Friday, January 23, 2009
The Psychedelic Spy and The New Avengers – Faces
At 11.55 tonight it’s BBC4’s latest episode of The New Avengers: Faces, an impressive adventure that reels you in slowly and really grabs you by the end. It’s the fourth and perhaps the best of The Avengers’ ‘doubles’ stories, going for broke with Steed, Gambit and Purdey all replaced by doppelgängers – or are they? Patrick Macnee and Joanna Lumley in particular are brilliant, and you can also catch Joanna on the iPlayer in The Psychedelic Spy, a drug-soaked, disturbing ’60s-set thriller that’s been playing on BBC7 all week (watch out for spoilers about both if you read on).
I’ll fill in the rest later, having given you a taste; my beloved came in late from work after a hellish journey, so I’ve been ministering to his needs and cooking a big meal in an attempt to revive him. Now I’m a little sleepy on it, so I’ll finish once I’ve had a while to digest. Possibly Monday!
And finally, a word on Andrew Rissik’s radio thriller, made in 1990, set very firmly in 1968, and broadcast in five parts this week on BBC7. If you missed it, it’s well worth tuning in on the BBC iPlayer; James Aubrey’s rather good as the lead, but ’60s legends Gerald Harper, Charles Gray and of course Joanna Lumley completely steal it.
I’ve been trying to work out in my head something to say about The Prisoner since Patrick McGoohan died last week – I fear it’s still in a bit of a tangle, but if you want to try unpicking the series yourself, it is of course being repeated twice every Tuesday on ITV4. It’ll only be four episodes in this week (depending on how you count them, which is trickier than it sounds), so the next one up’s as good a place as any to pick it up: Free For All is a relatively early episode, which means it explains some of the set-up, but it’s also the first to go utterly barking mad, so that gives you a flavour of what it can all turn into. This isn’t quite as much of a detour as it reads, as BBC7 has been repeating two of The Prisoner’s cousins. Each weekday morning at 9.30 they’re currently broadcasting Michael Jayston’s superb reading of Rogue Male, a 1930s thriller novel that’s a clear antecedent of Patrick McGoohan’s masterwork – it, too, has a magnificently egocentric lead character, a lone wolf at the top of his brutal profession, who’s trapped, repeatedly trying to escape, and persecuted physically and psychologically by anonymous servants of a mysterious service who want to find the purpose of his attention-grabbing opening action. And, of course, the starting point of The Psychedelic Spy is a top agent who resigns – only for his old bosses to try to bring him back in, sent against his will to a mysterious environment where no-one’s loyalties are entirely clear. With a lot of drugs.
The story is both an effective thriller in itself and a meditation on where the ’60s went sour, aided by a soundtrack including Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds and, most tellingly, the Who; the performances are uniformly excellent, the mood alternately grumpy and despairing, and the twists – all right. Look away to avoid spoilers, remember, as I turn to the outstanding actors. Robert Eddison, Michael Cochrane and Ed Bishop are all excellent as minor characters (particularly, I think, Mr Eddison’s fading old master of secret information), and James Aubrey’s rather good as Billy Hindle, the British secret assassin who wants out because he fears he’s turning into a psychopath. The first episode stars Gerald Harper, formerly Adam Adamant, as his manipulative boss Sir Richard Snark; no, with a name like that he’s not very nice, but he’s awfully good at it. The whole thing really gets going, however, when Hindle flies out to Temptation Island, run by dying charismatic genius Charles Gray and his glamorous wife Joanna Lumley. They are, in short, fantastic.
It feels very much like a ’60s thriller, not just for the stars but its mix of acid music, James Bond, The Prisoner, Callan and le Carré (with a dash of Apocalypse Now), but despite its quality, one aspect disappointed me. I think of women in thrillers being the ’40s and ’50s femmes fatale of film noir, or the powerful figures of the ’80s, or simply being treated much the same as the men since; the fact that my favourite series from the ’60s that can very roughly be described as a spy thriller is The Avengers has, I fear, rather spoiled me for a story like this that, in setting itself firmly in the feel of the time, pushes its women firmly into the background. So I admit I was disappointed as The Psychedelic Spy’s three significant women were one by one revealed to be much less interesting than I’d anticipated. In a very ’60s way, they are essentially pliant victims, and it’s notable that Hindle shags each of them. His rather drippy girlfriend whom he picks up after resigning, Marianne, was so utterly convenient that I assumed she was an enemy (or perhaps British) agent right until she was shot in his arms; I then instantly assumed, correctly, that she’d been the target rather than him, and probably at the order of either his ruthless employer or Joanna Lumley’s Tara (another Avengers name). Joanna’s performance is so magnetic – and, as she gives as good as she gets with Charles Gray and claims to be a very bad person – I assumed that she was an agent in her own right, probably responsible for the dodgy activities her husband’s implicated in. Again, I assumed that right up until the last minute… At which point it became dispiritingly clear that she was only there as unfaithful wife and then widow after all. The third woman in the story is Hindle’s ex, who’s disappeared while investigating Charles Gray’s character – our anti-hero characterises her as an evil, manipulative bitch, so I had high hopes that she’d have survived and be secretly engineering the whole thing. No such luck. It turns out, eventually, that she’s dead after all, leaving her undoubted abilities both of no use to the story and entirely framed by men who didn’t like her. I’d have liked us to meet her, instead.
