The Avengers, The Complete Season 4 on Blu-Ray (PG.)
Starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg. 1965. Seven Discs. 26 episodes.1352 min. Black and White.
The thing about screen avengers is that they never seem to be avenging anything. Cap America, Hulk and the gang got together to protect the Earth rather than pursue a vendetta, while the idea that Steed (MacNee) and Mrs Peel (Rigg) would ever get in a rage and go storming off to extract bloody retribution and eye for an eye justice is patently absurd. No such coarseness would ever be allowed to intrude on their world of jolly japes. These Avenger were always a class apart and this sixties spy romp is one of the great landmarks of British TV, a sublime pleasure that is just endlessly joyful and inventive, a miracle of creativity – and it was on ITV!
MacNee is gentleman spy John Steed, never seen without a bowler hat, a suit and an umbrella who investigates various improbable schemes and plots against the nation with the aid of a game amateur assistant, in this case Diana Rigg's Mrs Peel, who provides all encompassing scientific knowledge and martial arts skills.
Its tone is Roger Moore Bond silliness delivered with Connery Bond assurance and style. Silliness and frivolity usually seem cheap and common but here they are luxury commodities. The show is the sum of its contradictions: it is a pristine sixties pop culture artifact that is utterly timeless; a formulaic TV drama that is so freewheeling it borders on the surreal; an international hit that is inherently British. Snobbish, elitist, establishment British. The thing about Steed and Mrs Peel is that you watch them because they are so clearly better than us, and they are better than us because of their superior breeding. So the aesthetic is something of a kinetic Grazia magazine, watching the upper classes at (dangerous) play. They behave with an enormous sense of entitlement, casually slapping down the various assortment of ne'erdowells who are out to threaten the country.
(It is a unique feature of the show that usually the baddies' identity and motivation are not mentioned or explained.)
Of course, being aristocratic it was also strongly kinky; few episodes go past without a leather clad Mrs Peel being tied up by the villains and placed in mortal danger. It's tempting to see the series as extended exercises in mild s/m role play. This must be why Steed and Peel never seem in any way perturbed by the deadly perils that face them each episode – they both know the safe word.
Context.
Like almost all great TV, The Avengers emerged haphazardly over time rather than springing full formed from a great creative mind. There were eight seasons in all (if you count the New Avengers) and every season was different from the one before. MacNee's Steed is the only fixed point.
It started off in 1961 with Steed helping out Doctor Keel played by Ian Hendry (a dishier Fred Dinage.) He left and in the second season Steed took his pick from a choice of three, the most popular of whom, Honour Blackman's Cathy Gayle, became the regular companion. (Blackman left to do Goldfinger but gets a little in-joke mention in the episode Too Many Christmas Trees: Steed receives a Christmas card from her and wonders what she is doing in Fort Knox.)
This fourth season was the first to be shot on film, the last to be in black and white, the first to feature both Laurie Johnson's theme music and, most crucially, Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel. This was to be the show's pinnacle, what it was evolving towards and it is, magnificent. Of course once reached a pinnacle can never be sustained for long and once Rigg left after season 5 the show didn't last much longer. Partly because Linda Thorson's Tara King couldn't live up to her predessor but probably more because the show had torn its way though so much good material it had nothing left to give and nowhere to go.
Music.
Laurie Johnson's theme is so tied in with memories of the series it seems unbelievable that previous to this the series swung into action with a theme from Johnny Dankworth. His jazzy number was more equivocal, more menacing; Johnson's perfectly expressed the new tone: elegant, light, upbeat, frivolous. No matter how often you hear it it always generates a buzz of excitement, of anticipation. It's too good really. Even The Avengers has to work hard to live up to its promise.
Cast.
You just can't overstate how adorable Diana Rigg's Mrs Peel is. Taking over from Honour Blackman would've seemed to be quite a task but Rigg saunters onto the screen with such total assurance the matter is never an issue. In the first episode, The Town Of No Return, Steed just pops round to her flat, where she is practising her fencing, and invites her off to the seaside town to help him investigate the disappearance of some agents. Just for larks.
The show's attitude towards her is largely that of a young girl with a Barbie doll: the fun is in dressing her up in as many different outfits as possible. They range from kinky catsuits to ensembles that are almost childishly girly.
Sacrilege that it is, I can’t help feeling Patrick MacNee is monumentally miscast as Steed. He is supposed to be debonair, sophisticated and a man of action, total class. He strikes me though as, if not the golf club bore, then as the gold club bore's affable but dim mate. Of course, he's now so embedded in the role that you can't picture anyone else in it, and he is intensely likeable. Plus his chemistry with Rigg is effortless, and if she is going to vouch for him then who is going to object.
It may be worth noting though their respective futures in James Bond roles: Rigg went on to be the ultimate Bond girl in one of the best Bond film's, On Her Majesty's Secret Service; MacNee got to chauffeur Roger Moore around in the execrable A View To A Kill.
Starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg. 1965. Seven Discs. 26 episodes.1352 min. Black and White.
The thing about screen avengers is that they never seem to be avenging anything. Cap America, Hulk and the gang got together to protect the Earth rather than pursue a vendetta, while the idea that Steed (MacNee) and Mrs Peel (Rigg) would ever get in a rage and go storming off to extract bloody retribution and eye for an eye justice is patently absurd. No such coarseness would ever be allowed to intrude on their world of jolly japes. These Avenger were always a class apart and this sixties spy romp is one of the great landmarks of British TV, a sublime pleasure that is just endlessly joyful and inventive, a miracle of creativity – and it was on ITV!
MacNee is gentleman spy John Steed, never seen without a bowler hat, a suit and an umbrella who investigates various improbable schemes and plots against the nation with the aid of a game amateur assistant, in this case Diana Rigg's Mrs Peel, who provides all encompassing scientific knowledge and martial arts skills.
Its tone is Roger Moore Bond silliness delivered with Connery Bond assurance and style. Silliness and frivolity usually seem cheap and common but here they are luxury commodities. The show is the sum of its contradictions: it is a pristine sixties pop culture artifact that is utterly timeless; a formulaic TV drama that is so freewheeling it borders on the surreal; an international hit that is inherently British. Snobbish, elitist, establishment British. The thing about Steed and Mrs Peel is that you watch them because they are so clearly better than us, and they are better than us because of their superior breeding. So the aesthetic is something of a kinetic Grazia magazine, watching the upper classes at (dangerous) play. They behave with an enormous sense of entitlement, casually slapping down the various assortment of ne'erdowells who are out to threaten the country.
(It is a unique feature of the show that usually the baddies' identity and motivation are not mentioned or explained.)
Of course, being aristocratic it was also strongly kinky; few episodes go past without a leather clad Mrs Peel being tied up by the villains and placed in mortal danger. It's tempting to see the series as extended exercises in mild s/m role play. This must be why Steed and Peel never seem in any way perturbed by the deadly perils that face them each episode – they both know the safe word.
Context.
Like almost all great TV, The Avengers emerged haphazardly over time rather than springing full formed from a great creative mind. There were eight seasons in all (if you count the New Avengers) and every season was different from the one before. MacNee's Steed is the only fixed point.
It started off in 1961 with Steed helping out Doctor Keel played by Ian Hendry (a dishier Fred Dinage.) He left and in the second season Steed took his pick from a choice of three, the most popular of whom, Honour Blackman's Cathy Gayle, became the regular companion. (Blackman left to do Goldfinger but gets a little in-joke mention in the episode Too Many Christmas Trees: Steed receives a Christmas card from her and wonders what she is doing in Fort Knox.)
This fourth season was the first to be shot on film, the last to be in black and white, the first to feature both Laurie Johnson's theme music and, most crucially, Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel. This was to be the show's pinnacle, what it was evolving towards and it is, magnificent. Of course once reached a pinnacle can never be sustained for long and once Rigg left after season 5 the show didn't last much longer. Partly because Linda Thorson's Tara King couldn't live up to her predessor but probably more because the show had torn its way though so much good material it had nothing left to give and nowhere to go.
Music.
Laurie Johnson's theme is so tied in with memories of the series it seems unbelievable that previous to this the series swung into action with a theme from Johnny Dankworth. His jazzy number was more equivocal, more menacing; Johnson's perfectly expressed the new tone: elegant, light, upbeat, frivolous. No matter how often you hear it it always generates a buzz of excitement, of anticipation. It's too good really. Even The Avengers has to work hard to live up to its promise.
Cast.
You just can't overstate how adorable Diana Rigg's Mrs Peel is. Taking over from Honour Blackman would've seemed to be quite a task but Rigg saunters onto the screen with such total assurance the matter is never an issue. In the first episode, The Town Of No Return, Steed just pops round to her flat, where she is practising her fencing, and invites her off to the seaside town to help him investigate the disappearance of some agents. Just for larks.
The show's attitude towards her is largely that of a young girl with a Barbie doll: the fun is in dressing her up in as many different outfits as possible. They range from kinky catsuits to ensembles that are almost childishly girly.
Sacrilege that it is, I can’t help feeling Patrick MacNee is monumentally miscast as Steed. He is supposed to be debonair, sophisticated and a man of action, total class. He strikes me though as, if not the golf club bore, then as the gold club bore's affable but dim mate. Of course, he's now so embedded in the role that you can't picture anyone else in it, and he is intensely likeable. Plus his chemistry with Rigg is effortless, and if she is going to vouch for him then who is going to object.
It may be worth noting though their respective futures in James Bond roles: Rigg went on to be the ultimate Bond girl in one of the best Bond film's, On Her Majesty's Secret Service; MacNee got to chauffeur Roger Moore around in the execrable A View To A Kill.
