Os Campeões

Three secret agents crash their plane in Tibet, but are saved by the people of a lost civilisation who endow them with the powers of super humans.

Fun fantasy series which has had some good actors and directors working on it including John Gilling (THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, THE REPTILE for Hammer), veteran cinematographer-director Freddie Francis (who won an Oscar for SONS AND LOVERS) and Cyril Frankel who worked on just about every cult British TV show from that era. On the acting side John Carson and Gerald Harper have made guest appearances. It was the skills of all the people involved, not forgetting Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt who made nonsensical material credible to watch.

This show has been re-run on BBC 2 in the mid-1990's and several of the episodes are out on video and DVD.

I like The Saint but they made far too many episodes and a lot of the episodes were poor I think.

I first saw the Champions as a kid. Imagine the scene,Scotland early 1970s,school summer holidays and it always seems to be raining. Daytime tv was only on for a few hours I think. School holidays meant they showed old series like this. I could never get interested in Belle and Sebastian or White Horses but I like The Champions and Time Tunnel and things like that.

I suppose The Saint and Man In A Suitcase were for adults but The Champions was regarded as a kids show.

Anyway looking again at this series I am struck by how the plots are pretty good and the acting is pretty good. The plot idea (superpowers for ordinary people) is good. The plots meant that the series needed a bigger budget and different locations than the London based ITC series you might be used to.

You can tell by the Buddhist overtones in the first 2 episodes that Dennis Spooner was involved here. The Champions, or what I've seen of the series (6 episodes), is yet another in the long line of 60s-70s spy shows from Great Britain. But the marked difference here is the special abilities given to each of the main characters.

They all have unusual, superhuman powers which aid them in their crime-busting. It's a bit cheesy at times, but whatever gets the job done...

I know that The Champions are virtually unheard of in my native country, but the videos are commercially available in the UK. If you're fond of obscure technicolor british action-adventure, then you can't miss The Champions.

The only problem I have with the series so far: Why do so many British shows have American actors at the helm?

All I could remember of this show was something about them wearing white; that I loved it at the time (I must have been five when it first aired - I suspect I caught repeats, but it would all have been watched on a B&W TV), and it had something to do with telepathy. Oh, and I thought that there was a connection with Switzerland. I knew the title was something like 'The Persuaders', but that that was another great show (Roger Moore and Tony Curtis). I typed 'telepathy' into the 'plot' search in IMDb TV and 'The Champions' was the first option offered. Eureka! I have had this programme bugging me on and off for about ten years - it was such a relief to find out what it was called and to see those iconic photos. IMDb is such a great site. I'm off to buy the DVDs.

My siblings and I stumbled upon The Champions when our local station aired re-runs of it one summer in the 1970's. We absolutely adored it. There was something so exotic and mysterious about it, especially when compared to the usual American re-runs (Petticoat Junction, Green Acres... you get the idea). It had a similar feel to The Avengers (not too much of a surprise, since it was also British and in the spy/adventure genre).

I would love to see it again now -- hopefully it holds up. I've mentioned this show to others and no one has ever heard of it, so I began to wonder if I'd imagined its whole existence. But the wonder that is the web has allowed me track down information about it. Hopefully it will find a new generation of fans.