The close is a little too neat – not happy, you understand, but missing a dash of ambiguity, as if what we hear in the final episode is the truth rather than leaving it likely to be another layer of lies – but still, despite being occasionally predictable and a let-down on some of the non-existent twists involving female characters I’d predicted in hope, it works on the whole. Oh, I’m underselling it now; I liked it. But you might want to listen when you’re on an upper.
“Irreplaceable.”Doppelgängers were a staple of ’60s and ’70s series whose feet left the ground, especially science fiction or the more outré spy thrillers – and with The Avengers crossing the boundaries between both of those, with comedy, fantasy and more besides, it’s no surprise that the series had a go at the subject more than once. Two’s a Crowd did it as cod le Carré for Mrs Peel (and there’s a touch of it in her Who’s Who??? and Never, Never Say Die, too), while Tara King’s They Keep Killing Steed may just give you a hint as to which character is copied multiple times. The two that try for the most ‘realistic’ approach, however, are the best of them. Back in 1963, Man With Two Shadows pitted Cathy Gale against Steed, both when one of his associates tips her off that he’s a fake and when he’s shown at his most ruthless with the real doubles. More incredibly, Faces relies much further on coincidence, recovering slightly with talk of plastic surgery and a story spread over a five-year time period, but really succeeds in its intercourse between the regulars. There’s also arresting direction, and among three well-characterised villains you’ll find Edward Petherbridge, later to find fame as Lord Peter Wimsey. Oh, and before I go on with my usual spoilertastic analysis, have you got this week’s Radio Times? Ignore what it says. It’s not a spoiler, just almost completely wrong.
“I’d better have a word with him. Pull him back into line.”Like several New Avengers episodes, the opening scene’s set some years – five, it turns out – before most of the rest of the story. Unusually, this is without clearly identifying it as such, and the strong implication’s that the main part of the episode takes place over a period of weeks, if not months. Though neither script nor direction express that as well as they might, it gives the story added weight and credibility, and the director gives it real force. Two tramps see an obviously wealthy man drive past, the spitting image of one of them; after what we infer is a period of studying him, the pre-credits sequence ends with one of the series’ most striking freeze-frames, as the rabbit-poaching tramp shoots an arrow into the wealthy double who’s diving into his own private pool. It may not be a subtle way of killing, but it gets your attention.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Hmm. He’ll just have to be replaced, won’t he?”
I’ll fill in the rest later, having given you a taste; my beloved came in late from work after a hellish journey, so I’ve been ministering to his needs and cooking a big meal in an attempt to revive him. Now I’m a little sleepy on it, so I’ll finish once I’ve had a while to digest. Possibly Monday!
The Psychedelic Spy
And finally, a word on Andrew Rissik’s radio thriller, made in 1990, set very firmly in 1968, and broadcast in five parts this week on BBC7. If you missed it, it’s well worth tuning in on the BBC iPlayer; James Aubrey’s rather good as the lead, but ’60s legends Gerald Harper, Charles Gray and of course Joanna Lumley completely steal it.
I’ve been trying to work out in my head something to say about The Prisoner since Patrick McGoohan died last week – I fear it’s still in a bit of a tangle, but if you want to try unpicking the series yourself, it is of course being repeated twice every Tuesday on ITV4. It’ll only be four episodes in this week (depending on how you count them, which is trickier than it sounds), so the next one up’s as good a place as any to pick it up: Free For All is a relatively early episode, which means it explains some of the set-up, but it’s also the first to go utterly barking mad, so that gives you a flavour of what it can all turn into. This isn’t quite as much of a detour as it reads, as BBC7 has been repeating two of The Prisoner’s cousins. Each weekday morning at 9.30 they’re currently broadcasting Michael Jayston’s superb reading of Rogue Male, a 1930s thriller novel that’s a clear antecedent of Patrick McGoohan’s masterwork – it, too, has a magnificently egocentric lead character, a lone wolf at the top of his brutal profession, who’s trapped, repeatedly trying to escape, and persecuted physically and psychologically by anonymous servants of a mysterious service who want to find the purpose of his attention-grabbing opening action. And, of course, the starting point of The Psychedelic Spy is a top agent who resigns – only for his old bosses to try to bring him back in, sent against his will to a mysterious environment where no-one’s loyalties are entirely clear. With a lot of drugs.
