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The Avengers

  • TV Series
  • 1961–1969
  • TV-14
IMDb RATING
8.3/10
8.4K
YOUR RATING
POPULARITY
964
26
The Avengers (1961)
The Avengers: A Touch Of Brimstone
Play trailer1:45
16 Videos
99+ Photos
ActionComedyCrime

A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners.A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners.A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners.

  • Creator
    • Sydney Newman
  • Stars
    • Patrick Macnee
    • Diana Rigg
    • Honor Blackman
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    8.3/10
    8.4K
    YOUR RATING
    POPULARITY
    964
    26
    • Creator
      • Sydney Newman
    • Stars
      • Patrick Macnee
      • Diana Rigg
      • Honor Blackman
    • 66User reviews
    • 30Critic reviews
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 4 Primetime Emmys
      • 1 win & 5 nominations total

    Episodes161

    Browse episodes
    TopTop-rated

    Videos16

    The Avengers: A Touch Of Brimstone
    Trailer 1:45
    Watch The Avengers: A Touch Of Brimstone
    The Avengers: Dead On Course
    Trailer 1:16
    Watch The Avengers: Dead On Course
    The Avengers: Death Dispatch
    Trailer 1:03
    Watch The Avengers: Death Dispatch
    The Avengers: Traitor In Zebra
    Trailer 1:06
    Watch The Avengers: Traitor In Zebra
    The Avengers: The Removal Men
    Trailer 1:03
    Watch The Avengers: The Removal Men
    The Avengers: The Mauritius Penny
    Trailer 1:05
    Watch The Avengers: The Mauritius Penny
    The Avengers: Season 5
    Trailer 2:06
    Watch The Avengers: Season 5
    The Avengers: Season 4
    Trailer 2:32
    Watch The Avengers: Season 4
    The Avengers: Propellant 23
    Trailer 1:07
    Watch The Avengers: Propellant 23
    The Avengers: Death Of A Great Dane
    Trailer 1:08
    Watch The Avengers: Death Of A Great Dane
    The Avengers: Death On The Rocks
    Trailer 1:06
    Watch The Avengers: Death On The Rocks
    The Avengers: The Sell-Out
    Trailer 1:09
    Watch The Avengers: The Sell-Out

    Photos1517

    Diana Rigg in The Avengers (1961)
    Diana Rigg in The Avengers (1961)
    Diana Rigg in The Avengers (1961)
    Honor Blackman in The Avengers (1961)
    Derek Newark and Gary Watson in The Avengers (1961)
    George Innes in The Avengers (1961)
    Morris Perry in The Avengers (1961)
    Rhoda Lewis in The Avengers (1961)
    Douglas Muir in The Avengers (1961)
    Honor Blackman, David Garth, and Walter Hudd in The Avengers (1961)
    Robert Harris and Veronica Strong in The Avengers (1961)
    Patrick Macnee and Philip Madoc in The Avengers (1961)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Patrick Macnee
    Patrick Macnee
    • John Steed…
    Diana Rigg
    Diana Rigg
    • Emma Peel…
    Honor Blackman
    Honor Blackman
    • Catherine Gale
    Linda Thorson
    Linda Thorson
    • Tara King
    Ian Hendry
    Ian Hendry
    • Dr. David Keel
    Patrick Newell
    Patrick Newell
    • Mother…
    Ingrid Hafner
    • Carol Wilson
    Douglas Muir
    Douglas Muir
    • One-Ten…
    Terence Plummer
    Terence Plummer
    • Executioner…
    Valentino Musetti
    • Ali…
    Richard Neller
    • Board Member…
    Julie Stevens
    Julie Stevens
    • Venus Smith
    Edwin Richfield
    Edwin Richfield
    • Alex…
    Norman Chappell
    Norman Chappell
    • Fleming…
    Frank Maher
    • Barman…
    Terry Richards
    Terry Richards
    • Cybernaut…
    Cliff Diggins
    • Astronaut…
    Philip Madoc
    Philip Madoc
    • Ivan…
    • Creator
      • Sydney Newman(uncredited)
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      During her first season, Dame Diana Rigg was dismayed to find out that the cameraman was being paid more than she was. She demanded a raise, to put her more on a par with her co-star, or she would leave the show. The producers gave in, thanks to the show's great popularity in the U.S.
    • Goofs
      Steed was an officer during World War Two, but episodes involving his past disagree as to whether he served in the Army or the Royal Air Force.

      In Game (1968) Bristow had a list of Army officers he was targeting, including Major John Steed.

      In The Hour That Never Was (1965) Steed reminisces about life at RAF Hamelin.
    • Quotes

      [repeated line]

      John Steed: Mrs. Peel, we're needed.

    • Crazy credits
      American broadcasts of the 1965 season were preceded by an introduction showing Emma Peel and John Steed walking across a giant chessboard as a narrator says: "Extraordinary crimes against the people and the state have to be avenged by agents extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed -- top professional, and his partner, Emma Peel -- talented amateur. Together they are -- The Avengers!"
    • Alternate versions
      Starting in the summer of 2004, the BBC America Channel aired prints of fifth and sixth season episodes with the humorous tag sequences at the end of episodes deleted. During the autumn of 2004, the prints were further altered, with the original closing credits sequence with shadowy images of Steed and Mrs. Peel against a blue background replaced by credits rapidly rolled past a plain black background. In early 2005, the same channel aired seventh season prints with the same changes.
    • Connections
      Featured in Television: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1985)

    User reviews66

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    8/10
    The happy highway where I went and cannot go again
    When I was 16 this series meant a lot to me.

