The origins behind The Secret Service begin when Gerry Anderson was at Pinewood Studios when he was working on Doppleganger when he bumped into Stanley Unwin in 1968. Unwin was working on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the time and as it turned out, Anderson was a big fan of Unwin when he performed his various radio performances in the 1950s."I have always enjoyed Stanley's work and find him very amusing", said Anderson, "As far as I was concerned, Stanley came first and then the idea had to accommodate him. It wasn't that the show called for someone who could speak gobbledygook, but the question of how we could fit him into the storyline".
A new idea was needed for a new show, as it seemed Lew Grade wasn't ordering more episodes of Joe 90. Unwin was signed for a twenty-six episode contract and production would soon begin on the show following the completion of Joe 90. Obviously, because Joe 90 had yet (and prove) to be successful it obviously meant the Century 21 team had to do something else. Another inspiration for the show came from the Joe 90 episode The Unorthodox Shepard, where one of the characters was a deaf, aged vicar who pretended to be a cover-up agent. The story also featured location footage which was of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Harefield, Hillingdon in West London. TV Historians Simon Archer and Marcus Hearn have said that The Secret Service, "Continues the espionage theme of Joe 90 in a range of adventures that depict a Britain under siege from despicable foreign agents intent on stealing its secrets". Indeed, the plotline is similar to Joe 90. And that was it, as simple as that. Now, the show had been born...
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The Secret Service: The Vault
Non-FictionThe Secret Service was a 1960s British children's TV series created by Gerry Anderson and the team of Century 21 studios in Slough, from the makers of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Space: 1999. This was the final of his television series to feat...
