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!


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:
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:
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:
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:

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.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 10:30 am 0 comments
 

Why The Avengers Matters

Fifty years old this year, The Avengers is remembered not just because it’s the most Sixties show of the Sixties, or outrageous fun, but because, unexpectedly, it mattered. And there’s no better date to show you why than September 29th. Because exactly forty-nine years ago tonight, The Avengers – Mr Teddy Bear introduced viewers to Honor Blackman as an intelligent, independent woman who flung men over her shoulders. I’d like to say that TV was never the same again, but staid, submissive roles for women still can be; but this changed Britain by showing that they didn’t have to be.

In British cultural history there’s nothing like the Sixties, and in the Sixties there’s nothing like The Avengers. The decade’s TV is bursting with spies, thrillers, comedies, sci-fi, subversion of the establishment and celebrations of tradition – but only The Avengers did all of that at one, and more. You can’t place it in just one genre: it’s an extraordinary series, with extraordinary “agents”, and I’d call it “A fantasy of Britain” in the much more detailed article I’ll publish here at some point. But not tonight. Because tonight I’m thinking of the most important thing that made The Avengers extraordinary: that it rode old-fashioned Britishness and Swinging modernity with equal excitement – you might call it a hugely successful Conservative-Liberal coalition – and that equality was sexual in a way that no other TV show had ever managed. Or even tried.

Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale; Diana Rigg as Emma Peel; Linda Thorson as Tara King; Joanna Lumley as Purdey; all strong, independent women in their different ways, in a series that for the most part just ignored sexism and simply made women equal. All symbols of modern Britain, all partnered with the best of old Britishness, Patrick Macnee’s John Steed, a mysterious dandy in a bowler hat. It was sheer genius to make all the women ahead of their time and the man from a bygone age. And as well as lifting a glass of champagne to those brilliant women tonight, lift one to Mr Macnee, who was there first and did what few male stars would have done – let alone male action stars – by being both generous and secure enough in himself to let someone else step into the spotlight, and not just another man, but a woman who’d do most of the action (of all the many serendipitous accidents of history that created The Avengers, perhaps a special hurrah for Mr Macnee being raised by lesbians).


And now you’re enthusiastic to see this amazing series, where to start? Well, I can help you with that…

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 12:00 am 0 comments

Thursday, April 16, 2009

 

John Cater, Peter Rogers and Clement Freud

The deaths have been announced of two men with enormous track records in entertainment: Peter Rogers, who fabulously produced every single Carry On film; then celebrity cook, glacially slow Just A Minute speaker and contributor to the gaiety of the nation through Parliamentary Liberalism Clement Freud. Both of them and their work have been presences through my whole life, and I’m sorry that I never met either of them. I did, however, meet John Cater, an actor whose death was also announced recently, and I’d like to celebrate that genuinely nice chap as well as the two more famous men.

Intellectually, I’ve known for many years that Clement Freud was a Liberal MP, but as he lost his seat and largely disappeared from politics at around the time I started getting interested, it’s always been difficult to feel that political presence in the man who I’ve always known as a lugubrious regular alongside Nicholas Parsons (the only time I can remember hearing a Lib Dem conversation about him was scurrilous rumours that he and Roy Jenkins used to compete to see who could go for longest without visiting their seats). So as well as lauding Stephen Glenn’s very appropriate tribute, I’d like to direct you to Paul Walter, whose Clement Freud’s Vital 12.5% puts in perspective just how important Clement was to the Liberal Party during his time in Parliament – first elected on a day when, astonishingly, we won two by-elections on one day (26th July 1973) and, in those days long before being able to get 63 MPs elected, at a stroke increased our Commons representation by a third on top of what we’d had a few hours before. And, of course, I was always a great fan of Band On the Run, too (Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five is still one of the most stirring rock anthems). But, for all those people who talk about how off-message he was, you can read via Jonathan Calder how sharp his instinct was for getting a political point in at the most unlikely moment.

