John Wickham Gascoyne Beresford Steed and Mrs Emma Peel (née Knight)
Very popular British
Spy Drama running from 1961-1969, created by
Sydney Newman. A total of 161 episodes in six seasons. The show singlehandedly started the
Spy Catsuit and
Action Girl tropes.
Its most famous male-female partnership, between 1965 and 1968, was Patrick Macnee (who would later appear in a
Bond film) and Diana Rigg (who would later appear in a
Bond film).
In earlier seasons (1962-1964), the female co-star was Honor Blackman (who would later appear in a
Bond film).
The series was originally created as a vehicle for Ian Hendry (who would not later appear in a Bond film), to capitalise on the popularity he had developed during his previous show,
Police Surgeon. In the
pilot, his character, Dr Keel, was recruited by spy John Steed (Macnee) as a part-time expert assistant in return for Steed's help capturing the murderers of Keel's wife; this was pretty much
the last time in the series any actual avenging took place. This first series was generally a grim-and-gritty crime affair, centering around drug smugglers, arms dealers and endless cases involving stolen diamonds.
A TV strike delayed the start of the second season so Hendry left to pursue a film career. Steed became the show's central character and the production team started to explore other partnerships. The first, lasting just a few episodes, was Dr King, a blatant
Suspiciously Similar Substitute. He was followed up by stories that alternately paired Steed up with nightclub singer Venus Smith (
The Chick) and female spy Cathy Gale (arguably TV's first true
Action Girl). Cathy, who was mostly written identically to Dr Keel, proved to be the most popular and Venus was quietly dropped.
This
retooling of the show became a massive smash. With a consistent
Spy Couple format, the show began to move away from more mundane villains and towards science fictional supervillains and
diabolical masterminds.
Blackman left to pursue a film career (playing Pussy Galore in
Goldfinger* which is a Bond film
) and was replaced by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, described as a "talented amateur". Simultaneously, production switched from videotape to 35mm film. The show became much more stylish and faster-paced and even gained a new theme tune, although it wasn't until the next season that it was produced in colour. Mrs Peel - whose husband didn't make an appearance until her final episode - set the trend of the
Spy Catsuit and continued the gentleman spy
/Action Girl setup. Steed and Mrs Peel became the show's iconic pairing, helped by the introduction of filmed and colour episodes raising the show in the public's consciousness.
The stories became crazier and crazier - Space plants from the moon! Assassination by laser! Invisible spies! Housecats trained to kill! Politicians hypnotised into becoming children! - and typified the swinging cool of
1960s Britain.
Eventually Rigg left Steed for the embrace of
George Lazenby's doomed James Bond, and Steed took on his last partner, Tara King. Tara (played by Linda Thorson, who has
not appeared in a Bond film) was a more feminine character, though still an
Action Girl, but the series never survived the loss of Rigg, massive problems behind the scenes and being put up in America against
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In; the series finished after just one season with Tara King.
A
Revival was attempted in 1976, with
The New Avengers, starring Macnee and Joanna Lumley (better known for
Absolutely Fabulous,
but had earlier appeared in a Bond film). Oh, and the guy off the Nescafe adverts. But the new, gritty tone — matching shows like
The Sweeney and
The Professionals — was too much of a departure and it soon collapsed. This series lasted from October, 1976 to December, 1977. A total of 26 episodes in two seasons.
It was later
made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes (who is soon to appear in a
Bond film) and
Uma Thurman, whose only redeeming quality was
Sean Connery (
who had appeared in many Bond films)
hamming it up as an evil Scotsman. For more on this film, see
The Avengers (1998).
Not to be confused with
the comic or
its film adaptation.
Character tropes include:
- Action Girl (Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, Tara King, and Purdey in the revival)
- Actor Allusion (In one episode, Cathy Gale sends Steed and Peel a postcard from Fort Knox.
