How well can a TV show hold up after fifty years? Surprisingly well, it turns out. No doubt we could pick and choose any number of once-popular shows from the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s and be overwhelmed by how dated they feel, how old hat the storytelling and dialogue seem, how cheesy and outmoded the aesthetics are. But when all the elements are in place – good casting, good writing, good direction, interesting stories and visuals – we may find that the small screen entertainment of years gone by can prove just as entertaining now. And I’m quite happy to report this is most definitely the case with series 4 of The Avengers, now making its Blu-ray debut half a century on from its original airing.
A couple of points to emphasise right away, just so we’re all on the same page; no, this particular Avengers has nothing whatsoever to do with the Marvel Comics super-team (though it is the reason that Marvel chivalrously renamed their 2012 mega-blockbuster Avengers Assemble in the British isles, to avoid any confusion). Marvel debuted their team in 1963, by which time the British secret agent series had already been on the air for two years. The next question, then, is what’s so special about series 4, and aren’t we missing out not watching the first three beforehand? Well, first off a lot of the earliest episodes are lost – not too uncommon for TV shows of the time, alas – and the line-up of the team changed somewhat over the first few years. There’s definitely a case to be made that The Avengers really found their feet around the second and third series, during which time Patrick Macnee’s John Steed became the lead and Honor Blackman became his first leather-clad female cohort Cathy Gale. However, it would seem to be widely agreed that it was with series 4 that the show perfected the formula and reached its most iconic phase, thanks to increased budgets which allowed them to shoot on film rather than video, and – not for nothing – the retiring Blackman’s replacement by Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel. Macnee may not have been the original hero, and Rigg may not have been the original heroine (nor was she the last), but if we mention The Avengers – assuming we don’t automatically think of Iron Man, Thor and so on – the first names that come to mind are Steed and Mrs Peel, he with his bowler hat and umbrella, she in her skin-tight black leather catsuit. Sounds kinky, you say? Well, that’s hardly accidental. And if it still raises an eyebrow now, just think what the reaction must have been in 1965.
Oh, and as regards that other question about series continuity: just forget about it. One of the real joys of revisiting The Avengers now – and I’m sure this could be said of any number of old adventure-themed shows – is to be taken back to a time when you could quite easily catch a random episode of any given TV show and not be left a babe in the woods if you hadn’t seen every single episode that came before. As sophisticated and rewarding as TV drama can be nowadays, it really does demand great resilience on the part of the viewer, with backstory after backstory, subplot after subplot – skip one week and the whole thing can collapse like a house of cards. How refreshing, then, to just put your feet up and take on a far simpler, episodic TV show with a dramatic arc so small as to be almost non-existent.
From the first episode on, a very simple formula is established for just about every episode of The Avengers. In the opening scene, a stranger is murdered under mysterious, often bizarre circumstances, so Steed and Mrs Peel take a break from their affluent hedonistic lifestyle to investigate, generally with both of them taking on assumed identities (though almost always using their real names). The villains generally work in seemingly innocuous establishments – department stores, dancing schools, wine manufacturers etc – and strive to arouse no suspicion, but invariably give themselves away with shifty behaviour. Soon enough, Mrs Peel will get captured and (wouldn’t you know it) almost always tied up; once free, she and Steed beat the crap out of the baddies, and – seemingly without a jot of paperwork – ride away down some anonymous country lane on a vehicle of some description. And then, we cue the music (and damned if I haven’t had that tune on earworm since watching these).
If that all sounds boringly predictable, the other thing to take into account is how incredibly bizarre the show gets. As one of the most notable secret agent franchises of the 1960s, The Avengers may tend to be mentioned in the same breath as James Bond, but in tone and content the two are lightyears apart. Where Bond routinely traverses the globe, The Avengers remain in Britain, and generally within about a twenty mile radius of central London, aside from one episode set (though I suspect not shot) in Scotland; and The Avengers went to some altogether weirder places with their plots and characters. All manner of eccentric villains abound, with increasingly oddball evil schemes, and while oftentimes these boil down to simple enough murder mysteries, it often branches out into more off-the-wall sci-fi fantasy territory, some of the stranger plots including psychics, robots, and – surely the most bonkers of all – sentient man-eating plants from outer space. And yet they get away with it all, as never for a moment do you get the impression that anyone involved is taking any of it seriously in the least.
So yes, it’s an easy show to dip in and out of, with no overarching plot threads running through the series as has long since become the norm. What really kept the viewers coming back, then, was surely the cast. It’s small wonder that Patrick Macnee’s Steed was not the show’s original male lead, as he’s such an unlikely hero in so many respects; with his anachronistic old English gent garb and his overly chipper ex-public schoolboy manner, he seems so utterly un-macho, non-threatening, even laughable. But this is worked to his advantage, Colombo-style; Steed’s harmless, dim-witted outer appearance hides a lethally sharp mind, quick wit and killer fighting moves (even if his stunt double proves easy to spot). More stringently left-leaning viewers might deem his upper class carefree nature as a reflection of patriarchal imperialist Britain at its most loathsome, but I daresay such viewers may need to lighten up a bit.
And then there’s Diana Rigg’s Mrs Peel. There can, and indeed have been endless tomes written on her character, and what it meant in comparatively unenlightened mid-60s Britain to have a genuinely strong, smart, independent woman as the heroine in a top-rated TV show. To this day, every time a new Bond movie comes out, the PR will stress how the latest Bond girl is a true equal to 007, but we all know such claims will invariably prove facile. However, with Mrs Peel (and no, we never do see Mr Peel or learn anything about him), there really is no question that she is on a par with her male partner. Yes, she is frequently called on to do the damsel in distress bit – even getting tied to a railway track in one particularly cartoonish episode – but we almost never get the sense that she is at a disadvantage; a little sigh and roll of the eyes tells us that she simply puts up with the condescension of men, knowing full well she’s better than they are. Like Steed, she too kicks copious amounts of arse, but – and this really cannot be overstated – she looks a whole lot better doing it. And that without doubt is one of the key things that kept audiences coming back in droves, and made Mrs Peel so iconic: damn, Diana Rigg looks good. Over the course of the series, she perhaps doesn’t spend quite as much time in her iconic leather catsuit as you might expect, but they don’t pass up any opportunity to get her in any number of overtly titillating outfits: nurse, harem dancer, Robin Hood costume that makes no effort to conceal her buttocks, and most notoriously the Queen of Sin pictured above. But regardless of the get-up, there’s just something inescapably intoxicating about the woman herself, radiating genuine strength and intelligence as much as raw sex appeal. Truly, if watching Diana Rigg in The Avengers doesn’t stir any sensation below the navel, see a doctor.
The jewel in the crown of late British producer and screenwriter Brian Clemens, The Avengers also boasted its fair share of notable guest stars. Series 4 sees appearances from, amongst others, Michael Gough, Peter Wyngarde, Geoffrey Palmer, Nigel Davenport, Hammer actor Harvey Hall, Monty Python’s Carol Cleveland, even a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from future sitcom queen Penelope Keith, whilst behind the camera the esteemed Roy Ward Baker, billed simply as Roy Baker, gets a fair few directorial credits under his belt. Nostalgia hounds will be happy to see this seven-disc Blu-ray set isn’t short on extras either, with a number of episode commentaries, old promo material, behind the scenes footage and more, and the monochrome photography is stunningly beautiful in high definition. For any British pop culture historians, then, The Avengers Series 4 is an essential purchase; but above and beyond that, it remains a hugely enjoyable, endlessly rewatchable package of action-adventure TV at its finest.
The Avengers: Series 4 is out now on Blu-Ray from Studiocanal.