Softly, Softly (TV series) Alexis Kanner as DC Matt Stone. Although popular with audiences, Kanner appears to have alienated cast and crew with erratic behaviour during live recordings, and the character was dropped after only nine episodes. He later played the recalcitrant Number 48 in the final episode of "The Prisoner". The first two series continued the trend set by producer David Rose with "Z-Cars", and transmitted the majority of episodes live. This was one of the last long-running British TV series to do this. From series three onwards all episodes were pre-recorded. The original theme music was, like "Z-Cars", a folk-song arrangement by
The Highwaymen (folk band) Island. He was 71. As of December 2011, just two of the five original members are still alive, Steve Trott and Steve Butts. The Highwaymen had a significant impact on the folk scene of the early 1960s. Aside from two major hit singles and several appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the group contributed two future standards to the folk repertoire ("All My Trials", "Big Rock Candy Mountain") and played the central role in uncovering an important, long-overlooked song by Lead Belly, "Cotton Fields", which subsequently became a major addition to the repertoires