“I am Duncan MacLeod, born four hundred years ago in the Highlands of Scotland. I am Immortal and I am not alone. For centuries we’ve waited for the time of the Gathering, when the stroke of a sword and a fall of a head will release the power of the Quickening. In the end, there can be only one.”
Highlander is one of the most enduring and popular franchises of all time, an ambitious blend of fantasy, history, romance, swordplay, mythology, and special effects, all set to a soundtrack by Queen. While the original 1986 film spawned a pair of lukewarm sequels, it was Highlander: The Series, an internationally produced television show shot mostly in Vancouver that built on the film’s legacy and introduced it to a new audience. From sword fights in front of Science World to a medieval Scottish village built on the slopes of the North Shore mountains, the television show stretched the limits of Vancouver’s ability to stand in for other places.
Screenwriter Gregory Widen wrote the first draft of what would become Highlander as a project for his UCLA film class. The script was sold for $200,000 to producers William Panzer and Peter Davis, who attached director Russell Mulcahy and stars Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, and Clancy Brown. The film follows Connor MacLeod (Lambert), an immortal born in medieval Scotland and living in present-day New York. MacLeod is tutored by fellow immortal Ramirez (Connery), loses his mortal wife, and is pursued through the centuries by a powerful adversary called The Kurgan (Brown). The Immortals are destined to compete against each other in combat: each victory earns the winner their opponent’s power and wisdom, delivered in a blaze of lightning called “The Quickening.” An often-quoted line of dialogue served as the tagline for the film: “There can be only one.” Highlander’s popularity, plus the success of science fiction and fantasy shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, made a Highlander television series an appealing prospect for the producers.
Highlander: The Series began as a coproduction between several North American and European companies. According to Denis Leroy, head of production for the French company Gaumont, “Bill Panzer and Peter Davis had the underlying rights from the feature … Because of the flashbacks and the history of our characters, it was natural to use the locations and the talent in Europe and Northern [sic] America.” On a podcast, David Abramowitz, the show’s eventual head writer, recalled that the producers had “sold a slightly different show to every country. So to the French it was ‘Ah, it’s a crime fighter with a sword!’ To the Germans, it was a fantasy sword and sorcery show. To the Japanese, it was a show with rock stars.”
Former model and dancer Adrian Paul was cast as the titular character. “I was the first person they saw for the job but not the last,” he told Maureen Russell for Highlander: The Complete Watcher’s Guide. “Four months later, I did an audition and then a screen test. Then I waited three weeks and got the job.” While the original idea was for Paul to play Connor MacLeod, Christopher Lambert agreed to guest star as Connor in the pilot, passing the torch to a new Immortal. “Connor in the first episode is like what Sean Connery was in Highlander One,” Lambert said in a behind-the-scenes documentary. Instead, Paul would play Duncan MacLeod, a cousin of Connor, allowing the show to develop a new main character and a mythology of its own. “We as mortals change our lives every 20 years,” Paul said. “[Duncan] was 400 years old, so he was a lover and a fighter at one point. He was an idealist at another. Each period was slightly different.” The show’s fight choreographer and sword master, Bob Anderson, an Olympic fencer who also choreographed the duels in Star Wars and The Princess Bride, called Paul “the most talented physical actor I’ve come across in the whole of my career.”
The show’s cast also included Richie (Stan Kirsch), a streetwise youth Macleod mentors, and Tessa (Alexandra Vandernoot), an artist and Duncan’s mortal romantic partner. Later episodes would introduce Joe Dawson, a “Watcher” whose job was to record the history of the Immortals. Dawson was played by Vancouver blues musician Jim Byrnes. In addition to villains of the week, the show also included musicians Joan Jett as the first female Immortal, Felice Martins, and Who lead singer Roger Daltrey as the rakish Hugh Fitzcairn.
While the series was partly filmed in France, even making use of the Eiffel Tower for one episode, a great deal of both the present-day scenes and the historical flashbacks were filmed in Vancouver. In the pilot, duels are fought on the Burrard Street Bridge. Later in the first season, a duel and quickening happen in front of the Science World dome. MacLeod’s apartment and dojo and Joe Dawson’s bar were sets built in a Vancouver warehouse. Most of postproduction was local as well. The show’s unnamed home city, vaguely analogous to Seattle but featuring obvious Vancouver locations, was eventually dubbed “Seacouver” by fans.
The flashbacks presented unique logistical problems for production designer Stephen Geaghan and art director Richard Cook, who had to repurpose the Lower Mainland for a variety of cultures and time periods. “Having to shoot both period scenes and present-day scenes in the same day, we ended up having to find locations that allowed us to do untrammelled wilderness along with highly refined present-day environments,” Geaghan said. Cook remembered “all the many, many Celtic villages we set up on Mount Seymour,” while Geaghan recalled using the Orpheum Theatre to double as the palace of the Raja of Jaipur and Richmond’s Fantasy Gardens as a 17th-century English village. Once, after building a Scottish Blackhouse on Cypress Mountain, Geaghan found his work being scrutinized by a vacationing Scottish museum curator: “He said, “This is a better example of a Scottish Black Hut of the period, in its furnishings and dressings, than we have in our own museum. This is good.” We knew we were on the right track.”
Highlander: The Series ran for six seasons and led to two spinoffs: Highlander: The Raven, starring Elizabeth Gracen as the thief Amanda, and The Methos Chronicles, starring Peter Wingfield as the oldest living immortal. Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert reteamed for the 2000 film Highlander: Endgame; and a fifth film starring Paul, Highlander: The Source, was released in 2007. Recently, John Wick director Chad Stahelski announced a reboot of the franchise to star Henry Cavill.
If not quite immortal, Highlander: The Series has had a long cultural life. The show’s fan club is still active, and its stars are popular attractions on the convention circuit. Adrian Paul founded The Sword Experience, offering fencing lessons to fans. Jim Byrnes received the Order of Canada in 2022 and continues to work around Vancouver as a musician, actor, and voice artist, as well as with the charitable Face the World Foundation. Reflecting on the 30th anniversary of the franchise, screenwriter Gregory Widen told an interviewer, “I’ve always been amazed that a project I wrote as a UCLA student has had this kind of life.”
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