The Avengers
The Avengers was a British 1960s television series featuring secret agents in a fantasy 1960s Britain. The programs were made by TV company Associated British Corporation, and created by its Head of Drama, Sydney Newman. It was an early example of the genre SpyFi (which combines secret agent story lines with science fictional elements).
Program premise and overview
During the course of its run, The Avengers was marked by different eras as different co-stars came and went. The only constant was John Steed, played by Patrick MacNee.
With Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry)
The Avengers began with a medical doctor named David Keel (Ian Hendry) investigating the murder of Peggy, his office receptionist and wife-to-be, by a drug ring. A mysterious stranger named John Steed, who was investigating the ring, appeared on the scene and together they set out to avenge her death in the show's first two episodes. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to continue partnering him on an as-needed basis to solve crimes.
The Avengers was a successor (but not, as sometimes stated, a direct sequel) to Hendry's earlier series Police Surgeon, in which he played a similar character. While Police Surgeon did not last long, viewer letters had praised Hendry's work in it. Hendry was considered the star of the new series, receiving top billing over MacNee, and Steed did not even appear in two of the episodes. Because of the practice in the British television industry (followed until the 1970s) of junking and deleting episodes of old programs deemed no longer of commercial value, most episodes of the first season are considered lost, save for two complete episodes recently located, and the first 15 minutes or so of the premiere episode.
In the first season broadcast in 1961, Steed began as a secondary character, the protagonist being Keel; as the season progressed, Steed began to be established as a co-star, carrying the final episode solo. While the two stars used wry wit while discussing the crimes and dangers, the series benefited from the interplay and, often, 'the tension' between Keel's idealism and Steed's hard professionalism. As seen in the surviving episode The Frighteners, Steed also had a group of helpers scattered among the general population who provided information, not unlike the "Baker Street Irregulars" of Sherlock Holmes.
The other regular character appearing in the first season was Carol Wilson (Ingrid Hafner), the nurse/receptionist who replaced the slain Peggy. Carol assisted Dr Keel and Steed in various ways in their cases, without being a part of Steed's 'inner circle' in the way that Keel was. Hafner had also played opposite Hendry as a nurse in Police Surgeon.
With Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman)
Production of the first season was cut short by a strike. By the time it was settled and production could begin on the show's second season, Hendry had quit to pursue a film career. MacNee was promoted to series star and Steed became the focus of the series, initially working with a rotation of three different partners.
Dr Martin King (Jon Rollason), a thinly disguised rewriting of David Keel, saw action in only three episodes, as he was only intended to be a 'transition' character between Dr Keel and the two new female partners. He appeared in three unused scripts left from the first season. Rollason later had a regular role on Coronation Street.
Nightclub singer Venus Smith (Julie Stevens) appeared in six episodes. She was a complete "amateur", meaning that she did not have any professional crime-fighting skills as did the two doctors. She was excited to be participating in a "spy" adventure alongside secret agent Steed (although at least one episode - "The Removal Men" - indicates she isn't always so enthusiastic). Nonetheless, she appears to be attracted to him and their relationship appears similar to that later displayed between Steed and Tara King. Her episodes featured musical interludes showcasing her singing performances. The character of Venus underwent some revision during the second season, becoming younger-looking in demeanour and dress. Stevens was better known in Britain as a host of various children's/teen-age television programmes.
The first episode of the second season introduced Steed's third partner, and the one who would change the show into the format it is most remembered for. Honor Blackman played Dr Cathy Gale, a self-assured, good at judo, quick-witted anthropologist. Widowed during the Mau Mau years in Kenya, she was the "talented amateur" who saw her aid to Steed's cases as a service to her nation.
Gale was unlike any female character seen before on British TV and became a household name. Reportedly part of her charm came from the fact her earliest appearances were episodes in which dialogue written for David Keel was simply transferred to Cathy. By the third season, she became Steed's only regular partner. The series established a level of sexual tension between the characters, although as part of the evolving format of the series, writers were not allowed to let the characters go beyond flirting and innuendo. Despite this, the relationship between Steed and Gale was progressive for 1962-63. In the episode "The Golden Eggs", it is revealed that Gale is living in Steed's flat; her rent according to Steed is to keep the refrigerator well-stocked and to cook for him (she appears to do neither). It is also stated, however, that this is a temporary arrangement while Gale (for reasons not stated) looks for a new home, and that Steed is actually sleeping at a hotel.
