Wednesday, May 13, 2020
The Avengers – The Lost Episodes: The Springers #Fragments
Julian Wadham is John Steed. Anthony Howell is Dr Keel. It’s not The Avengers as you know it. The Springers was broadcast on May 13th 1961 and no longer exists to watch – but as an audio drama, it’s now very satisfying. To break a prison-breaking gang, one Avenger goes undercover deadly seriously while the other goes undercover outrageously. You can guess which. And you can see (or hear) just how The Avengers was on its way…
To Begin With…
“The Avengers is about a man in a bowler hat and a woman who flings men over her shoulders.”…said Patrick Macnee, John Steed. Except that right at the start, it took Mr Macnee a little while to find his bowler, and the lead was another man – Ian Hendry as Dr David Keel. Steed is a shady arm’s-length government agent. Keel is a doctor whose fiancée was murdered by a drugs gang, and who joined up with Steed to avenge her. Together, they fight increasingly weird crime. Early publicity photos, before they’d got the hang of the weirdness, sell the show as mean, moody and chain smoking. This probably didn’t last long, but it’s hard to tell; only three and a third of the first year’s twenty-six episodes survive. For the second year, Ian Hendry leaves, Honor Blackman arrives and television gains a woman lead like no-one ever before, so it’s easy to forget the originals. But now Big Finish have completely remade the first season as audio dramas, so I was able to find out what I was missing: adapted by John Dorney, The Springers opens The Avengers – The Lost Episodes Volume 3), and this is what I thought of it…
“If you are going to handcuff me to a chair, is it too much to ask that it’s a comfortable one? These wicker seats are murder on the back.”
Seeing The Avengers When Hearing The Lost Episodes
You know those perception trick pictures, where some people see a vase and others two faces? I’d always imagined The Avengers’ first year as a completely different show. Gritty, macho, and rather mundane (at least by comparison to what came after). Protection rackets, vice rings, drug deals? All a bit grubby. And sometimes it is. Even on audio, the publicity photos didn’t lie: this story is wreathed in smoke. Several of these Big Finish versions have featured smoking, but here it’s everywhere – from snout inside the nick, to Steed’s fictitious seaman’s pipe being a plot point, to a packet of cigarettes for ‘Dr Fenton’ (in truth Dr Keel) now he’s out, but still locked up and gasping. And yet, the more of Big Finish Lost Episodes I hear, the more I glimpse The Avengers as it will be instead. Patrick Macnee was always the constant through the series on TV, and Julian Wadham is Steed, too. Slightly dull plots are enlivened by sparkling dialogue and suddenly offbeat characters like, say, an undertaker-taxidermist introduced when all you need is anyone with a phone. Some stories leap into technicolour as you listen: Ashes of Roses with its gossip, single entendres and Steed going way beyond louche; Kill the King’s intricate assassination plot and very Avengers creations; most of all, Dead of Winter. I gasped hearing that one – opening on frozen beef, it accelerates into a plot that had it been done at the height of colour Mrs Peel, you’d say, ‘Well, that was pretty ambitious to get away with.’
The Springers is right on the borderline here: the picture keeps changing shape in my head. Serious criminals are being spring from prison, and Dr Keel is put inside as a ringer for crooked Dr Fenton, to be sent down the escape line. The cells are quite gritty, but this end is mostly a bit pedestrian (no kidding). You can sort of see the seeds of Escape In Time (one of the most fabulous Avengers of all), but the actual escape plan isn’t all that exciting or interesting despite Dan Starkey’s One-Ten trying to make it seem important – and does the same screw ‘get clobbered’ every time? Or are they all on the take? One of several shoes that doesn’t drop (like the real Fenton never turning up, an idea followed through later with Mrs Gale in Intercrime).
Then half-way through it does something many later Avengers will (The Hidden Tiger springs to mind) and, having established guest characters and setting, abruptly drops them all for a complete change of faces, places and pace. It’s well-balanced for both the leads – focusing on Keel early on, then having much more fun with more Steed. The plot springs from vicious crooks and Keel threatening each other in their cell to Steed not taking remotely seriously his attempt to infiltrate the Belport College for Young Ladies with a suddenly striking pre-echo of The Avengers to come.
Julian Wadham Is John Steed. Anthony Howell Is A Very Different Dr Keel
I absolutely love Julian Wadham’s John Steed. I never thought anyone else could be the character, but he won me over in his very first episode. This is absolutely the same person as Patrick Macnee, and yet definitively his own take, too, which is remarkably hard to do. Suave (you might say louche), witty, slightly harder yet rather naughty, he’s a charismatic star lead. Anthony Howell’s Dr Keel has a very different approach, but is just as successful. I’m not sure whether Keel is a harder or an easier role? Steed gets all the best lines but has over a decade of fabulous Mr Macnee to be measured against; Keel is less showy but with Ian Hendry’s part much less well-known, there’s more of an opportunity to make it your own. And unlike Wadham, Howell seems to have made a deliberate choice to do that with an interpretation that’s little like the screen version. Keel has a lot in common with Cathy Gale, especially – unsurprising, given that several of her early scripts were initially written for him and the production team made the magnificent decision not to write them down to a ‘woman’s role – something of her rectitude; Steed is playful and mischievous, but the only rule Cathy breaks is gender. As scripted, Keel is moral to the point of priggish, evolves camaraderie with Steed but doesn’t quite trust him and is rigid where Steed’s mercurial. From what we can see, Hendry plays against the lines with an unexpectedly relaxed performance shot with occasional bursts of anger. Howell leans into the lines instead, not just upright but uptight, intense, even obsessive. He relaxes a bit when doctoring, but with this Keel, despite pangs that he may not be being entirely ethical and resentment that Steed enjoys it, there’s always a kernel at the core of his playing that never lets go of, ‘Bastards like these killed the woman I love’, and he’s driven to keep Avenging her.
