The Third Man is a TV series which ran from 1959 to 1965. It was based on the novel and film The Third Man and starred Michael Rennie as Harry Lime. In the TV series, Lime is an international private investigator.
The series was a co-production between the NTA Film Network and the BBC. The first twenty episodes were shot at 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood. Later episodes were filmed at Shepperton Studios and Associated-British Elstree Studios (Associated British Picture Corporation) in England.
Initially eight episodes were lost due to the BBCâÂÂs junking policy, but on 4 October 2024, the Film Is Fabulous project announced the episode "The Man Who WouldnâÂÂt Talk" had been recovered and returned to the BBC archive. In addition, they announced the recovery of a version of "The Man With Two Left Hands", which was in better quality than the one that existed.
Out of a total of 77 episodes, 6 are currently missing: three from the first series, two from the second series & one from the fourth. On 4 October 2024 the Film Is Fabulous project announced the recovery of "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk", which brought the number of missing episodes down from eight to seven. They also announced they had located a 16mm film recording of "The Man With Two Left Hands" which was a significant improvement on the poor-quality domestic videotape copy previously known to exist. In 2025 the Film is Fabulous initiative announced the recovery of series 4 episode 6 "Proxy Fight" as part of their 'Recovered' event, which showcased programmes recovered by the initiative.