People are voting emotionally.

Fantastic!

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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?

I can only comment on the episodes using Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg between 1965 and 1968.What a diverting show it was. MacNee is John Steed, the proper gentleman in bowler hat, wielding his deadly brolly. His character and appearance are perfect for a vehicle like this. It isn't so much that he was never nonplussed, so much as that he was always plussed. Rigg is Emma Peel in her jump suits, zippered up front, with that tantalizing, over-sized ring dangling from the zipper just below her sternoclavicular notch. Diana Rigg has a curious beauty. She sports a pair of wide-set eyes, elevated cheekbones, a perfunctory nose and tiny lips, like a Hentai cartoon. She's a good actress too. Did a fine job as one of the bad daughters in Lawrence Olivier's TV production of "King Lear." She was so popular at the time she left this series that she was whisked off to Broadway for "Abelard and Heloise," which included a topless scene. I understand the theater was jammed, but then the story has always been immensely popular with the masses. There are Abelard and Heloise fan clubs in every dusty little town in the world.The two of them work off each other very well, whether popping the cork of a champagne bottle or fending off evildoers. Their, um, relationship is never fully explained. They both work for some ultra-secret British government organization apparently. Each show opens with Mrs. Peel uncovering a message from Steed, coyly hidden in a box of chocolate or under some peeling wallpaper -- "Mrs. Peel. We're needed." The forces they battle are absurd. Some fantastic organization is breeding a horde of robotic soldiers in a vast, excavated place under a cemetery, and they plan to emerge and take over the British Isles. Or another cabal -- P.U.R.R. -- has invented a device that turns ordinary pussy cats into demonic, homicidal beasts that will be used to eliminate the world's leaders so that P.U.R.R. can take over. Somebody is always trying to take over the world. And Steed and Mrs. Peel are always there to thwart their plans.It isn't broad comedy. A viewer is more likely to smile than laugh out loud. But the scripts are quietly witty and suggestive. The episode about felines -- "The Hidden Tiger" -- has an uncountable number of references and puns on the subject. P.U.R.R. is run by a Mr. Cheshire. (Cheshire cat, get it? "Alice in Wonderland"?) The manager's name is Mr. Manx. Too many puns on pussies and cats to enumerate, but the last word spoken in the episode is "cat-astrophe." The fashion is that of Britain in the period of the early Beatles, and Carnaby Street, and the general sense conveyed is that of a loose-limbed freedom from earlier conventions. Nothing is taken seriously. If a man drops dead in front of Steed and Mrs. Peel, they kneel down, check his pulse, and look at each other with a slight, quizzical frown.The plots are convoluted, and it's easy to lose track of what's going on. At times, one's mind drifts. A series like this must walk a tightrope. "Whimsy" can too easily slip into "cute" or, worse, the abyssal "silly." But the plot is never very important anyway.Everything is handled with style and panache. Bowler-hatted or coiffed auburn, these episodes are heads and shoulders above most of the junk that fill the TV screens today.

The adventures of a suave British agent John Steed and his sexy female sidekicks...This highly popular and long running spy show was the brainchild of Canadian born producer Sidney Newman. It began life as a medical crime drama called "Police Surgeon" starring Ian Hendry as Dr David Keel a pathologist working for the London police. When this failed to take on with the public, the character called John Steed was created. In the first episode of the revamped show renamed "The Avengers", John Steed helps Dr David Keel to avenge the death of his wife because he happened to be after the same man. Steed and Keel would collaborate many more times to rid the streets of criminals. The new show took on much better but Ian Hendry departed after the first series and was replaced by Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, the first of the better known sexy sidekicks that would put the show firmly on the British TV show map. Blackman lasted two series and was then replaced by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, a sexy auburn haired leather cladded woman who was expert at karate as well as having skills in a wide range of subjects such as chemistry. By now John Steed's English gentlemen image had been fully opened up, his bowler hat and umbrella was inspired by the film "Q-Plains". Steed's image also consisted of suave suits and he drove vintage cars, first a 1927 4 and a half litre Bentley and occasionally a speed six Bentley (circa 1926) and later a 1927 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in the Linda Thorson series. In one or two episodes, Steed could be seen driving a 1927 Rolls Royce Phantom One. Emma Peel drove a 1966 Lotus Elan and Tara King was often seen behind the wheel of a Lotus as well.By now the show had cracked the American market and it's success lead to the use of colour film for the last two series. Diana Rigg left in 1967 and her replacement was a young Canadian actress called Linda Thorson who played a young agent called Tara King. There was initial doubts about her suitability to the part, but the script writers modelled the character as a young agent who Steed was grooming and her skills developed as the series progressed. The series was a tremendous success in the UK, but in America it was less so. Therefore in 1969 the show was cancelled. However, in 1976, a revival series entitled "The New Avengers" surfaced co-produced by original producers Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens and a French production company (see separate review). Alas, financial problems saw the show cancelled after a year."The Avengers" is without doubt one of British TV's finest hours. In almost every episode superb character actors were drafted in to support Macnee and his co-stars. The plots were usually tight and the combination of fantasy and a unique brand of British humour rose the show well above the average sixties spy show. The most representative segments of the show are without doubt the Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson series. The Honor Blackman series has dated badly because the primitive video tape production techniques are less effective than the later filmed episodes and the style of the show was never really opened up until Diana Rigg joined the show. The writers most associated with the look of the programme are Brian Clemens and Philip Levene. There is only one episode of the Ian Hendry series left in existence and the majority of these were transmitted live.Finally, here is a list of my recommended episodes, all are available on DVD.Diana Rigg series: "The Gravediggers", "The Master Minds", "What The Butler Saw", "Room Without A View", "Epic", "The Living Dead" and "The Forget Me Knot" (in which Emma Peel left and Tara King joined).Linda Thorson series: "Love All", "Requiem", "The Morning After", "The Rotters" and "Bizarre" (the very last episode in the series saw Steed and Tara take off in a rocket).

There were three great shows that came out of Britain to American TV in the 60s and early 70's - The Prisoner, Monty Python, and The Avengers. When all is said and done, this is the one that I cherish the most. Patrick Macnee stars as secret agent/counter-spy John Steed along with a series of female sidekicks. Macnee was refined, witty and debonair but with an un-Bondian modesty - he was simply different than Bond, rather than better or worse. The plots were campy, cute and wry with some suspense, the restrained comedy and the drama played about equally. The series has a classic bell curve, the episodes in the middle of the run excelling over the early episodes (low production values and rudimentary scripts) and the later shows (tired concept and no Rigg). The only really rewatchable episodes now are the Rigg episodes, but they are most eminently enjoyable, as good in their way as anything now shown on television and deserving of a lot more cable time than they've gotten (I happen to have the entire Rigg DVD set). Rigg's Emma Peel is a truly unique television character who was ahead of her time - beautiful, adventurous, graceful, fearless, direct, coy, and athletic, among other things. The exact nature of the relationship between Steed (bachelor) and Peel (missing husband) was enchantingly ambiguous without being self-consciously so, and their interplay was always a great joy to watch. In addition to all else, the opening and closing credits were enchanting and elegant. In my top five television shows of all time.