There’s a lovely moment for both of them where an exceedingly grumpy convict Keel is called to the prison governor’s office, only to find Steed lounging there swapping old school tie stories. When the doctor snipes to Steed that it’s all right for him because he’s never been inside, he’s airily contradicted and, audibly shocked, tells Steed that one day they’ll have to tell each other about their pasts.
If you think of this as an Avengers story from the point of view of the future series, the prison escapes and the crooks involved in them seem very small-time. But from the point of view of Dr Keel’s Avenging, it really clicks into place. Fenton isn’t just a doctor gone wrong, appealing to Keel’s moral sense, but a drug dealer – which sparked the outrage that set Keel on his mission to begin with. Though he’s given much more to do in the first half, Keel’s most electric moment here is close to the end. Having gone through the pipeline, he’s kept locked up again while the Springers wait to verify his identity: when the doctor channels his actual pissed-off-ness with the situation into naturalistically grabbing a gun and threatening the escape-enablers who’ve become his second-jailers, he gains a very dangerous edge.
Steed, on the other hand, is at his best with a comedy scene, a risk that doesn’t quite come off, and an unexpected woman.
It’s not full-on Avengerland camp, but when Steed arrives at a College For Young Ladies, I held my breath at just how awkwardly 1961 this was going to be only to get something much funnier. Thank goodness! It’s between terms, so rather than perving over ‘kinky’ schoolgirls all but one of the young ladies are out of season (a bit at Matron, inevitably) and the episode’s real eye-opener – while Keel’s banged up, Steed’s brought along a young woman agent for the first time. Melanie gets less agency than I’d like (she seems to enter without introduction and leave without sendoff), but it’s a pretty good part raised to a vivid guest star by Miranda Raison, and her proto-Tara is very much a sign of things to come. She even gets champagne. But, best of all, Steed turns up as a Navy man, hilariously overplaying his cover story of needing somewhere to look after his ‘daughter’ while he’s away, like putting his hound into kennels. Then he introduces himself as “Commander Kennelworthy” and I laughed more than was strictly decent. That’s very Steed. So, later, is his dialogue when tied up, baiting Neame first as “diabolically clever” then taunting him for being a third-rate opponent, trying any angle to get his captor off-guard much as you picture him physically wriggling while he does it.
This is the second of what might be a series of Fragments – not-quite-finished, not-quite-polished (I polished it a bit, but the end dangles), from ideas I’ve written up over time and maybe I’ll share some of them anyway. If you’d like more, please let me know, and if you’d like to help, please ask me, ‘Have you at some point written something intriguing about Story / Series X, and could you post it?’ You might pick one that I can (TS;RM [Too Short; Read More]? Here).
Labels: Big Finish, Fragments, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 1, The Avengers The Lost Episodes, The Springers
Friday, September 30, 2011
Which The Avengers DVDs Should You Buy?
The Avengers is fifty years old this year, and at last it’s all available on DVD. But where to start? Strangely (but for both practical and quality reasons), not at the beginning. Last night, I celebrated one of the most important anniversaries in Twentieth Century British history in saying Why The Avengers Matters, how it changed television and society too. Today, I have a simple guide to those extraordinary agents’ DVDs for you to watch one of the greatest TV series ever. And if you buy The Avengers Complete 50th Anniversary Collection box set today, you can get a bargain!
You’ve got a choice of half a dozen The Avengers DVD boxed sets, and if you don’t want to get everything at once, well, I don’t blame you, and I’ll pick which are best to dip into first in a minute. But bear with me. If you don’t have any of The Avengers – and you have a bit of spare cash – obviously I’ll recommend you buy the 39-disc limited edition DVD box set The Avengers Complete 50th Anniversary Collection, which is complete. Completely complete. The lot… Well, except for The New Avengers, which has a different rights owner and which you have to buy separately (but quite cheaply), and for most of the first season of The Avengers from 1961, which unfortunately doesn’t exist any more. So it’s as complete as you’re likely to get, and it’s worth buying if you can afford it. And if you can afford it today, it’ll be slightly cheaper.