John Cater – Intense, Reliable, and A Disturbing Sort of Spear-Carrier

You probably knew of Clement Freud, and you’ve almost certainly watched some of Peter Rogers’ films, but you may not be able to place the name of John Cater. He was an actor with a hugely impressive list of screen credits across fifty years – from Saturday Night Theatre in 1958, via the Dr Phibes movies, Dad’s Army and a regular role in The Duchess of Duke Street to, oh, never mind, Bonekickers last year – but taking in along the way an enormous number of roles. I particularly remember him for his appearances in arguably my three favourite series of all, Doctor Who, I, Claudius, and the one I’ll always associate him with, The Avengers.

He was quite slight, and often bearded, with an inquisitive look to him; though usually found in moderately-sized rather than leading roles, he was a very reliable character actor, and managed to combine a light touch for comedy with an extraordinary intensity. He was always terribly watchable. In Doctor Who – The War Machines, the 1966 story that warns that the Internet is coming and it will TAKE OVER THE WORLD! he’s Professor Krimpton, one of the developers of the deadly computer system who, on seeing his boss become a starry-eyed zombie, first laughs and just thinks he’s flipped, as you would, then fights against the Machine’s hypnotic control in a very disturbing scene, then eventually succumbs. A decade later, he was one of the Emperor Claudius’ two trusted Greek administrators towards the end of the serial, the one who saw what was coming and didn’t betray him.

Back in the mid-’80s, however, it was John Cater’s death in an episode of The Avengers that made him unforgettable for me. During a Channel 4 repeat run, I got hooked on the series first through some of the Tara King episodes and then on catching some of the black and white Mrs Peel outings. It was in one of the latter, Death At Bargain Prices, that he plays a store detective who befriends Mrs Peel – sent there to investigate strange goings-on – and comes to a particularly nasty end. Though he’s also an entertainingly diffident foreign spy in the later episode The Living Dead and “Disco” (not who you imagine) in the Cathy Gale story The Nutshell, for me he’ll always be Jarvis, creeping around Pinter’s Department Store. But what harm could come to you in a big store? Well, when there’s a large jungle set up in the middle of it – to show off camping equipment, of course – where better to find yourself winding up with a spear through your chest, for one of the most haunting images of my teens?

In the last couple of years, I met John twice at different Doctor Who events, and had the chance to chat to him (and to get him to autograph my Avengers DVDs). Spry, animated and a great conversationalist, he came across as a genuinely lovely guy, with a wicked twinkle. Discussing I, Claudius, he talked about how Derek Jacobi would always learn his lines at least one episode in advance, so he could sit doing the Times crossword as other actors got it right, and how another actor he worked with, Ronald Culver (father of Michael), would do the same. From the inside, he too was very impressed by I, Claudius, but unimpressed by the industry not giving any work to its director, “the great Herbie Wise,” because “directors over forty are past it” – recalling Herbie’s being asked “What have you done?” when going for a job on The Bill, “whereas actors can get away with it, because there’ll always be old fart parts for old farts like me.” He remembered, in The Avengers’ The Living Dead, “being a rather silly second lieutenant to Julian Glover,” but enjoying playing the piano badly and being asked by a gruff shop steward, “Are you in the Musicians’ Union?” And as he’d always been a bit of a muso, he joined on the spot and still kept it up to that day, which gave him the odd free entry to concerts and things. He found that episode’s director John Krish a real gentleman – he got him a car home despite the unions making a fuss, and did him a copy of The Living Dead when he couldn’t find one (he recalled that John also did a film, Decline and Fall, which John regrets was ruined by the editors forced on him).

I mentioned, of course, my memory of that gloriously surreal Avengers image of him lying dead with a spear in his chest, in a jungle, in a department store, one of the moments that so captivated me about the series when I was new to it. He told me about the filming, and the “mechanism” he was fitted with:
“Yes, I remember that shot. The props man passed by as I was being set up for it and shouted, ‘Stick it up his Jacksie’. And I thought, how rude! ‘You wouldn’t say that if I was Laurence Olivier,’ I said. ‘But you’re not, are you?’ he said. ‘Stick it up his Jacksie!’”

Peter Rogers, Carry On Up the Khyber, and The Worst DVD Commentary in the World, Ever!

