Fight Against The Mafia Recorded In “Vendetta”

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32235, 2 March 1970, Page 3

Fight Against The Mafia Recorded In “Vendetta”

The late programme tonight will be notable for the beginning of a 13 episodes’ series about one of the world’s most widespread notorious and feared organisations. “Vendetta” concerns the Mafia which, though it calls itself the “honoured society,” has become synonymous with dishonour.

The Mafia started, no-one is quite sure when, as a resistance movement of the Sicilian people against successive foreign overlords. But it has now grown into an international brotherhood of racketeers, with fear as its armour and murder its weapon. The Mafia controlled much of American gangsterdom in the Al Capone era and, through such later off-shoots as the “Cosa Nostra," still does. There is evidence to show that the Mafia is now. active in Britain and Australia and New Zealand. The Italian Government tries to fight it through the police, and idealists such as Danilo Dolci oppose it with ideas—but the Mafia remains one of Interpol’s biggest headaches. “Vendetta” tells how, in 1957, an anti-Mafia commission is set up in Rome to fight the “brotherhood” on a worldwide scale. There is an advertisement for a man to head the commission. Only one reply is received—from Danny Scipio. A Sicilian himself, he saw his whole family wiped out by Mafiosi when he was 10. Now, although he is a servant of the State, Scipio finds that his is not the impersonal attitude of the policeman to his job. To him, every Mafiosi is a bloodenemy, to be eliminated by any—repeat any—means. This war is a vendetta in the classical sense of the word. Scipio is joined in his battle by Angelo James, a tough, shrewd young AngloItalian whose vendetta against the murderers of his wife is as passionate as that of his boss. The two men meet for' the first time in episode three of the series, “The Widow Man,” and are then featured in separate stories, fighting the Mafia all over the world —in the United States, Canada, Australia, England, France, Sicily and metropolitan Rome itself. The role of Scipio is played

| by Italian actor Stelio Candelli, who became extremely popular in Britain through this series. Angelo James is played by Neil McCallum, a young Canadian, who has (worked extensively in cinema, television and theatre. Kenneth J. Warren plays Superintendent Saville, Scipio’s contact in the British police force. Leo Genn, Max

• Adrian, Griffith Jones and ' Patrick Alien are some of the i guest stars for the series. ; John Barry, who wrote the i musie for the James Bond ; films, has written special ■ “Danny Scipio” and “Ven- . detta” themes. The series has ; been devised by Brian Degas ■ and Tudor Gates for the i 8.8. C. and is produced by : William Slater.