The Invisible Man: Man of Influence (Seventies TV Season)

The introduction to this series of posts about 1970s TV shows can be found here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/seventies-tv-season-introduction

I'm sad to be blogging about The Invisible Man since David McCallum has died so recently, and also delighted because revisiting the show for this post has significantly improved my opinion of it. I have actually had the box set for some time, and have definitely watched all the way through it before, not been very impressed, and added it to the collection to be revisited at some point because it wasn't utter dross to be thrown out with some violence. I am glad that that point has come because on revisiting it, this show is an absolute joy.

The title gives the premise away, but briefly it is that Daniel Westlin is a scientist who discovers how to make a person invisible and tries it successfully on himself. Most of the rest of the series is him undertaking adventures, in which invisibility would be useful, for the US government, with his wife.

I have identified the mistake I made with this show before and if you have never seen it, I would suggest you skip the pilot (on the box set) and start straight on into the series. The reason is that the pilot sets you up wrong, by dealing with the difficulties of being invisible, which are naturally not negligible, and the moral difficulty that obviously the process would be wanted for military use. In the pilot this rather ruins Westlin's life and he's also stuck with being invisible, with no hope of a cure. In the actual series this heavy stuff is just abandoned, Westlin has somehow forgotten his moral quandary and ignores the problems that being invisible would cause, and the show has a humorous touch which makes it a jolly romp.

Honestly, I wish I'd given this show more attention sooner because it's an absolute delight: the sort of show where you know it's going to resolve alright, but you're not worried about what is happening because you know it isn't real. It's real comfort television. Despite the way it is quite similar to many another detective show of the period, of course it's the invisibility that gives it this unreality. It isn't exactly science fiction, because the fiction of invisibility isn't really the subject, but it's always there. This show isn't in the vein of shows like Sky or The Owl Service which drew on the magical/occult/folk horror interests of the time, but this episode almost pokes fun at those things by representing a medium who is fake but is believed by intelligent, educated people.

For the lover of old TV one of the interesting things, watching it fifty years after it was made, is the obvious glee the team took in the sheer number of special effects, and the way they are all 1970s vintage special effects. If a door is opened by an invisible person in media nowadays it will certainly be computer generated, but in the 1970s we know that door actually opened and was filmed in real time. Full use is made of green screen (although I suspect actually blue screen because that colour is largely missing from the show). It's literally got every trick available at the time.

Westlin's invisibility means that a theme runs through the show about seeing, not seeing, and deception. This is very pronounced in this episode, because Westlin and Mrs Westlin investigate a fake medium. The fake medium makes a politician change his mind about an energy source but this plot is handled with a lightness which doesn't make this episode at all stodgy.

I can't disagree with the obvious criticisms of this show and they're all over the internet, but briefly, the show doesn't deal with the huge contradiction that Westlin has a moral problem with the possible military uses his discovery would be used to, before without explanation becoming an agent for the US government and asset for the company where he discovered it. There is also a repeated criticism that the show, by its nature, becomes rather formulaic. Something happens, Westling uses his invisiblity to investigate, he sets up Mrs Westlin to do something to resolve the plot but she gets into trouble, and Westlin resolves it using invisibility.

Reportedly (and we all know how reliable internet rumours are) one of the reasons for the show's cancellation after one series was that people were incensed by the realisation that notionally when McCallum is invisible, he would be naked. This despite the fact that of course we can't see him! I have even read a couple of more recent online reviews by people who find this realisation an incredible sticking point for this show.

I honestly find this so surprising because my personal reaction was just to think that it wasn't real and of course he wouldn't actually be naked! This is perhaps a perfect example of how the artifical world of television can mess with your head, although I'm sure everyone reading this knows that in reality what the crew would have seen when McCallum undressed was him dressed in a green or blue morph suit to make him go invisible.

This show is one which I really wish I'd paid more attention to sooner, and may well be appearing here again.

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