Look… (Stop me if you’ve heard this one) but there were these two Avengers

When people in the media today refer to The Avengers, they are almost certainly referring to the Marvel comics and film series. But to some of us, when we see the title The Avengers, we tend to think of something else.

The history of the British TV series The Avengers is long and complicated. The series was first broadcast in 1961 and the final episode was shown in 1969. Though it’s six seasons it developed from a videotaped, studio bound crime/espionage drama to a glossy, colour filmed romp. The era most people know of will be the show’s fifth season, also known as the colour Emma Peel season. That was the series I first saw when I discovered the show while at university.

While the colour episodes are the most well known, the best season is the one immediately prior. The fourth series, or the monochrome Emma Peel season, is simple sublime. Full of charm and drama and the black and white lends well to creating a great atmosphere. If I were to introduce anyone to The Avengers I would show them the opening episode of the fourth season ‘The Town of No Return’. It is quite simply remarkable.

But what of the earlier seasons? Well these tend to get overlooked in favour of what came after. The first three seasons were made in a totally different style. They were shot on video, in a small studio and they were essentially recorded ‘as live’. They are much rougher around the edge and some episodes are dogged with technical issues.

So how come my favourite period of the show is the rough, wobbly videotaped era? I’m a big fan of archive TV and can easily cope with different types of production.

Sort of… I’ll admit when I first watched an episode from the first season (The Frighteners) I was taken aback by how primitive it was. The theme music was different and the title sequence is a series of still images that look like they’ve been left out in the rain! I still have, for no apparent reason, the VHS tape which was my first experience of the early episodes. To be honest of the four on there, only one is worth watching and that is the last one on there. I’ll admit I struggled on that first viewing.

So what changed my mind? Well it was that fourth episode, Death Dispatch. It was the first episode to feature Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale. And what a difference a co star can make. It was easy to see why this character took off in the way she did. The version of Cathy is this episode is slightly different to how she’d be in subsequent episodes. She smiles a lot and dresses in well… dresses. But the chemistry between her and Patrick Macnee was evident and so I was will to give the other episodes of the era another chance.

I rented a video with a solitary episode from the third season on it, The Gilded Cage and this sealed the deal for me. The episode can only be described as a precursor for Goldfinger. It was witty and intelligent and the studio bound nature of the production never bothered me. It was a much more polished effort overall. That Christmas I asked for the series three box set and I watched the lot in a few days.

So what does these episodes have that make me prefer them? Well there’s no doubting the positives of the filmed episodes. Steed and Emma Peel have fantastic on screen chemistry and the episodes are excellent made. But what the older episodes have is a greater sense of drama. As they didn’t have the space or time for big dramatic fight scenes every week, there was a greater emphasis on character and drama. As a wannabe writer, I much prefer this. Also the character of Steed is much more fascinating. In the earlier episodes, he is much more of a shadowy figure and not entirely trustworthy. His relationship with Cathy has a slight edge to it and she often rails against Steed and his methods.

If you want a more direct comparison between the VT and filmed eras, there is a very easy way to do it. First watch the third season episode Don’t Look Behind You and then go and watch the season five episode The Joker. They might seem similar and that’s because it’s almost the exact same script. This wasn’t a mistake, some of the VT episodes were remade in colour with only a few script changes. These two though are similar but there are some key differences. I won’t go into them all here but the one that I always cite is the use of John Steed.

The basic plot of these episodes is Cathy/Emma receives an invitation from an old friend to visit them at their countryside mansion. They go and their friend isn’t there. It becomes apparent that a shadowy figure has lured them to the house to exact revenge.

In the Emma Peel version, she goes to the house alone as Steed has been laid out with a broken leg. He realises Emma has been lured into a trap and races to rescue her.

In the Cathy Gale version, he drives Cathy to the house and leaves for a weekend break. He is not seen again until right at the end of the episode. And it’s very heavily implied he knew what was going on and used Cathy as bait. This isn’t expanded on, but the Steed of this era would be more than capable of doing such a thing.

I know as a fan of drama which version I prefer. The ambiguity is much more, for want of a better word, thought provoking. I also like the idea of a hero that you’re not too sure you can trust. This is what draws me to the earlier episodes.

The first season, the hardly mentioned David Keel era, is harder to talk about as there’s so little of it left. It’s only in the last couple of years that more detailed and specific information about the episodes has been published. Of the 26 episodes broadcast only two and a third remain in the archives. For a long time these were considered to be basically ‘not very good’ but closer examination of scripts and other resources have shown they might have been more interesting than their reputation suggests. Sadly, unless someone uncovers the remaining 23 and a bit episodes we shall never know.

So that was a brief excursion through another one of my shows. I’m hoping to write up something a bit more detailed in future. And one day I will write about Foxy Brown!