Peter Rogers was a brilliant producer. To have made so many Carry On films, and for so many of them to be brilliant – as well as some that were all right, some mediocre and one or two downright dreadful – means he deserves to be remembered for giving people an awful lot of pleasure and, for someone who clearly had a sharp focus on the bottom line, for being responsible for the one of the most successful British film series ever made. I think only James Bond can touch it.

The best way to celebrate him, then, is to bung on one of his films and simply enjoy it. If you need a tip, try going for Carry On Cleo, or Carry On Screaming, or Carry On, Don’t Lose Your Head – yesterday, Film Four showed Leslie Howard’s version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, and though that’s much-lauded, Don’t Lose Your Head is not only (naturally) a much funnier film, but a far more exciting one. The 1934 adaptation may have a strong plot and some good lines (if none to match “The Duc de Pommes Frittes has had his chips!”), but the action in the comedy version beats it hands down, and you can’t beat Sid James’ joyous foppery. For years, every time Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel came round, The Guardian’s film review would praise its swordplay as “exhilarating”. And every time, I’d raise an eyebrow, because that film contains no swordplay at all, still less any to compete with the genuinely exhilarating swordplay at the climax of Peter Rogers’ Don’t Lose Your Head. Or, of course, you could simply watch the finest of all his films, set in part in the aforementioned town of Jacksie, Carry On Up the Khyber.

Ah, yes, Carry On Up the Khyber. It may be an inappropriate way to remember him, but I didn’t hear all that many interviews with Peter Rogers, and the one that sticks in my head with fascinated horror was his DVD commentary for that movie, an experience so dreadful that – years before I started blogging – I was moved to send an e-mail round relating it. So here, from the 24th of May 2003, is my reaction to his reaction. I hope you’ll find it entertaining, if a cautionary tale in why being brilliant behind the camera doesn’t necessarily mean entertainment in front of it…
The Worst DVD Commentary in the World, Ever!

OK, I admit that (paraphrasing Donald Cotton on Helen of Troy) it’s impossible to know this without the most extensive surveys, but yesterday evening I listened to such a mind-boggling train-wreck of a commentary that I had to share it with you. Or give you a warning.

The DVD in question is one just bought for me by my beloved, the Special Edition of Carry On Up the Khyber (or “Carry On the Regiment” as a team of censors unfunnily tried to persuade them was a better title). Now, for the most part this is a terrific DVD, with added subtitles, a nice little booklet with Doctor Who references, rather good extras – even the bonus Carry On Laughing show (usually unimpressive), The Sobbing Cavalier, is quite a fun Civil War piece – and the film itself is fantastic, which is why we went for the Special Edition even after getting the original DVD release. But the commentary is astoundingly painful.

The Carry On Special Edition commentaries I’ve heard so far have mostly been Jim Dale on his own, which are only so-so, or a team of the more minor actors, which are rather more entertaining, each moderated by Carry On reference book author Robert Ross (Barbara Windsor doesn’t seem to be doing any). For Khyber, sadly, almost all the actors are now dead, and presumably they didn’t think Angela Douglas, say, was a big enough draw on her own. You can imagine Mr Ross thinking, ‘Hey, this is the best Carry On, so for something really special, let’s bring in Peter Rogers, the producer of all the films. That’ll work.’

It doesn't.

By half-way through, I was actually wondering if they’d get to the end of the recording; if this was a marriage, it’d be at the stage of acrimonious divorce due to irreconcilable differences. Ross has gone into it with a trayful of fascinating facts and a set of questions to prompt heart-warming anecdotes; Rogers is under the impression that he’s being paid to sit and watch a film – with gritted teeth – and regards any attempt to engage him in conversation as the utmost impertinence.

Before this, my most grumpy commentary was with Nigel Kneale on the laserdisc of the Quatermass II film, being prodded every few minutes by his moderator and either staying silent or snapping viciously at the stick that’s prodding him. At least, though, Kneale is a brilliantly evil old curmudgeon who hates directors, actors, and above all every single young person in the world, and can be relied on to say something waspish and indiscreet (notably taking a fiendish delight in Brian Donlevy’s flying hairpiece) that makes the long periods of silence bearable. Rogers’ lofty hostility beats this hands down as a grim listening experience.

