Barring The Prisoner, Star Trek (with Kirk and Spock) and Thunderbirds, The Avengers is the best 1960s TV series going - you can have hours of fun pretending to be John Steed by bellowing "MRS PEEL" at everybody in your life knowing that few of them will know what you mean - but will laugh anyway. Note the opening credits of the Emma Peel Colour series (1967), where Steed (Patrick Macnee)wobbles while standing on one leg proferring his furled umbrella. Some of the stories here have not been screened in the UK since 2001 - and then only on Granada Plus where they were edited down from original run times of 50 minutes to 46 to accommodate ever longer advert and trailer breaks; and in the case of the final episodes of the Tara King series (1968-9) this amounted to the removal of the tag scene which closed every episode. Thusly, volumes 7 & 8 of the Tara King series have been known to achieve ridiculously high prices in Ebay auctions - these being the episodes most rarely screened in their entirety - Channel 4 ran them in full in late summer 1997 in an early Friday evening slot. Some may choose to source their Avengers fix by buying the much better priced Dutch DVD releases (re-titled "Der Wrekers") but with the confusion that they sequenced their discs with a different running order to the UK issues. Oddly, even these do not follow the exact order in which the stories were originally transmitted or filmed (Dave Rogers' exquisite books The Avengers (1983) and The Ultimate Avengers (1995)tell you everything you need to know about this) Let's hope the whole set from Ian Hendry's one remaining 1961 videotaped episode ("The Frighteners") to Joanna Lumley's miniskirt marvel "Emily" from 1977 are all given re-releases on DVD at prices lower than you'd expect to pay for an thoroughbred Ferrari or an undiscovered Titian – which happily they now have. But what price would be paid to that enterprising and either exceptionally wealthy or well connected (pun intended) person who owns original video recordings of those 1961 episodes that ITV hadn't got room for in their apparently tiny vaults? Dream again - and dream harder,sweet cousins.
Review of The Avengers
