cult film freak: JACQUELINE ELLIS VACATIONS FOR A NOIRISH 'DANGER MAN'

Patrick McGoohan and Jacqueline Ellis in Danger Man: Vacation Year: 1961 Grade: A+

When it comes to 1960's British spy television, Patrick McGoohan is (and was even then) a legend with DANGER MAN, playing agent John Drake, morphed into SECRET AGENT and then THE PRISONER (more a spiritual than literal continuation): and in the first series, actress Jacqueline Ellis... usually cast as the good girl-next-door type for the overall crime genre... is the... um... well...

That's a spoiler because her character... the niece of a very rich fella sought by a professional hit man (Hugh McDermott, who'd play Ellis's husband on THE SAINT) that Drake's impersonating after recognizing and then knocking him out in an airplane... initially seems like the target, and whether she's practicing tennis or urgently warned by the always-intense McGoohan, she's cuter than ever in an excellently tight-knit, no-nonsense episode.