The Divine Diana Rigg

 

In 1987 I visited England for the first time. The weeks leading up to the trip were filled with difficult choices on what to do in those ten days, amidst a seemingly endless selection of historical sites and castles and monuments and natural wonders.

 

But one thing was certain – one of those nights would be spent with Diana Rigg. 

 

 

She was performing in a West End production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies. Back then I was not as conversant in musical theater as I am now, so the show itself held little interest. All I knew is that for a few hours I’d be in the same room as Mrs. Emma Peel. To me that was as important as seeing Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the British Museum.

 

In many ways The Avengers was my introduction to London. Long before I went there I fell in love with the city as it was portrayed in this classic ‘60s series.

 

Was there really a place this civil and sophisticated, where men dressed as nattily as John Steed, and were so well versed in fine wines and cricket and vintage Jaguars? And were the women really as stunning as sexy as Emma Peel? If so, visiting might not be enough – I may have to move there.

Of course, London wasn’t always like it was shown in The Avengers, then or now. But there are still places in its winding streets and hidden corners where reside little antique shops that could appear in an episode like “The Correct Way to Kill.” I was delighted every time I found one.

 

 

One thing is sure: no city ever had a better endorsement for tourism than London had in The Avengers, or two more ideal ambassadors than Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.

 

When I think of the show now I don’t remember stories or villains. It’s the moments around the plots that linger most vividly, when Steed and Emma are trading banter and barbs like no other couple since Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man films. The chemistry between the two actors has never been surpassed.

 

Emma Peel: Would you like a drink?

John Steed: Intravenously!

 

John Steed: I've driven across this road, oh, a hundred times during the war.

Emma Peel: Well, since you know it so well it's remarkable you couldn't stay on it.

 

Emma Peel: [referring to Steed's watch] That's new.

John Steed: Legacy from my uncle.

Emma Peel: Pity it's dented.

John Steed: Battle of the Somme, 1916.

Emma Peel: German bullet?

John Steed: Canadian mule.

 

Emma Peel: What have we got, so far?

John Steed: Two black roses, three corpses...

Emma Peel: Four white feathers...

John Steed: And a partridge in a pear tree.

 

Emma Peel: The invitation came from a mutual friend – Jeremy Wade

John Steed: That’s the fellow that deals in old prints and manuscripts. Is he still after your first edition? 

 

Rigg enjoyed a long and impressive career that enhanced British institutions from Shakespeare and Charles Dickens to James Bond and Doctor Who. But with The Avengers, she accomplished the rare achievement of adding a character to that iconic roster.

 

It takes more than beauty to do that – even if we’re talking about beauty so exceptional it can reduce a young man to a catatonic state of staring at a TV screen in abject wonder. Mrs. Peel was not just an exquisite face, long legs, and a leather catsuit. She was a journalist and a scientist, a fighter and a femme fatale. She was a civilian who gladly joined a top British agent on missions that could bring down a nation. She was Steed’s equal in wit and style and derring-do. And what a voice: so deep and resonant yet still beguilingly feminine. 

 

So while this is a sad time when we mourn the passing of a quintessential English rose, it helps to believe that perhaps now she’s sharing another glass of champagne with her debonair costar. Maybe Mrs. Gale will join them. 

 

 

Five Television Moments That Should Have Been Better

 

The fall TV season is fast approaching, and there are moments many of us are already looking forward to experiencing. Some will surpass expectations but most will fall short, which has always been the way with television. Here are five moments from the Comfort TV era that promised much but stumbled on delivery.

Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett Team-ups

If there were a Mount Rushmore for television comediennes, Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett would be among those immortalized. But when Carol and Lucy joined forces, the magic wasn't there. 

They had plenty of chances – Burnett guest-starred more than once on both The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy, and Ball returned the favor with several appearances on Carol’s brilliant variety series. But none of their collaborations merit inclusion in a retrospective on either of their remarkable careers.

Their first team-up, in the 1966 Lucy Show episode “Lucy Gets a Roommate,” is probably the best. Carol plays a meek librarian who Lucy tries to coax out of her shell (with predictable but occasionally amusing results). I can recall only one memorable Carol Burnett Show sketch with Lucy, who clearly missed the rehearsal time she needed to perfect the comedy moments that became legendary on her own shows. In one 1969 appearance she and Carol played stewardesses on a Miami-bound plane. "Is that a Cuban accent?" Lucy asks passenger Harvey Korman. "What makes you say that?" he asks. Replies Lucy, "If there's one thing I know, sir, it's a Cuban accent!" That line earned the biggest laugh of the episode.  

Rescue from Gilligan’s Island

This one should have been a no-brainer. Gilligan’s Island was a syndication staple after its three year run ended in 1967, and there was obvious unfinished business with the castaways still stuck in their bamboo paradise in the final episode.

Closure was finally achieved in the 1978 TV movie Rescue from Gilligan’s Island, which reunited the original cast except for Tina Louise. The timing was perfect; ten years of build-up was just right, and the cast still looked enough like their characters so their reunion would be nostalgic and uplifting, rather than desperate and sad.

The movie earned an amazing 52 share of the audience, so it was undoubtedly a success in every way except creatively. If anything, Rescue was even dumber and more juvenile than an average episode of the series. One sequence with Gilligan paddling around in the water with a shark seems to go on for hours. Worse, its popularity paved the way for The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, an even greater atrocity that featured the unforgettable image of Lovie Howell face-guarding Sweet Lou Dunbar. 

Diana Rigg in a Sitcom

I love Diana Rigg. She is in that very, very rare class of performers who can take an ordinary line of dialogue and make it compelling by sheer force of personal magnetism. Kate Jackson has it, as does Michael J. Fox and a select few others – maybe that will be a future blog topic.

Following her transcendent work in The Avengers (look it up, kids – this is the one without Iron Man) Rigg signed up to star in an American sitcom (for the paycheck, she later admitted), as a British divorcee who moves to New York to start a new life and a new career as a fashion coordinator at Butley’s Department Store.

Diana (1973) was not a terrible sitcom, but it was terribly conventional and, well, boring. Which is even more unexpected for a show with such a vivacious leading lady. It was canceled before the end of its first season.  

Police Squad!

The success of the Airplane! films established the joke-a-minute formula of writer/directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker, and the deadpan brilliance of actor Leslie Nielsen. But it was an approach that didn’t translate to television. Police Squad! debuted on ABC in 1982, and was canceled after just four of its six episodes aired.

Fans still remember this as a great miscarriage of justice (TV Guide ranked it #7 on their 2013 list of TV shows that were canceled too soon). But I kinda get why it didn’t work. The scattershot approach that made the films so unique became formulaic on the series – several jokes were repeated in every episode, such as the episode title on screen being different than what the announcer read, the faux ‘freeze frame’ behind the closing credits, and the murder of a “special guest star” at the beginning of each show.

Also, TV standards and practices being what they were in the 1980s, the show did not have the same leeway with the subtly risqué content that contributed to the best moments in the Naked Gun movies, which were inspired by the series.  

Barbara Eden on Dallas

While the timing was right for Rescue From Gilligan’s Island, it was not so fortuitous for another classic TV couple.

By the time Jeannie blinked her way into Ewing Oil, Dallas was limping through its 14th and final season. Viewers had already endured Bobby’s shower resurrection, a trip to Russia for no apparent reason, and the escalating embarrassment of Sasha Mitchell’s attempts to act. No one cared anymore and that apparently included the writers, who introduced Eden as corporate raider LeeAnn De La Vega. She went after J.R.’s company because – wait for it – he had jilted her in college. Really? Two TV icons and that’s the best they could do?