TV

The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 3 – Man with Two Shadows

by
Cathy Gale assesses John Steed

Shown the same day that RA (“Rab”) Butler made his big pitch to be the new leader of the Conservative party after Macmillan’s shock resignation (Butler’s big speech was a total fail), Man with Two Shadows also plays with the idea of the wrong man – the double being so fruitful a concept that The Avengers would return to it often, as did a lot of 1960s TV. Perhaps the widely prevalent notion of “false consciousness” – there is a right way of seeing things and a wrong way – has something to do with it. Another well worn path is that of someone being killed before the opening credits have rolled. In … Read more

The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 2 – The Undertakers

by
Honor Blackman, Lally Bowers

On Saturday 5 October 1963, a day after the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had updated their plan to invade Cuba the following July (President Kennedy’s assassination would intervene), and while JFK’s wife Jackie was enjoying the company of shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in Greece (she would later marry him), TV audiences in the UK got their own kicks by sitting down to watch the second episode of series three of The Avengers, altogether a camper, more knockabout affair than series two. And there was nothing camper in the 1960s than death, there being a positive Joe Orton-esque quality to the superb opener to The Undertakers – one member of a coffin-carrying team … Read more

The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 1 – Brief for Murder

by
John Steed

Whoop de doo, it’s season three of The Avengers and to celebrate its continuing success, the opening credits have been given a bit of a makeover – they’re much more Saul Bass now – there’s more money being spent on the production, the camerawork is more filmic and the editing is noticeably snappier. Brian Clemens has also arrived as a writer. In fact Clemens had contributed two scripts (his first, Brought to Book, co-written with Patrick Brawn) for the first series but those episodes have now disappeared, so this is his extant debut, if there is such a thing. And Brief for Murder has the Clemens fingerprints all over it – a tricksy plot, misdirection … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 26 – Killer Whale

by
Honor Blackman, Patrick Macnee and Patrick Magee

Killer Whale is a queer fish, the 26th and last episode of series two being a mix of the quite bizarre and the incredibly mundane. Things get off to an eyebrow-raising start right from the off, with Steed in the process of losing 50 quid at a boxing bout as we join the action. Mrs Gale is luckier, though, managing to pick up a stray boxer during the evening and become his trainer. As you do. Joey the boxer becomes Mrs Gale’s inside man at the gym, and a bit of investigation by the two of them, they establish that there’s a link between the liniment and bandages and the more rarefied atmosphere … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 25 – Six Hands across a Table

by
Gale and Steed

As I write, the UK is drunkenly stumbling towards its exit from the European Union. Rewind 55 years and Six Hands across the Table, the penultimate episode of the second series of The Avengers, is having a discussion similar to the one the country is having right now, a “whither us” debate about Britain – is it better going it alone or heading towards a more European version of the future? The drama opens at a meeting of a shipbuilding cartel, part of an industry in trouble. (For those too young, that “industry in trouble” idea is why the country signed up to the European project in the first place.) Digression aside, this … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 24 – A Chorus of Frogs

by
Shima, Stevens, Pohlmann and Macnee

A mix of the familiar and the exotic in A Chorus of Frogs, the 24th episode in the broadcast run of series two of The Avengers, and another chance for Julie Stevens’s Venus Smith to do her wide-eyed naive thing. It’s a useful character trait, since there is plenty of explicatory work to be done in an episode that kicks off with a frogman dying of the bends, before taking in a group of the dead man’s fellow divers (and, it seems, spies) called the Frogs, a large yacht that’s home to a Bond villain fattie (Eric Pohlmann) and a head-in-the-clouds scientist (Frank Gatliff) who hasn’t quite realised that the diving technology he’s … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 23 – Conspiracy of Silence

by
Steed throttles a clown

Tight direction is the saving of Conspiracy of Silence, episode 23 of the second series of The Avengers, a mix of the confusing and the humdrum. Why, for example, is Steed being targeted by a killer while he’s out walking his dog? The imdb brief description tells us it’s because he interrupted a drug-trafficking op run by the Mafia. So, assuming you are the Mafia, why not just kill him in one of the more usual ways, rather than deploy an innocent, Carlo (Robert Rietty), transformed into an automaton killer by a trigger phrase in a redundant mind-control subplot? Perhaps The Avengers were just warming up the idea for future episodes – mind control … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 22 – The Man in the Mirror

by
Venus photographs a dead man

At this stage in the game – we’re at episode 22 now – we more or less expect someone to be dead before the opening credits have rolled. But Man in the Mirror rings the changes a touch – there’s a dead body in the opening shot. The plot is slight and utterly fanciful and centres on Venus Smith – in a stripy t shirt and wearing that 1960s hat faintly modelled on the soldier’s shako (funny how the lovin’ decade loved its military regalia) – visiting a funfair with her dog. She takes some snaps and, when they’re developed, it turns out that in one of the shots is the dead man, alive as … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 21 – The White Dwarf

by
Mrs Gale reads a children's science book

A top astronomer dies before the opening credits in The White Dwarf, the 21st episode broadcast in series 2 of The Avengers. Turns out that a large astral body might be heading towards Earth and if it does in fact arrive, we’re all toast. And Professor Richter was the only man who knew absolutely for sure whether it was coming this way or not. Who would want such a man dead? It’s a good sci-fi premise which sees The Avengers edging further into the world they would eventually dominate – the esoteric. And off we go to some science facility in Cornwall, Mrs Gale undercover as usual, as Dr Gale, checking into the … Read more

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 20 – School for Traitors

by
Venus Smith and John Steed

Mrs Gale takes a rest and Venus Smith gets another outing in an episode set at an elite Oxbridge-style university and kicking off with a death (again) before the credits (again). Steed is sent in to find out what happened to the man he was meant to have been keeping an eye on, after a briefing from a different control, One-Seven (Frederick Farley), a ridiculous throwback complete with cigarette holder and winged collar. A much chattier, gamine Venus Smith is introduced early on. Smith just happens to be gigging at the university’s rag week, which is handy for Steed, who has soon also inveigled his way into the grove of academe and is … Read more