The story is both an effective thriller in itself and a meditation on where the ’60s went sour, aided by a soundtrack including Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds and, most tellingly, the Who; the performances are uniformly excellent, the mood alternately grumpy and despairing, and the twists – all right. Look away to avoid spoilers, remember, as I turn to the outstanding actors. Robert Eddison, Michael Cochrane and Ed Bishop are all excellent as minor characters (particularly, I think, Mr Eddison’s fading old master of secret information), and James Aubrey’s rather good as Billy Hindle, the British secret assassin who wants out because he fears he’s turning into a psychopath. The first episode stars Gerald Harper, formerly Adam Adamant, as his manipulative boss Sir Richard Snark; no, with a name like that he’s not very nice, but he’s awfully good at it. The whole thing really gets going, however, when Hindle flies out to Temptation Island, run by dying charismatic genius Charles Gray and his glamorous wife Joanna Lumley. They are, in short, fantastic.
It feels very much like a ’60s thriller, not just for the stars but its mix of acid music, James Bond, The Prisoner, Callan and le Carré (with a dash of Apocalypse Now), but despite its quality, one aspect disappointed me. I think of women in thrillers being the ’40s and ’50s femmes fatale of film noir, or the powerful figures of the ’80s, or simply being treated much the same as the men since; the fact that my favourite series from the ’60s that can very roughly be described as a spy thriller is The Avengers has, I fear, rather spoiled me for a story like this that, in setting itself firmly in the feel of the time, pushes its women firmly into the background. So I admit I was disappointed as The Psychedelic Spy’s three significant women were one by one revealed to be much less interesting than I’d anticipated. In a very ’60s way, they are essentially pliant victims, and it’s notable that Hindle shags each of them. His rather drippy girlfriend whom he picks up after resigning, Marianne, was so utterly convenient that I assumed she was an enemy (or perhaps British) agent right until she was shot in his arms; I then instantly assumed, correctly, that she’d been the target rather than him, and probably at the order of either his ruthless employer or Joanna Lumley’s Tara (another Avengers name). Joanna’s performance is so magnetic – and, as she gives as good as she gets with Charles Gray and claims to be a very bad person – I assumed that she was an agent in her own right, probably responsible for the dodgy activities her husband’s implicated in. Again, I assumed that right up until the last minute… At which point it became dispiritingly clear that she was only there as unfaithful wife and then widow after all. The third woman in the story is Hindle’s ex, who’s disappeared while investigating Charles Gray’s character – our anti-hero characterises her as an evil, manipulative bitch, so I had high hopes that she’d have survived and be secretly engineering the whole thing. No such luck. It turns out, eventually, that she’s dead after all, leaving her undoubted abilities both of no use to the story and entirely framed by men who didn’t like her. I’d have liked us to meet her, instead.
The close is a little too neat – not happy, you understand, but missing a dash of ambiguity, as if what we hear in the final episode is the truth rather than leaving it likely to be another layer of lies – but still, despite being occasionally predictable and a let-down on some of the non-existent twists involving female characters I’d predicted in hope, it works on the whole. Oh, I’m underselling it now; I liked it. But you might want to listen when you’re on an upper.
Labels: Joanna Lumley, Michael Jayston, Radio, Reviews, Spies, The New Avengers, The Prisoner
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Avengers – Two’s a Crowd
It’s almost time for tonight’s episode of The Avengers – an absolutely outstanding one, on BBC4 at 7.10 (or tomorrow, 11.30) – and they’re showing the groovy little documentary The Avengers Revisited tonight at 10, so it’s about time I got round to reviewing last week’s. Unusually for the series, it was grounded in the time’s ‘spy reality’, though nobody was so gauche as to name the foreign embassy around which the plot revolves. Steed’s out to catch a notorious Ru… (cough) spymaster, but the ‘double’ plot that ensues is much funnier if considerably less credible than John le Carré…
There’s actually another gimmick that a lesser episode might also have hung its entire story on - though this is far from perfect, it’s certainly inventive. The opening scene is a series of overhead shots of London, as a plane makes its way across the sky towards a grand house of the sort used for important embassies. You’re encouraged to discount that the plane looks like a dodgy model, because so many TV shows of the time used unconvincing modelwork and expected the audience to believe it that, when it drops a bomb that falls screaming into… Warren Mitchell’s punchbowl, with a small plop, it’s a refreshing surprise to realise that the model is meant to be a model. Mr Mitchell is playing Ru – ahem, foreign Ambassador Brodny, and the ‘bomb’ carries a message that mysterious spymaster Colonel Psev is coming to Britain to break the new ‘Western Defence Conference’ planning bases and routes for Polaris. In return, Steed and his dull new sidekick Major Carson (easily overcome for a bet by his usual Mrs Peel) intend to break Psev. No-one’s ever seen him, but he’s feared around the world and spotted by his entourage and foibles. When Shevedloff, Pudeshkin, Alicia Elena and Vogel turn up and demand remote-controlled model planes to adapt, a particular brand of cigars, and the rare liqueur ‘la crème de violettes’, people know Psev is in town.
