In the short-lived 1983 series Manimal, college professor Jonathan Chase used his ability to transform into animals to assist law enforcement.
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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.
Simon MacCorkindale, the talented British actor/producer/director, who made his international film debut as the murderer in DEATH ON THE NILE and who was seen as a regular on CBS’s FALCON CREST, says that probably more mayhem has happened to him on movie and TV screens than any other actor of the younger set.
“In DEATH ON THE NILE, I was shot twice; in THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS, my hand was smashed; in QUATERMASS, I was beaten up and then shot; in CABO BLANCO, I caught a bullet in the shoulder and almost bled to death. In THE GAYDEN CHRONICLES, I was hanged; in MACBETH, I was beheaded; in I CLAUDIUS, I was drowned; while in AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS, I hanged myself after comitting murder. For THE SWORD & THE SORCERER, I was hung in chains and tortured; while in THE MANIONS OF AMERICA, I was wounded in the leg (off stage) and then shot in the shoulder in a duel. In OBSESSIVE LOVE, I put my fist through a glass cabinet; in FALCON’S GOLD (ROBBERS OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN), I get beaten up, chased, beaten up again, and finished up hanging from the skid of a helicopter; and in JAWS 3D, I was unceremoniously devoured by a 35-foot shark.”
Film: Running Wild First Aired: 26 July 1998 Character: Walton Baden Smythe
Description: This drama centers on the efforts of a UN wildlife observer and his family as they work with park rangers on an African animal preserve to prevent poachers from slaughtering elephants.
Film: The Way to Dusty Death First Aired: 20 July 1998 Character: Johnny Harlow
Description: Too many things have been going wrong in too many Formula One races. Johnny Harlow, world champion driver and apparent cause of the latest accident, decides the time has come to sort things out. And what he finds has nothing to do with cars.
Internationally recognised as an award-winning actor, director, producer and screenwriter, Simon MacCorkindale personifies the suave, sophisticated British leading man, a role he very much brought to life in the USA Cable/ALLIANCE/TFl France co-production series COUNTERSTRIKE (66 episodes), in which he starred as ex-Scotland Yard inspector Peter Sinclair in front of the cameras, and acted as executive production consultant behind them.
Film: Sands of Eden First Aired: 18 April 1998 Character: Peter Gregory
Description: Tom’s dad disappeared while flying to a remote archaeological site 27 years ago. Now an engineer, Tom’s sent to Abu Dhabi where he meets a French archaeologist. She’s interested in his father’s quest to discover a lost city. Taking his dad’s diaries they search for it – and find a treasure far greater than gold…
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.
Series: La Femme Nikita Episode: Charity First Aired: 3 February 1997 Character: Alec Chandler
Description: During a routine assignment, Nikita saves an attractive man, Alec Chandler, from being hit by a car. When he asks her on a date, she declines but gives him information about where she works so he can send her a present.
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For an instant, the Range Rover was travelling on two wheels. Then, with a terrifying inevitability, it rolled over on to its side and skidded across three lanes of heavy traffic before coming to a stop on the hard shoulder of the motorway.
Inside the car, Susan George was stunned, battered and bruised. Her head was gushing blood. But when she heard her husband’s voice say: ‘It’s all right darling, we’re alive,’ she knew she was going to survive. It was, without a doubt, nothing short of a miracle that the couple escaped such a crash with their lives. Their Range Rover, on the other hand, was a complete write-off.
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.
Susan George and husband Simon MacCorkindale had a narrow escape earlier this week when the car they were travelling in crashed on the M40 in Oxfordshire.
The couple were taken to Radcliffe Infirmary where Susan was treated for a head wound and Simon, who injured his neck, was kept in overnight for observation.
The couple were on their way to London for the Stella Artois tennis tournament when the accident happened. Their Range Rover hit the central barrier, somersaulted
An Arabian Night in Dubai and a Day At The Races For The Horse-Loving Acting Couple
(Mainly a Susan George article)
Susan George and Simon MacCorkindale, both great horse lovers, glance across the paddock enclosure with wonderment written across their faces. “We’ve been to race meetings all over the world, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this,” says Susan. “There is something very special about this race, which has attracted the world’s best horses, owners, trainers and jockeys.”