The Avengers Complete 50th Anniversary Collection has several advantages over buying all five of the one-season sets. It’s expensive – but it’s cheaper than buying the lot. And while there’s not a lot of range between different sellers, according to this price comparison site, if you order it by the end of today from one site there’s a 10% off code, which for this one stacks up to more than a tenner. It’s quite a nice case, though the packaging’s even more difficult to get into without leaving your prints all over the disc than it is to shake out the jammed-in slim cases from the season boxes. It has a whole extra disc of still more bonus features that they couldn’t fit on the earlier releases (though, and kudos to Optimum for this, they’re having the decency to bring that out separately later in the year so people who’ve already bought the individual seasons can buy it too). And – and this is embarrassing – if you buy them like this, all the discs work properly. For all these sets, for all 139 episodes, the picture’s been restored as well as it can be; there are commentaries, rare little clips, scripts and other pdfs, huge stills galleries (but not much in the way of subtitles). And then some prat at the DVD authoring house managed to let production faults slip through on most of the boxes. Now don’t panic: they’ve fixed them all, and each of the ones they buggered up can be replaced. But it’s a palaver, isn’t it? So get them at once, and because this big set came out last, you don’t have to exchange any of it.
But, OK, buying the individual season box sets has its advantages too. You get a few more extras to hold in your hands – exciting little reproduction press handouts, and not just on pdf. And you don’t have to shell out so much at once, just in case (in some Bizarro-world) you turn out not to like it. And picking and choosing encourages you to start in the middle, which if you’ve never seen The Avengers, might be wise. There were six seasons broadcast through the Sixties, 1961 to 1969; two more of The New Avengers in the mid-’70s. In six boxes. That’s because they some of the early ones went out live, and some of those they recorded, they threw away, so the few bits left of the first season are in with the complete second, and The New Avengers only ran half as long, so both seasons are boxed together. That’s six. So which to choose? Start in the middle. The Complete Series 2 is historically fascinating, has flashes of brilliance (not least Mr Teddy Bear), and changed TV – but compared to the rest, it’s much cruder, and it suddenly hits its stride a year later. The New Avengers starts well and has a handful of terrific episodes, but hits a steep decline. So be counterintuitive, and leave the first and last until a little later.
So if you were to buy just one The Avengers season box set, which should it be? And which episodes from it are especially tempting?
Most people would pick The Complete Series 5. It’s “The Avengers – In Color” for the first time, with Diana Rigg and American money, a massive international hit. And it’s brilliant. Or you might go for The Complete Series 3, the height of Honor Blackman, the original breakthrough, the strongest of all the Avengers women, much cheaper but inventive and with the scripts starting to leave the ground. And that’s nearly as brilliant. But I’m a bit strange, so I’ll draw your attention to the two others. The Complete Series 4 was the first with Diana Rigg, the first shot on film, and stylish as anything in black and white. The Complete Series 6 stars Linda Thorson, and is satisfyingly weird in blazing colour. Both hit just the right note for me between camp and sinister. But whichever you pick, some episodes are better than others, so to help you pick your year, or to give you somewhere to start once you’ve got it, here are a few to set you on your way…
Introducing Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, witty, gorgeously shot in black and white, and the perfect balance of suspense and silliness. If you choose this DVD boxed set, I think you’ll find it’s the most consistently brilliant of all the seasons, though some episodes are more wobbly towards the end. And the very first episode in the set is the perfect introduction to The Avengers. As I’ve often said, The Town of No Return is a strong episode, though certainly not the best, but its first seven minutes are flawless: the first blast of that famous fanfare theme tune; a bizarre mystery played utterly deadpan; meeting our heroes as they trade barbs and make their way to the scene. Together, those seven minutes make up the most perfect encapsulation of what The Avengers is about, not least in letting you know that unlike every other crime-fighting / spy-busting duo, they just do it for fun.
Tara King is younger, more earnest – sometimes – and very easy to root for, growing as she goes along. So do the stories; like the black and white Mrs Peels, these superbly blend suspense and silliness, but here the earlier episodes tend to be the rockier ones. It’s more of a mixed bag, but its heights are fabulous. My personal favourite’s Pandora, but even for The Avengers, that’s out of the ordinary, so if you pick up this particular box, here’s my pick of a variety of episodes you might consider starting with:
The most famous, the most repeated, the height of the series’ wackiness and depiction of Britain as a fantasy ‘Avengerland’, this is Emma Peel “In Color”. Simply iconic, though the last third of this season were made after a bit of a break and (comparatively) run out of steam a little. And if you choose this particular boxed, here are my suggestions for a variety of different episodes you might want to start with:
A little more ‘realistic’ than the others, becoming a big hit in the UK but still with a limited budget, this gives the first, most physical of The Avengers women her finest hours. Steed’s often at his best, too, and Honor Blackman terrific; the downside is a much less polished production and the original theme tune, which isn’t bad, but disjointed and nowhere near as classy as that famous fanfare introduced with Mrs Peel. And finally, if this is the boxed set you pick up, here’s my pick (as with all of these, in no particular order, spanning various tastes) of the episodes you might want to try first:
Of my previously-written Avengers articles I’ve linked to above, incidentally, my picks for the best would be The Town of No Return, Game and The House That Jack Built, as I think I did rather well for each of them. But what are you sitting down reading them for? Go out and find the episodes themselves! And whichever you pick, enjoy, and watch out for diabolical masterminds.