Psev’s little idiosyncrasies make for entertaining scenes. See Mrs Peel in glasses, working at London’s top model shop, or turning up at the embassy with a delivery (sternly refusing to leave it at the door: “There’s two pounds to pay”), or Steed helping out Brodny with a bottle of la crème de violettes before the poor chap’s eliminated for failing to deliver. And, of course, the way Brodny grabs the plane from his underling to give himself an excuse to enter the Colonel’s rooms and try to catch a peek of the elusive Psev (where he is of course refused access to the inner office by Psev’s implacable team). There was a splendid and very darkly funny Honor Blackman episode with Warren Mitchell called The Charmers, in which also he played the leading ‘opposition’ man. That role’s essentially been split here, with the ‘spymaster’ side hived off to Psev and Mr Mitchell’s ambassador left as the comic relief. Brodny is constantly flustered, much keener on staying in Britain than being sent home, and tries his not terribly stylish best to dress like Steed. Psev’s staff, on the other hand, are much more threatening.
The episode is initially stolen by Colonel Psev’s entourage, led by Julian Glover – tall, young and commanding in his first of four Avengers roles. There are half a dozen outstanding Avengers guest actors that each appears at least four times in similarly styled roles and always steals the show… I’ve written in the past about ‘Villainous Peter Bowles’ and ‘Loveable Roy Kinnear’, but I have to admit ‘Villainous Julian Glover’ has been a favourite actor of mine from a very early age and is terrific here. He plays Vogel, very much the focal point of Psev’s team, with Shevedloff, Pudeshkin and Alicia Elena constantly consulting between themselves. In many ways it’s a joint performance, as throughout they act almost as one, closing in on Brodny in step in a remarkably threatening manner. Of the others, Ms Elena also gives a great performance with a lot of clever observations, as well as looking as striking as Vogel. It’s Glover’s arrogant spokesperson whose icy impatience with Brodny really sets them off, though.
The most impressive aspect of this episode is the way that, with a compelling four-person enemy team so comprehensively stealing it from the regulars with their performances and model gadgets, Patrick Macnee dresses up as an altogether different sort of model to steal it all back again. With Brodny already dressing as Steed’s mini-me, he’s despatched to the big new fashion show – fashion being, of course, yet another of Psev’s notorious and curiously decadent foibles – where he discovers one Gordon Webster in a hideous hat, floral shirt and ’tache, modelling the latest ghastly outfits with a most un-Steedlike swagger, his vulgarity set off by a bevy of swimsuited ‘lovelies’. It’s all hugely unlike The Avengers for a moment, and Brodny can’t believe it either, even ringing Steed to make sure he’s at home. And, naturally, this dubious male model and actor was cashiered from the army, drinks, gambles, womanises and is perfectly corruptible. Fancy! Webster is soon brought in to be quizzed by Psev’s staff, just as – coincidentally – Steed is visible on TV arriving at the Conference with the ‘Western Defence Chiefs’. Who’d have thought News 24 was going back in 1965? Mr Macnee clearly has enormous fun as Webster, wearing horrible outfits (even beating the two cardigans Steed wears this time, one of which is particularly nasty), being terribly louche and displaying a completely different body language to that of Steed, as well as managing to play someone attempting to give an unconvincing impersonation of himself once it’s decided that Webster will play Steed to infiltrate the Conference. The huge stack of notes he’s given as he bargains up his very large bribe is a scream, too. There’s an arresting moment later, when he disparagingly confuses several different customs from ‘abroad’ in a stereotyped British hooligan sort of way; it calls attention to one of Steed’s most striking characteristics, that his highly stylised Britishness isn’t remotely jingoistic and he’s confident enough not be anti-foreign, with an appreciation of other cultures and customs, notably being on rather friendly terms with Brodny from ‘the other side’. Naturally, Mrs Peel spots Webster on a visit to the Embassy, and becomes more than a little concerned. When they’re both invited to a cocktail party there and ‘Steed’ turns up with a buttonhole so huge that even Brodny despairs of his taste, Emma is caught trying to ring Major Carson about a fake Steed – by ‘Steed’, gun in hand and really rather sinister – and has to be locked up as Webster is sent off to kill the real one…
So, did you spot what the twists were going to be? If you recorded it last week and haven’t watched it yet, look away now…
What normally happens in these things is that the ‘fake’ Steed is sent to kill Steed, our hero overcomes him, and the real Steed impersonates the fake one in turn in order to round up the villains. There’s a brilliantly tense sequence with some great suspense music (largely lifted from The Cybernauts) as Steed is apparently killed, then ‘Steed’ arrives at the Conference and, with Vogel excitedly counting away the time, makes it back to the Embassy with the crucial plans captured by miniature camera tie-pin. Except, of course, that it’s all a deception. Yes, obviously it’s Steed who comes back, insists on reporting to Psev in person and gets Emma out of there while the Colonel is distracted… But it’s always been Steed. Yes, he was playing Webster all along, with recordings of him playing at Steed’s flat and on TV to give the impression he was in two places at once. And that’s not the only deception, because the entire ‘Defence Conference’ was a fabrication as bait for Psev. And ‘Colonel PSEV’ is of course a deception, as the reason he’s such a perfect all-round spy is that the acronymic mastermind is really four people. Pudeshkin handles ciphers (and smokes those cigars), Shevedloff is an expert in elimination, Elena runs the administration and makes sure every instruction from ‘Psev’ is relayed by phone by her, while Vogel is in charge of planning. They’d always acted eerily as one, and Steed had earlier sent up the carefully established set of foibles that make Psev seem ‘real’:
