Across 161 episodes broadcast between 1961 and 1969, The Avengers (starring Patrick Macnee’s John Steed and his various glamourous, assertive female assistants) cut a swathe through the decade. When its production budget increased from its fourth season onwards, it came to represent the very best of slick, stylish, wildly imaginative British adventure television.
The show came to an end in 1969 when American financing fell away, and Steed and his then-assistant Tara King (Linda Thorson) were last seen hurtling into space (and popping champagne corks) in the episode Bizarre. Their de facto boss Mother (Patrick Newell) broke the fourth wall by informing the audience that “they’ll be back”. He was right.
The Avengers (well, Steed at least) returned seven years later in a glossy new series with two new sidekicks – to take some of the physical strain from Macnee, now nearing his mid-fifties, Steed’s new best friends were high-kicking Purdey (Joanna Lumley in her star-making role) and eager-to-please Mike Gambit (the likable Gareth Hunt).
But The New Avengers arrived in a British TV landscape that was a little greyer and bleaker than the one it had exited in 1969. Broad escapist fare was out of favour – gritty investigators like Callan and The Sweeney had grown to represent a more austere and pessimistic new decade – and genre television wasn’t quite as upbeat (Doomwatch warned of the perils of new technology and Survivors decimated the world’s population).
The New Avengers tried its best to recreate the golden era in which the original had flourished, and the first thirteen-episode season has a handful of lively episodes that almost recapture the magic. The Last of the Cybernauts…?? is a rare episode that revisits the show’s own mythology, Sleeper sees much of London anaesthetised by a gang of robbers, Dennis Spooner’s Gnaws is a cheeky riff on the previous year’s box office phenomenon Jaws with a giant rat loose in the London sewers, and the very first episode The Eagle’s Nest sees Peter Cushing playing a scientist kidnapped by a Nazi cult determined to resurrect Hitler.
But many episodes are slightly plodding espionage fare like To Catch a Rat (enlivened by a sturdy guest appearance from original Avenger Ian Hendry) and The Tale of the Big Why. A second season of thirteen episodes followed in 1977, but funding required much of the series to film in France and Canada. The essential Englishness of the series was lost and the stories became even more mundane and forgettable.
For all its faults and the enduring sense that this was a ‘fish out of water’ series that didn’t quite fit in with the era it was made, there’s fun to be had here. The new trio are an endearing partnership, even if the bantering relationship between Purdey and Gambit veers towards the irritating and Steed is now more of a kindly father figure than the suave and charming ladies’ man of the original show. The 1960s Bentley is long gone but at least the umbrella and bowler remain in situ.
This new box set (Blu-ray and/or 4K) does the series more than justice with a plethora of new and vintage documentaries and features for fans to explore. The picture quality is astonishing of course; shot on 35mm, the episodes look bright and glorious and sharp. Bonus highlights include brand new commentaries (Lumley and stunt co-ordinator Cyd Childs on Sleeper, Big Finish’s Nick Briggs along with stunt performers Rocky Taylor and Henry Holland on The Last of the Cybernauts…??, amongst others), documentaries The Impact of The New Avengers: Reinvented for a New Era and Kicks, Flips & Spy Tricks: The Stunt Magic of The New Avengers, as well as fascinating convention footage from 2011 (especially stunt performer/writer/director Ray Austin) and a brief but warm retrospective on the series from Joanna Lumley. Also included are a commemorative booklet and a comic strip booklet.
It’s a generous package that more than does justice to a series that’s actually better than our memories might led us to believe, even if it doesn’t manage to capture the freewheeling zaniness and unfettered creativity of the 1960s incarnation.
THE NEW AVENGERS – SERIES 1 & 2 is available now on Blu-ray and 4K from StudioCanal.
