Cult TV Blog

It's a strange world of mirrors, the cult TV blogosphere. We all plant ideas in each other's heads and bounce ideas off each other. This blog post was inspired by two coincidences, for example. The first was that Mitchell Hadley commented how much he likes early Steed. Well, so do I. I love that early Steed is a much more mutable character than the later bowler-hatted agent employed by the ministry: we never really know who he is, he comes across as louche and could even be a criminal. Particularly he treats Venus Smith like dirt and she hates it but he carries on. In fact I think this is one of the reasons the Venus Smith episodes are unpopular. Then I came across something else which reminded me of this episode (more anon). I see that I last opined about this episode nearly a decade ago (you can see the post in a series I did about Venus Smith by clicking the relevant tag in the menu). It's a pretty good blog post, even if I do say so myself, and reflects when I was young...

Continuing a series of posts about TV episodes relating to the circus. Warning: this post contains a plot spoiler. Not a favourite of the fans by any stretch of the imagination, this one. Multiple reviews comment that it just doesn't get it right and so all those reviews spend most of their time trying to work out why. I am surprised at that, because this has always been one of my personal favourite Avengers episodes. I note that many reviews also compare it negatively to Girl on the Trapeze, which I am not sure is a very fair comparison. I think the reason this episode causes such dissatisfaction is that they are expecting something which the episode may not be trying to deliver. This is not an objective assessment - I have no idea the impression that was intended but this is just an idea that's come to me as I've read the reviews. What people are expecting (very reasonably) is an action-filled spy drama utilising the setting of a circus. What the episode actually delivers...

It's been a year since The Avengers made an appearance here and even longer since I did any posts on the missing episodes of Series 1 so it's high time we had some more. This blog post is based on the reconstuction on the Series 6 boxed set, internet commentary and the original script, which can be downloaded here . I have been particuarly won over by Alex Wilcock's review of the Big Finish audio version  here.  Can I just say that I looove the way this show has 25 ratings on IMDB, despite the fact it doesn't exist any more and nobody has seen it for sixty years? In common with many another Avengers fan I have spent my life listening to rumours of what Series 1 is like. Until some episodes surfaced there was a mythology that it wasn't much cop, and so it was a perfectly sensible decision to junk the episodes. There's another mythology that Series 1 is dead gritty in comparison to later series, and to an extent this is true. For example, you can ghet lung cancer...

I really don't think this Avengers is a favourite with the fans and I'm not going to beat about the bush, I can see why. It lurches too far into the realm of slapstick for most people, has a plot which can only be described as labyrinthine, and includes enough gimmicks for three normal episodes. I'm not going to try to redeem it but as is my wont, have a few opinions to pass. Right at the beginning when the secretary drives off the grey car she drives off in is a significant part of British motoring history. It is badged as a Morris 1100 with a 1965 registration and is part of the  ADO16  range produced by the British Motor Corporation and later British Leyland. These were the best selling cars in Britain for most of the 1960s and in the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil gives the car a damn good thrashing, it's an ADO16 he does it to. Bizarrely they were designed by Sir Alec Issigonis who came up with this clunky design despite also designing the permanently curvaceous...

These novelisations have come up here a couple of times. There were a number of novels published based on The Avengers in the sixties. Rather than rely on the remaining yellowing paperbacks, it is my joy to let you know that many of these are available at the Internet Archive. I have worked from  this  list to compile this list, and there may well be others. I have read some of them but look forward to expanding my reading. Deadline by Patrick Macnee and Peter Leslie (1965) https://archive.org/details/TheAvengersDeadline Dead Duck by Patrick Macnee and Peter Leslie (1966) https://archive.org/details/TheAvengersDeadDuck The Floating Game by John Garforth (1967) https://archive.org/details/avengers1thefloatinggame The Laugh Was on Lazarus by John Garforth (1967) https://archive.org/details/avengers2thelaughwasonlazarus The Passing of Gloria Monday by John Garforth (1967) https://archive.org/details/avengers3thepassingofgloriamunday Heil Harris by John Garforth (1967) https://arc...

This is a post I've been thinking about for ages, because we all wish there was more of The Avengers (particularly in its later incarnations) but there couldn't really be any more. The New Avengers doesn't quite catch the feel of the later series of the original show - perhaps you had to be stoned out of your head to write them. With this in mind, here are three films from the sixties which I think also capture the ethos of the original Avengers. Just to be totally clear, I mean the Peel/King series with high levels of unreality, lots of magical omniscience, and set in a very swinging London. This was of course a London where you didn't have to have an income of £300,000 a week to live there. The world of parties, lots of experimentation, and a time which will never be repeated. It was a world in which the entire resources of the world weren't aggregated in the hands of half a dozen corporations. First up we have The Sorcerers  (1967) in which Boris Karloff plays an...