By this stage, The Avengers was mostly inhabiting its own world, a version of Britain quite unlike anyone else’s. Two’s A Crowd steps away from that to send up at the same time the gadgets of James Bond (or, indeed, ridiculous real-world spies) and the intricate string-pulling of John le Carré. The result is very entertaining, but more from the performances and characters than the quality of the plotting. By stepping into other people’s rules, it’s somehow less believable than less ‘realistic’ episodes are. A diabolical mastermind with a preposterous scheme somewhere in the Hertfordshire countryside allowing Steed and Emma to infiltrate his tiny operation? Could be. The top international spymaster of an unnamed superpower (with Russian accents, mentions of Western decadence and internal exile… All right, we can take the hint) having not a single agent at their beck and call, so that they have to get the Ambassador to do fieldwork and Steed can run rings round them? Rather than my usual willing suspension of disbelief, I find I have to switch my brain off and just enjoy all the marvellous actors. Steed’s running rings is almost literal – he certainly runs about remarkably easily for someone who you’d have thought would be under surveillance. How does Steed flit between his apartment and Webster’s or the Embassy so quickly? Are they next door? Is no-one watching him do it? Why does the attempted defector attempt to meet Steed in the Embassy grounds, and why does Steed assume he and Emma can just run out of there through the woods at the end? Are there no guards in these grounds, or even a fence? Why is Ambassador Brodny sent with ‘Webster’ to kill Steed, when he just waits outside anyway? Come to that, why is a male model sent to eliminate a top agent, rather than Psev having him accompanied by a crack team of killers? The Avengers is usually underpopulated as a stylistic trait, and I can believe that of private villainy. But when the Soviet Embassy in London and the USSR’s top world spymaster between them manage half a dozen staff and no ‘professionals’, while there’s much to enjoy here, it seems stepping out of Avengerland and into the real world (or something like it) is a mistake. I can believe the ‘unbelievable’, but the ‘unrealistic’ merely jars.
Steed is single-minded – Emma sees doubleAlmost every series with a touch of fantasy about it has done a ‘doubles’ episode, and The Avengers did at least four, all really rather good. Two’s a Crowd came after the Honor Blackman episode Man With Two Shadows, a rather sinister slice of the Cold War with a very dark wit, but before Linda Thorson’s bizarre They Keep Killing Steed or The New Avengers’ rather splendid Faces, in which not just Patrick Macnee (as in all the others) but everyone gets a chance to play someone playing themselves. Mr Macnee’s vulgar playing of ‘Gordon Webster’ here is huge fun to watch, but what really sets this apart from the other stories in which our heroes face impersonation is that the ‘double’ plot is just the twist in the main story rather than the whole thing.
There’s actually another gimmick that a lesser episode might also have hung its entire story on - though this is far from perfect, it’s certainly inventive. The opening scene is a series of overhead shots of London, as a plane makes its way across the sky towards a grand house of the sort used for important embassies. You’re encouraged to discount that the plane looks like a dodgy model, because so many TV shows of the time used unconvincing modelwork and expected the audience to believe it that, when it drops a bomb that falls screaming into… Warren Mitchell’s punchbowl, with a small plop, it’s a refreshing surprise to realise that the model is meant to be a model. Mr Mitchell is playing Ru – ahem, foreign Ambassador Brodny, and the ‘bomb’ carries a message that mysterious spymaster Colonel Psev is coming to Britain to break the new ‘Western Defence Conference’ planning bases and routes for Polaris. In return, Steed and his dull new sidekick Major Carson (easily overcome for a bet by his usual Mrs Peel) intend to break Psev. No-one’s ever seen him, but he’s feared around the world and spotted by his entourage and foibles. When Shevedloff, Pudeshkin, Alicia Elena and Vogel turn up and demand remote-controlled model planes to adapt, a particular brand of cigars, and the rare liqueur ‘la crème de violettes’, people know Psev is in town.
Psev’s little idiosyncrasies make for entertaining scenes. See Mrs Peel in glasses, working at London’s top model shop, or turning up at the embassy with a delivery (sternly refusing to leave it at the door: “There’s two pounds to pay”), or Steed helping out Brodny with a bottle of la crème de violettes before the poor chap’s eliminated for failing to deliver. And, of course, the way Brodny grabs the plane from his underling to give himself an excuse to enter the Colonel’s rooms and try to catch a peek of the elusive Psev (where he is of course refused access to the inner office by Psev’s implacable team). There was a splendid and very darkly funny Honor Blackman episode with Warren Mitchell called The Charmers, in which also he played the leading ‘opposition’ man. That role’s essentially been split here, with the ‘spymaster’ side hived off to Psev and Mr Mitchell’s ambassador left as the comic relief. Brodny is constantly flustered, much keener on staying in Britain than being sent home, and tries his not terribly stylish best to dress like Steed. Psev’s staff, on the other hand, are much more threatening.
