Adam Adamant Lives!

A black-and-white British series in the 1960's, which featured a Victorian adventurer frozen and returned to life in the present day. The show was originally planned to use the actual Victorian character Sexton Blake, but the BBC could not get the rights to use the character this way (although they did a Blake radio show with a normal setting) and a new name, Adam Adamant was chosen.

Betrayed by the woman Louise in 1902 to his archenemy The Face, Adamant is frozen and not resuscitated until 1966. He escapes the hospital and is overwhelmed by the sights of the city. He meets and helps Georgina Jones, who is a fan of his, and who constantly becomes embroiled in adventures, which Adam considers unladylike. Adamant's home base is his old home rebuilt--on top of the upper floor of a car park (parking lot to Americans).

The series was produced by Verity Lambert when Sidney Newman was BBC Head of Drama; the two were more famous for Doctor Who. It starred Gerard Harper as Adamant and Juliet Harmer as Georgina Jones. It lasted two seasons, but almost half the episodes are missing nowadays. The existing episodes were released on DVD in the UK and Australia.


 * Alliterative Name
 * Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Adamant.
 * Big Bad: The Face, who wasn't a presence until season two, and even then only as The Man Behind The Man.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance between Adamant's Victorian mores and the modern day. On the other hand, Adamant recognized that the modern world has some social advantages and didn't approve when a villain thought the Victorian era was perfect.
 * Distressed Dude: Pretty much the whole first season had one scene an episode where Adamant is knocked out and sees a flashback of his treacherous love interest in the Victorian era saying "So clever... but oh so vulnerable."
 * Dueling Shows: The Avengers also featured an overdressed male adventurer helped by a modern-day woman.
 * Geisha: An embarrassingly bad episode More Deadly than the Sword which included inaccurate stereotypes of Japan, bad accents, and actors in Yellowface.
 * Gentleman Adventurer: Adamant. Although on the documentary, the writers admit that Adamant wasn't really like a Victorian adventurer, even a fictional one.
 * Good Old Ways: Adamant.
 * Human Popsicle: Adamant
 * Missing Episode: Most of the second season and some of the first season no longer exist in any form.
 * Old School Chivalry: Part of Adamant's Victorian attitude.
 * Reckless Sidekick: Georgina.
 * Rich Idiot With No Day Job: It is never explained how Adamant gets his money.
 * The Sixties and The Swinging Sixties
 * The Slow Path: Adamant eventually meets Louise in the modern day, aged as one would expect.
 * Undead Tax Exemption: Averted, because Adam Adamant is a famous person in-story and his revival is not a secret, so his own identity is still good.