Choosing Between The Avengers DVD Boxed Sets
You’ve got a choice of half a dozen The Avengers DVD boxed sets, and if you don’t want to get everything at once, well, I don’t blame you, and I’ll pick which are best to dip into first in a minute. But bear with me. If you don’t have any of The Avengers – and you have a bit of spare cash – obviously I’ll recommend you buy the 39-disc limited edition DVD box set The Avengers Complete 50th Anniversary Collection, which is complete. Completely complete. The lot… Well, except for The New Avengers, which has a different rights owner and which you have to buy separately (but quite cheaply), and for most of the first season of The Avengers from 1961, which unfortunately doesn’t exist any more. So it’s as complete as you’re likely to get, and it’s worth buying if you can afford it. And if you can afford it today, it’ll be slightly cheaper.
The Avengers Complete 50th Anniversary Collection has several advantages over buying all five of the one-season sets. It’s expensive – but it’s cheaper than buying the lot. And while there’s not a lot of range between different sellers, according to this price comparison site, if you order it by the end of today from one site there’s a 10% off code, which for this one stacks up to more than a tenner. It’s quite a nice case, though the packaging’s even more difficult to get into without leaving your prints all over the disc than it is to shake out the jammed-in slim cases from the season boxes. It has a whole extra disc of still more bonus features that they couldn’t fit on the earlier releases (though, and kudos to Optimum for this, they’re having the decency to bring that out separately later in the year so people who’ve already bought the individual seasons can buy it too). And – and this is embarrassing – if you buy them like this, all the discs work properly. For all these sets, for all 139 episodes, the picture’s been restored as well as it can be; there are commentaries, rare little clips, scripts and other pdfs, huge stills galleries (but not much in the way of subtitles). And then some prat at the DVD authoring house managed to let production faults slip through on most of the boxes. Now don’t panic: they’ve fixed them all, and each of the ones they buggered up can be replaced. But it’s a palaver, isn’t it? So get them at once, and because this big set came out last, you don’t have to exchange any of it.
But, OK, buying the individual season box sets has its advantages too. You get a few more extras to hold in your hands – exciting little reproduction press handouts, and not just on pdf. And you don’t have to shell out so much at once, just in case (in some Bizarro-world) you turn out not to like it. And picking and choosing encourages you to start in the middle, which if you’ve never seen The Avengers, might be wise. There were six seasons broadcast through the Sixties, 1961 to 1969; two more of The New Avengers in the mid-’70s. In six boxes. That’s because they some of the early ones went out live, and some of those they recorded, they threw away, so the few bits left of the first season are in with the complete second, and The New Avengers only ran half as long, so both seasons are boxed together. That’s six. So which to choose? Start in the middle. The Complete Series 2 is historically fascinating, has flashes of brilliance (not least Mr Teddy Bear), and changed TV – but compared to the rest, it’s much cruder, and it suddenly hits its stride a year later. The New Avengers starts well and has a handful of terrific episodes, but hits a steep decline. So be counterintuitive, and leave the first and last until a little later.
Which Avengers Episodes To Watch?
So if you were to buy just one The Avengers season box set, which should it be? And which episodes from it are especially tempting?
Most people would pick The Complete Series 5. It’s “The Avengers – In Color” for the first time, with Diana Rigg and American money, a massive international hit. And it’s brilliant. Or you might go for The Complete Series 3, the height of Honor Blackman, the original breakthrough, the strongest of all the Avengers women, much cheaper but inventive and with the scripts starting to leave the ground. And that’s nearly as brilliant. But I’m a bit strange, so I’ll draw your attention to the two others. The Complete Series 4 was the first with Diana Rigg, the first shot on film, and stylish as anything in black and white. The Complete Series 6 stars Linda Thorson, and is satisfyingly weird in blazing colour. Both hit just the right note for me between camp and sinister. But whichever you pick, some episodes are better than others, so to help you pick your year, or to give you somewhere to start once you’ve got it, here are a few to set you on your way…
The Avengers – The Complete Series 4
Introducing Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, witty, gorgeously shot in black and white, and the perfect balance of suspense and silliness. If you choose this DVD boxed set, I think you’ll find it’s the most consistently brilliant of all the seasons, though some episodes are more wobbly towards the end. And the very first episode in the set is the perfect introduction to The Avengers. As I’ve often said, The Town of No Return is a strong episode, though certainly not the best, but its first seven minutes are flawless: the first blast of that famous fanfare theme tune; a bizarre mystery played utterly deadpan; meeting our heroes as they trade barbs and make their way to the scene. Together, those seven minutes make up the most perfect encapsulation of what The Avengers is about, not least in letting you know that unlike every other crime-fighting / spy-busting duo, they just do it for fun.
“Are you sure you won’t have a marzipan delight?”And once that’s – holding my breath – grabbed your attention, here’s my variety assortment (in no particular order, but with a one-line sketch so you can see which might be most to your taste) of the other episodes you might want to dive in with:
- Dial a Deadly Number – sex, big business and Peter Bowles; high finance, high camp and the best duel in TV history. It’s not with what you think… Or, rather, it is.
- The Cybernauts – straightforward, quite a bit of action, outstanding music and the most sci-fi the series ever gets: watch out for the killer robots!
- Quick-Quick Slow Death – silly froth. Simply fun. With murder, obviously.
- The House That Jack Built – Op-art craziness for Emma! It looks terrific, and so is she (stuck in an evil TARDIS).
