Trivia / Man in a Suitcase

• Actor-Shared Background: McGill, like Richard Bradford, hails from Texas.
• California Doubling: McGill's cases take him all over Europe and beyond, but such international filming was well beyond what was practical for a 1960s British TV show. Hence London and the Home Counties are called on to double for an array of foreign locales, including France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Sweden, East Germany, Scotland^note well, not technically foreign, but it was too far away from London to do any location filming there, and even Africa.
• Creator Backlash: Richard Bradford did not enjoy working on the series, and decades later he expressed surprise at its continuing popularity.
• Fake Nationality: Numerous examples of this; the series included many episodes set abroad in continental Europe and beyond, and even some of the episodes set in the UK included characters from abroad, but the cast consisted of mostly British actors, aside from the Texan Richard Bradford as McGill himself. This even extended to casting British actors as Fake Americans to play McGill's former CIA colleagues, who turned up in several episodes.
• Hostility on the Set: Richard Bradford frequently clashed with the production team. His method acting style often brought out bemusement from the directors, who commonly complained that they couldn't hear his dialogue, owing to his more naturalistic delivery of his lines.
• What Could Have Been: Jack Lord was an early candidate for McGill.
• Working Title: McGill.
  • "Man in a Suitcase" was the working title for the first episode to be produced, which ended up being titled "Man From the Dead".
• You Look Familiar: Although no character other than McGill appeared in more than one episode, excluding the two-part "Variation on a Million Bucks", several actors appeared as multiple characters over the course of the series:
  • Donald Sutherland appeared as Willard in "Day of Execution" and as Keith Earle in "Which Way Did He Go, McGill?".
  • Colin Blakely appeared as John in "Brainwash" and as Father Loyola in "The Whisper".
  • Philip Madoc appeared as the Kommandant in "Somebody Loses, Somebody... Wins?" and as Dr. Forsyth in "Who's Mad Now?"
  • Jacqueline Pearce appeared as Miss Brown in "Sweet Sue" and as Ruth Klinger in "Somebody Loses, Somebody... Wins?"
  • Philip Bond appears as Luis Iglesias in "The Man Who Stood Still" and as Philip Oliver in "Web with Four Spiders"
  • Harold Goodwin appears as Foley in "The Girl Who Never Was" and as the Taxi Driver in "Why They Killed Nolan".
  • Basil Dignam appeared as Todd in "The Girl Who Never Was" and as Sir Eric Coulsdon in "The Boston Square".

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