The Avengers (TV Series) Homicide and Old Lace (1969) User Reviews

Mother tells a crime story to his aunts

[Tweekums · 5/10 · 29 July 2015]

It is Mother's birthday and he has gone to visit his crime story obsessed aunts. They want to hear a story about a case he was involved in so he tells them of InterCrime's plot to commit the Crime of the Century'. Told in flashback we see how Steed and Tara infiltrate InterCrime by demonstrating that they have the skills required for their latest job. It turns out they are needed to access a government facility and acquire the security codes which change daily. The facility is part of operation 'Rule Britannia' a plan to replace priceless artworks and the crown jewels with fakes at a time when it looks as if an enemy is about to invade. InterCrimes plan is to set the operation in motion then rob the facility. Steed is forced to go along with their plans for real when Tara is taken hostage… of course our duo will thwart their plans; if they didn't Mother wouldn't me telling the story.

This could have been a decent episode but the way it was presented was fairly weak. Much of the early material is clearly taken from other episodes and Tara's blonde wig shows us the main story was filmed with the intention of broadcasting it much earlier in the series before it was abandoned then rejigged as the story Mother tells. The story could have been interesting but it is rather disjointed and the fact that it is narrated after the events removes any sense of danger for Steed and Tara. To cap it all just as it looks as if we are going to hear Mother's assistant Rhonda talk at last it turns into a weak gag! Overall a somewhat disappointing episode.

It was never going to be brilliant, but it isn't bad.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 6/10 · 15 September 2022]

For his birthday, Mother visits his Aunts Harriet and Georgina, he recounts a recent case, in which Steed and Tara take on a group of art thieves.

Looking at one or two reviews, and hearing from fans of the show, I was expecting this to be awful, I can understand why it's not universally loved, but I have to admit, I didn't mind it.

Doctor Who had Shada, The Avengers had The Great, Great Britain crime, an episode that for one reason and another wasn't made. I can understand there were probably pressures on the producers to get episodes transmitted on time, so you can't blame them for trying to salvage the material.

You can see where they were trying to go with Tara at the time, but she wasn't Gale or Peel, I understand why there were frustrations with her character's early episodes.

Obviously it would have been better if it had been completed in its original format, but what was cobbled together here was actually quite fun. Patrick Newell's Mother was entertaining enough, but Joyce Carey and Mary Merrall are great value as the crazy Aunts.

I preferred it to Whoever shot George and Have guns, will haggle.

6/10.

Homicide with Old Footage

[LCShackley · 3/10 · 19 March 2021]

You know you're in trouble when you're past the 9-minute mark and you haven't seen Steed or Tara since the credits. The dread increases when it becomes apparent that the star of the episode is Mother, whose very presence is one of the biggest blots on season seven. Apparently, the producers were trying to salvage footage from an episode that was shot and too terrible to use, so they chopped it to bits (along with scenes from other old episodes) and had Mother talk over it, with occasional accompaniment from Laurie Johnson's tack piano. Despite the humorous bits by Mother's old aunties, this script is dead in the water and a mess to follow with any sense of logic. I guess it was a budget-saver, but it was so embarrassing that they didn't air it until the show was on its last legs.

Perfectly Dreadful

[raymond1313-614-577373 · 1/10 · 2 August 2022]

Rehashed lame material from the producer that was let go early on in the final/Tara King season. I am not at all a fan of the "Mother" character to begin with, so - apart from the yawn inducing story and material - there was almost 50% of the episode's screen time focused upon him to persevere. If I saw this Tara King episode before all the others, I would have not watched the rest of them. Yes, this was that bad.

The worst episode?

[kevinolzak · 3/10 · 8 April 2011]

"Homicide and Old Lace" may have arrived at the very end of the original series (Jan. 1969), but it was conceived in the fall of 1967, as one of the earliest Tara King episodes (witness her blonde wig, wisely discarded but not soon enough). Scripted as a sequel to the excellent Cathy Gale episode "Intercrime," this entry features the new boss, Dunbar (Keith Baxter, perhaps the single dullest villain of the entire series), leading what he describes as the crime of the century, namely the theft of priceless art treasures from under the nose of security man Colonel Corf (Gerald Harper, "Death Dispatch" and "The Hour That Never Was"). The final result is a total mishmash, half comprised of endless new footage of Patrick Newell's Mother, who never appeared in the original version titled "The Great Great Britain Crime," coupled with scenes from Emma Peel episodes, "The Bird Who Knew Too Much," "Murdersville," "The Fear Merchants," and Christopher Lee's cottage battle from "Never, Never Say Die." All of Tara's footage was shot before "The Forget-Me-Knot," with Steed making two token appearances in new scenes opposite Mother. Also featuring Mary Merrall ("The Girl from Auntie"), Donald Pickering ("The Winged Avenger"), Bari Jonson ("The Yellow Needle"), Bryan Mosley ("The Gravediggers"), and Anne Rutter ("Super Secret Cypher Snatch"). Even the producers showed their contempt for it by inserting ridiculous silent film piano music at random, creating an utterly bizarre effect that does not go unnoticed (unthinkable during the Emma Peel era). Is it the worst episode? I've always believed so, and found my father in agreement (Among many contenders, Cathy Gale's worst was "Conspiracy of Silence").

