Manimal will be released by Fabulous Films on DVD 30th April 2012 11th June 2012 Aug 27 2012.

No art work is available yet but Artwork available in the gallery. You can also pre-order a copy at amazon.co.uk or at Fabulous Films

If you wish to discuss this you can here http://www.simonmaccorkindale.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1375

INTERVIEW WITH SIMON MACCORKINDALE

Thanks to Laura for this article

The timeless family classic, The Sound Of Music, continues to delight audiences in this lavish production at the legendary London Palladium.

Summer Strallen as Maria is now joined by TV star Simon MacCorkindale as Captain von Trapp. Simon, best known recently for his starring role as Harry Harper in BBC’s Casualty, has taken time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about the show and his career.

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STAGE CLASSIC IS BRINGING OUT THE MANIMAL IN SIMON

He was the English aristocrat of choice a decade before Colin Firth emerged from a lake to become a housewife heartthrob and Hollywood star.

Simon MacCorkindale played the upper-crust cad in some of the most popular American television series of the 1980s – from The Dukes of Hazzard and Hart To Hart to Dynasty and Falcon Crest.

Now he’s taking to the Nottingham stage as a devious author in the revival of psychological thriller Sleuth, alongside his Dynasty co-star and former TV Robin Hood Michael Praed.

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This interview was carried out with Simon on the 13th February 2008 at the Beck Theater in Hayes. Audio can be found on the forum as well as a video message from Simon filmed at the same time. This is Simon in his own words (i.e. typed word for word what he said)

We also got Simon to answer the forum’s ‘Meet a Member’ questions which can be found here

001 – From Clare: How have you family (Susan included) influenced your career?
Well I think mostly through their absolute continued unquestioning support for whatever I embark upon. Susan particularly is a very good springboard for various choices that I have made so I do share all the choices that I make. I think that my mum and dad particularly, it was about the honesty of what one was trying to do, and the respect for the audience. Very early on my father taught me about respect for the audience. I’m not sure I was ever really gonna go down in a daft way with it but certainly that I think has been a very important part in how I deal with the public. I’m always giving the time for other people even within a busy schedule.

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This is the interview we managed to arrange for the site’s first birthday in April 2007 , though the interview was recorded late February. All answers are pretty much word for word what he replied. The interview was carried out at the Grand Theater in Wolverhampton. This is quite a long interview and the questions are out of order from when they were originally asked to make more sense.

Audio from the interview can be found on the forum

Question 000 – From shelliwood: How did you get the scar under your right eye?

How did I get the scar under my right eye? That happened when I was about 13 and I was playing cricket and I got hit by a cricket ball.

I hit a ball and it caught the edge of the bat and flew back up into my face, and hit me right under the eye, split it wide open. But it’s been there and I’ve used it, on a couple of jobs I did I actually highlighted it slightly and made it a feature of the character.

Did I use it in Manimal? Did I or not, do you know I can’t remember. I mean it was more noticeable, it become progressively less noticeable, I don’t even notice it anymore actually. I haven’t ever had anything done about it but as one’s face changes so does it. It also stated a little higher it was nearer my eye so it gets a bit lower, force of gravity (chuckle) or something like that.

Question 003 – From Kerri: Do you find it weird that there are fan sites about you?

I suppose I don’t find it weird because I did when it first happened and therefore having accepted it, I know it’s there.

When Lonna Poland approached my manager in California, which was probably 1982, she would know better than I, but I’m sure it was 1982, it seem to me to a very strange thing, seemed to be rather an American thing because I hadn’t really experienced it much in the UK. We discussed it, my manger said, ‘No this is really fairly normal and it’s not a bad things at all it’s good for PR, it a good way of communicating with fans and we can control a lot of thing so forth to a degree.’ So anyway I said to Lonna that we’d do it and we did. So having made that judgment, from then on I knew about fan sites and therefore I knew what it could be like and Lonna was exceptionally good at running it.

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Loose Lips – The Stars . . . In Their Own Words

“I feel my time as as actor and leading man is now”

At the grand old age of 53, Simon is more content than ever with his impressive acting career.

