Adam Adamant LIVES!

By Hanna

The 60s British TV series Adam Adamant Lives! is now mainly remembered for being the inspiration behind Adam Ant’s stage name. Although he says nothing about this in his auto-bio Stand and Deliver, he does talk a lot about how much he loved television as a child growing up in the 60s.

But more about how Adam Adamant Lives! influenced pop culture later; now it’s time to talk about the series, which can be seen as a part of the 60s British skiffy tradition.

A deliberate mispronunciation of “sci-fi”, skiffy is an affectionate/ironic name given to British science fiction TV shows of the 60s (and early 70s). The main example, of course, is Doctor Who, which has a particular connection to Adam Adamant, as it features a lot of the same crew, writers, and actors as the first Doctor Who series.

The first episode gives us the back story of how Adam Adamant (portrayed by Gerald Harper) was a dashing 19th century adventurer, lured into a trap by his great enemy, The Face, with his fiancée serving as The Face’s main accomplice. The Face then freezes Adam cryogenically. Fast forward to the 1960s, where his frozen body is found and brought to a hospital to be defrosted. In a scene reminiscent of the first episode of Jon Pertwee’s version of the Doctor (indeed, it has been suggested Pertwee based his Doctor directly on the character of Adam Adamant), Adam flees the hospital, with no idea that it is now the 60s.

When he wanders out into modern London, he is adopted by Georgina Jones (whom he mistakes for a boy despite her long hair, tight top, and extremely thick eye makeup). Immediately he gets involved in a complex blackmailing scheme run by an evil elderly lady, which shows the extent of villainy Adam has to battle most of the time, with his typical dramatic intensity. Other adversaries include a soap manufacturer, a man obsessed with bodybuilding, a cult of old ladies, and an evil, gay record company mogul.

It is a mostly conservative show, as the answers to the problems in the plotline are mostly solved by Adam Adamant’s strict adherence to Victorian values of propriety, honor, and manners. It has to be added that these values often form his weaknesses as well as his strengths. Moreover, the series’ idea of what Victorian values actually were is more than a little skewed. It takes a contradictory stance towards Adam’s conservative values, and this manifests itself in slightly ridiculous tropes, such as the intricate fight scenes that result from Adam’s insistence on only fighting with a sword, against criminals often brandishing firearms (somehow he still always wins).

By contrast, Adam insists on treating all women as victims who need his help, although he is bested again and again by maintaining this attitude. This attitude got him into trouble in the first place, as the whole reason he was frozen for 90 years is because his fiancée betrayed him. (You’d think he’d remember that, since the scene where she tricks him is repeated in every single episode, but no.)

Towards the end of the series, Adam Adamant’s makeup darkens, the plots become slightly more intricate, and it becomes much easier to see the possible influence the series had on Adam Ant’s stage persona.

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