The Avengers Series 1
In many ways the British TV series The Avengers was the Beatles of TV. The series was created in 1961 by Sydney Newman (who also created Doctor Who) as a gritty black and white TV programme very much in thrall to existing 1950s styles and finished in 1969 a spy series with kaleidoscope eyes. Over … Read more
The sixth episode of the series (numbers two to five having vanished) and we’re edging into what would later be familiar Avengers territory. There are devious foreigners, a complex plot and a surprising amount of agency for the female sidekick. Dennis Spooner’s screenplay concerns a woman throwing herself off a London bridge into the Thames, … Read more
The 15th of 26 episodes in the first series is a story that Humphrey Bogart might recognise. A tale of a greasy heel sending his thugs around to put “the frighteners” on a society lothario who is wooing the impressionable daughter of a local business big noise, it looks and feels every inch like a … Read more
For a long time it was thought that only a couple of episodes from series one of The Avengers had survived. And then Tunnel of Fear turned up in a “private film collection”, as the press release guardedly puts it, swelling the number of complete episodes from two to a mighty three out of a … Read more
