Sixties City presents a wide-ranging series of articles on all aspects of the Sixties, penned by the creator of the iconic 60s music paper  Mersey Beat

Adam Adamant Lives!

Gerald Harper
 A BBC series of 29 fifty-minute episodes in monochrome, originally broadcast from June 1966 – March 1967. The series was created by Don Cotton and Richard Harrison at the suggestion of Sydney Newman and produced by Verity Lambert. In the Victorian age, Adam Llewellyn De Vere Adamant is a popular hero, a master swordsman, boxer and athlete, dedicated to routing evil. His deadliest foe is a man known only as The Face, a villain whose features are concealed behind a leather mask. Louise is a woman Adamant loves, but will not marry in case her life is endangered by someone using her as a weapon against him, although it is Louise who lures him into a trap. The Face has discovered the secret of suspended animation and injects Adamant with a drug to give him eternal life, then freezes him in a block of ice.
Juliet Harmer

The last sight Adamant sees is that of The Face kissing the hand of Louise. The year is 1902. 64 years later, in 1966, during work on a building site, the block of ice is discovered and Adamant is revived. He is so overwhelmed by the sights and sounds – traffic, transistor radios, women in outrageous fashions, huge neon signs, that he faints. He’s rescued by a young mini-skirted girl, Georgina Jones, who joins him on a series of adventures in ‘Swinging London’.
Due to the fact that his fortune has increased tremendously as a result of compound interest, Adam is a wealthy man. He buys a penthouse overlooking the River Thames and hires a butler, William E. Simms, a former music-hall artist, who proves an invaluable ally. Over the years, Louise has attended to the frozen body of The Face, and revives him from suspended animation. She is now an old woman and The Face poisons her, resulting in a vow from Adamant that he will avenge her.

The series starred Gerald Harper as Adamant, with Juliet Harmer as Georgina, Peter Ducrow as The Face, Mary Yeomans as Louise and Jack May as Simms. Among the guest players in the series were John Le Mesurier, Peter Vaughan, Michael Ripper, Patrick Troughton, Kate O’ Mara and Windsor Davies. The BBC destroyed many of the episodes, but a number were traced and issued on video.
First Season:
A Vintage Year For Scoundrels
Death Has A Thousand Faces
More Deadly Than The Sword
The Sweet Smell of Success
Allah Is Not Always With You
The Terribly Happy Embalmers
To Set A Deadly Fashion
The Last Sacrifice
Sing A Song Of Murder
The Doomsday Plan
Death By Appointment Only
Beauty Is An Ugly Word
The League Of Uncharitable Ladies
Ticket To Terror
The Village Of Evil
‘D' For Destruction

Second Season:
A Slight Case Of Reincarnation
Black Echo
Conspiracy Of Death
The Basardi Affair
The Survivors
Face In A Mirror
Another Little Drink
Death Begins At Seventy
Tunnel Of Death
The Deadly Bullet
The Resurrectionists
Wish You Were Here
A Sinister Sort Of Service

Adam Adamant            Radio Times

Adam Adamant    Adam Adamant
 Ridley Scott directed the episodes ‘The League Of Uncharitable Ladies’, ‘Death Begins At Seventy’ and ‘The Resurrectionists’. Verity Lambert was the first producer of Doctor Who and this series was her next assignment after leaving the show.



Mersey Beat Magazine Bill Harry attended the Liverpool College of Art with Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon and made the arrangements for Brian Epstein to visit The Cavern, where he saw The Beatles for the first time. Bill was a member of 'The Dissenters' and the founder and editor of 'Mersey Beat', the iconic weekly music newspaper that documented the early Sixties music scene in the Liverpool area and is possibly best known for being the first periodical to feature a local band called 'The Beatles'. He has worked as a high powered publicist, doing PR for acts such as Suzi Quatro, Free, The Arrows and Hot Chocolate and has managed press campaigns for record labels such as CBS, EMI, Polydor. Bill is the critically acclaimed author of a large number of books about The Beatles and the 60s era including 'The Beatles Who's Who', 'The Best Years of the Beatles' and the Fab Four's 'Encyclopedia' series. He has appeared on 'Good Morning America' and has received a Gold Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Article Text Bill Harry       Original Graphics SixtiesCity      Other individual owner copyrights may apply to Photographic Images

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