3-03. The Same Trick Twice.

Surtees (Richard Hurndall): enemy agent or outraged citizen?

Air Date: Apr. 22, 1970. Written by: Bill Craig. Directed by: Peter Duguid. Produced by: Reginald Collin.


THE PLOT:

A prisoner exchange at the border between East and West Germany yields two British citizens who have been detained for five years. Mallory (Patrick O'Connell) is an agent whose network was uncovered after the arrest of the other man: Surtees (Richard Hurndall). British Intelligence has spent the last five years insisting that Surtees is not an agent, which nobody believes.

Now that he's returned home, Surtees plans to publish his story. He alleges that a British agent calling himself "Hunter" blackmailed him into espionage activities, including assisting in the assassination of a CIA agent. Mallory and civil servant Bishop (Geoffrey Chater) theorize that he might actually be working for the Russians, acting to discredit British Intelligence. Whatever the case, Hunter cannot allow Surtees to publish - even if that means ordering the man's death!

Callan intimidates Lonely.

CHARACTERS:

Callan: Initially reacts to Surtees' allegations with a hint of smugness, noting that The Section's various dirty deeds were bound to come back to haunt them eventually. He clearly doesn't believe that Surtees is a Russian asset, and he resists the idea of eliminating him... though he is prepared to do so if no other alternative presents itself.

Hunter: Like Callan, he doesn't particularly think that Surtees is KGB. However, he also doesn't particularly care. "The theory doesn't have to be right," he observes; it's sufficient for him that it's possible. An interesting note is his reaction to Bishop's involvement in the operation. He entirely supports Bishop in front of Callan; but once Callan leaves, he curtly says that he resents meddling with his Section. We also see that he is more than just a bureaucrat, as it's his ability to connect observations with reality that enables The Section to determine exactly who's behind this mess.

Lonely: Lonely's brief role makes me wonder if this episode was originally envisioned as the second of the season. Callan has to search for him, and finds him working a legitimate job as a "hygiene operative" (bathroom attendant) - clearly needing an honest job for the sake of his parole. If this episode was intended to come before Summoned to Appear, it would make a lot more sense of his reluctance to work with Callan and his statement that menial honest labor is "better than the nick." It's worth noting that there are alternate viewing orders for Series Three, whose transmission was disrupted; the Callan: This Man Alone DVD set .pdfs include a Feb. 1970 transmission schedule that's quite different from the way the episodes actually aired. Still, every version of the "intended sequence" for the season has the first three episodes in the same order, which makes this continuity hiccup perplexing.

Surtees: Richard Hurndall strikes a perfect tone as Surtees. His story is believable enough to convince Cross, and his posture and tone are just indignant enough to fit what he claims happened to him. However, he is possessed of a certain arrogance, taking genuine pleasure from his plan to disgrace his home country's intelligence agencies - an attitude that fits equally well whether he's an innocent man wanting revenge or an enemy operative striking a blow against the other side.

Hunter looks over Surtees' article, which
is even more damning than he'd feared.

THOUGHTS:

The Same Trick Twice is a difficult episode to judge. The plot holds together well enough, and there are some good scenes. Callan's intimidation of the sleazy photographer (Harold Innocent) who set up Surtees' blackmail is a darkly amusing bit, and an off-the-record conversation between Callan and Hunter is sharply scripted and wonderfully acted by Edward Woodward and William Squire.

The problem is... It's really not very involving. Much of the story is depressingly predictable. By twenty minutes in, I was pretty sure of the villain's identity, leaving me to spend the remaining half hour waiting for Callan to catch up. The episode's first half is slow-paced and dry, and I felt at a remove from the events I was watching.

The second half does improve significantly. There are some interesting complications involving the photographer and Jean (Trisha Noble), his old model who has now moved up to a successful marriage and who doesn't want to revisit her sordid past. It builds to a good scene between Callan, Jean, and Surtees... Though even that scene depends on Callan being uncharacteristically un-curious about a mysterious phone call, presumably so that the (predictable) ending can happen.

Overall, I would rank this as the weakest existing Callan episode since The Little Bits and Pieces of Love. It's not bad in any way - but it's a bit too slow and a bit too predictable for me to qualify it as good.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Previous Episode: Summoned to Appear
Next Episode: A Village Called 'G'



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