Any Avengers fans
neo_wales
Posts: 13,625 Forum Member
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Having just read a thread on 'The Champions' I wondered if there are many fans of the Avengers?
Wonderful shows and I'm now enjoying watching them on DVD.
Wonderful shows and I'm now enjoying watching them on DVD.
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I bought the US discs about 10 years ago and refuse to buy on dvd again.
I'm waiting for the Blurays of the Rigg and Thorson series and if Optimum don't get a move on I'll buy the French releases.
Optimum are pretty inept when it comes to quality control and so far they have managed to screw up all but one of the remastered boxsets with the colour Rigg set spoilt by speeded up audio .
It's a major fault and has caused the complete boxset to be delayed by 3 months so it misses the Xmas market
And Canal + are the most expensive too
Series 5 is my favourite by a country mile though. The Colour Rigg Episodes stand head and shoulder above the rest.
'Mrs Peel. We're needed.'
Classic stuff!!!!
My favourite eps are 'Invasion of the Earthmen' from the classic series and 'Dead Men are Dangerous' from the New Avengers
*snif*
Please excuse me
*sob*
I suppose it is because I remember the Tara King episodes from my childhood. Plus I think she is a stunning lady in every sense. Emma Peel always seemed a bit too posh for me. ( Answers on a postcard)
When the New Avengers began, we all watched ( it was after all, must see tv at the time ) and loved it. Just recently I bought the boxed set and thought it better than my memory of it. Especially Mike Gambit, who had been rather diminished in my mind due to coffee commercials and endless 'Give us a Clue' appearances. He was very very good, and I do not think the New Avengers would have worked with just Steed and Purdey. He was warm and witty and hard as nails as required. The wide jacket collars don't look too ridiculous now either.
As for the movie! A triumph of set and costume design over every other important factor. What were they thinking. To be fair to the producers and director etc. they were seriously messed around by the studio on that one. I know a couple of people who worked on it and lament what might have been if they had been allowed some plot to make the edit and not just chases, catsuits and bad wisecracks. Oh and very bad acting from Sir Connery.
Naughty Sean!!!!
But basically Ralph Feinnes was miscast as Steed. He did his best, bless him. Never more has a part cried out for someone with more warmth and humanity.
I cannot imagine anybody getting Steed right apart from Mr Macnee though.
Any suggestions?
I've seen the Rigg episodes a couple of times, but have only seen a couple of Blackman episodes and no Thorson. Wish BBC4 would show them.
The New Avengers is largely pretty poor. Old Avengers was about groups of bee keepers plotting to take over the world; New Avengers was about Russian spies. Most ordinary.
New Avengers bridges the gap between the Avengers which takes place in fantasyland and The Professionals which is set very much in the real world. You still have the fantastic but in the age of Star Wars maybe we're just not that willing to accept the not-so-great special effects any more.
As for the Avengers film I think Uma and Ralph were brilliantly cast but the plot was a mess. Gareth Hunt was very good as Gambit, very much a prototype Bodie
Nope.
Nobody can 'play' Steed - Patrick McNee is Steed.
Some actors make a role so definitively their own that it cannot be taken on by anyone else.
This is most probably true. It was not so much playing a part as basing the part on one's own character. And therefore consigning anybody else who tries as a mere mimic?
So it would seem that if no actor would play Steed to the fans satisfaction, then does that mean that they should just leave it alone now and think up something fresh and new?
Or try to do it without the character of Steed at all. Just leave him and Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Peel, Miss King, Miss Purdey and of course Mr. Gambit as back history.
Basically start again with someone from the more obscure end of the British Secret Service helping out an ordinary member of the public as they become embroiled in nefarious plots by eccentric villains. All styled with the latest fashions and panache - and a nice cup of tea! After the pilot episode the member of the public would become part of the service and the adventures would continue. That could work well.
Umbrellas are ok, but there's no way they could get away with bowler hats though nowadays.
Really? I found the New Avengers (which I loved by the way) just as fanciful. After all the very first episode started off with Hitler's Brain! Followed shortly after by the Cybernauts, Sleeper agents that hadn't aged in 50 years, buildings that kill people, birds that kill people and Russian martial artists that can deflect bullets!
Loved that show
Emma Peel is my favourite character, and I think some of her stories are the best ones of all. But I also appreciate Tara King and The New Avengers.
My favourite companion is Emma Peel. I think the spark and witty banter between her and Steed is the best. Lots of good episodes, but "The House That Jack Built" stands out as a creepy one and one of my favourites. Then of course there is "A Touch of Brimstone" which was notorious for its time! Plus it was cut as well. With Emma dressed up in a very revealing costume.
