The Avengers Series 5

The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 1 – From Venus with Love

For a lot of people, series five of The Avengers IS The Avengers. It’s in colour, for starters, and takes full advantage of the extended tonal pallet by really laying on the visuals – in From Venus with Love, the … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 2 – The Fear Merchants

“Steed puts out a light; Emma takes fright” runs the subhead to The Fear Merchants, second episode of the fifth series of The Avengers, and its belly-flop rhythm makes it apparent that this novelty is already not a good idea. But … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 3 – Escape in Time

Escape in Time is a good chance to see what the great documentary maker John Krish can do when handed an episode of The Avengers to direct. The results are a mixed bag: visually interesting but dramatically a little flat, … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 4 – The See-Through Man

After time travel in the previous week’s episode, Escape in Time, The Avengers’ augmented interest in sci-fi gets another workout in The See-Through Man, a plot all about invisibility and its dastardly uses. Comedy is the overarching tone and self-parody … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 5 – The Bird Who Knew Too Much

Even being kind The Bird Who Knew Too Much is a fairly crap episode of The Avengers, a half-hearted rewrite of an Alan Pattillo story by Brian Clemens. But it gets off to a quirky enough start – a man … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 6 – The Winged Avenger

The Winged Avenger, self-referentiality to one side, is a comic-book title and a comic-book episode – look at the framing throughout – and intriguingly suggests that The Avengers now has another genre reference point, having conclusively ditched noirish crime fiction as … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 7 – The Living Dead

The zombie movie was sleeping fitfully in its crypt – George Romero would wake it in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead – when The Avengers episode The Living Dead first aired in February 1967. Steed and Peel, it … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 8 – The Hidden Tiger

Well written and brilliantly cast, The Hidden Tiger is also very neatly directed by Sidney Hayers, who starts the episode with a point-of-view shot of a butler being dispatched by forces unseen while he is putting out a bowl of … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 9 – The Correct Way to Kill

So we arrive at The Correct Way to Kill, a rewrite of the series 3 episode The Charmers, and a frank admission that The Avengers has pretty much run out of ideas. Or, since we’re being generous, that it’s taking … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 10 – Never, Never Say Die

Christopher Lee! Christopher Lee of Dracula fame, intelligence operations during the Second World War, later a Bond villain, Saruman of Lord of the Rings and a heavy metal artist in his 90s, yes, that’s the man, lumbering about like Frankenstein’s … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 11 – Epic

When writers run out of ideas, they either start cannibalising their own old ones (see the episode from two weeks’ prior – The Correct Way to Kill), they duck into comedy (no refuge for a series that already has its … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 12 – The Superlative Seven

Charlotte Rampling, Donald Sutherland and Brian Blessed are the standout names in The Superlative Seven, a title suggesting this episode is going to borrow heavily from The Magnificent Seven of seven years before. In fact it’s more a reworking of … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 13 – A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station

The Stephen Sondheim musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum – a hit on Broadway in 1962, in 1966 a film directed by Dick Lester and featuring Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers and Buster Keaton in his … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 14 – Something Nasty in the Nursery

Clive Dunn, Paul Eddington, Yootha Joyce and Penelope Keith – four of the biggest names in 1970s British TV comedy – were relative unknowns when Something Nasty in the Nursery aired in April 1967. But their presence is further proof, if … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 15 – The Joker

The creeping feeling that The Avengers is running out of puff is further reinforced by The Joker, a rewrite of the Cathy Gale-era episode Don’t Look Behind You. Except in this case it’s Emma Peel who is stalked by an … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 16 – Who’s Who???

The Nicolas Cage/John Travolta film Face/Off might perhaps have borrowed its central idea from Who’s Who???, a crackingly conceived episode of The Avengers built around the idea of a mind-swap between Steed and the dastardly Basil (Freddie Jones). There’s a … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 17 – Return of the Cybernauts

When the British Film Institute celebrated 50 Years of Emma Peel in 2015, as well as interviewing the venerable Dame Diana Rigg – halfway through her run on Game of Thrones at the time – the BFI screened two episodes … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 18 – Death’s Door

Closer co-operation between European countries is a good thing, right? That’s the idea driving Death’s Door, an episode with a mind-control theme and a jaunty spy-fi approach to what is essentially an espionage thriller plot. But before the Europhobes get … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 19 – The £50,000 Breakfast

The £50,000 Breakfast is a Cathy Gale-era episode (Death of a Great Dane) originally written by Roger Marshall and then reworked here by Brian Clemens into an Emma Peel-era one. And though it’s tempting to do a compare and contrast … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 20 – Dead Man’s Treasure

Dead Man’s Treasure takes that old staple of the country house weekend – the treasure hunt – and turns it into a reasonably thrilling car-chase adventure unsure quite how jokey it wants to be. My hunch is that the thrills come … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 21 – You Have Just Been Murdered

You Have Just Been Murdered is what this episode of The Avengers is called and it’s what’s written on a card left behind at the house of a man who has just been menaced with a gun by an intruder. … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 22 – The Positive Negative Man

A mad spy-fi story, the sort that made The Avengers the legendary show it is, The Positive Negative Man gets off to a Cybernauts-style start with a big lumbering creature – a man in silver greasepainted face and a metal … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 23 – Murdersville

Murdersville feels like a very loose rewrite of a Cathy Gale-era Avengers episode, though having wracked my brains, I don’t believe it can be. The hallmarks are there though – old school English village, locals, a pub – real life, … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 24 – Mission… Highly Improbable

The US TV series Mission: Impossible was not quite a year old and hadn’t yet aired in the UK when the Avengers episode Mission… Highly Improbable debuted in the UK in November 1967, so Brits wouldn’t have got the joke/reference. … Read more

The Avengers Series 5

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