Los vengadores

To this day, The Avengers remains a cult favourite. It is still released onto video and watched by fans today; whether a new generation of fans has been introduced to it is unknown but I do know that people like myself who watched it the first time round are tuning in again.

The one constant through the series was Patrick Macnee who played John Steed. He was joined by various females throughout the show (my favourite being the lovely Emma Peel played by Diana Rigg).

The show was full of wit in addition to the action, intrigue and adventure. Steed-in his bowler hat and with his umbrella-faced all kinds from mad scientists to robots. Always calm, Steed brought down his foes usually with the help of his bowler hat or umbrella.

What more can I say about The Avengers? It was unique, it was funny and it has stood the test of time very well.

When I was 16 this series meant a lot to me.

Like other American fans, I became aware of it when it burst onto American TV in summer 1966. What a revelation it was to someone who'd grown up watching American TV! It was unpredictable: it mixed mystery, adventure, science fiction, and satire in always changing proportions. The mysteries were truly intriguing, the adventures truly exciting, the eerie situations truly frightening, the fantastic explanations truly ingenious, and the jokes truly funny. In later seasons the show formularized its conflicting elements, like every other show. But in the beginning you couldn't guess what might come next.

And of course there was the sex and violence. It seems impossible now that there was once a time when there was too little sex or violence on TV, but what there was was dull and stodgy. The American network had omitted the most suggestive episodes, but left in a few lines of dialogue that startled at the time. The climactic fight scenes were much more exciting than those on American shows: dynamically staged and photographed, and with a satirical edge, which was lost in later seasons.

The writing was very good too. To us in the States it seemed even better than it was because we hadn't then seen a lot of British TV. The scripts were solidly constructed, tightly packed, and full of clever dialogue. Patrick Macnee has claimed in interviews that "there was no clever dialogue" except what he and Diana Rigg rewrote, but the lines of the supporting characters belie that.

The atmosphere of the show was new to me: a dark, bright, sharp, woozy, ordered, but unpredictable world where reality could be rolled like a die, figures of speech could become facts (a killing rain, an underground club), and you couldn't be sure that anybody was what he seemed. If I'd seen Alfred Hitchcock's early films at the time, I would have recognized this as an exaggeration of their milieu, to the verge of parody: those flower sellers and organ grinders seemingly hanging out on street corners but really doing spy business. The world of The Avengers extended beyond them to encompass killer robots and plants from outer space--but only a certain distance beyond. (The failure to observe that distance spoiled many of the later shows.)

That atmosphere stayed with me for years. It carried me through dreary jobs by enabling me to imbue mundane surroundings in schools and industrial parks with fantastic and sinister possibilities. Other shows tried to imitate it, but never successfully. How could they, when The Avengers itself had lost it and never recaptured it again?

The primary technical device for bringing about this atmosphere was the teaser. The Avengers made an art out of it. A man in a field is rained on, tries to escape, is rained into the ground. Superimpose title: "A Surfeit of H2O." The title is the punchline. A man breaks into a house and opens a door; a lion jumps out at him. Title: "The House That Jack Built." And so on.

The puzzle posed by the opener often suggested philosophical or metaphysical possibilities, but they were never followed up on. The solution generally turned out to be slightly science-fictional, and the climax, rather than expanding on the potential implications of the story's premise, was just a comic fight. But it was remarkable in itself that the series could progress from one to the other with such deftness, beginning with a cosmic inversion and steadily narrowing it down to a trivial joke.

The heroes were invincible (otherwise the stories would have been too horrifying), inexplicable (those of us who didn't know the show's origins had no idea why they were called Avengers), androgynous (Steed was the fancy dresser, Mrs. Peel did the manhandling), paradoxical (Mrs. Peel was widowed, yet somehow virginal), and timeless. (In subsequent seasons, they were turned into pop icons, but divested of most of the twists that had made them interesting.)

