Gerald Harper obituary

Fri, 04 Jul 2025

Stylish actor with a self-knowing comic touch who had a successful career on television and the stage

Suave adventurers operating in intelligence or as undercover agents were all the rage on television in the 1960s: Roger Moore in The Saint, Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man, Patrick Macnee in The Avengers and, in more explicitly comic vein, Gerald Harper in the 1966-67 cult series Adam Adamant Lives!

Harper, who has died aged 96, played an Edwardian swordsman and crime fighter, Adam Llewellyn De Vere Adamant, who returns to life in the swinging 60s after being frozen in ice for six decades. Devised by the BBC in direct response to ITV’s The Saint, it was the brainchild of the executive Sydney Newman and the producer Verity Lambert, who had launched Doctor Who in 1963. But it lasted only a year.