Oh dear, this Avengers doesn't half get a hammering on the internet. For example  Grant Goggins  says, 'This story is a complete turkey.' Simon Wood  says, ' It’s an interesting episode to watch and quite absorbing just as a curiosity, if you watch it with suitable detachment. But it doesn’t fit, production values are very low, and it’s certainly not a return to ‘realism’.' And for the most damning,  David K Smith  says, ' Doubtless one of the worst classic  Avengers  episodes of all time.' Given the total train wreck everyone else considers this adventure, it will surely come as no surprise that it is one of my favourites. Don't get me wrong, it has incredible shortcomings so let's get them out of the way first. The temporary change of director means that there are elements more reminiscent of other shows here. Star Trek for example. I do see that. There are also elements of incredibly bad sci-fi movies. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if parody...

This post is based on the episode reconstruction on the Avengers Special Features disc. We go straight into the underworld with this one, but goodness how old fashioned it seems. On the one hand Im sure many a retail worker supplements their income with an Only Fans these days, so the sex work has probably become more widespread but the mechanics of 1960s prostitution seem so old fashioned. When I lived in London in the nineties I knew someone whose job was putting the advertising cards in phone boxes for sex workers. There were a bunch of them who worked for different pimps and they spent every day cycling round taking down other people's cards and putting up their own. Even that seems old fashioned now but - yikes - it was 30 years ago. Do city workers still live in hostels? I doubt it, but it indicates the girls aren't being paid enough to live independently. I wonder whether it would have been acceptable for a young girl to house share in the early 1960s - I suspect it woul...

I love this episode, however have fought shy of writing about it because it manages to pack so much in, viz. 1. The Hammer style beginning. I actually think it is one of the nicest Avengers imitations of other genres. 2. Actually perhaps it's more in the style of Amicus because it is set in the present day and includes dialogue about the reality or otherwise of ghosts. I love the Avengeresque acronyms of the two ghost investigating groups, FOG and SMOG! 3. The episode is set against the noblesse oblige background of the Benedict estate. Very classic Avengers setting of the great and the good gone wrong. 4. The caricatured British setting is influenced by a very stereotypical foreigner. 5. It isn't explicitly mentioned but the noblesse oblige setting is not totally beneficent to the workers. The Benedict family not only formerly operated a mine, never a very safe or pleasant place to work, but the operation was brought to a close by an accident. However the dukes of Benedict are...

 How didn't I know this video existed until today?

 I love this episode, it is like an encapsulation of everything Avengers in one hour! Eccentrics, romance, dastardly plots, and parody of our glorious nation. Actually I was reminded of it when watching Clue (one of my favourite films, along with Murder by Death), when Tim Curry told one of the guests that a butler 'butles'. There is an irony - Steed understands 'service' so well because of having been brought up on the other side of the counter. He fits in by actually being an obvious fraud and therefore a shifty character - I love that the nobles in his forged references are the names of pubs! Normally I don't take to familiar faces but like that John le Mesurier turns out to be the baddie here. I love his quote to the effect that his roles were usually of a decent man at sea in a chaos of his own making - which presumably means this isn't a usual role for him. He did actually see himself as a jobbing actor of the sort I'm usually irritated by and has a hu...

I have had a stressful few weeks... However thankfully I am starting a holiday at home which will hopefully mean getting some sun. I was thinking which recent purchases I ought to blog about but then decided that I will watch and blog about what I want to! One of the reasons I have picked this Avengers is it is an all-time favourite of mine, seems to be popular with the fans and yet strangely gets hammered on the Internet. Let's get the criticism out of the way, so that I can proceed with pure adulation. Props, locations, shots are all taken from other Avengers, but of course we must remember these shows were intended to be viewed once and not to hold up to the sort of analysis we give them now. You will also read that this one is inferior to Too Many Christmas Trees - it is if you buy the premise of real psychic powers, but I think the fake psychic power here puts it more firmly in the spy stable. I have commented many times on the sparse props used by this series to give a wh...

In theory I am working from home but surprisingly can't get on to remote working and have done nothing for two days. I have additionally been offered another job, and since my manager couldn't be bothered to acknowledge my notice or speak to me, I am not minded to be helpful! The perfect opportunity to write a blog post. I don't know why I have never noticed that this Avengers is one of those which spoof a whole genre of film, in this case the dangerous plants theme which is a sub set of 1950s creature features. It is suitable for the Avengers  which so frequently refers to the 1960s love and fear of science, which at the same time was mirrored by a love and fear of nature. One of the things I find interesting about this is that in theory the action leaves Avengersland completely, going as far as Denbigh, which is in Wales. There are also other distances involved, by means of rockets and what have you. There is therefore a sense in which this show is an exception to the...

