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Archive: Charm, Elegance & Danger

19th February 2014

In another article from the Impact archives, Ian Fryer took a look at the original (non-Marvel) Avengers and the whole wild world of British `60's adventure TV....

Avengers article from December 1993 impact online Take a charming, old Etonian spy with a highly developed sartorial sense, add a beautiful but deadly female assistant, and stir in some snappy and amusing scripts. Leave for twenty four years and then release on video (as Lumiere just have), and you have The Avengers, the funniest, oddest (The Prisoner notwithstanding), fastest moving tv adventure series ever made, and (not coincidentally) the hottest sell-through release of the year.

The story of The Avengers begins in 1960 with a failed cop series called Police Surgeon, where it was discovered that people (especially female people) liked the eponymous leading character, played by the late Ian Hendry, but hated the series. The simple answer (which nobody would have the gonads to suggest these days) was to start again and launch a new series with Hendry in a similar role. Less than a month after the axing of Police Surgeon, The Avengers was on the air.

Instead of consorting with a bunch of boring flat-foots and shop lifters, Hendry gets mixed up with spies after drug runners murder his fiancee. Helping him avenge her death is ruthless, shadowy spy John Steed, played to perfection by Patrick MacNee, at first very much the co-star. MacNee grew in popularity especially after being encouraged to make Steed a bit more flamboyant in action and dress, and the show became a hit.

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