Danger Man - Programme Overview

Programme Overview

The first series of episodes ran to 24–25 minutes each and portrayed John Drake as working for a Washington, D.C.-based intelligence organization, chiefly acting on behalf of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However he often went on missions well out of NATO jurisdiction; assignments frequently took him to Africa, Latin America, and the Far East. In episode 9, "The Sanctuary", Drake declares that he is an Irish-American.

He sometimes seemed at odds with his superiors about the ethics of the missions. Many of Drake's cases involved aiding democracy in foreign countries and he was also called upon to solve murders and crimes affecting the interests of either the U.S. or NATO or both.

Beginning with the second series, which aired several years after the first, the episode's length was increased to 48–49 minutes and Drake underwent retconning and became a British agent (though he identifies himself as Irish in "The Battle of the Cameras") working for a secret British government agency called M9, though his mid-Atlantic accent persists for the first few episodes in production. Other than the largely nominal change of employer and nationality, Drake's mandate remains the same: "to undertake missions involving national and global security". In keeping with the episodic format of such series in the 1960s, there are no ongoing story arcs and there is no reference made to Drake's NATO adventures in the later M9 episodes.