- Network
- ITV
- Original run
- 1962 to 1969
- Episodes
- 118 across seven series
- Lead
- Roger Moore as Simon Templar
- Supporting
- Ivor Dean as Inspector Teal
- Format
- Crime series, black and white then colour
- Revivals
- Return of the Saint, 1978, and six TV films, 1989 to 1990
Watch Order
0 / 9 watchedThe seven ITV series in broadcast order, then the 1978 revival, then the six television films from 1989 and 1990. Standalone cases, so release order is the only order that matters.
About The Saint
The Saint is a British crime series that ran on ITV from 1962 to 1969, based on the character Simon Templar created by Leslie Charteris in the 1920s. Roger Moore plays Templar, a gentleman thief who helps people the police will not or cannot help, and who keeps trying to stay on the right side of the law. Ivor Dean plays Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, the nominal nemesis who grudgingly tolerates him.
The ITV run is 118 episodes across seven broadcast series, and it was shot entirely on film, unlike The Avengers of the same era. It also changed midway: the first four series were made in black and white and the last three in colour, which is where the show's habit of talking straight to the camera in the opening titles stops and simple narration takes over.
The character came back twice more. Return of the Saint, a 1978 revival with Ian Ogilvy, ran one series of 24 episodes on ITV and CBS with no continuity to the Moore years, and six made for syndication television films, broadcast in 1989 and 1990 as part of the Mystery Wheel of Adventure package, starred Simon Dutton as Templar. The 1997 Val Kilmer film is a separate production and sits outside this list, along with the eight RKO movies from 1938 to 1943, which have their own guide.
Good to know
Watch the seven ITV series in order. They are standalone cases in the main, so the running order matters less than the era, but the black and white to colour switch in series 5 is worth doing in order so the visual change reads as a change.
Two episodes from the later production runs, Vendetta for the Saint and The Fiction Makers, were turned into feature films for European cinemas and turn up on their own. They are the same material, so do not watch them separately and then sit through the series versions.
Return of the Saint and the 1989 and 1990 television films are both separate productions with a different actor, and neither continues the ITV series in any sense, so treat them as separate blocks after the seven series. The Val Kilmer movie from 1997 and the eight RKO films are covered elsewhere on the site.
If you want the books rather than the episodes, Charteris wrote fifty of them between the 1920s and 1983, and several series scripts were novelised afterwards.