“They put us up against Dallas on a Friday night. It was suicide!”

One of Simon’s most bizarre roles was as a professor with the power to turn into animals. Sadly, Manimal was axed after three months in 1983!

“The farm provides us with two contrasting lifestyles – it’s restful after a hectic day”

The actor and his wife, Susan, Live on a large farm in Exmoor, Devon where they breed Georgian Arabian horses.

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Manimal Instinct

Simon MacCorkindale might now be more familiar for his role on Casualty, But we decide to remind him of his time when he could turn into any animal he wanted, in his superhero guise of … Manimal!

Possibly the most bizarre of a plethora of superhero action series that Glen Larson launched upon an unsuspecting television audience in the Eighties, Manimal starred Simon MacCorkindale as Dr Jonathan Chase, a tuxedo-clad university professor who helped the police using his unique special power. At the merest hint of trouble, he could turn into any animal he desired. Whether panther, elephant or mouse, a barrage of plastic special effects, throbbing foreheads and elongating fingers signaled his transformation as he stomped or scurried to thwart a dastardly crime. MacCorkindale took to the role with aplomb, a dashing hero with charisma and charm, but alas the combination of his debonair good looks and demented special effects were not enough and the show only lased for eight episodes after its star-studded pilot first aired.

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Manimal, The Legend of The Man Animal

Translated from the original French, so readability is a little strange.  Translated by SMCFP Member Nadeia

The man-animal, is one of the most popular myth: Minotaur, Sphinx, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau, Tarzan, The Fly, Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Werewolf, the Beast of Gévaudan, Cat people, The Creature from the black Lagoon, and The Man from Atlantis, to list only the most famous which inspired widely legends, literature, movies, comics and television.

After the bionical man (the six million dollars man), knight rider (K2000), cybernetic man (Automan), the writer-producer-director Glen A. Larson and Donald Boyle, decided to adapt the myth of the man-animal.

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TV CV

Simon MacCorkindale

Casualty Saturdays BBC1
Name Simon MacCorkindale
Age 50
Education Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, Studio 68 of Theatre Arts, London
Role Call Could easily have been typecast as an urbane hunk, but has achieved a diverse gallery of roles – from classics to soaps – in TV, film and theatre.  Also a writer, director and producer who runs his own production company, Amy International, with his actress wife, Susan George

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50 Worst Shows Of All Time

15th – Manimal

NBC, September 30, 1983 – December 31, 1983

Thought you saw a puddy-tat? So did everyone else who watched Manimal, an astonishingly silly, unintentionally hilarious crime series that starred Simon MacCorkindale as Jonathon Chase a scientist who discovered “the secrets that divide man from animal.” Able to transform into the beast of his choosing, Chase helped the NYPD battle bad guys even though he looks like a “Cats” understudy.

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In the short-lived 1983 series Manimal, college professor Jonathan Chase used his ability to transform into animals to assist law enforcement.

This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.

SIMON MACCORKINDALE was the perfect choice to play the wealthy, cultured Chase. “I thought the concept for Manimal was excellent,” says MacCorkindale. “I also appreciated the fact Chase was a very cerebral individual and that Glen Larson [series creator and producer] had decided to make the show very stylish by having my character be an Englishman who wore expensive suits and drove around in a Rolls Royce. All this was quite unusual for television at that time, so we really were exploring new ground.

“Back in the early Eighties the only other English actor on American television was Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele. Then I got Manimal and a year or two later there was a massive influx of English actors hired for night-time Soap Operas, but Pierce and I started that whole trend. So that, of course, was very much an exciting part of getting the job on Manimal because I knew I had found a foothold in an area that was pretty much virgin territory for Englishmen.

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Manimal, MacCorkindale, a funny animal!

Translated from the original French, so readability is a little strange.  Translated by SMCFP Member Nadeia

Now 45 years old, the ex-Jonathan Chase, Manimal’s hero, would rather have a farm as fallow land than gathering laurels in Hollywood.  However, actor since age 8, he has experienced the difficult art of the Shakespearean repertory. He would still be burning the stage, if the big, and the little screen, hadn’t caught him, attracted by his big blue eyes and his golden wheat coloured hair. “I started in Hollywood in 1980, I earned a lot of money there, but my parts never reached my ambition” he acknowledges. 