    Like other American fans, I became aware of it when it burst onto American TV in summer 1966. What a revelation it was to someone who'd grown up watching American TV! It was unpredictable: it mixed mystery, adventure, science fiction, and satire in always changing proportions. The mysteries were truly intriguing, the adventures truly exciting, the eerie situations truly frightening, the fantastic explanations truly ingenious, and the jokes truly funny. In later seasons the show formularized its conflicting elements, like every other show. But in the beginning you couldn't guess what might come next.

    And of course there was the sex and violence. It seems impossible now that there was once a time when there was too little sex or violence on TV, but what there was was dull and stodgy. The American network had omitted the most suggestive episodes, but left in a few lines of dialogue that startled at the time. The climactic fight scenes were much more exciting than those on American shows: dynamically staged and photographed, and with a satirical edge, which was lost in later seasons.

    The writing was very good too. To us in the States it seemed even better than it was because we hadn't then seen a lot of British TV. The scripts were solidly constructed, tightly packed, and full of clever dialogue. Patrick Macnee has claimed in interviews that "there was no clever dialogue" except what he and Diana Rigg rewrote, but the lines of the supporting characters belie that.

    The atmosphere of the show was new to me: a dark, bright, sharp, woozy, ordered, but unpredictable world where reality could be rolled like a die, figures of speech could become facts (a killing rain, an underground club), and you couldn't be sure that anybody was what he seemed. If I'd seen Alfred Hitchcock's early films at the time, I would have recognized this as an exaggeration of their milieu, to the verge of parody: those flower sellers and organ grinders seemingly hanging out on street corners but really doing spy business. The world of The Avengers extended beyond them to encompass killer robots and plants from outer space--but only a certain distance beyond. (The failure to observe that distance spoiled many of the later shows.)

    That atmosphere stayed with me for years. It carried me through dreary jobs by enabling me to imbue mundane surroundings in schools and industrial parks with fantastic and sinister possibilities. Other shows tried to imitate it, but never successfully. How could they, when The Avengers itself had lost it and never recaptured it again?

    The primary technical device for bringing about this atmosphere was the teaser. The Avengers made an art out of it. A man in a field is rained on, tries to escape, is rained into the ground. Superimpose title: "A Surfeit of H2O." The title is the punchline. A man breaks into a house and opens a door; a lion jumps out at him. Title: "The House That Jack Built." And so on.

    The puzzle posed by the opener often suggested philosophical or metaphysical possibilities, but they were never followed up on. The solution generally turned out to be slightly science-fictional, and the climax, rather than expanding on the potential implications of the story's premise, was just a comic fight. But it was remarkable in itself that the series could progress from one to the other with such deftness, beginning with a cosmic inversion and steadily narrowing it down to a trivial joke.

    The heroes were invincible (otherwise the stories would have been too horrifying), inexplicable (those of us who didn't know the show's origins had no idea why they were called Avengers), androgynous (Steed was the fancy dresser, Mrs. Peel did the manhandling), paradoxical (Mrs. Peel was widowed, yet somehow virginal), and timeless. (In subsequent seasons, they were turned into pop icons, but divested of most of the twists that had made them interesting.)

    What was considered by common consent the best episode of all, "The House That Jack Built," I didn't see originally (it was a choice between that and a screening of "The Music Box" with Laurel and Hardy). When I finally got to see it in syndication, five years later, it was like being taken back in time and watching the series for the first time. I was just as fascinated, just as mystified, just as amazed.

    I set aside my Wednesday nights especially to watch the series. Apparently not many other people did. But that was always how it was with everything that developed a cult. At the time I seemed to be almost the only one who took an interest in it. Only years afterward would people write about it as if it had been a universally shared generational experience.

    The following year the news came out that The Avengers would return. And so it did--sort of. But despite assiduous effort I gradually had to accede to an awareness that it was no longer very good. It had been dumbed down for Americans. It wasn't the same. It was gone.

    And now, looking back on it forty years later, I wonder (and can never know for certain): was it really so good as it seemed to me, in that one happy season of my youth? And can anything ever seem that good again?
    helpful•25
    1
    • galensaysyes
    • Nov 18, 2008

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    FAQ3

    • Who besides me remembers closing credits where an unseen person performs "card tricks?" Fanning a deck open, then snapping it shut, etc. I have looked and looked for this sequence, followed, I believe, by a final ABC (Associated British Corporation).
    • Why doesn't Steed use a gun?
    • What's the difference between The Avengers and The New Avengers?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 28, 1966 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United Kingdom
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone
    • Filming locations
      • 31 Ennismore Gardens Mews, Knightsbridge, London, England, UK(John Steeds house)
    • Production company
      • Associated British Corporation
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Color
      • Black and White
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 4:3

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