The episode is initially stolen by Colonel Psev’s entourage, led by Julian Glover – tall, young and commanding in his first of four Avengers roles. There are half a dozen outstanding Avengers guest actors that each appears at least four times in similarly styled roles and always steals the show… I’ve written in the past about ‘Villainous Peter Bowles’ and ‘Loveable Roy Kinnear’, but I have to admit ‘Villainous Julian Glover’ has been a favourite actor of mine from a very early age and is terrific here. He plays Vogel, very much the focal point of Psev’s team, with Shevedloff, Pudeshkin and Alicia Elena constantly consulting between themselves. In many ways it’s a joint performance, as throughout they act almost as one, closing in on Brodny in step in a remarkably threatening manner. Of the others, Ms Elena also gives a great performance with a lot of clever observations, as well as looking as striking as Vogel. It’s Glover’s arrogant spokesperson whose icy impatience with Brodny really sets them off, though.
The most impressive aspect of this episode is the way that, with a compelling four-person enemy team so comprehensively stealing it from the regulars with their performances and model gadgets, Patrick Macnee dresses up as an altogether different sort of model to steal it all back again. With Brodny already dressing as Steed’s mini-me, he’s despatched to the big new fashion show – fashion being, of course, yet another of Psev’s notorious and curiously decadent foibles – where he discovers one Gordon Webster in a hideous hat, floral shirt and ’tache, modelling the latest ghastly outfits with a most un-Steedlike swagger, his vulgarity set off by a bevy of swimsuited ‘lovelies’. It’s all hugely unlike The Avengers for a moment, and Brodny can’t believe it either, even ringing Steed to make sure he’s at home. And, naturally, this dubious male model and actor was cashiered from the army, drinks, gambles, womanises and is perfectly corruptible. Fancy! Webster is soon brought in to be quizzed by Psev’s staff, just as – coincidentally – Steed is visible on TV arriving at the Conference with the ‘Western Defence Chiefs’. Who’d have thought News 24 was going back in 1965? Mr Macnee clearly has enormous fun as Webster, wearing horrible outfits (even beating the two cardigans Steed wears this time, one of which is particularly nasty), being terribly louche and displaying a completely different body language to that of Steed, as well as managing to play someone attempting to give an unconvincing impersonation of himself once it’s decided that Webster will play Steed to infiltrate the Conference. The huge stack of notes he’s given as he bargains up his very large bribe is a scream, too. There’s an arresting moment later, when he disparagingly confuses several different customs from ‘abroad’ in a stereotyped British hooligan sort of way; it calls attention to one of Steed’s most striking characteristics, that his highly stylised Britishness isn’t remotely jingoistic and he’s confident enough not be anti-foreign, with an appreciation of other cultures and customs, notably being on rather friendly terms with Brodny from ‘the other side’. Naturally, Mrs Peel spots Webster on a visit to the Embassy, and becomes more than a little concerned. When they’re both invited to a cocktail party there and ‘Steed’ turns up with a buttonhole so huge that even Brodny despairs of his taste, Emma is caught trying to ring Major Carson about a fake Steed – by ‘Steed’, gun in hand and really rather sinister – and has to be locked up as Webster is sent off to kill the real one…
So, did you spot what the twists were going to be? If you recorded it last week and haven’t watched it yet, look away now…
What normally happens in these things is that the ‘fake’ Steed is sent to kill Steed, our hero overcomes him, and the real Steed impersonates the fake one in turn in order to round up the villains. There’s a brilliantly tense sequence with some great suspense music (largely lifted from The Cybernauts) as Steed is apparently killed, then ‘Steed’ arrives at the Conference and, with Vogel excitedly counting away the time, makes it back to the Embassy with the crucial plans captured by miniature camera tie-pin. Except, of course, that it’s all a deception. Yes, obviously it’s Steed who comes back, insists on reporting to Psev in person and gets Emma out of there while the Colonel is distracted… But it’s always been Steed. Yes, he was playing Webster all along, with recordings of him playing at Steed’s flat and on TV to give the impression he was in two places at once. And that’s not the only deception, because the entire ‘Defence Conference’ was a fabrication as bait for Psev. And ‘Colonel PSEV’ is of course a deception, as the reason he’s such a perfect all-round spy is that the acronymic mastermind is really four people. Pudeshkin handles ciphers (and smokes those cigars), Shevedloff is an expert in elimination, Elena runs the administration and makes sure every instruction from ‘Psev’ is relayed by phone by her, while Vogel is in charge of planning. They’d always acted eerily as one, and Steed had earlier sent up the carefully established set of foibles that make Psev seem ‘real’:
“He’ll be there, cigar in one hand, liqueur in the other, and flourishing a copy of The Aero Modeller, no doubt.”The most sinister sequence was another clue, when Brodny’s deputy finds out he’s to be eliminated for his failures, discovers something (or, rather, nothing) in Psev’s inner office and attempts to defect on the shore of a rather beautiful lake, only to be shot by a model sub within sight of Steed. There are more models at the climax as Steed and Emma make their getaway – back to being Steed, he’s magnificently dignified when she holds him at gunpoint, and she’s only convinced when the model planes sent after them fire at ‘Webster’. In that old Avengers cliché, of course, the Psev team are blown up (in a rather feeble explosion) by their own model bomber. Which is jolly handy, as while Steed had already suspected Psev was his entourage, once they’ve confirmed that for him he has no plan to deal with them or even to escape with the information, which makes you wonder what he thought he was up to.