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Simon MacCorkindale Half-man Half-animal

Translated from the original French, so readability is a little strange.  Translated by SMCFP Member Nadeia

Actor becoming producer, Simon MacCorkindale has been cultivating his passion for animals in his farm, with his wife for twelve years on his side. At the time, he was filming “Manimal”…

A real gentleman farmer this animal of  MacCorkindale, who settled in a 17th century farm, in the north west of London, lives happy days.

TK7 :  Have you been marked by “Manimal” ?
Surprisingly, yes. I say surprisingly because they keep on talking to me about a TV show filmed in 1983 in three months! Manimal was a very ambitious production, an ecological-zoological project. I have been marked by this show because it gave me the passion for animals.

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MANIMAL 1983

This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.

Picture this: a glossy American series where a hunky British actor fights crime, the twist being that he has a unique way of getting out of trouble – he can turn into any animal he chooses (usually a black panther) by looking constipated. Sound like a winner, doesn’t it? Yes, if you thought we were scraping the barrel with our retrospective on Blue Thunder: The Series in SFX, has Jon Abbott got a treat for you…

Created by Glen A Larson, master of gimmick TV, Manimal was a short- lived blend of fantasy series and crime show – just one of a large number of such shows that came and went in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It starred British actor Simon MacCorkindale, reasonably well known in the UK for assorted TV series (most interestingly as scientist Joe Kapp in the 1979 Quatermass serial), films (such as Death on the Nile and the 1978 adaptation of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands), and being married to actress Susan George. MacCorkindale’s career, though promising at one point, never really took off, and choices like Manimal ought begin to explain why…

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Simon MacCorkindale

Simon MacCorkindale: “I’m not jealous of my wife’s past”

Translated from the original French, so readability is a little strange.  Translated by SMCFP Member Nadeia

Simon MacCorkindale seems to be predestined for TV shows. Before he asserted his discrete but effective charm in Falcon Crest, where he seduced Ana-Alicia, for example, the athletic actor had already been noticed thanks to Manimal, in which he could transform into any animal to solve mysteries. Since he left Falcon Crest, Simon MacCorkindale hasn’t appeared in any TV shows. In Counterstrike, a new detective TV show, he plays a member of action team charged to solve mysteries.

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The Envelope, Please!

(Manimal Article)

Apparently, every dog will have its day. Even Manimal, NBC’s late, unlamented adventure-drama about a crimebuster who could turn himself into various beasts at will. Some of those beasts have won Patsy Awards, given annually by the American Humane Association to non-human actors. Among the winners: leopards Dodger and Ivory; and Merlin, the hawk who doubled for series star Simon MacCorkindale (above) in his flightier moods. NBC had no comment. However, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox, which produced the series, did offer this: “We’re glad to get any recognition we can for the show. But we don’t think animal lovers will beat down NBC’s doors to get it back on the air.”

Beast Get The Beauty

Manimal star is set to marry Susan George

BRITISH actor Simon MacCorkindale is about to take on the most important role of his life – husband to beautiful actress Susan George. They plan to marry as soon as his busy Hollywood schedules permit.

“We spend every spare moment together,” says Simon, 32, who shares a love-nest in plush Beverly Hills with Susan. It’s his second marriage – the first, to actress Fiona Fullerton, broke up after Simon made it clear he wanted to be a superstar – but it’s Susan’s first trip down the aisle.

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SIMON MACCORKINDALE alias Jonathan Chase

This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.    

Merely transforming into a wide variety of animals from a black leopard to a high flying hawk should pose no problem to British star Simon MacCorkindale, who stars as Jonathan Chase in the 20th Century- Fox Television series, “Manimal”.

“In recent pictures and series I’ve been shot and killed, had my hand bashed, was caught by a bullet in the shoulder, hanged, beheaded, drowned, hung in chains, tortured, and in “Jaws 3D”, I was devoured by a 35-ft. shark,” the handsome leading man confided.