Peter Rogers appears to have entered a bet with someone that he can take profound personal offense at any remark, even if it’s actually praising him, rather like the “I Couldn't Disagree With You More” round on the much-missed ’90s panel game If I Ruled the World. “So, this film is often thought of as one of the best British films ever made – do you feel proud of it?” asks Ross hopefully, for example. “Proud? No, certainly not. What a thing to say,” is just one of the affronted retorts I remember from last night.

Rogers’ other tactic is silence. Getting any reply at all out of him is like pulling teeth. You get the feeling that Ross was considering shooting himself after the 433rd complicated question which had been greeted with “… (pause) … (more pause) …No.” Admittedly, he asks for trouble a couple of times, trying persistently to correct Rogers on facts which the other man clearly isn’t going to give way on (tip: never mention Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in his presence), but you can’t blame him. I’d probably have strangled the rude old git.

He’s hypersensitive about money; he puts down Ross’ attempts to infodump to give the listener something for their money (“You sound like a football commentator”); he says, in the tone of a headmaster cleaning urine out of the drinking fountain with his hands, “As long as I make people laugh, I’m happy.” At one point, he has the cheek to remark, “You’ve not asked me any questions for a while,” immediately qualifying it with “Not that I want to answer them.” Most of all, he just doesn’t want to speak. I suspect he’s never heard a DVD commentary. Except as a lesson in how not to do one, you shouldn’t try to hear this one, either.

Oh, and it closes with Ross somehow forcing himself to say, “Thank you, Peter Rogers. It’s been a pleasure.” “I wish I could say the same,” he stiffly replies. Straight up!

Finally, though you won’t see John Cater in either of them, tonight BBC4 spoil us with two episodes of The Avengers. At 7.40 you can see Obsession, a reasonable story notable for Purdey’s ballet career and sad love affair, asides about Middle East politics and being the first time Lewis Collins and Martin Shaw (later to be a memorable Citizen Camembert himself) worked together, and that’s on again tomorrow night at 12.25. Steed’s pretty damned terrific at the end, too. If you’re seriously sleepless, they’re also showing a signed repeat tonight of the very much better House of Cards, the last of Peter Jeffrey’s strange trilogy of villains spread across a decade, each time a different old foe bent on revenge against an Avenger, where each uses a playing card motif, each has a dubious continental connection, and each one is dead… But that episode’s not on until 2.30am, so I hope not to be watching it this time.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 6:59 pm 2 comments

Thursday, April 12, 2007

 

The Avengers – The Correct Way to Kill

This evening’s edition of The Avengers (BBC4 at 7.10, and again tomorrow night at 11.50) is one of the most amusing and – with its impeccably polite killers, an army of deadly agents inspired by Steed’s fashions, and Emma meeting her Eastern Bloc match – one of the most ‘iconic’, though hardly the most original. The US-financed colour episodes from 1967 were really getting into their swing, so writer Brian Clemens decided he’d like to show American audiences some of what they’d missed in the early ’60s with this direct remake of black and white Honor Blackman episode The Charmers, the first of three and a half such rewrites. With the beautifully filmed Mrs Peel shows “in color” by far the best-remembered, most-repeated and most often commercially available of The Avengers these days, it’s a fair bet that this version is better-known than the original version. But is it better?

Steed changes partner – Emma joins the enemy

This story certainly has a scintillating script, though writer / producer Brian Clemens deserves most of his credit for it for the 1964 rather than the 1967 version, but there’s also impressive work from (appropriately) Ealing Comedy director Charles Crichton and a startling array of guest stars – Philip Madoc, Peter Barkworth, Anna Quayle, Terence Alexander, Timothy Bateson, Michael Gough – with even Steed and Emma’s outfits almost uniformly delightful this time out (thanks to Pierre Cardin and Alun Hughes). Added to all that talent, it certainly had a lot more money put into it than the visibly much cheaper version made more crudely on videotape. Now, by this stage you’re going to imagine my punchline to be that the cheapie prototype has a raw power to it, but that the stylish and expensive remake loses the chemistry and is a terrible flop. Actually, no. Both of them are splendidly crafted and highly entertaining pieces of television – but the earlier one, while less polished, remains the more stylish…

More (sigh) to follow…

Meanwhile, for anyone trying to get in touch, again please use the e-mail link in the sidebar. My main e-mail address remains inaccessible, despite my being told by my ISP that it was a temporary problem and everyone’s service would be restored by “tomorrow evening”. That was a week of tomorrows ago now… Anyone with the misfortune to share Breathe as their ISP has my sympathy.

