The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 17 – Box of Tricks

Smith and Steed examine a box

A thin, confusingly plotted and frankly rather dull episode is only emphasised by the terrible picture and sound quality (on the old box set I’m watching this series on, anyway). And it’s a Venus Smith episode, which means a song from the chanteuse, but not until after the opening credits. Before they roll, we watch as a magician in the night club does the disappearing lady trick. Glamorous assistant enters magic box covered in spangles. Magician utters the magic words. Glamorous assistant exits magic box covered in spangles and blood – dead. We cut to a seemingly unrelated story, set in the house of a senior military gent (Maurice Hedley) in a wheelchair, overseen … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 16 – Immortal Clay

Steed is briefed by One-Ten in a steam room

By a gigantic stroke of luck, it seems, while Mrs Gale is being given a guided tour of a ceramics atelier, she stumbles across a dead body in the room where the raw clay is kept. Doubly handily, it seems that the company is engaged on cutting edge research to produce an indestructible tile to be used in the nose cone of a British rocket – what days, what days – and the dead man in question is one of the researchers engaged in its development and production. Of course, Gale – in deliberately ass-backwards Avengers plotting – isn’t at the factory/studio/lab/atelier (Teddington Studios, in fact) by accident, and, by way of explanation, we are … Read more