- Almost Dead Guy (countless episodes)
- Anonymous Ringer (The Prime Minister in "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Station")
- Ax Crazy ("Escape in Time", "The Joker", "Don't Look Behind You")
- Bad Boss ("A Touch of Brimstone")
- Bench Breaker: At one point, Mrs. Peel gets handcuffed to a wooden chair. When the time comes, she swiftly breaks the chair and beats up the baddies with the sticks. At the end of the episode, as they stroll off across a golf course, Steed asks her what her handicap is. She shows him the chunk of wood still cuffed to one of her wrists.
- Big Bad (the puppeteer in "Look (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellas")
- Biker Babe (Cathy Gale)
- Boxed Crook (many episodes)
- Bungling Inventor (Quilby in "The See-Through Man")
- The Chick (Venus Smith)
- Combat Pragmatist (Steed; a producer's write-up to guide writers of episodes specifically stated that "he fights like a cad and uses every dirty trick in the book...")
- Corrupt Corporate Executive ("The Fear Merchants", "Silent Dust")
- Damsel in Distress: Tara often gets chloroformed or clubbed and kidnapped.
- Diabolical Mastermind
- Doomed Appointment (Countless)
- Double Agent (Merlin - actually a quadruple agent - in "The Morning After")
- Film Felons ("Epic")
- Funny Foreigner (A few, most notably the Russian diplomat in "Fog")
- Heel Face Mole ("The Correct Way To Kill")
- Hot Scientist ("The Man-Eater of Surrey Green", not to mention Mrs. Peel all the time)
- Implacable Man (The Cybernauts in "The Cybernauts", "Return of the Cybernauts" and "The Last of the Cybernauts...?")
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain (Brodny in "The See-Through Man" and "Two's A Crowd")
- Last Name Basis
- Large Ham (Mother)
- Loony Fan ("Epic", "The Joker", "Don't Look Behind You")
- Mad Scientist (countless episodes)
- Meaningful Name (When charged with coming up with a new character, the writers were told to create one with 'Male Appeal', abbreviated as 'M. Appeal')
- The Mole (many episodes)
- Mooks (countless episodes)
- The Napoleon ("Escape in Time")
- Old Friend (countless, generally doomed)
- Part Time Hero (Tara King was the first of Steed's associates to be a professional agent like him; all those that came before were "talented amateurs" who maintained their own careers between outings with Steed. The having-to-balance-heroing-with-real-life side of the trope rarely came up with any of them, though.)
- Emma Peel is shown pursuing numerous hobbies that suggest she is rather lonely since the disappearance of her husband. No wonder she always looks happy to be solving mysteries with Steed.
- Plant Aliens ("The Man-Eater of Surrey Green")
- Platonic Life Partners: Steed and Mrs. Peel
- Quintessential British Gentleman: Steed, naturally
- Quirky Miniboss Squad (the clowns in "Look (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellas")
- Red Scare ("The Correct Way to Kill")
- Right Wing Militia Fanatic ("The Mauritius Penny", "The Eagle's Nest")
- Serial Killer ("Fog", "Game")
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute (Dr King)
- The Voiceless (Mother's bodyguard, Rhonda)
- The Stoic (Steed, Mrs Peel and sometimes Tara King generally treat horrible murder with barely a flicker of emotion)
- Technical Pacifist (Steed)
- Terrorists Without a Cause (countless episodes)
- The Vicar (numerous episodes)
Plot tropes include:
- Alone with the Psycho ("The Joker")
- Amnesia Danger ("The Forget-Me-Knot")
- Animal Assassin ("The Hidden Tiger")
- Aristocrats Are Evil ("Hellfire Club")
- Brainwashed ("The Hour That Never Was", "Pandora")
- Busman's Holiday ("A Chorus of Frogs")
- The Butler Did It ("What the Butler Saw")
- Class Reunion ("The Hour That Never Was")
- Clear My Name ("All Done With Mirrors", "Who Was That Man I Saw You With?")