…And after a slight interregnum, I’ve caught up [readers may be reassured to learn that we did eventually find a better ISP. And for this particular piece of television, it seems apposite that it’s Waitrose].

Iconic Avenging

It’s not hard to understand why this is an iconic episode: The Avengers defies a simple description, but is often called a comedy spy series, while I’d describe it as a fantasy of Britain. This is one of the most comedy scripts (even more noticeable in the more down-to-earth 1963-4 series as a clear signpost of what was to come), one which unusually revolves around spies from ‘the other side’ rather than mad scientists and mad conservatives, and as for a fantasy of Britain… The villain wants to take over the world with an army of Steeds. It even starts on a foggy cobbled street at night by gas lamp, as a rather nastily-outfitted Russian member of the other side with an accent – which all of them share (to verifying degrees of plausibility) but no-one mentions – waits for two impeccably attired chaps in suits and bowlers just like our hero’s to come round the corner, accompanied by an inappropriately (or is it?) martial fanfare. They have important information to sell – but, being British, can’t do so until they’ve been properly introduced. So, is this a topical tale of traitors? It seems so for a moment… But then it looks more complicated, as their raise their hats to their contact – and shoot him dead with silenced pistols, leaving him in the gutter as they walk briskly away and the episode’s title is revealed as the punchline: “The Correct Way to Kill”. The music’s far better with Laurie Johnson than the 1964 version, of course, as is the title, and this teaser scene’s much more to the point – establishing the Cold War and the perfidious stiff upper lip. Yet while upper-class killers Percy and Algy are one up on the less memorable lone well-mannered warrior of the earlier production, I can’t help thinking it was more subtle and stylish when fencing practice turned suddenly deadly was presented as a complete mystery. As the episode goes on, too, you notice that the army for whom Percy and Algy are prototypes are all trained in foils; that the episode ends with an exciting pair of fights with foils; and that this opening scene rewritten with guns… Lacks its earlier symmetry.

So, we have a mystery. Who is killing off the Soviet other side’s agents? And why? Steed and Mrs Peel meet on that cobbled street in the clear daylight, and two of them look rather good on it. I don’t usually go for pinstripe, but Steed’s is in a rather plush grey that always suits him, while Emma’s in a striking blue top and very vibrant orange blouse and skirt (very Pet Shop Boys). It’s not what you’d expect her to be wearing, but she looks terrific in it. That street, though, looks even more like a studio in ‘daylight’; unusually for this period of The Avengers, the whole thing’s filmed on studio sets*, and perhaps it’s a little let down by their ranging only from ‘quite intriguing’ to ‘functional’ rather than up to ‘outré’, meaning that while this episode is visibly much less cheap than the 1964 production it’s still one of the cheaper ones by 1967 standards (perhaps they spent the budget on the star-studded guest cast?). Anyway, Steed is rather peeved to recognise Groski in the gutter:
“You mean he’s not one of ours?”
“No. He’s one of theirs. One of their top agents.”
“That makes a change.”
“Yes, but it’s embarrassing. If he had been naughty, they might have had the good manners to have popped him off in his own country.”
“Leaves us with all the paperwork.”
It’s just not cricket. He hopes they don’t do it again… But, of course, they do, dispatching agents in a lift and then a revolving door, with Emma pulling Steed up on repeating his same testy observations about purges and unethical behaviour…
“We need a drink.”
“That you haven’t said.”
Which, knowing those two, I frankly find unlikely. Still, that gets us back to Steed’s flat for the scene that sets up the dynamic of most of the plot: Emma notices a lurking presence and, tethering Steed to declaim a mish-mash of poetry and prose, lures in and clobbers Philip Madoc’s agent Ivan, who wants to shoot our hero (while Steed saves, then offers, the red wine). And it’s not just that he’s fed up with schoolboys reciting Casabianca – in a twist on who’s usually ‘the Avengers’, he’s been sent to kill Steed in revenge for the others. But Steed hasn’t killed anyone all week! With Ivan convinced, they realise that someone is setting the two sides against each other and decide to work together – Emma being assigned to work with Ivan, and Steed given a new partner who’s the most Russian Russian ever shown on TV without anyone ever saying the word “Russian”. And so the hi-jinks ensue. With an increasing level of spoilers from this point on.

