THE KNIGHTS OF THE SKY (1967-1970)

THE KNIGHTS OF THE SKY aka The Knights of Heaven aka The Aeronauts. This 1967-1970 French series is the Forgotten Television subject this time around. The series ran for 39 episodes – 3 seasons of 13 episodes each. Episodes filled a half-hour timeslot with commercials.

Les Chevaliers du Ciel, to use the program’s French title, starred Jacques Santi and Christian Marin as Michel Tanguy and Ernest Laverdure, respectively. The pair were fighter pilots who flew mostly in Mirage aircraft and had a series of espionage and military escapades in addition to lots of encounters with attractive ladies.   

The dynamic of their relationship is that Tanguy is the serious man of action and a Casanova with women, while Laverdure, though capable in a fight and as a pilot, is the comical partner whose antics are often undignified. I like to think of Christian Marin as the French Peter Davison, so think of his character Ernest Laverdure as Davison’s hapless Tristan on All Creatures Great and Small.

The French Air Force let the production film on actual military bases, so things look as close to Top Gun as you could get in the late 1960s. Other branches of the service wanted in on that, so the French navy and a few other outfits also provided terrific filming locales as the series went on. 

The Knights of the Sky often presented serialized adventures that would run for 3 or 4 episodes, punctuated by stand-alone episodes. The tales of Tanguy and Laverdure would range from superspy antics to more realistic military tableaus to sappy love stories.

SEASON ONE – This season opened with Lieutenants Tanguy and Laverdure arriving at their new duty station – the French air base in Dijon. Laverdure gets them into trouble with a flyby over the home of a woman he’s trying to impress. This attracts the attention of two James Bond style villains, Max (Jose Luis de Vilallo) and his boss Mr. X (Valery Inkijinoff).

        The bad guys try to recruit our heroes to work for them and covertly pass along national defense secrets and/or sabotage the French Air Force. Naturally, the pair of fighter pilots refuse. They may get into mischief, but they’re not traitors.

        Mr. X and Max spend the season engaging in enemy activity while also trying to get revenge on Tanguy and Laverdure for thwarting them at every turn. The villains have a variety of schemes, like abducting visiting Canadian pilots and substituting them with lookalike agents. The phonies try to kill an officer at the Dijon base and steal a Mirage fighter. 

        Our heroes also stop Mr. X and Max from getting photos of a top secret atomic installation out of the country, from sabotaging a demonstration flight in order to cost France the selling of 60 Mirage fighters to another country, from killing a foreign dignitary and from killing Laverdure with a hidden bomb.

        In the season finale, Max gets killed in battle with Tanguy and Mr. X flees to Bermuda, never to trouble our heroes again.     

SEASON TWO – More action, intrigue and beautiful women this season. Our two main characters are now assigned to Istres, a testing site for experimental aircraft. This season’s first two episodes deal with an experimental Vertical Takeoff and Landing craft called the Voltaire. 

        From there, our boys get sent to Tahiti/ French Polynesia for atomic tests and for lots and lots of partying with sexy local ladies. Several episodes set in the islands involve sabotage attempts by enemy Pembala agents from Indonesia, who want the atomic tests to go wrong and to prevent Tanguy and Laverdure from retrieving a sunken seaplane.

NOTE: The actor Valery Inkijinoff, who played Mr. X in Season One, plays the kepala (head) of the Pembala agents, which caused many fans to mistakenly think he was still supposed to be playing Mr. X.

        Also in Tahiti, our heroes clash with Pembala spy planes, one of which shoots down Laverdure, who gets taken prisoner, but manages to escape on his own. The Pembalas also try to detonate one of the A-bombs prematurely, in order to wipe out the French naval base and kill thousands of people. Tanguy gets to take down the kepala of the enemy operatives.   

        Finishing off the several episode run in French Polynesia, Laverdure and Tanguy clash with a cliched Japanese soldier from World War Two who thinks the war is still going on. At any rate, the French Navy got to shine in these shows.  

        Back in Istres, the boys get involved in a multi-episode adventure about enemy agents (with the phony company Vulcan Airlines as a cover) using a hidden jamming station to disrupt French tests of a remote-controlled nuclear warhead. This tale gives viewers action in Istres, North Africa and the Canary Islands.         

SEASON THREE – The final season and the least liked by fans. Too much romance, too much realism about routine military duties and an overall blah feel. There are a few adventurous high points, however.

        Tanguy and Laverdure start the season assigned to Belgium to get to the bottom of why Mirage fighters sold to the Belgians are malfunctioning. A downed plane carrying toxic chemicals must be dealt with at one point, too.

        Next, our heroes spend some time assigned to the Patrol de France, an aerial unit of trick fliers (like our Blue Angels)and that outfit gets a lot of free publicity for a few episodes. Tanguy and Laverdure’s foe this time around is Fergusson, a Scandinavian master of Industrial Espionage who wants to lay his hands on French Patrol aircraft to copy their design.

        At a base in Orange, France, the boys participate in testing new radar equipment and in a drill against the French aircraft carrier Foch. Laverdure and Tanguy clash with scuba diving crooks who want gold bars from a long-sunken ship. Next, a vacation at La Plagne finds our men having to foil a gang of armed robbers.     

        To close out the season, we get several episodes set in Peru, where our Knights of the Sky have been sent to train Peruvian pilots to fly Mirage fighters that France has just sold to Peru. This results in espionage drama regarding a new viewfinder and a side-mission into the jungle to recover a downed pilot. The jungle bit leads to a clash with Jivaro headhunters.   

        Capping off the Peruvian adventures, the womanizing Tanguy has met and is about to marry Maria Tuma, a local woman. Her sinister uncle tries to steal the new viewfinder AND murder Tanguy but naturally, the bad guy is thwarted. Both our stars return to Dijon, where they are promoted to captains.

A 4th season was being planned for the show, but Jacques Santi (Tanguy) suffered facial disfigurement in an accident, so the series was canceled rather than recast the Romeo role. 

FOR MORE FORGOTTEN TELEVISION CLICK HERE:   https://glitternight.com/category/forgotten-television/