I am accustomed to saying that the world depicted in The Avengers is not real. Until now. British Pathé did a series of films on eccentric vicars and this one (from 1963) is straight out of The Avengers. Many a clergyman must have been involved in wrestling or boxing, but working in Canada  buying a horse from 'the gypsies' and giving the horse beer to drink take it to the next level. And that wrestling match in the open surely wasn't set up for the camera was it?

I was convinced I had already blogged about this Avengers episode, since it is one of my favourites, but am unable to find it if I have. The episode came to my mind recently, because once again I am having a spot of bother at work. I solemnly swear I don't go looking for it! But when I explained to my manager the reason that it is a phenomenally bad idea to stop anyone except management reporting incidents, I found myself using the words of Mother in this episode, when he comments that his interlocutor would be foolish not to suspect him . Nobody should be above suspicion, and the best-intentioned of people can, and do, go off the rails. Since then one of my colleagues has quite rightly blown the whistle on their failureto treat a particular event as an incident, and management have wound up looking very silly indeed. Anyway the upshot is that all three of their seniors are looking for other jobs. Incidentally, in this one Mother dictates a memo to Grandma, whom we never see, an...

Why haven't I thought of this similarity before? As I write this I am watching Never Say Never Again, and while fans will know some don't even think of this as a real Bond film, I have a weakness for the unloved and orphaned. I see from t'internet that the first Bond novel by Ian Fleming was published in 1953 - although push that back to the middle of the forties if you believe that Fleming plagiarised Bond from another writer. The first film was in 1962, although again there was a Bond episode broadcast in the 1950s US TV show Climax! I am not convinced that UK scriptwriters on The Avengers would have been that likely to have seen that show, but of course you never know. The first Avengers episode was broadcast in 1961. In novel terms Bond has the head start but The Avengers was broadcast in the UK before the first Bond film. This  page has a list of real people who could possibly have contributed to Bond's personally - I had no idea there were so many! But one thi...

I'm on holiday this week and hence a post about one of my favourite Avengers episodes, which is a jolly romp about a hotel. Except it isn't, since this Avengers draws on the classic fear found in many a dream, where the protagonist finds himself in a situation where nobody believes him. In this case the prison is a luxury hotel and nobody can believe it is a prison. Out here in the real world this situation is of course what underlies many a situation of abuse, and it is no coincidence that I am writing this post shortly after the Abbot of Ealing Abbey has belatedly resigned from his position in the wake of the inquiry into child sexual abuse showing the paucity of his response to complaints. One of his predecessors is in prison after being on the run from the police, and another monk and several lay teachers are also in prison. But who would have believed that those holy men would be abusers? Just as who would believe a hotel would be so difficult to escape from? That is t...

I have been watching The Moonbase, and I'm liking it very much. Not for the first time it has made me ponder that Cybermen appear in Doctor Who, and Cybernauts appear in The Avengers. Cyber of course indicates that something pertains to the world of computers, information technology and, nowadays, virtual reality. Much of this was a fond dream in the 1960s but the appearance of this word reflects the contemporary enthusiasm for the brave new world of science, an enthusiasm I have written about here frequently. I have also written about the corresponding fear of what happens when technology gets out of hand, which is of course present in the depiction of both Cybermen and Cybernauts. I had wondered before whether anyone else had made a connection between these two monsters, and of course fandom didn't fail me, see for example  here.  That link also kindly did my homework for me and revealed that the Cybernauts were first broadcast a full year before the Cybermen made thei...

I started a blog post on this episode last week but it became incredibly unwieldy so I have scratched the whole lot and will start again. I find that using voice activated software to type makes me even more verbose than usual so perhaps I'm better with bullet points. I do highly admire the way David Stimpson blogs about The Prisoner, though, with more short posts on particular points, although I'm not sure it would work with the way I blog. 1. This Avengers episode is the famous one with Mrs Peel strapped to the railway line. I start with this because I had forgotten it was this one. My main criticism of this episode is that what with the radar thing, the hospital, the undertakers and the railway, it is perhaps somewhat too packed with different images. 2. Apart from that scene the episode contains about every ingredient of an Avengers episode you could ever wish for: English eccentrics, wonderful visuals, deadly enemies... You name it. 3. The episode effectively 'Ave...

This weekend I have watched the House on Haunted Hill (1959) for only the second time in my life. I have had it saved on my hard drive for a number of years but haven't watched it again because I remember it as being rather inconclusive and unsatisfying. I have much preferred it the second time, for Reasons which are not entirely clear to me. It has however set me thinking about some possible connections with this Avengers episode. The superlative seven it's another of those Avengers episodes which Tend To Be  written about fairly dismissively in the blogosphere. I have a feeling that this is because it is perceived to be a remake of the Cathy Gail era episode dressed to kill. And of course it is, or rather it is another episode which uses the same basic plot device off a number of people being called together and then being picked off by various methods. Let me get of the way right at the beginning that I agree with the basic criticisms of this episode, and in fact do...