During the first season hints were dropped that Steed worked for a branch of British Intelligence, and this was expanded in the second season. Early on, Steed received orders from a series of different superiors, most notably men referred to only as "Charles" or "One-Ten". By the third season, however, Steed was seen working on his own, the origins of his orders remaining a mystery.
With the start of the third season Venus Smith was dropped, leaving Cathy Gale as Steed's sole partner.
Another change during the Gale era was the transformation of Steed from a rather rough-and-tumble trenchcoat-wearing agent into the stereotypical English gentleman, complete with Saville Row suit and bowler hat and umbrella, both of which turn out to be full of tricks, most notably a sword hidden within the umbrella handle and a steel plate concealed in the hat. Blackman became a TV superstar in Britain with her leather boots (nicknamed "kinky boots") and her high-kicking fighting style.
The Avengers had not yet been shown in America, even through syndication. This was partly due to its 'live-studio' look, which American television had left behind several years earlier. Episodes were often videotaped the same day they were transmitted (a few were even performed live), and as such there was little opportunity for retakes; as noted by websites such as The Nitpicker's Guide to the Avengers, these early episodes were wrought with technical errors (example: during the episode "Immortal Clay" the camera hits something during a scene making it appear as if a sudden earthquake had occurred) and fluffed dialogue (example: in "School for Traitors", Julie Stevens (as Venus Smith) stumbles when trying to introduce John Steed to another character, prompting Patrick MacNee to ad lib a joke to cover the error).
The very 'Britishness' of it was another 'strike' against it. In addition, the more relaxed standards of British media would have required some moments to be censored in America; in Mr. Teddy Bear, Steed is seen stripping down to his underwear for decontamination, and in Death Dispatch Gale is seen talking to Steed on the telephone while wearing nothing from the waist up but a black-lace brassiere.
After two seasons in this format, a movie version of the show was in its initial planning stages by late 1963. The early story proposal would have paired Steed and Gale with a male/female duo of American agents, to make the movie appeal to the American market which had not seen the show. Before the project could gain momentum, Blackman was tapped to appear opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond film, Goldfinger, requiring her to leave the series.
Arrival of Emma Peel (Diana Rigg)
Main article: Emma Peel
A new female partner appeared in October 1965: Mrs. Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). The name of the character derived from the phrase "M Appeal" or "Man Appeal".[1] The character, whose husband went missing while on a South American exploration, retained the self-assuredness of Cathy Gale, combined with superior fighting skills, intelligence, and fashion sense.
After more than 60 actresses had been auditioned, the first choice to play this role was actress Elizabeth Shepherd. However, after shooting one and a half episodes, Shepherd was released, as her on-screen personality did not seem as interesting as that of Blackman's Cathy Gale. Another 20 actresses were auditioned before the show's casting director suggested that producers Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell check out a televised drama featuring the relatively unknown Rigg. Her screen test with MacNee showed that the two immediately worked well together, and a new era began in Avengers history.
The classic Avengers episodes are generally considered to be those featuring MacNee and Rigg. By contrast to the Cathy Gale episodes, there was a lighter comic touch evident, both in Steed and Peel's conversations and in the ways they reacted to other characters and situations. Earlier seasons of the show had a much more hard-edged tone, with the Blackman episodes including some surprisingly serious espionage dramas (when viewed through the prism of the later, better-known period). The harder edges of the previous seasons almost completely disappeared, as Steed and Peel visibly enjoyed topping each other's witticisms.
Additionally, many episodes were characterized by a futuristic, science fiction bent to many of the tales, with mad scientists and their creations leaving havoc in their wake. The duo dealt with giant alien carnivorous plants (The Man-Eater Of Surrey Green), being shrunk to doll size (Mission . . . Highly Improbable), pet cats being electrically altered into 'miniature tigers' (The Hidden Tiger), killer automatons (The Cybernauts and Return Of The FurrCybernauts), mind-transferring machines (Who's Who???), and invisible foes (The See-Through Man). The series also poked fun at its American contemporaries with episodes such as The Girl From Auntie and Mission ... Highly Improbable. The show still carried the basic format: Steed and his associate were charged with solving the problem in the space of a 50-minute episode, thus preserving the safety of 1960s Britain on a regular basis.
Comedy was also evident in the names/acronyms of the organizations Steed and Peel encountered. In The Living Dead, two duelling groups examine reported ghost sightings: FOG (Friends Of Ghosts) and SMOG (Scientific Measurement Of Ghosts). The Hidden Tiger features the Philanthropic Union for Rescue, Relief and Recuperation of Cats - PURRR - led by folk named Cheshire, Manx, and Angora.
