Season 2 • Episode 7
LatestWhen his goddaughter is jilted on her wedding day, Hannay finds himself searching for not just a missing bridegroom but also a shipment of gold.
Hannay is a 1988 spin-off prequel series to the 1978 film adaptation of John Buchan's novel The Thirty-Nine Steps which stars Robert Powell as Richard Hannay, a role which he reprises in the series, an Edwardian mining engineer from Rhodesia of Scottish origin. It features his adventures in pre-World War I Great Britain. These stories had little in common with Buchan's novels about the character, although some names are taken from his other novels.
Costume
Powell's tweed game is genuinely immaculate.
Production
BBC period detail on a shoestring — somehow charming.
Creator
Michael Robson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Robert Powell was the only actor to play Hannay in both film and television iterations, making him the franchise's accidental canonical core.
The series aired as Thatcher's Britain romanticized imperial past, making Hannay's colonial adventurer persona oddly politically resonant for 1988.
GB
