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

Annette Carell, Patrick Cargill and Garfield Morgan

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

Emma Peel and John Steed cower in a doorway

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

Emma Peel in cartoon form being menaged by a giant bird

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

Diana Rigg, Patrick Macnee and Christopher Lee

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

Mrs Peel surrounded by a halo reading a ZZ Schnerk Production

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