By this stage, The Avengers was mostly inhabiting its own world, a version of Britain quite unlike anyone else’s. Two’s A Crowd steps away from that to send up at the same time the gadgets of James Bond (or, indeed, ridiculous real-world spies) and the intricate string-pulling of John le Carré. The result is very entertaining, but more from the performances and characters than the quality of the plotting. By stepping into other people’s rules, it’s somehow less believable than less ‘realistic’ episodes are. A diabolical mastermind with a preposterous scheme somewhere in the Hertfordshire countryside allowing Steed and Emma to infiltrate his tiny operation? Could be. The top international spymaster of an unnamed superpower (with Russian accents, mentions of Western decadence and internal exile… All right, we can take the hint) having not a single agent at their beck and call, so that they have to get the Ambassador to do fieldwork and Steed can run rings round them? Rather than my usual willing suspension of disbelief, I find I have to switch my brain off and just enjoy all the marvellous actors. Steed’s running rings is almost literal – he certainly runs about remarkably easily for someone who you’d have thought would be under surveillance. How does Steed flit between his apartment and Webster’s or the Embassy so quickly? Are they next door? Is no-one watching him do it? Why does the attempted defector attempt to meet Steed in the Embassy grounds, and why does Steed assume he and Emma can just run out of there through the woods at the end? Are there no guards in these grounds, or even a fence? Why is Ambassador Brodny sent with ‘Webster’ to kill Steed, when he just waits outside anyway? Come to that, why is a male model sent to eliminate a top agent, rather than Psev having him accompanied by a crack team of killers? The Avengers is usually underpopulated as a stylistic trait, and I can believe that of private villainy. But when the Soviet Embassy in London and the USSR’s top world spymaster between them manage half a dozen staff and no ‘professionals’, while there’s much to enjoy here, it seems stepping out of Avengerland and into the real world (or something like it) is a mistake. I can believe the ‘unbelievable’, but the ‘unrealistic’ merely jars.
Labels: Julian Glover, Reviews, Spies, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 4
Monday, September 04, 2006
Tinkering
I’ve spent today writing a 1,000-word article; while most people would work up to that number, obviously I tapped in 8,000 of notes, then started chipping away in a manner almost completely unlike that of Michelangelo. Taking a break, and as it’s three hours ‘til Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, it’s been time to potter on the Internet; some fabulous things about comics, Tony Benn agreeing with Lib Dem bloggers, a splendid anti-Labour song, Rob Fenwick on fibbing… Then I fell asleep on the keyboard and, while getting qwertyface, dreamt someone was mad enough to propose me for Lib Dem President.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is gripping television, despite being very, very slow. Everyone’s just so terribly watchable, particularly Ian Richardson doing every bit of acting ‘business’ known to man and Alec Guinness stealing the scene merely by putting his glasses on. If you’ve not been following the repeats on BBC4, there’s still time to catch the last two tonight and tomorrow; the final episode, of course, unmasks the mole, but tonight has the best scene of all those awfully good scenes. With strong support from Michael Jayston, Alec Guinness as George Smiley faces off against Bernard Hepton’s Toby Esterhase. Three spies, one small room, no flashy action, and absolutely mesmerising as within a few minutes of Smiley’s implacable interrogation by voice and eyes alone Esterhase cracks completely. Even though we have the DVD (worth buying, but look for a sale offer; with a solitary extra and no picture restoration, the BBC did it on the cheap and so should you), we’ve been putting on the odd episode anyway and I suspect we shall tonight.
In an earlier episode, Smiley visits each of those ‘next in line’ in the secret service on behalf of the ailing and possibly demented and messianic man at the top, only to be rebuffed by all three, none of whom think Control any longer has anything to offer them and all of whom are looking to his obvious successor for favours instead. While Smiley’s return from the wilderness to flatten Toby Esterhase through his sheer presence is the first and most stunning of the scenes where he turns the tables on each of those who denied him, I couldn’t help but think of mad-eyed Mr Blair. I wonder who he’s sending out to his formerly loyal followers, and what favours offered to plead for more time at the top are being rebuffed by those scenting the smell of death in the Labour Party?
Meanwhile, though not wishing to steal Quaequam Blog’s thunder, I’ve been reading 2000AD long enough to remember hackneyed author Alec Trench, and I’m delighted to have found a tribute to him (thanks to Dave Bishop’s blog article Beware the Pagan Acid-Spitting Plesiosaur). Alec Trench’s Thrill Pitcher randomly generates ‘pitches’ for new graphic epics, made from cut-up old 2000AD characters; so, for example, your strip might have anti-heroes where
With the V For Vendetta DVD in the shops and its grumpy author taking his name off the credits, as usual, Mr Bishop has also publicised a way of removing Alan Moore from his own graphic novels. Marvel at his famous creation Watchmen, as scripted by, er, Marvel maestro of mayhem Stan Lee…
It’s still not as funny, though, as the lovely Rob Fenwick pointing out that Newsnight’s Daniel Pearl is a fibber. Apparently I wasn’t alone in not getting a reply from the soon-to-be-ex-editor.