Stars From the Other Side

I’ve said this has a set of great guest actors and a script full of witty lines, though the two don’t always come together to make great parts. The late Peter Barkworth gets little to do but sneer and shoot as assassin Percy (and Graham Armitage still less as Algy, though the only other TV I really know him from is Doctor Who’s The Macra Terror, coincidentally broadcast the same day), while Timothy Bateson has virtually nothing but being testy, then jumpy, then murdered in a blackly comic way. Philip Madoc’s Ivan is on paper a more shallow part than the 1964 equivalent “Martin” and probably the slightest of his five Avengers roles, but he mines something memorable from not very much, not only making the most of his meagre lines but with a flickering wolfish grin, many significant looks, lots of business with his coat and an ability to insinuate himself into the foreground so that, when he does get something to say, you listen. Not long after they kill off Ivan, the traditional mid-episode shift of scene takes us to SNOB and Terence Alexander’s Tarquin Ponsonby-Fry, a larger role but almost his polar opposite – where Ivan was mostly gloomy with a predatory smile, stating his opposition to Steed but eventually helpful, Ponsonby-Fry lights up with admiration at Steed’s style but, for all his smiling worship, wants to give him a short, sharp, stab in the back.

The two biggest guest roles are both from the other side: Anna Quayle’s formidable Olga (wearing a complete Russian bear) and Michael Gough’s spymaster Nutski (“My friends call me Nutty”). Olga is a more heavily armed, more ideologically pure and far less knowing Mrs Peel, introduced to much admiration from Nutski (“And they say that today there is no moral fibre among the younger generation”) and with much hostility to Steed (though she thaws slightly by the end, the tag scene suggesting a degree of cultural exchange and offering a good shaggy dog of a party manifesto). She’s the biggest change from The Charmers – not as subtle, funny or lush as Fenella Fielding’s Kim Lawrence, but with a completely different character and different set of lines she’s able to make the part her own. And I suspect it may have been written that way, as Anna Quayle had had a hit on stage with a very similar Soviet part in Stop the World – I Want To Get Off. She has the disadvantage that where Kim’s unpredictability would throw Steed, Olga’s blunderbuss fanaticism doesn’t worry him at all, though her utterly straight absurdity and reactions direct to camera for his more outrageous moments are still priceless. While there’s a running joke about his asking for her to be more “subtle”, that’s something someone might have said to Michael Gough, as his characterisation of Nutski starts with the name and goes upward. Where Warren Mitchell’s 1964 equivalent Keller is grubby, Nutski is hammy, and only in part because his plan is significantly inflated here (like his little tribute to The Great Dictator). Perhaps Michael Gough, a superb actor with an amazingly long résumé, just wanted to differentiate his performance from last season’s Dr Armstrong in The Cybernauts (Emma gives a twirl to that role here as one of her several homages to that particular episode)? He still gets many of the best lines, and Merlin’s hanging crocodile, but somehow he’s less funny by being just that bit too over the top, right from his first greeting to Steed – and aside to Ivan:
“What a delightful surprise! What a pleasure to see you again! I told you to kill him.”
Imitation and Flattery

Steed and Emma are still at the centre of all this, despite so many scene-stealers – not least because even the villains recognise that they are the best in the world. Everyone mysteriously seems to have the same Enemy Identification Boards boasting rather lovely publicity shots of each of them, with her tickled at their labels; and while Steed is the more obvious model for the evil of the Third Way, that might just be because Mrs Peel is too high a standard to meet. The killers trained at Sociability, Nobility, Omnipotence, Breeding, Inc. (like FOG, SMOG and ABORCASHATA, I can’t resist an acronym) are all men, and all doing Steed the compliment of becoming dangerous agents with bowlers and swordstick brollies but with added fascistic taxi-hailing… But they’re all taught by a woman, who’s clearly deadlier. SNOB, as it should, has the best of the sets, rich-looking golden panelling outside, fashionable paint sketches within.

Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg live up to their roles as ever, both seemingly enjoying an episode in which even the baddies hero-worship them. Steed has enormous opportunities for fun paired with Olga and then admired by Ponsonby-Fry as so much better than his protégés even in defeat, with Patrick Macnee happily every bit as suave as the script demands, and while Emma has less time to form double-acts with Ivan or Nutski, Diana Rigg gets some sparkling moments on her own (as well as a fabulous reaction to what Hubert Merryweather does, in a gag that literally up-ends a role from the earlier version). Emma wins the outfits, too in an episode where neither of them have a bad one – though Emma’s lilac trouser suit isn’t too striking and Steed’s slightly-too-dark-for-him navy suit is, shockingly, accessorised by a non-matching black bowler, even Steed’s cravats are stylish, and while Emma’s vibrant dark blue and orange from earlier in the episode is her best outfit here, to prepare for the inevitable fights she swaps round the dominant colours for an even more vivid orange Emmapeeler with dark blue trim. If I have a complaint, it’s that neither are at their most dangerous – perhaps they simply assume beating imitations will be a breeze. So, for example, Emma’s delivery of “I can assure you, my cheek will be nowhere near his jowl” can’t help but sound secretly indulgent, lacking Cathy’s fiery whiplash the first time, and though their individual swordfights at the climax are neatly choreographed – particularly Emma and Olga at last perfectly in sync – something in me says they’re the wrong way round; Emma gets to be stylish but looks too easy, while Steed’s fight with Ponsonby-Fry sees the two smashing and slashing as if their foils are broadswords or cutlasses, making it more about strength than style. It’s a rare moment where they slip into sexual stereotypes, and also for me Steed seems more dangerous when he looks like he’s not trying, and Emma when beating men at their own game.

Perhaps that’s part of the sense that, in polishing The Charmers, they’ve filed off some of its edge. Other than Ponsonby-Fry’s creeping, it’s mostly so light and frothy that there’s not much sinister, despite a rare outing for Mrs Peel’s first season’s old ‘mysterious’ music in a colour episode and two effective ominous moments, one a ‘hanged man’ in the foreground as Steed and Olga enter Winters’ shop (though the proprietor is much jollier than the creepy old curmudgeon once in his place), and another a brief use of writer Brian Clemens’ favourite ‘undertaker’ motif. It’s certainly not threatening when the diabolical mastermind’s plan suddenly grows to preposterous proportions. He’s revealed as none other than triple-crossing Nutski himself – not merely frustrated, as Keller was in 1964, with being an underfunded station chief and looking to exploit both sides, but suddenly a Bond villain who wants to take over the entire world! I like the idea ‘How would a Russian take over the world? By being just like the British’, and that we’re secretly very unsporting, too, but it’s a bit of a leap, and Michael Gough is both too much and not enough. If you want a bonkers villain who throws around a globe, plots world domination and declaims “this is merely the beginning” like he means it while still being funny, I have the terrible confession that Sean Connery slices much better ham in The Avengers movie (though in general that’s far less successful than The Correct Way To Kill). For what’s been – for 1967 – a relatively small, relatively (relatively) rooted in reality spy spoof, it seems to climax in a failure of nerve and try to puff itself up to something it isn’t. The villains want to be the Avengers, but bigger, and badder, and fail; the producers want to do The Charmers, but bigger, and better, and… Nearly succeed. But not quite. It’s still funny, stylish and a solid piece of Avenging, but it tries just that little bit too hard.


*There’s just one brief scene filmed in a real dingy, wet street as Ivan’s nasty car drives up; establishing it shows us that the other side are a bit cheap, but it hardly adds to the style of the thing.

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# posted by Alex Wilcock @ 5:21 pm 0 comments
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