Build a Better Mousetrap

Episode aired Apr 1, 1991
52min

7.5/10

S3.E21

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Action Comedy Crime

Angered by a noisy motor bike gang who ride on their land, elderly sisters Cynthia and Ermyntrude Peck, who claim to be witches, cast a spell which causes all the motor-bikes to stall. Not o... Read allAngered by a noisy motor bike gang who ride on their land, elderly sisters Cynthia and Ermyntrude Peck, who claim to be witches, cast a spell which causes all the motor-bikes to stall. Not only that but almost every electronic and mechanical object in the area also tends to malfu... Read allAngered by a noisy motor bike gang who ride on their land, elderly sisters Cynthia and Ermyntrude Peck, who claim to be witches, cast a spell which causes all the motor-bikes to stall. Not only that but almost every electronic and mechanical object in the area also tends to malfunction. Mrs. Gale in her leathers joins the gang to ask permission from the sisters to rid... Read all

7.5/10

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Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee in The Avengers (1961)

Angered by a noisy motor bike gang who ride on their land, elderly sisters Cynthia and Ermyntrude Peck, who claim to be witches, cast a spell which causes all the motor-bikes to stall. Not only that but almost every electronic and mechanical object in the area also tends to malfunction. Mrs. Gale in her leathers joins the gang to ask permission from the sisters to ride on their property and in the process discovers that these two sweet old dears may actually be in possession of a sophisticated long range jamming device. They may have built a better mouse-trap but it will cause some unsavoury types to beat a path to their door. —don @ minifie-1

elderly sisters biker gang noise power plant nuisance 2 more

Genres
Parents guide
- Add content advisory

Trivia
It may look like a lot of motorcycles in this episode, but there are in fact only five, or maybe six. Mostly BSAs, plus Cathy's famous Triumph.

Quotes
Stigant: Mr. Steed, can you imagine the military applications of a device which could disable any mechanical form of machinery?
John Steed: A sort of instant peace.

Top review

4/10

Fails to rev up any excitement

"Build a Better Mousetrap" is generally regarded as one of the better examples from the Cathy Gale era, perhaps for its image of the leather-clad Honor Blackman astride a motorcycle (rockers, not mods), because the plot never gets revved up into any excitement. All mechanical devices conk out within a two mile radius of a windmill owned by two elderly sisters believed to practice witchcraft, with Cathy's faceless dancing bikers proving a noisy nuisance. The villains aren't revealed until the end, so little actually happens, plus the filmed sequences prove to be more shoddy than usual, definitely a script more suited for the shot-on-film Mrs. Peel era. At least we get to see Patrick Macnee do a bit of his own judo in a rare action scene. Hammer veteran Harold Goodwin supplies good work in his only AVENGERS episode, while Athene Seyler returned in "Man-Eater of Surrey Green," and Nora Nicholson returned in "All Done with Mirrors." Series veterans included John Tate, who previously did "Killer Whale," Donald Webster, who did "Intercrime," and Allan McClelland, who did "The Big Thinker."

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