What was considered by common consent the best episode of all, "The House That Jack Built," I didn't see originally (it was a choice between that and a screening of "The Music Box" with Laurel and Hardy). When I finally got to see it in syndication, five years later, it was like being taken back in time and watching the series for the first time. I was just as fascinated, just as mystified, just as amazed.

I set aside my Wednesday nights especially to watch the series. Apparently not many other people did. But that was always how it was with everything that developed a cult. At the time I seemed to be almost the only one who took an interest in it. Only years afterward would people write about it as if it had been a universally shared generational experience.

The following year the news came out that The Avengers would return. And so it did--sort of. But despite assiduous effort I gradually had to accede to an awareness that it was no longer very good. It had been dumbed down for Americans. It wasn't the same. It was gone.

And now, looking back on it forty years later, I wonder (and can never know for certain): was it really so good as it seemed to me, in that one happy season of my youth? And can anything ever seem that good again?

There were many spy series on the boob tube in the swingin' 60s. "I Spy". "Mission:Impossible". "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." I liked them all. But I adored "The Avengers".

One day at school, Brad Barner was talking wildly about a TV show. I made my mind to check it out, if I could.

At this time I had four brothers and four sisters. Use of the TV was by majority rule, so I plead my case for "The Avengers".

That first episode was "The Winged Avenger": the eponymous comic book character had apparently come to life and was killing off upper middle-management types.

Enter John Steed and Mrs. Emma Peel, who dispatch the villains with a wit and style I had never seen. The effect of Mrs. Peel's jumpsuits (Barbara called them Emma's "fighting clothes") on my teenage libido was a bonus. I would have watched if I was nine years old.

The Avengers were cool.

Each week I would watch the pair defeat all sorts of threats to the British Empire. I enjoyed the science fictional plots the best, but I was hooked.

An absolute masterpiece in British television, The Avengers is a timeless, witty, fantastical series which is as, if not more, popular today than it was more than 40 years ago.

This series has something for everybody - gangsters, diabolical masterminds, glamorous girls, car chases, fights and endless glasses of champagne.

It is interesting to see how the series developed from its humble beginnings in 1961. Playing it straight in the early days it gradually became more and more way-out with wackier and wackier plots and characters. The Cathy Gale and Emma Peel eras are regarded by many to be the high point of the series although there are high spots in virtually every point in the show's history.

Only one episode exists from Series 1 with the mysterious, shadowy Steed being a much more sinister character to Ian Hendry's open Doctor Keel. Then we have much verbal sparring and innuendo between Steed and the delicious Cathy Gale and her kinky boots. Film and eventually colour were introduced with the feline Emma Peel and her high kicks and the show closed the 60s in gaudy, cartoonish style with the naive Tara King and her snazzy Lotus Europa.

This is British television at its best and a true legend in broadcasting. The 1970s version, The New Avengers, has it's own charm in a way but is best regarded as a totally separate entity as this original series was...well...original!

Definitely 60's and it is obvious. Yet this is still one of the most fun shows ever made. John Steed is the epitome of British class, right down to the Bentley in British Racing Green (notwithstanding the Tara King years).

Then there is Emma Peel, mmmmm Emma Peel. Aside from Diana Rigg's obvious physical charms her real appeal is the strength of her character. Totally confident, cool, classy, and capable (driving a Lotus Elan was also a big plus) Diana Rigg created a female character (which was resisted by the producers tooth and nail I understand) that surprised me even though I first saw the show over 20 years after it went off the air. Emma Peel was devoid of the traditional female stereotypes that permeate the airwaves always in need of rescue and if not are total cartoons. She could kick ass and frequently saved Steed's butt in the process. Mass media still has a major allergy to original, tough female characters which is a testament to the originality of the character.

Something was lost after Tara King took over. It was a return to the stereotypes and the show lost something for me, that and I didn't like Steed's new car, just didn't have the same class as his former Bentley.

Still I highly recommend watching it, fun plots, wry humor, over the top villains, great characters, and an impossible lack of blood. How can you not have fun watching this?