MacCorkindale, who came to the United States in 1981, is a native of Cambridge, England, who made his professional stage debut at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, England, in “A Bequest to the Nation”. His first international television assignment was in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth ” in which he played Lucius, the centurion who was strongly featured in the last hour of the six-hours epic. Curiously enough, he also played Lucius, the son of Emperor Augustus, in “I Claudius”.

Among his roles on British TV have been Sir Thomas Walsingham in “Will Shakespeare”, Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet”, the callous vet in “Baby”, poet Siegfried Sassoon in “Out of Battle”, the naive Oxford graduate in Elinor Glyn’s “Three Weeks”, along with appearances in “Just William ” and Dr. Dady in the series set in a woman’s prison, “Within These Walls”.

What he considers the major break of his career was his being cast as Simon Doyle, the smooth, avaricious young murderer in “Death on the Nile”. He was presented to the Queen at the Royal Premiere in London, by which time he had completed a role in marked contrast, the tough sailor hero in Erskine Guilders classic spy story, “The Riddle of the Sands”.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep4 – Night of the Beast
First Aired: 17 December 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: Vacationing in a small town, Birch Hollow, JC is kidnapped by a woman who believes he is responsible for the disappearance of her brother. She locks JC in a crate. At the hotel, Ty & Brooke find criminals who plot to establish a casino.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep8 – Breath of the Dragon
First Aired: 10 December 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: While visiting a friend in Chinatown, Jonathan discovers that there’s a gang who are shaking down everyone. He discovers that his friend’s grandson has joined the gang. They learn that the man behind the gang calls himself the Dragon who’s emulating a man who years ago demanded that people give him half their earnings, and if not they will receive the mark of the Dragon which are left at their door and if they still refuse they will feel the breath of the Dragon which is fire, which has been happening a lot. Jonathan learns he also has a gambling casino which he goes to and meets the man. Jonathan then tries to help his friend’s grandson but gets beaten by the Dragon. Later he challenges the Dragon to a fight.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep7 – Scrimshaw
First Aired: 3 December 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: Jonathan, Brooke and Ty are at the beach with seaman and his grandson. They find a skeleton. It’s quite obvious the person was killed by boomerang that struck the head which was embedded in it. And the person was holding a scrimshaw. They notice something carved into it which is quite obviously a map. So they try to find out who the victim is and who the killer is. In the meantime, the seaman is keeping something from them.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep5 – High Stakes
First Aired: 5 November 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: Jonathan and Ty are at the race track. A female horse owner sees another racing and thinks that it’s her horse which was stolen sometime ago. She confronts the man who owns the horse and says she’s wrong but she insists she’s right. Jonathan decides to help her.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep3 – Female of the Species
First Aired: 28 October 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: A girl was found in India apparently raised by wolves and brought to the U.S. and is being kept at a university while she is being studied. Jonathan attends a lecture and it’s during the lecture her habitat is set on fire. Jonathan tries to save her but she runs away. When she sees Jonathan transform she trusts him. Jonathan takes her to his home and tries to communicate with her. The scientist who found demands she be returned to him but Jonathan thinks she’s in danger.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep6 – Night of the Scorpion
First Aired: 21 October 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: A man is found dead on a ship with a venomous spider next to him. Jonathan is brought in and he doesn’t think the spider is the cause of death. An autopsy is done and it’s discovered that he had some kind of drug in his system. A drug that is kind of truth serum and he had a bad reaction to it.

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Series: Manimal
Episode: S1Ep2 – Illusion
First Aired: 14 October 1983
Character: Jonathan ‘JC’ Chase

Description: Jonathan is helping the police apprehend the man behind a smuggling ring. But they discover that the man is a diplomat with diplomatic immunity. Jonathan follow him and sees him talking to a magician. Later the magician appears to have been killed by the leopard he uses is in his act. His partner says that his partner always went near the leopard and nothing happened. Rivera says that the leopard by law has to be put down. Jonathan doesn’t think the leopard killed the magician. They try to find out what the connection between the diplomat and the magician is

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