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, though the premise â a time-travelling bolthole into another era to aid escaping master criminals â is a fascinating one if youâre on board with the whole time-travel idea.
And it gives the production team at The Avengers a chance to get the fancy-dress box out â a sure sign of a series thatâs jumping the shark. On the upside, Peter Bowles is in it, and we meet him very early on after one of Steedâs colleagues has been whisked back in time (nice bit of Krish camera work) to the Elizabethan era, where heâs shot by Bowles, in ruff, Van Dyke beard and diabolical Bowles grin.
Washed up in the river â back in the 20th century â the man is soon on a pathologistâs slab, where his wound is identified by Emma Peel as having been caused by a Tudor weapon. It turns out he was investigating the disappearance of a lot of villains and, according to man-from-the-ministry Clapham (long, lean Geoffrey Bayldon, later Catweazle) was about to make a breakthrough.
This is a handy bit of âno time for investigationâ exposition by writer Philip Levene, who knows heâs got a lot to pack into this episode, and it conveniently sends Peel and Steed up the most fruitful avenue first.
Fruitful for our sleuth/spies does not necessarily translate as interesting for the viewer, though. For too much of this episode Peel is getting into scrapes of her own outside a barberâs shop (Steed visits the barber; Emma has a close shave! is the episode subhead) as she follows the comings and goings of Josino (Ricardo Montez), a villain who is probably going to time-travel his way out of trouble.
On the street outside the barberâs is a newspaper billboard. âWhere is Blakeâ it shouts. This rare intrusion of external reality in The Avengers refers to Soviet spy George Blake, who escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 by climbing the wall and jumping down onto the roof of a waiting Ford Transit van â they raised the height of the walls after that â and stands as a counterweight to all the fantastical to-ing and fro-ing. A documentaristâs touch.
Thyssen (Bowles), after having killed a number of people in a variety of epochs, soon gets a visit from Steed, posing as a rich guy who needs to make a quick exit from the here and now. In short order Steed has been given a taster of an escape into the past, a trip to 1790.
For all its trips into the past, though, this is a very 1960s episode, psychedelically flavoured, full of blind alleys, weird stuff happening for no real reason and fashion thatâs designed almost as a dare, it seems.
Krish shoots a lot of it almost like a silent film, which gives Bowles rein to play the Thyssens of various eras as men who are devious verging on the deviant. Judy Parfitt, as Thyssenâs right-hand woman, sadly doesnât get much to do in her third outing in the series.
It should all work but it doesnât â perhaps spies and time travel is just one bridge too far â and the obviousness of the studio sets doesnât help very much.
But if youâve ever wanted to see Steedâs brolly emitting gas â a Bond-like gadget! â this is for you. And Krishâs direction, and in particular his love of a wonky camera angle, is something to admire.
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Š Steve Morrissey 2020
The first part is a bit slow with the whole scene with the rag puppet exchange in a neighborhood evidently rebuilt in the studio which is all too childish. The second one is more fun with the psychedelic journey and lopsided shots like in the Batman TV show. Excellent Peter Bowles, a small part for Imogen Hassall who remains in my memory as the girl disputed between Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in the first episode of “The persuaders”.
For the foot fetishists, we still see Diana Rigg’s super cute ones, after the previous episode where Steed tickled them with a feather and in the nineteenth of the fourth season, “Quick-quick-slow death”, where the shoe store clerk performs an almost hardcore scene.
It’s not a great episode but it is imaginative at least. And yes, the socks/the stocks with the bare feet is a nice touch.