- Dead All Along (Professor Keller in "The House That Jack Built")
- Deadly Prank ("Hellfire Club", "Game")
- Doppelgänger (any way you can think of — Magic Plastic Surgery, Latex Perfection, Identical Stranger, Freaky Friday Flip — The Avengers did it at least once)
- Enemy Mine ("The Morning After")
- Enemy Without (In an episode where a man's brainwaves are projected into a series of hapless British spies.)
- Fauxtastic Voyage ("Escape In Time", "Pandora")
- Finger Poke of Doom ("The Positive Negative Man")
- Freaky Friday Flip (""Who's Who???")
- Groundhog Day Loop (Kind of, in "You Have Just Been Murdered")
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game ("The Superlative Seven")
- Hypno Fool ("The Master Minds")
- Incredible Shrinking Man ("Mission... Highly Improbable")
- Invisible Main Character (Kind of, in "The See-Through Man". Definitely in "Get-A-Way!")
- Killer Robot ("The Cybernauts", "Return of the Cybernauts")
- Knife Throwing Act ("Conspiracy of Silence")
- Man-Eating Plant ("Man-Eater of Surrey Green")
- The Nasty Party ("The Superlative Seven")
- Ontological Mystery ("The House That Jack Built")
- Snuff Film ("Epic")
- Ten Little Murder Victims ("The Superlative Seven")
- Thanatos Gambit ("The House That Jack Built")
- Town with a Dark Secret ("Murdersville")
- Treasure Map ("Dead Man's Chest")
- Your Worst Nightmare ("Too Many Christmas Trees", "Death's Door")
Other tropes that appeared on the show include:
- Instrument of Murder (One enemy agent in had a clarinet with a blade that would slide out of the bell when the right key was pressed)
- It Must Be Mine ("The Man from Auntie")
- Jumped at the Call (Both Steed and Mrs Peel clearly enjoy their adventures, even though it occasionally means killing lots of people.)
- Limited Wardrobe (Steed)
- Lost Episode All but two-and-a-half episodes of the first season. Videotape was expensive in the early 60's and was routinely reused. Two acts of the first episode can be found on You Tube.
- Replaced the Theme Tune: It originally had a theme tune by Johnny Dankworth. It also underwent a complete makeover when production was switched from videotape to film, simultaneous with Diana Rigg's arrival, resulting in the more familiar Laurie Johnson theme.
- Re Tool (the show changed dramatically with the introduction of Cathy Gale.)
- Re Vision (Mother)
- She-Fu
- Shout Out (In one episode a plot to destroy a train is summed up as such: "Pop goes the diesel?"
- Shrug of God (Steed and Mrs Peel — are they or aren't they? Since they would never have been permitted to address the question explicitly on-screen, it was deliberately left ambiguous. An interviewer once asked Macnee, Rigg, and the series' head writer what was really going on with Steed and Mrs Peel, and got three different and mutually-exclusive answers.)
- Spy Catsuit (the original, in fact, and the origin of the trope.)
- Spy Couple
- Spy Drama
- Spy Fiction
- Sword Cane (Steed had a sword concealed in his umbrella)
- The Tag (humorous variety)
- Turned Against Their Masters ("The Cybernauts")
- We Help the Helpless (The Avengers' scope of action varies from episode to episode — sometimes it's impossible or unusual crimes, sometimes it's purely spy-based, sometimes it's breaking smuggling rings.)
- Weaponized Headgear (Steed's steel-lined bowler)
- Will They or Won't They? (There was a palpable sexual chemisty between Steed and Mrs Peel. And between Steed and Mrs. Gale. And between Steed and Miss King. And between Steed and Purdey.)
- Whole Plot Reference ("Dead Man's Chest" is basically It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; "The Superlative Seven" is a riff on The Most Dangerous Game)
- You Got Murder
- You Look Familiar
The 1976-77 remake series The New Avengers provides examples of:
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