- Too Many Christmas Trees – haunting and brilliant, though Steed’s character is off-key for important reasons; not completely the season of goodwill.
The Avengers – The Complete Series 6
Tara King is younger, more earnest – sometimes – and very easy to root for, growing as she goes along. So do the stories; like the black and white Mrs Peels, these superbly blend suspense and silliness, but here the earlier episodes tend to be the rockier ones. It’s more of a mixed bag, but its heights are fabulous. My personal favourite’s Pandora, but even for The Avengers, that’s out of the ordinary, so if you pick up this particular box, here’s my pick of a variety of episodes you might consider starting with:
- Game – iconic Avengers: outrageously surreal sets and plotting, giant killer games, Peter Jeffrey… And I’ve written about it in detail, too, with a whole list of reasons why you should watch this postmodern extravaganza.
- Look – (Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers… – a comedy of murders, with surreal style, John Cleese, Bernard Cribbins and killer clowns.
- My Wildest Dream – threatening psychodrama, with superb action sequences and score, plus one of the most barking sets.
- Who Was That Man I Saw You With? – the first I ever saw, and it got me hooked. Slippery double-crossing spies, murder and setting our heroes up.
The Avengers – The Complete Series 5
The most famous, the most repeated, the height of the series’ wackiness and depiction of Britain as a fantasy ‘Avengerland’, this is Emma Peel “In Color”. Simply iconic, though the last third of this season were made after a bit of a break and (comparatively) run out of steam a little. And if you choose this particular boxed, here are my suggestions for a variety of different episodes you might want to start with:
- Escape in Time – inventive, entertaining, colourful, a great use of other times and cuddly toys, and a magnificent villain in Peter Bowles.
- The Hidden Tiger – archetypal ‘first half setting up the threat, second half going to the villains’ Avengers plotting, and the height of comic fantasy (with Ronnie Barker).
- Dead Man’s Treasure – like a week off, driving around the countryside to breezy music. Fun.
- The Superlative Seven – one of the most sinister colour Mrs Peels, rather brilliant, loads of guest stars… Not a lot of Mrs Peel, though (perhaps The Joker if you want an unsettling one with more Emma).
The Avengers – The Complete Series 3
A little more ‘realistic’ than the others, becoming a big hit in the UK but still with a limited budget, this gives the first, most physical of The Avengers women her finest hours. Steed’s often at his best, too, and Honor Blackman terrific; the downside is a much less polished production and the original theme tune, which isn’t bad, but disjointed and nowhere near as classy as that famous fanfare introduced with Mrs Peel. And finally, if this is the boxed set you pick up, here’s my pick (as with all of these, in no particular order, spanning various tastes) of the episodes you might want to try first:
- Esprit de Corps – great fun, with a twisty-turny plot, a striking central idea and some superb guest stars (Roy Kinnear, John Thaw).
- The Charmers – very witty, a brilliant spy spoof, and even better than the later colour remake (though that’s fun, too).
- Man With Two Shadows – a really rather dark thriller, and arguably the best of the series’ ‘doubles’ episodes.
- November Five – assassination at the by-election, political manipulation and dastardly plots inside the House of Commons. Who’d have thought? Vote Gale to sort it all out!
Of my previously-written Avengers articles I’ve linked to above, incidentally, my picks for the best would be The Town of No Return, Game and The House That Jack Built, as I think I did rather well for each of them. But what are you sitting down reading them for? Go out and find the episodes themselves! And whichever you pick, enjoy, and watch out for diabolical masterminds.
Labels: DVD, DVD Tasters, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 1, The Avengers Season 2, The Avengers Season 3, The Avengers Season 4, The Avengers Season 5, The Avengers Season 6, The New Avengers, Top Tips
Friday, January 09, 2009
The New Avengers – To Catch A Rat
Are you still up? Well, stop what you’re doing, and turn over to BBC4 at 12.25 for tonight’s episode of The New Avengers, To Catch A Rat. While its sexual attitudes aren’t as wholesome as your everyday Internet porn, it’s still interesting for all sorts of reasons. On Wednesday, The Avengers was 48 years old – in this one, you’ll see the return of Ian Hendry, the show’s original lead actor (that’s right; in 1961, Patrick Macnee was the co-star). It’s a Cold War ‘thriller’ in which the story makes little sense but the main characters are rather beautifully drawn.
Gambit and Purdey are driving in circles, discussing what they were doing seventeen years ago. Gambit is driving, quite badly, and flirting, very badly. Purdey is eating marshmallows.
That’s not to say that Joanna has it all her own way. I’ve written before about the sexism in this version of the series’ format (suddenly, an older Steed gets to do the ‘thinking’ and Gambit the ‘action’, both previously the purview of Avengers women) and in the deliberate writing and directing decisions, and Purdey is still leched over by every character to an uncomfortable degree. This was one of the few New Avengers episodes to be novelised, and the only one I’d actively urge you to avoid; the author makes every male character drool over her in a way that leaves you feeling soiled. The TV original is less sleazy, but we still get her involvement with ludicrously improbable men, and the director offers lingering shots up her legs as she rolls filigree coverings over them. No male character’s ever objectified in this way, though I have to admit I wouldn’t thank them for offering the same treatment to Mike Gambit. Thankfully, Purdey’s relaxed teasing of Gambit (and her spotting and nearly stopping the villain) points the way the series is going to go – Joanna’s clearly the one to watch here, and that leg shot is almost made up for by her scenes spent in a suit and big tie, which both looks fantastic and shows that she still commands the camera when completely buttoned up.