It is an episode where the writers were all sick

[hakenatongaming · 1/10 · 8 July 2022]

It is an episode where the writers were all sick so they recap all the previous episodes. So boring and feel so cheated I wrote my first review on IMDB. Dreadful.

Absolutely awful

[larrydearing · 1/10 · 23 August 2019]

I can't add much to the spot on negative comments by other reviewers except to say that this episode is proof positive that the problem with this season was not Linda Thorson as Tara King. "Get rid of the lemon & bring back the Peel" was the battle cry for Diana Rigg fans, but there are some episode in which Ms. Thorson shines. The problem was the scripts, and this one is undoubtedly the worst.

'The Great Great Britain Crime'

[ShadeGrenade · 7/10 · 7 April 2009]

'Homicide & Old Lace' is regarded by 'Avengers' buffs as the show's worst ever episode. I disagree. Season Five's 'The Joker' ( a lame remake of the vastly superior 'Don't Look Behind You' ) beats it hands down for sheer awfulness. Even so, it is a bit if a dog's breakfast.

When John Bryce was fired as producer, Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens were asked to return. They filmed new scenes for the episodes already in the can, with only 'Invasion Of The Earthmen' going out relatively intact. 'The Great Great Britain Crime' was not so lucky. Clemens apparently disliked it so much he felt the only way he could possibly include it was to turn it into a comedy, hence the framing device of Mother spinning a tall tale to his dotty spinster aunts ( Mary Merrill and Joyce Carey ). What ultimately resulted was an 'Avengers' version of 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' and you cannot get much worse than that. We can see where the faults are, and do not need for anyone to point them out to us.

The plot itself is a sequel to 'Intercrime', an episode of the second season, written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks. The dastardly criminal organisation is up to its old tricks again, this time plotting to trigger 'Operation: Rule Britannia', a plan to remove all art treasures from galleries in the event of war, replace them with forgeries, and give the originals for safe-keeping to Colonel Corf ( Gerald Harper ). Once he places them in his secure vault, Intercrime can then nab them.

The 'Great Great Britain Crime' sequences were directed by Vernon Sewell, but the director's credit goes to John Hough. The problem is that the framing material is obtrusive and leadenly unfunny, despite artful playing from Newell, Merall and Carey. There's no Tara, and Steed only appears in a toe-curling tag scene in which Rhonda ( Mother's mute bodyguard ) is made to speak for the first time. Left intact, this would in my view have been a lot more interesting. Certainly it boasts a couple of decent action bits, such as Tara being chased around a multi-storey car park by hoods and the final shoot-out in Corf's vault.

Another mistake on Clemens' part was the re-use of old footage, such as Steed nearly being buried alive in 'The Fear Merchants' and being attacked by Christopher Lee in 'Never Never Say Die'. Sadly, the original version is widely believed to no longer exist, meaning we are stuck with this travesty for all eternity.

The final insult is Laurie Johnson's tinkly piano score. It more or less tells the audience: "this is rubbish and we know it!". So its 7/10 for the revisions, 9/10 for the original material.

MR DEARING MISSED THE POINT IN 2 WAYS

[phk211 · 7/10 · 15 March 2021]

Larry Dearing's review was unthinking and totally missed the point, which was that the intention was to give the plot structure an original angle, and to make the most of the comedic & comic-book element of the show. And the similarly stupid bad reviews of Linda Thorson failed to recognise that all Steed's partners had their own personalities and contribution to the series, and Ms Thorson, as well as being (arguably) the most beautiful of them all - in outstanding company - and performed equally as professionally as the others. I can't understand why anyone would give her a hard time, and the partnership deserved many more seasons.

A lost early Tara King episode butchered into a clip show episode

[johannesaquila · 31 March 2023]

In American TV series there is a tradition that each season has precisely one episode (sometimes referred to as a clip show episode) that consists almost completely of clips from earlier episodes. Typically this is done by making two or more protagonists reminisce about their exploits. As a 1960s British TV series, The Avengers thankfully does not follow this tradition. However, after a change of production teams one of the earliest Tara King episodes produced was reworked by the new team into something that has pretty much the same feel, even though there is only a small number of scenes taken from earlier episodes and most of the clips are original. (To the original episode that is, which unfortunately we can't watch instead.)

This episode is a bit of a counterexample to the principle that the quality of an experience is determined by the beginning, the end, its best moment, and its worst moment:

The beginning, a spoof of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), is extremely strong. The end, in which Steed is irritated by the fact that Mother's assistant never speaks, and tries to do something about it, is slightly better than the average Steed/King ending. The problem is that the beginning is also the high point, and is followed immediately by the low point: the set-up of the boring framework in which Mother tells the original story.

Despite these problems, I did enjoy this episode because there is enough of the original version left to be genuinely interesting. It's framed to make it ridiculous, but personally I don't mind. Ever since the days of Tara King's predecessor Mrs. Peel, the series has never taken itself very seriously anyway. I assume I would have enjoyed the original version even more, but apparently it is lost. (To be honest, the material that didn't make it into the clip show may have been awful; it seems unlikely, but we just don't know.)

The story told in the clip show concerns Intercrime, and is a continuation of Intercrime (1963), an episode of the era before the series was sold to the US, featuring Mrs. Peel's predecessor Mrs. Gale.