I’ve completed Part One of this enormous, comprehensive and highly readable volume, the 350 pages that cover production of the 1960s TV series
The Avengers. The book goes on to cover the stage and radio versions,
The New Avengers TV series, the 1998 movie and a whole load more besides — all beyond the scope of my latest research project. I hope to come back to this stuff another time.
In what I’ve read, Michael Richardson lays out an astonishing compendium of facts. If you want to know the make and registration of any vehicle in an episode, the make and calibre of any weapon or the identity of real-life locations, it’s all here. He’s clearly had access to production files and scripts, though it’s not always clear when the behind-the-scenes detail comes from contemporary paperwork or the later memories of cast and crew. As always with this kind of endeavour, I yearn for extensive footnotes spelling out the sources — which, admittedly, I’ve not always been able to include in the books I write myself.
In writing my own books, I’m acutely conscious of not simply listing a series of what took place on what date; the trick is to bring the material alive, to humanise it, teasing out the different personalities of those involved and the bigger story going on. There’s lots of that here and a lot that is suggestive. No one seems to have a bad word to say about gentlemanly Patrick Macnee, the actor in the leading role of not-always gentlemanly agent John Steed. His co-stars Honor Blackman (who played Cathy Gale) and Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) also meet with universal praise. With everyone else, I think Richardson frames things in the best of light but we can quite often read between the lines…
Again and again, I was astonished by the story being told here. There are often creative sparks and clashing egos. But even the hard numbers cited tell their own eye-popping tale.
I already knew that producers Sydney Newman and Leonard White at the ITV franchise ABC conceived The Avengers as a vehicle for actor Ian Hendry, keen to keep him under contract when another show, Police Surgeon, ended prematurely. What I didn’t know — what I can hardly get my head round — is that, from initial conception, it took just six weeks to get the first episode into production (p. 22).
The idea you could have an idea for a series and get it made so quickly is unthinkable now. At the time, there were others working in television who would have found it unthinkable, too. No wonder there was a culture clash when Newman moved to the BBC and it took months to get Doctor Who started.
What was created so quickly remains compelling more than 60 years later. The first 15 minutes survive of Hot Snow, the first episode of The Avengers (1961). We see Ian Hendry established as a hard-working, cool young doctor with a nice fiancee — who is then shot and killed. It’s a cliche to kill a woman as an inciting incident like this but we at least get to know her first (it’s not simply her smiling at the camera while in bed), and her death is the pay-off to a very suspenseful sequence where she and Hendry chatter happily as they move round their home / office, oblivious to the villain who has broken in and keeps just out of sight (to them but not the viewer).
It’s slick and edgy and exciting, and then stops abruptly because the last two-thirds of the story are missing from the archive. The script included on the DVD box-set reveals what happens next: when the police seem unable to solve the crime, Hendry’s character investigates. In so doing, he meets the enigmatic John Steed (Macnee), who helps him uncover a plot to smuggle heroin, avenge the murder and bring the villains to book. Over subsequent weeks, Steed would call on him again…
Richardson is good on the logistics of production. At this stage, the actors would spend 10-14 days rehearsing each episode, with time out to film particular sequences that would lend a credible air or reality. They’d then spend a day at Teddington Studios, where after technical rehearsals they would perform the episode — “as live” if recorded in advance but often broadcast live. The episodes were made using electronic cameras and recorded on videotape, with its characteristic fluid and intimate feel. I’ve watched a lot of old telly, and The Avengers isn’t perfect — Richardson lists exactly when you can spot boom microphones in shot or actors fluff their lines — but it’s an ambitious, accomplished slick programme of its type.
That was recognised at the time. Made by and shown on the ITV franchise ABC, The Avengers did well in its first year. But, for reasons that Richardson explains, star Ian Hendry’s other commitments meant he wouldn’t be available for a second run. That could well have been the end of this series — a footnote in TV history rather than the icon it became.
Instead, the production team decided to make enigmatic Steed the lead character and introduce some new costars. For three episodes, scripts written for Hendry were given to Jon Rollason, playing an almost identical character. Richardson seems to suggest there was never any thought that they might extend Rollason’s contract — he was just a stopgap while they readied scripts for the two favoured candidates to take the supporting role. Honor Blackman was contracted for six episodes as Mrs Cathy Gale, the tough anthropologist widow of a white settler in Kenya killed by the Mau Mau. Julie Stevens was contracted for six episodes as singer Venus Smith, the scripts contriving means for her to perform numbers in each of her adventures. Blackman, of course, had her contract extended — and became sole costar to Macnee in Season 3 (1963-64).