The main plot, though, centres on the older actors – and it’s rather nice to see so many of them about, whether in charge of records, swilling brandy and smoking cigars in the bath in the world’s largest bathroom (yes, all right, one rather nicely acted old chap gets to show off even more of his body than Purdey does, though I don’t think the director’s enjoying it so much), or of course being the main protagonists. On the one hand, the villains are rather bland; there’s a double agent to be exposed, and though technically there are several suspects, we only get to know two of them. One of these acts so suspiciously throughout that he may as well have a neon sign above his head saying, ‘You’re supposed to think it’s me!’ while the other’s more urbane until he becomes Purdey’s unbelievably slimy date. If you’re under the age of four, you may not have just worked out whodunnit. It’s odd, really, that the usually prime parts of the villains are so dull, when almost all the bit-part old chaps shine, and both Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry are marvellous, despite neither having much in common with the characters they were playing together back in 1961.
As in several of the earlier New Avengers stories, Steed largely stays in the background and gives the orders while the young ’uns handle the action; though I still prefer him light but dangerous against a diabolical master mind, this is one of the few episodes where his serious, authority figure persona really works, giving weight to the George Smiley figure in this cut-price le Carré (though the script’s so flimsy on that side that, without Patrick Macnee, there’d be nothing to it but lots of running around and looking concerned on the radio). Despite that, the show’s stolen by Ian Hendry, who’s the only actor in the whole series to get a full screen ‘Guest Star’ credit and thoroughly deserves it.
Ian Hendry once played Dr David Keel, whose fiancée was murdered by drug dealers in the first ever episode of the series and who was assisted by a shadowy government operative named Steed to avenge her. He left after the first series, Patrick Macnee remained and became the lead, Honor Blackman took over the second ‘man’s’ role, and the rest is history. While every later Avengers episode still exists, only two and a half of Mr Hendry’s remain in the archives (the first reel of the very first episode, Hot Snow, up until the murder; The Frighteners, a mundane plot enlivened by great characters and performances; and Girl on the Trapeze, the only Avengers episode without Steed, and like this episode of course featuring a trapeze). His glittering film career never quite materialised, other than character roles like the violent chauffeur in Get Carter, and perhaps it’s not just his (make-up-assisted?) heavy ageing that helps inspire the melancholy feel of this episode.
In Doctor Who terms, this is less The Five Doctors, more Meglos, as the original star returns but not to play his original role. In an uneven script’s best and most self-referential bit of writing, he’s a former agent, lost for sixteen years, come back a shadow of his former self but determined, once again, to avenge his own dead. And Mr Hendry’s performance as Gunner is full of that pathos – one early scene has him struggle to pull his identity back out of his fragmented mind, then see a little girl and break into a warm, reassuring smile, not wanting to frighten her, and it’s beautifully played.
The trouble with the episode, then, isn’t with the leading actors, but with the plot. It desperately wants to be John le Carré, but misses out the multiplicity of suspects, the intricacy and, well, all the clever bits. So we’re left with a trapeze artist agent in East Germany who wounded the double agent who blew his cell – arguably the only ‘clever le Carré plotting’ here has to be inferred to precede the first scene, in the trap Gunner has laid ‘off’ for the “White Rat”; I’d rather we actually got to see some intelligent intelligence work than have to assume it was there just before we joined the story – but was then let down by his traitorous partner before he could tell London. His brain and body broken by the fall, he takes sixteen (or seventeen, depending on who’s speaking) years to be hit on the head again, in traditional fashion, get his memory back and go on the hunt for the White Rat. If you’re hoping for more character moments and subtle intrigues, tough luck; his return is just a cue for everybody to run around the countryside and the odd flat after everybody else until everybody’s either cleared or dead, or simply tired out after all the chasing. Perhaps the biggest let-down, other than the pre-titles freeze-frame, is that the logic of what passes for the plot means Steed can’t catch up with Gunner until the last couple of minutes. Patrick Macnee has one tender moment with his old co-star, but I can’t help hoping for more, and it’s not as if the story came up with a gripping alternative.
The plot isn’t merely thin, either, but full of holes. How come the terribly wounded Gunner was moved to a ship’s hold to be found and cared for, rather than finished off or turned over to the Stasi? Why, if the villains were going to soft-heartedly put him on a boat, did they stick him on a boat to Britain, where he can expose them (Richard wonders if they gave him a memory test before dumping him)? Why does the man who dropped him from a great height just happen to be listening in all those years later to spot Gunner’s signal? Why does he then go to ‘reassure’ Gunner, when surely if the man’s finally got his memory back he might remember who betrayed and tried to kill him? Why are the villains the only ones who remember the Department’s signals and codenames from a mere decade and a half earlier, while others in the service at the time – all the other potential White Rats Gunner checks out, Steed himself – have to shrug and wonder? Why isn’t the first thing the Department does to check everyone who was involved back in 1960, then isolate and interrogate them, rather than the identity of one of the main participants being sprung as an off-hand ‘surprise’ at the last minute? And did they really think the contrived nudist jokes about Steed’s old codename were funny – though it does make me wonder which came first, the laboured puns or Patrick Macnee’s naturism? At least if Pat was already hanging out nude, the in-joke’s amusing, if not to the viewers.
