The first episode of 'Callan' recaps the premise established in the superior pilot, 'A Magnum for Schneider' (an episode of 'Armchair Theatre' broadcast earlier in 1967), but with added Nazi power. Alongside Edward Woodward, Ronald Radd and Russell Hunter also return from the pilot as, respectively, Callan's spymaster Hunter and trusty but unwashed black-marketeer 'Lonely'.
The exposition of Callan's relationship with the Service is badly rushed here, but it is at least completely consistent with the ending of 'A Magnum for Schneider'. In Hunter's colour-coded files, where yellow means a target is being watched and red means they're a danger and should be killed, Callan's own records have been transferred from a yellow file to a red one. His relationship with Hunter continues as before - there is advantage to both in continuing to work together, but each would happily see the other dead. In the series Anthony Valentine replaces Peter Bowles as Hunter's new right-hand man, still keeping an eye on the unreliable Callan.
It's slightly harder to understand this time why Callan would instinctively show any compassion towards a Nazi war criminal, especially once his investigations have unearthed some fairly gruesome evidence of the truth. It's perhaps similarly more difficult to see why Hunter still feels confident to use him for another case after the events of the pilot episode - perhaps it would be safer just to have him killed. Nevertheless, the ending of this episode reinforces that of the pilot, that Callan has a need to understand his target, such that to the end he is evaluating whether or not the target has a right to live or die.
Viewing this episode of 'Callan' isn't easy. Like all the surviving episodes, it has been released on DVD by Network in the UK, but it is one of the episodes which has really only just survived at all. Recorded off-air by the quaint back-up method of pointing a video camera at a TV monitor screen, it survives in a motley 405-line version (compare scenes in Hunter's office or Callan's flat with similar scenes in the superior 625-line quality of the pilot). As a direct consequence of this, the episode suffers from terrible image ghosting throughout - you can still see the countdown screen several seconds after the episode has in fact begun to play, and the shadow of one actor's head and shoulders across a shot of another. However, you get used to it after the first few minutes, and a strong audio rack compensates for some very fuzzy shots and flurries of videotape lines across the screen.
This series episode clearly didn't have the same budget as the pilot, and lighting and sound issues arise throughout. There are a number of particularly annoying studio bangs, alongside some rather jerky camera-work towards the denouement of the episode, which make one particularly aware of the limitations of the "as live" studio recording methods of 1967. Presumably there just wasn't time to reshoot this final sequence, nor were there resources to drop in short re-record sequences in post-production editing.
All in all, it's a solid first episode, but I'd have to recommend the pilot 'A Magnum for Schneider' over this, and would even suggest that having watched that you might dispense with this altogether and move on to other episodes which have something new to offer.