There was also a notable fetishistic undercurrent in many episodes (most notably the B&W Rigg episode "A Touch Of Brimstone", in which Mrs Peel, dressed as a dominatrix, becomes the "Queen Of Sin"). Tight-fitting fashion for both Gale and Peel was one of the notable features of the shows; MacNee and Blackman had even released a novelty song called "Kinky Boots". (Some of the clothes seen in The Avengers were designed by the clothing designer John Sutcliffe, who also published the AtomAge fetish magazine).
Another fashion aspect of the show from this point on was its automobiles. Steed's signature cars were 1926 - 1928 Bentley racing/town cars including Blower Bentleys and Bentley Speed Sixes, and Peel drove a Lotus Elan, while Mother drove Rolls-Royce cars and Tara King drove an AC 428 and a Lotus Europa. (Some of this began in the Gale episodes, as Gale occasionally used a Triumph motorcycle.) During the first Emma Peel season, each episode would end with a short, comedic scene of the duo leaving the scene of their most recent adventure in a variety of unusual vehicles.
The relationship between Steed and Gale differed noticeably from that of Steed and Peel, with a layer of conflict in the former that was rarely seen in the latter - Gale on occasion openly resenting being used by Steed often without her permission. There was also a level of sexual tension between Steed and Gale that was absent when Emma Peel arrived. In both cases, the exact relationship between the partners was left ambiguous, although they seemed to have carte blanche to visit each other's homes whenever they pleased and it was not uncommon to see an episode in which Steed spends the night at Cathy Gale's/Emma Peel's home, or vice versa, although nothing "improper" is ever suggested.
The arrival of Rigg coincided with the show's sale to US television. This made it one of the first British series to be aired on prime-time American television, alongside traditional US shows. A change was made to the opening credits of the first Emma Peel season with the addition of a brief prologue explaining the concept of the series and introducing the characters. The decision of the US's ABC to schedule The Avengers was made easier by the "British Invasion" of pop music and fashion, dating from the huge success of The Beatles and others who followed them into the American market.
Previously the series had been shot on 405-line videotape, with very little provision for editing and virtually no location footage. This meant that to all intents and purposes the Blackman episodes were shot live in the studio. A number of these were wiped, the survivors being in the form of 16mm film telerecordings (see below).
The US deal meant that the producers could afford to shoot the series on 35mm film. In any case, the change was essential because British videotapes were incompatible with US standards. The transfer to film meant that episodes could be shot like films, giving the show much greater flexibility. After one filmed season (of 26 episodes) in black and white, The Avengers began filming in color in 1967, although it would be two years before British viewers could see it that way. These color episodes came with a new stylized opening sequence, involving Steed unwrapping the foil from a Champagne bottle and Peel shooting the cork away, especially advertising the episodes with a title of The Avengers In Colour.
The Steed/Peel episodes began with a comic visual 'tag line,' with a caption displayed on-screen using the format of "Steed [does this], Emma [does that]." For example, the episode Death At Bargain Prices dealt with trying to prevent an atomic bomb from being detonated inside a London department store. The opening caption informs the viewer that "Steed fights in Ladies' Underwear".
Departure of Emma Peel and the introduction of Tara King (Linda Thorson)
Rigg was never happy with the way she was treated on the show (she discovered at one point that she was being paid less than the cameraman) and she left in 1967 to pursue other projects (including, like Blackman, a On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a James Bond film). No farewell episode had been shot, and despite now being out of contract, Rigg agreed to return to film an episode that explains Emma's departure. At its end, the news breaks that Emma's husband, Peter Peel, has been found alive and rescued, and she ends her role with Steed in order to be with Peter. (From Steed's viewpoint looking out the window to the driveway below, Peter resembles Steed exactly.)
This episode, that went to air as the first of the 1968/69 season, also introduced Emma's successor, an inexperienced agent named Tara King, played by Canadian actress Linda Thorson. Thorson played the role with more innocence in mind and at heart; and unlike the previous partnerships with Cathy and Emma, the writers allowed subtle hints of romance to blossom between Steed and Tara. Tara also differed from Steed's previous partners in that she was a fully fledged (albeit inexperienced) agent working for Steed's organisation; his previous partners had all been (in the words of the prologue used for American broadcasts of the first Rigg season) talented amateurs.