So, I’m afraid this isn’t one of the great episodes (rather, among the weaker ones; not actively bad, but dull, plodding and with very little distinctive Avengers feel to the script). It does, however, have some great moments for the regular cast, and particularly from the one who stopped being a regular fifteen years before. But that’s not the only recommendation – despite on the surface being a very old-fashioned story, probably dated in 1960 let alone 1976, it has some elements that the series will take further and improve on. There are some of the first steps in elevating Purdey in the script and treating Gambit as a bit of a prat, rather than the holy soul of machismo. Most strikingly, elements of Terence Feely’s script – a pre-titles sequence years ago on the Iron Curtain, the lost old agent returning from the other side, a melancholy exploration of Steed’s past – are reworked into a far, far better script that knows what to do with them a year later, when Brian Clemens writes by a long way the greatest episode of The New Avengers, Dead Men Are Dangerous. One thing that doesn’t point to the series’ future, though, is the title sequence; sorry, I said last time that this would be the first to have the swishy, expensive, nearly-three-colour 1976 CGI opening. It isn’t. But this time I think it really is the last one to have the by-the-numbers clips montage. Tune in next week to see if I’ve got it wrong again, and for an unusual secret code, an hilarious ‘secret’ outfit and a very dubious young Roy Marsden…
‹Older
Gambit and Purdey are driving in circles, discussing what they were doing seventeen years ago. Gambit is driving, quite badly, and flirting, very badly. Purdey is eating marshmallows.
“Me? I was discovering sex.”Our two young leads seem slightly out of place in this story, but they’re still among the best things in it – their relationship is coming on in leaps and bounds, as the camera has stopped fetishising Gambit as a hard man and Purdey has started taking the Mike out of him. And Joanna Lumley is fantastic at it, from the exchange above, through her pointed failure to get his terrible “undercover” pun, to one of the best scenes in it – at best peripheral to the plot – when they stumble into a church, Gambit’s gun drawn, and startle two ladies doing the flowers. Purdey’s brilliant idea for getting them out of there without causing any embarrassment is worth tuning in for alone.
“What a waste of time. You might have been learning to drive.”
That’s not to say that Joanna has it all her own way. I’ve written before about the sexism in this version of the series’ format (suddenly, an older Steed gets to do the ‘thinking’ and Gambit the ‘action’, both previously the purview of Avengers women) and in the deliberate writing and directing decisions, and Purdey is still leched over by every character to an uncomfortable degree. This was one of the few New Avengers episodes to be novelised, and the only one I’d actively urge you to avoid; the author makes every male character drool over her in a way that leaves you feeling soiled. The TV original is less sleazy, but we still get her involvement with ludicrously improbable men, and the director offers lingering shots up her legs as she rolls filigree coverings over them. No male character’s ever objectified in this way, though I have to admit I wouldn’t thank them for offering the same treatment to Mike Gambit. Thankfully, Purdey’s relaxed teasing of Gambit (and her spotting and nearly stopping the villain) points the way the series is going to go – Joanna’s clearly the one to watch here, and that leg shot is almost made up for by her scenes spent in a suit and big tie, which both looks fantastic and shows that she still commands the camera when completely buttoned up.
The main plot, though, centres on the older actors – and it’s rather nice to see so many of them about, whether in charge of records, swilling brandy and smoking cigars in the bath in the world’s largest bathroom (yes, all right, one rather nicely acted old chap gets to show off even more of his body than Purdey does, though I don’t think the director’s enjoying it so much), or of course being the main protagonists. On the one hand, the villains are rather bland; there’s a double agent to be exposed, and though technically there are several suspects, we only get to know two of them. One of these acts so suspiciously throughout that he may as well have a neon sign above his head saying, ‘You’re supposed to think it’s me!’ while the other’s more urbane until he becomes Purdey’s unbelievably slimy date. If you’re under the age of four, you may not have just worked out whodunnit. It’s odd, really, that the usually prime parts of the villains are so dull, when almost all the bit-part old chaps shine, and both Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry are marvellous, despite neither having much in common with the characters they were playing together back in 1961.
As in several of the earlier New Avengers stories, Steed largely stays in the background and gives the orders while the young ’uns handle the action; though I still prefer him light but dangerous against a diabolical master mind, this is one of the few episodes where his serious, authority figure persona really works, giving weight to the George Smiley figure in this cut-price le Carré (though the script’s so flimsy on that side that, without Patrick Macnee, there’d be nothing to it but lots of running around and looking concerned on the radio). Despite that, the show’s stolen by Ian Hendry, who’s the only actor in the whole series to get a full screen ‘Guest Star’ credit and thoroughly deserves it.
