Puppets Go BOOM! Episode 10: The Secret Service

In this episode of Puppets Go BOOM!, Arun and Patricia discuss about the 1969 sci-fi espionage series The Secret Service. The show takes in a small English village where a parish priest named Father Stanley Unwin is a secret member of the British Intelligence Service Headquarters, Operation Priest (BISHOP). Together with his partner Matthew Harding, they are giving assignments by the head of the organization The Bishop to uncover secrets while under the guise of a regular vicar. By shrinking Matthew small using a device called the Minimiser, Father Unwin packs him in his suitcase and has him learn the plans of various people of bribery, counterfeiting money, sabotage, or blackmail and reports it to Unwin to stop them. When the show premiered, it received mixed reviews. While Gerry Anderson and Barry Gray called it their favorite Supermarionation show they ever worked on, many people felt it was too eccentric thanks to Stanley Unwin's well known way of speaking gobbledygook, had far less action and adventure, and was too distinctly British to connect to a mass demographic compared to the other shows like Thunderbirds. It was cancelled after 13 episodes and is regarded as the weakest Supermarionation show ever made. The Secret Service would be the final Supermarionation show and Gerry Anderson wouldn't create another show featuring puppets until 14 years later with Terrahawks under the term Hypermarionation. Is it as bad as people say it is?