THE AVENGERS

ITV series (ABC)

aired in UK 1961-1969

Notes by Domino

Season One

Season One starred Ian Hendry as Dr. David Keel. In the very first episode "Hot Snow", Keel's girlfriend is gunned down by drug peddlers, and he vows to avenge her death. A shadowy and mysterious figure, John Steed (Patrick McNee), introduces himself to Keel and says he is also after the gang. Together they bring them to book.

It emerges that Steed is a member of an undercover police organistation (though it doesn't seem to be Special Branch!) that is fighting organised crime. The rest of Season One saw Keel drawn into various adventures in which he either agreed to help Steed or was duped into doing so. Steed's character was very cynical and underhand yet velvety smooth. In this season, Keel frequently wore a three-quarter length military style raincoat and Steed wore a standard length trench-coat. This season was going to be extended from 26 to 39 episodes, but an actors' strike by Equity ensured that this never happened.

Always a watchable series, the fact that the style drastically altered from season to season did irritate even a lot of its loyal fans. Nevertheless, it achieved cult status.

Season Two

Ian Hendry was not available for Season Two as he had turned his attention to films. Steed was therefore elevated to be the central character. Without explanation he now seemed to be involved in regular counter-espionage as well as fighting crime! He had three assistants, though in each episode only one appeared. There was Dr. Martin King (played by Jon Rollason - who would later be in 'Coronation Street' as David Robbins, a teaching colleague of Ken Barlow), and Venus Smith, a night-club singer, (played by Julie Stevens), but by far the most popular was Cathy Gale, a highly intelligent widow with a PhD in Anthropology and a black belt in Judo, (played by Honor Blackman). In the episode "Man in the Mirror", Venus wears a three-quarter length, unbelted raincoat (unbuttoned). In the episode "Death Dispatch", which is set in South America, and others, Cathy wears a trench-coat, though it was her leather clothing that attracted all the attention.

In Season Three Steed and Cathy are a definite team. Cathy frequently wears her trench-coat. In the episode "Second Sight", set in Switzerland, she meets Steed in an Alpine cable car during heavy rain, and has it belted and buttoned to the neck.

"Second Sight"

"Death of a Batman"

Season Four

In Season Four Cathy Gale was replaced by Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg). On seeing an advance photo of her, I remember thinking how great she was going to look in a trench-coat. Alas, she never wore one! There are only two episodes in which she dons rainwear. One is "Silent Dust" [to which Pete has already drawn our attention], where she briefly wears a short riding mac, but of greater interest to us is "A Surfeit of H2O". At several points in this she wears a tight-fitting, shiny, black PVC suit. Inexplicably, for a fight at the end, despite taking place in an extremely heavy (artificially induced) downpour, she wears her leather fighting suit. (Perhaps they thought the PVC wouldn't be up to it.) Even better, in one all too brief scene in this episode, she wears a standard length, shiny black PVC raincoat, belted and buttoned. The stories were unashamedly surreal.

"A Surfeit of H2O"

Season Five

Season Five was the first in colour. It seems to be without macs. There is a publicity photo showing Steed with Emma on a bicycle, wearing a shortie white raincoat with a fur collar, with just one button fastened. I have been unable to identify which episode this appears in, and suspect it may not be in any. The stories now became quite silly.

[Cari H tells us that this picture of Steed and Emma is from The Hour That Never Was, 1965 (series 4).]

Season 6

In Season Six, Emma Peel was replaced by Tara King, who Steed insists on calling 'Ra-boom-di-ay' - whatever did they make of that in the USA? - (played by Linda Thorson) and I I used to think there were no macs to be seen. I now have
a pic however which shows that must be wrong. I have taken it from a clip which is dubbed into French. It appears to be from a "tag scene", but despite scouring the book "The Complete Avengers", which gives a detailed synopsis of every episode, including the tag scenes, I cannot identify with certainty to which episode this belongs. It may be "Stay Tuned".

yellow mac

Incidentally, all Tara King's clothes for this series were designed by Harvey Gould (for the first six episodes only) and then Alun Hughes, who had designed some of Emma Peel's outfits. So it must be the latter who designed this mac. I wonder if he intended Linda Thorson to wear the sou'wester back to front, or was it her own idea?

Domino