Tradecraft: Former Templars Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy Join the Cast of the New Saint Pilot!

Wow! After years and years of percolating and percolating and nothing ever reaching fruition, the brand new Saint project that finally materialized (and is already shooting) just keeps getting better and better! Yesterday, Deadline reported that former Saint stars Roger Moore (who played Simon Templar in the classic ITC TV series of the 1960s before he became Bond) and Ian Ogilvy (who played Templar in the Seventies revival series Return of the Saint) have joined its cast. As previously reported, Adam Rayner (Hunted) plays the new Simon Templar in this latest incarnation of Leslie Charteris' immortal literary and screen hero. I take it as a good sign that my two favorite Saints to date are now on board. Hopefully, they'll rub off on Rayner and he'll become my third favorite! Moore was already attached to this version as a producer (along with his son Geoffrey), and had previously been slated to do a cameo in the defunct Saint in New Orleans project (which was to star James Purefoy), so it's very welcome news, but not that surprising to learn that he'll turn up on screen in this one. But Ogilvy is a bit more of a surprise, and equally welcome. Let me just take a second here to give him his due. Moore's Sixties interpretation was so definitive that Ogilvy is sometimes overlooked (and his series was not nearly as successful), but he's a great actor who made a truly wonderful Saint. The first thing I ever saw him in was an episode of The Avengers, and I immediately thought, "wow, that guy should play the hero in his own series!" I didn't realize it at the time, but he did exactly that in the following decade, and he did a fantastic job filling Moore's very large shoes. So it's a thrill to see them both on board this latest incarnation of a character to whose history they've both contributed so greatly. In the newest version, Moore will play "Jasper" and Ogilvy will play "The Banker." (The name Jasper rings a bell with me... Is that a character I should recognize from the Saint books?) Those kind of sound like cameos, but the rest of the cast is shaping up quite impressively as well. Alias' Greg Grunberg will play a government agent, Enrique Murciano (CSI) will play recurring Saint foil Inspector Fernack, and Thomas Kretschmann (24, Cars 2, King Kong) will play the villain Rayt Marius, who appeared in several Charteris novels. It was previously announced that Eliza Dushku would play another recurring character from the books, Templar's sometime girlfriend Patricia Holm. This list of characters would certainly seem to back up the producers' claim that this version of The Saint will stick closer to Charteris!