The usual capricious nonsense, this time about a school of ballroom dancing that recruits lonely bachelors as students and then bumps them off at graduation and replaces each with a foreign agent. Steed enrolls as a client. Mrs. Peel gets a job as instructor. Clues include a rose tattoo and a garlic sausage. Bizarre, yes.
This episode has two things going for it, in addition to its intrinsic appeal. One is that Emma Peel's bare foot is cast in plaster in order to create a pair of hand-made dancing pumps. The man at the shoe shop casts Mrs. Peel's foot but not before examining it with a fetishist's fascination. He speaks in a fey continental accent to the foot as he caresses it, scolding the toes for speaking to him, "Naughty chatterboxes." The second is the studio's alcoholic band leader. There are few people who can play drunks on the screen while making them both funny and believable but this guy is one of them -- maybe his name is Larry Cross. In the neighborhood of roles like this, Lee Marvin is his only neighbor that I'm aware of. He stumbles precariously around. He smiles but in a way that signals confusion. His every word must be completed by someone else.
It's all pretty amusing.
This episode has two things going for it, in addition to its intrinsic appeal. One is that Emma Peel's bare foot is cast in plaster in order to create a pair of hand-made dancing pumps. The man at the shoe shop casts Mrs. Peel's foot but not before examining it with a fetishist's fascination. He speaks in a fey continental accent to the foot as he caresses it, scolding the toes for speaking to him, "Naughty chatterboxes." The second is the studio's alcoholic band leader. There are few people who can play drunks on the screen while making them both funny and believable but this guy is one of them -- maybe his name is Larry Cross. In the neighborhood of roles like this, Lee Marvin is his only neighbor that I'm aware of. He stumbles precariously around. He smiles but in a way that signals confusion. His every word must be completed by someone else.
It's all pretty amusing.