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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…
Film: No Greater Love First Aired: 1 January 1996 Character: Patrick Kelly
Description: A woman (Kelly Rutherford) who loses her fiance and her parents in the Titanic disaster neglects her own needs to care for her brothers and sister.
Film: At the Midnight Hour First Aired: 29 October 1995 Character: Richard Keaton
Description: Wealthy widower Richard Keaton engages young widow Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Guinness as the 4th consecutive nanny for his pre-teen, equally science-devoted son Andrew, with instructions to disturb neither. She learns of mother Alycia’s fatal fall, an official suicide but was probably murder. Dad keeps Andy at a distance, so he draws towards Liz. Real danger starts when Richard’s brother, novelist Blain, arrives with his friend Jillian, to sell the ancestral estate against Richard’s will.
Harlequin novels sell like hotcakes, but do they make good TV-movies? Oh yes, whew, yes indeed. All you have to do is lie back and let yourself enjoy them
“He’s over there,” they said, pointing past a priceless Darracq touring car toward the massive Rosedale mansion surrounded by summer gardens in full bloom.
But the woman didn’t need to be told who Simon was. He drew her gaze as effortlessly – and unwittingly – as a burning flame captures the innocent gray moth. Unable to tear her eyes away, and knowing full well he hadn’t seen her yet, she stood outside the estate’s gates and studied him, shamelessly, from head to toe.
Simon strode from the dark entranceway and down the stone steps into bright daylight. She knew instantly from the storm of emotion in his flashing eyes that he was terribly angry, and when he leaned over the Darracq and spoke with barely controlled fury, the driver shrank back from his unbridled power.
The acting couple shows us the dream farm that’s allowed them to put down their roots and provides a break from their hectic film careers
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Susan George and Simon MacCorkindale have been cruising along the movie world’s jet-set super-highway for over 20 years. They have probably spent more time in exotic film locations than in their native Britain. Even on their wedding day they were to be found exchanging sacred vows on the paradise isle of Fiji.
But now Susan, at 44, and Simon, at 43, have finally stopped roaming – and it is largely due to the farm they have just moved to on the edge of an old-world village.
The idyllic 17th-century property with its 12 lush acres on the Oxfordshire-Northamptonshire border has given them a clearer perspective, a degree of tranquillity – and forced them to re-evaluate their lives.
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Counterstrike, a hit series about billionaire industrialist Alexander Addington (Christopher Plummer) whose passion for justice is implemented by a three-member strike team.
Plummer is a film and theatre legend. He has starred and costarred in over 40 feature films, including The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, The Return of The Pink Panther and Star Trek VI.
As Addington on Counterstrike, he formed his strike team after his wife was kidnapped by an international terrorist organization.
The search for her proved unsuccessful. Nevertheless, he vowed that behind the cover of his financial empire, he would help eliminate criminals who currently find sanctuary in the cracks between existing law enforcement organizations.
Leading the strike team is Peter Sinclair (Simon MacCorkindale) – featured on this week’s cover.
Sinclair, a former Scotland Yard inspector – the youngest in the history of the Yard – is also a legendary hostage negotiator.
MacCorkindale made his stage debut at age eight. From this humble beginning, his love for theatre was born. During the next nine years he wrote, produced, directed and/or acted in some 25 productions at school and with local groups.
Upon leaving high school he was accepted as a drama student at Studio 68 of Theatre Arts in London, England. And, as luck would have it, by the end of his first year he was signed to play a leading role in George Bernard Shaw’s The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
After a number of appearances in the regional theatres in England, he made his West End debut in the highly-acclaimed 1974 production of Pygmalion.
In this week’s Counterstrike (Saturday on CTV), Simon MacCorkindale played coach to rocker and neophyte actress Latoya Jackson—a bit of “stunt casting” that works, says MacCorkindale, because her role was tailored to her “extraordinary look” and “natural abilities.” In the show, Jackson (left, with MacCorkindale) plays a fashion maven with deadly designs on her models for the most bloodcurdling of reasons. “It’s a weird, off-the-wall” episode, MacCorkindale admits, but Jackson “pitched right into it. She listened and watched, and she learned very quickly. I’ve seen a lot of people who’ve been in the business for years who didn’t have the relaxation and the wit to learn the technique as quickly as she did.”
In the short-lived 1983 series Manimal, college professor Jonathan Chase used his ability to transform into animals to assist law enforcement.
