fact that several have been reported as lost forever AND user comments on the selling page indicate that they are not present). Seasons 3 and 4 are collected in The Colour Years.