The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 12 – Don’t Look Behind You

Ola with a lighted taper

Don’t Look Behind You is Brian Clemens’s second script for this series of The Avengers, and his fourth to date. And it’s a cheeky lift of the Old Dark House story. Put another way, there is no typical Avengers setup of a corpse before the episode title has come up, and little in the way of bantering exposition while Steed and/or Gale fiddle with something, drink something or parade around the flat they seem increasingly to share. Instead it’s a story about characters gathered together in “an old dark house”, where forces known or unknown set about their malevolent business. Here things have a modern resonance, because before Steed drives Mrs Gale in … Read more

The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 11 – The Golden Fleece

John Steed on the phone

After the camp fun of the previous week’s episode, The Grandeur That Was Rome, a bit of a bump as we touch back down on planet Earth for a much more realistic Avengers episode – The Golden Fleece. Warren Mitchell gets the first word, only three years from starring in the series that would make his name, Till Death Us Do Part, and looking a generation younger, he’s one of a bunch of soldiers at an army camp in Aldershot discussing the unusual financial situation of a small amateur club, The Golden Fleece, which seems to have riches out of all proportion to its activities. We cut to a Chinese restaurant, where hostesses welcome … Read more