And, at last, as Mr Blair gets ready to deliver his most barking speech yet – well, all right, the competition’s fierce, but it has to make the shortlist – backed up by Social Nationalisation Minister Hilary Armstrong, Tony Benn’s trundled out to agree with Lib Dem bloggers that it’s scarily authoritarian. Shame they can’t find a current Labour politician who’s willing to criticise the policy instead of just gossiping about the personalities, isn’t it? As you say goodbye to the Summer, sit back and watch a brilliant anti-New Labour song that lemony Rob Morris has found on YouTube. I’ve got the single somewhere…
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Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is gripping television, despite being very, very slow. Everyone’s just so terribly watchable, particularly Ian Richardson doing every bit of acting ‘business’ known to man and Alec Guinness stealing the scene merely by putting his glasses on. If you’ve not been following the repeats on BBC4, there’s still time to catch the last two tonight and tomorrow; the final episode, of course, unmasks the mole, but tonight has the best scene of all those awfully good scenes. With strong support from Michael Jayston, Alec Guinness as George Smiley faces off against Bernard Hepton’s Toby Esterhase. Three spies, one small room, no flashy action, and absolutely mesmerising as within a few minutes of Smiley’s implacable interrogation by voice and eyes alone Esterhase cracks completely. Even though we have the DVD (worth buying, but look for a sale offer; with a solitary extra and no picture restoration, the BBC did it on the cheap and so should you), we’ve been putting on the odd episode anyway and I suspect we shall tonight.
In an earlier episode, Smiley visits each of those ‘next in line’ in the secret service on behalf of the ailing and possibly demented and messianic man at the top, only to be rebuffed by all three, none of whom think Control any longer has anything to offer them and all of whom are looking to his obvious successor for favours instead. While Smiley’s return from the wilderness to flatten Toby Esterhase through his sheer presence is the first and most stunning of the scenes where he turns the tables on each of those who denied him, I couldn’t help but think of mad-eyed Mr Blair. I wonder who he’s sending out to his formerly loyal followers, and what favours offered to plead for more time at the top are being rebuffed by those scenting the smell of death in the Labour Party?
Alec Trench Lives!
Meanwhile, though not wishing to steal Quaequam Blog’s thunder, I’ve been reading 2000AD long enough to remember hackneyed author Alec Trench, and I’m delighted to have found a tribute to him (thanks to Dave Bishop’s blog article Beware the Pagan Acid-Spitting Plesiosaur). Alec Trench’s Thrill Pitcher randomly generates ‘pitches’ for new graphic epics, made from cut-up old 2000AD characters; so, for example, your strip might have anti-heroes where
“He’s an umbrella-wielding curvacious telepath with New Wave hair. His ex-lover is a pagan axe-wielding bounty hunter on his death bed. They must save London from an invasion by thinly-disguised Soviet stereotypes!”It’s inspired by They Fight Crime! which uses the same sort of random snippets to create a thrillingly quirky crime-fighting series (well, it would) in which, for example,
“He’s a bookish pirate waffle chef on a mission from God. She’s a chain-smoking insomniac mermaid with a birthmark shaped like Liberty’s torch. They fight crime!”Reminds me of Richard and my pitch for a crime series, Russell and Russell, in which a dry-witted and penetratingly intelligent history professor solves crimes by recognising that the offence was committed in exactly the same way in 1647, assisted by his lovely, excitable Welsh super-TV-writing sidekick… Richard may frown that I’ve blown that story.
With the V For Vendetta DVD in the shops and its grumpy author taking his name off the credits, as usual, Mr Bishop has also publicised a way of removing Alan Moore from his own graphic novels. Marvel at his famous creation Watchmen, as scripted by, er, Marvel maestro of mayhem Stan Lee…
It’s still not as funny, though, as the lovely Rob Fenwick pointing out that Newsnight’s Daniel Pearl is a fibber. Apparently I wasn’t alone in not getting a reply from the soon-to-be-ex-editor.
Out With the New
And, at last, as Mr Blair gets ready to deliver his most barking speech yet – well, all right, the competition’s fierce, but it has to make the shortlist – backed up by Social Nationalisation Minister Hilary Armstrong, Tony Benn’s trundled out to agree with Lib Dem bloggers that it’s scarily authoritarian. Shame they can’t find a current Labour politician who’s willing to criticise the policy instead of just gossiping about the personalities, isn’t it? As you say goodbye to the Summer, sit back and watch a brilliant anti-New Labour song that lemony Rob Morris has found on YouTube. I’ve got the single somewhere…
Labels: Comics, Conrad Russell, Ian Richardson, Labour, Michael Jayston, Spies