Ian Hendry and Dr Keel
Ian Hendry once played Dr David Keel, whose fiancée was murdered by drug dealers in the first ever episode of the series and who was assisted by a shadowy government operative named Steed to avenge her. He left after the first series, Patrick Macnee remained and became the lead, Honor Blackman took over the second ‘man’s’ role, and the rest is history. While every later Avengers episode still exists, only two and a half of Mr Hendry’s remain in the archives (the first reel of the very first episode, Hot Snow, up until the murder; The Frighteners, a mundane plot enlivened by great characters and performances; and Girl on the Trapeze, the only Avengers episode without Steed, and like this episode of course featuring a trapeze). His glittering film career never quite materialised, other than character roles like the violent chauffeur in Get Carter, and perhaps it’s not just his (make-up-assisted?) heavy ageing that helps inspire the melancholy feel of this episode.
In Doctor Who terms, this is less The Five Doctors, more Meglos, as the original star returns but not to play his original role. In an uneven script’s best and most self-referential bit of writing, he’s a former agent, lost for sixteen years, come back a shadow of his former self but determined, once again, to avenge his own dead. And Mr Hendry’s performance as Gunner is full of that pathos – one early scene has him struggle to pull his identity back out of his fragmented mind, then see a little girl and break into a warm, reassuring smile, not wanting to frighten her, and it’s beautifully played.
The trouble with the episode, then, isn’t with the leading actors, but with the plot. It desperately wants to be John le Carré, but misses out the multiplicity of suspects, the intricacy and, well, all the clever bits. So we’re left with a trapeze artist agent in East Germany who wounded the double agent who blew his cell – arguably the only ‘clever le Carré plotting’ here has to be inferred to precede the first scene, in the trap Gunner has laid ‘off’ for the “White Rat”; I’d rather we actually got to see some intelligent intelligence work than have to assume it was there just before we joined the story – but was then let down by his traitorous partner before he could tell London. His brain and body broken by the fall, he takes sixteen (or seventeen, depending on who’s speaking) years to be hit on the head again, in traditional fashion, get his memory back and go on the hunt for the White Rat. If you’re hoping for more character moments and subtle intrigues, tough luck; his return is just a cue for everybody to run around the countryside and the odd flat after everybody else until everybody’s either cleared or dead, or simply tired out after all the chasing. Perhaps the biggest let-down, other than the pre-titles freeze-frame, is that the logic of what passes for the plot means Steed can’t catch up with Gunner until the last couple of minutes. Patrick Macnee has one tender moment with his old co-star, but I can’t help hoping for more, and it’s not as if the story came up with a gripping alternative.
A Bit of A Disappointment, Then…?
The plot isn’t merely thin, either, but full of holes. How come the terribly wounded Gunner was moved to a ship’s hold to be found and cared for, rather than finished off or turned over to the Stasi? Why, if the villains were going to soft-heartedly put him on a boat, did they stick him on a boat to Britain, where he can expose them (Richard wonders if they gave him a memory test before dumping him)? Why does the man who dropped him from a great height just happen to be listening in all those years later to spot Gunner’s signal? Why does he then go to ‘reassure’ Gunner, when surely if the man’s finally got his memory back he might remember who betrayed and tried to kill him? Why are the villains the only ones who remember the Department’s signals and codenames from a mere decade and a half earlier, while others in the service at the time – all the other potential White Rats Gunner checks out, Steed himself – have to shrug and wonder? Why isn’t the first thing the Department does to check everyone who was involved back in 1960, then isolate and interrogate them, rather than the identity of one of the main participants being sprung as an off-hand ‘surprise’ at the last minute? And did they really think the contrived nudist jokes about Steed’s old codename were funny – though it does make me wonder which came first, the laboured puns or Patrick Macnee’s naturism? At least if Pat was already hanging out nude, the in-joke’s amusing, if not to the viewers.
So, I’m afraid this isn’t one of the great episodes (rather, among the weaker ones; not actively bad, but dull, plodding and with very little distinctive Avengers feel to the script). It does, however, have some great moments for the regular cast, and particularly from the one who stopped being a regular fifteen years before. But that’s not the only recommendation – despite on the surface being a very old-fashioned story, probably dated in 1960 let alone 1976, it has some elements that the series will take further and improve on. There are some of the first steps in elevating Purdey in the script and treating Gambit as a bit of a prat, rather than the holy soul of machismo. Most strikingly, elements of Terence Feely’s script – a pre-titles sequence years ago on the Iron Curtain, the lost old agent returning from the other side, a melancholy exploration of Steed’s past – are reworked into a far, far better script that knows what to do with them a year later, when Brian Clemens writes by a long way the greatest episode of The New Avengers, Dead Men Are Dangerous. One thing that doesn’t point to the series’ future, though, is the title sequence; sorry, I said last time that this would be the first to have the swishy, expensive, nearly-three-colour 1976 CGI opening. It isn’t. But this time I think it really is the last one to have the by-the-numbers clips montage. Tune in next week to see if I’ve got it wrong again, and for an unusual secret code, an hilarious ‘secret’ outfit and a very dubious young Roy Marsden…
Labels: Joanna Lumley, Naturism, Reviews, The Avengers, The Avengers Season 1, The New Avengers