Another change returned the series to its roots by having Steed once again take orders from a British government official, this time the wheelchair-bound "Mother" (Patrick Newell, who had played different roles in two previous episodes), who was in fact an obese man. Mother's headquarters would shift from place to place, including one episode in which his complete office was on the top level of a double-decker bus; several James Bond films of the 1970s would make use of a similar gimmick for James Bond's briefings.
The revised series continued to be broadcast in America. The episodes with Linda Thorson as Tara King proved to be highly rated in Europe and the UK. In the United States, the ABC network which carried the series, chose to air it opposite the number one show in the country at the time, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Steed and Tara couldn't compete with it, and the show was cancelled in the US. Without this vital commercial backing, production could not continue in Britain either, and the series ended in May 1969. The final scene of the final episode ("Bizarre") has Steed and Tara, champagne glasses in hand, accidentally launching themselves into orbit aboard a rocket, as Mother breaks the fourth wall and says to the audience, "They'll be back!" before adding in shock, "They're unchaperoned up there!"
Production team
The production team changed during the series' long run, particularly between the third and fourth seasons, but the influence of Brian Clemens was felt throughout. He wrote the second episode and became The Avengers'' most prolific scriptwriter. Succeeding producers Leonard White and John Bryce, Clemens became associate producer towards the end of the third season, with Albert Fennell credited as "In charge of production".
Johnny Dankworth composed The Avengers' original theme tune, a syncopated jazz number, which was reworked for the third season. When Diana Rigg joined the series, the new title sequence was accompanied by a fresh theme by Laurie Johnson, a catchy, brassy tune designed to promote the "English eccentricity" of the show. Johnson also provided incidental music, and subsequently collaborated with Clemens on other projects, including the theme for the later New Avengers revival.
The New Avengers
The sustained popularity of the Tara King episodes in France led to a 1975 French television commercial for a brand of champagne, featuring both Thorson and MacNee reprising their roles. The commercial's success spurred financing interest in France to create new Avengers episodes.
As a result, the series was revived as The New Avengers, with MacNee reprising his role as Steed, this time with two new partners, Mike Gambit (Gareth Hunt) and Purdey (Joanna Lumley). This new series aired on ITV in the UK, CTV in Canada, and CBS in the United States in 1976 and 1977. The final four episodes were almost completely produced by Canadian interests and were filmed in that country; they carried the title The New Avengers in Canada.
Rebroadcasts and DVD
North American audiences saw the Cathy Gale/Venus Smith/Dr King episodes of the series for the first time in the early 1990s, when they were broadcast on A&E. Until recently, no David Keel episode of the series had ever been shown outside of Britain; to date only a couple of complete episodes from the show's first season are even known to exist, the rest having been "wiped" years ago (an incomplete copy of the first episode was recently found in the United States, containing only the first 20 minutes, up to the original commercial break). 16mm film copies of the Gale-era episodes survive (the original videotapes no longer exist) and have been released to DVD, as have the complete filmed series of Emma Peel and Tara King episodes. BBC Four in Britain currently broadcasts episodes of the B&W 'Emma Peel' series at 7.10pm on Thursdays. In the United States, BBC America regularly airs episodes from the Peel / King eras -- currently, they air weekday afternoons.
A recent newspaper report suggested that MacNee himself was responsible for tracking down the original negatives of both series for remastering, because he was tired of seeing inferior copies.
In early 2006, A&E issued a new "megabox" collection of the complete Emma Peel era (with the DVD's now packaged in "slimline" cases); a bonus disc was included in the new edition, featuring the first DVD release of the two complete first-season episodes, plus the extant 20 minutes of the premiere. A&E has yet to announce whether similar "megabox" reissues will occur with the Gale and King episodes. In April 2006, a complete set of Gale-era episodes broadcast in 1962 was released, and it was stated that this was the final Avengers release.
Episodes
There were six seasons of The Avengers (divided into seven by some sources), running from 1961 to 1969. Only two episodes of the first season still exist in their entirety.
External links
- Avengers on the Radio
- Lower Storpington, a fan site
- Museum of Broadcast Communications
- The Avengers Forever, an extensive fan site
- Mrs. Peel... We're Needed!, another noteworthy fan site
- Steedophilia John Steed tribute site
- French website, including Diadem and Minikillers videos
- Encyclopedia of Television
- British Film Institute Screen Online
- Review The Avengers at the Internet Movie Database
- Documentary Review Avenging the Avengers at the Internet Movie Database
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