The early episodes with Cathy Gale are okay, from what I remember of them. "Death of a Great Dane" being quite a good episode from Cathy's time on the show.
The episode featuring Dr. King, Venus Smith, or Dr David Keel tended to be a bit dull for my tastes.
Tara King episodes were great as well. The episode when they launch a rocket into space is hilarious! Plus I love the funeral episode where Tara thinks that Steed has been killed!
The Cybernaut episodes were quite good as well. Although I think their appearance in The New Avengers wasn't called for.
Interestingly The Avengers is the only British TV programme(apart from the BBC's Merlin) to ever go out on US broadcast network television(NBC showed it). Most British shows end up on the PBS networks in the US(their equivalent of the BBC).
Don't even mention the film! Oh dear! What a disaster! I know there is even a reboot being planned. I don't like the sound of that either.
I do like The New Avengers. My favourite episode from that is "Sleeper" as it is creepy having all of London asleep. "Cat Amongst the Pigeons" is also quite good evoking memories of Hitchcock's "The Bird's". I thought "Gnaws" though was pretty over the top with the giant rat!!!
Yeah, I agree with you on the new movie. They failed last time and can't see this time being better. The off-screen chemistry between Macnee and Rigg were what really made the characters work on-screen. To get that anywhere near that sort of relationship again is nigh on impossible. They should leave it be.
It was all very tongue in cheek stuff, and Emma Peel did wonderful things for me as a young lad growing up I can tell you.
Yes but they also had a lot of real life elements missing from the original, poor people, council estates, drugs, uniformed policemen, gunfights (even Steed kills 2 men using a gun), car chases, the Cold War etc. You could imagine most of it actually happening.
'Dead Men are Dangerous' is the best ep, the emotion between Steed and his old friend who always bore him a secret jealousy is great but also like 'Obsession', Martin Shaw (AND Lewis Collins, he even remarks 'We're a good team, we should work together again') as Purdey's old flame RAF pilot plotting to steal a missile and blow up Parliament. Like 'Dirtier by the Dozen' too, the idea of a mad Colonel renting out his commando unit as mercenaries to the highest bidder.
As for the giant rat, well it was better than the one in the Dr Who ep 'The Talons of Weing Chiang'
I thought they were both terribly cast.
Thurman was too cold and lacked the playful warmth that Diana Rigg brought to the character.
Fiennes resembled an English stockbroker, and lacked the dangerous streak that Macnee brought. Steed was always an English gent, but you knew he had the experience to handle himself in a fight.
I guess you could say that they were both overly-serious.
Anyhoo, looks like the Season 4 Blu-Rays are officially in Optimum limbo... : (
It takes a lot to look at home in that particular hat, though. To my mind only Patrick Macnee, Liza Minnelli and Charlie Caroli could pull it off.
If you want to imagine a new Steed, think of an actor, then put him in a bowler and see if it still works. Even though Patrick Macnee hated the hat, at least he looked good in it.
You're spot on there.:D
TBH though, I don't want or need a new Steed, because the original was perfection.
At its height it was something to behold..Emma Peel and the iconic John Steed.
The scariest thing I remember from my yoof was those bloody cybernauts karateing through doors and then the sheer relief of Steed using the simple expedient of conning them into kicking seven shades of hades out of each other.
The New Avengers wasn't as good because the classic series could never be recreated but Joanna Lumley was a decent companion and I liked the chemistry between the solid but dull Gambit and the cunning Macnee. Remember with some fondness Steed being framed and Gambit having to be the one to bring him in. Which didn't end well for Gambit...ouch!!!
The one really good thing about the New Avengers was the respect for the Steed character and if anything that show brought home what a dangerous gent he really was.
I don't think The New Avengers was that bad, it had been a few years since The Avengers had finished so it was always going to seem different when it came back. The whole Series certainly had a 70's feel about it but Patrick McNee hardly changed Steed at all. My only negative feeling about it was that due to their being three characters he was often reduced to the background in some stories.
That aside I loved the dynamic between Purdey and Gambit. It was probably the closest to the Steed-Peel partnership as you could get but in a slightly different way.
Ha!
Quite possibly the man most suited to wearing a bowler!
Do you mean the French are releasing this on blu-ray? I would have to have that.
The Avengers was my favourite TV show when I was a kid. Emma Peel was my first sexual fantasy, at the ripe old age of 8.
Don't worry, had my first crush on Lynda Carter at about the same age. Then came Kate Jackson...:)