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

John Steed

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

The Avengers: Series 2, Episode 26 – Killer Whale

Honor Blackman, Patrick Macnee and Patrick Magee

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

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

Gale and Steed

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