Richardson explains why The Avengers proved such a hit, the way those involved made it something different and distinctive and fun. He tells us that the budget fro Season 3 was £5,100 per 50-minute episode (p. 79), still recorded basically “as live” on videotape at Teddington Studios. That budget is not too far from the £2,300 allocated to each 25-minute episode of Doctor Who being made by the BBC at the same time. But the team behind The Avengers had ambitions to sell their series to mainstream US networks, which required a higher resolution than could be achieved by videotape production in the UK at the time.
So, Season 4 of The Avengers (1965-66) was made on film. Each episode still took about a fortnight, but was now made bit by by, with about five minutes filmed per day. Instead of completing an “as live” production with a pretty much finished product, the film then needed editing and dubbing. It was all a much more time-consuming and expensive process — allocated £25,000 per episode and closer to £29,000 in practice (p. 132), more than five and a half times per episode compared to Season 3.
What astounds me is that they could find the investment to do this without a US sale agreed in advance, all on a gamble. They had made most of Season 4 before that the deal was agreed, with production taking place on The Danger Makers, the 20th of 26 episodes, when on 25 November 1967, the sale to the American ABC network was announced. (Yes, confusingly, a series made by the British ABC was sold to a US network with the same name.) The deal entailed making the next season in colour, with a corresponding rise in budget.
Seasons 5 and 6 cost £50,000 per episode (p. 191 and p. 264) — more than the combined budget of 12 episodes of Doctor Who, still being made in black-and-white and on videotape at the same time. All eight episodes of the Cybermen invading contemporary London in The Invasion, plus all four episodes on the alien world of The Krotons, and you pay for a single colour episode of The Avengers in late 1968. Which was still a year before ITV even began broadcasting in colour. It’s a gobsmacking amount of money. The gall of it! The chutzpah!
That money came with conditions: the US network had a say in casting the successor to Diana Rigg and in the style and tone of the series. This then led to problems.
When towards the end of production on the third episode of Season 6, the US network executives (and several people in the UK) thought the series had taken a wrong turn, there was an extraordinary about turn, carefully detailed by Richardson. The producer and script editor were fired and a new crew were brought in, led by Brian Clemens - who had left the series earlier that year under what may have been a bit of a cloud. With Clemens back in charge, all three episodes were reworked to a greater or lesser extent, the team changed the colour of lead actress Linda Thorson’s hair and introduced a new leading character in Steed's boss, Mother (Patrick Newall). According to Richardson, Clemens came in with carte blanche to do as he liked and he seems to have spared no one’s feelings where there were things he didn’t like. Basically: high drama.
By this point, says Richardson, The Avengers was being sold to 70 countries and ABC in the US moved it to a primetime slot at 7pm on Mondays. On 28 March 1968, the Stage called “it the most successful British television series ever to appear on the American network” (p. 293). But this high-profile position and dependence on American investment was also its downfall, which came swift and sure.
The success of The Avengers depended on how it fared against the competition on US TV. That competition, says Richardson, was Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and I Dream of Jeannie on NBC, and Gunsmoke on CBS. There’s a reason you’ve probably heard of them: they were the big guns of TV. Against them, The Avengers ranked 69th in ratings, respectable - even remarkable - for a UK-made series and yet not enough in its own right. Despite the extraordinary gamble and the work of all those involved, chasing the US market so doggedly also sealed the series’ fate.
News broke in the Daily Mail on on 24 January 1969 that the ABC network in the US had decided not to take any more episodes. Despite sales by now to 90 countries (!), the loss of the US network deal made the series no longer viable, given the enormous costs of production. The end came brutally fast: just a month later, on 28 February, Macnee and Thorson filmed their last scenes as Steed and Miss King.
Steed, at least, would return a few years later. But the end of the initial run feels so abrupt, so frustrating, so wrong. Like the death of the fiancee in the very first episode, it’s utterly compelling. I want to dig in more. In fact, I’ve some threads to follow up now as part of ongoing research into something not yet announced. I hope to have more on the personalities involved, the crises and the drama...
Cue dramatic music by Johnny Dankworth and cut to the ads.
