Circus Season: Conspiracy of Silence (The Avengers)

Continuing a series of posts about TV episodes relating to the circus.

Warning: this post contains a plot spoiler.

Not a favourite of the fans by any stretch of the imagination, this one. Multiple reviews comment that it just doesn't get it right and so all those reviews spend most of their time trying to work out why. I am surprised at that, because this has always been one of my personal favourite Avengers episodes. I note that many reviews also compare it negatively to Girl on the Trapeze, which I am not sure is a very fair comparison.

I think the reason this episode causes such dissatisfaction is that they are expecting something which the episode may not be trying to deliver. This is not an objective assessment - I have no idea the impression that was intended but this is just an idea that's come to me as I've read the reviews. What people are expecting (very reasonably) is an action-filled spy drama utilising the setting of a circus. What the episode actually delivers is a beginning and end containing high drama, and a fairly lengthy middle where apparently not a lot happens.

However I disagree that not a lot is happening. When I say that what is actually happening in the middle half hour or so of this episode is depictions of a set of eccentrics, performances where we actually see the man we're looking for but don't know it, am atmospheric depiction of circus life and the world of tattooing, and Mrs Gale going about her business of trying to find out what is going on. It's the eccentrics and murderous lunatics that give this away - I think this Avengers is leaning towards episodes in later seasons and doing a lot of the setting of scenes which we get in those seasons. It would, of course, be accurate to say that it's doing it a bit cack-handedly and it doesn't come across as clearly as it does in series 6 when the insanity is really dialled up, but this is an episode from later seasons mixed in  among season 2.

I suspect that sixty years after this was made we've lost some detail of what is being portrayed. The hint is in the tattoos. We all know that only prostitutes and sailors have tattoos, right? They are a certain sign that their wearer is a member of the underworld and simply cannot be trusted. In fact, only this morning I came across a Canadian health poster saying to keep away from girls with tattooss because they would be certain to have syphilis. This show is depicting the underworld in a very 1960s way which doesn't come across now. It is not stated explicitly but that is also the import of the circus setting: we all know how travellers, circus people and theatricals generally used to have a reputation for being dodgy (and still do if you're a gammon).

Only prostitutes and
sailors have tattoos

Finally, the presence of Mrs Gale is very underworld indeed. If we remember that she was the first female TV character to get as assertive as she is, to wear leather as street wear instead of fetish wear, and also has a knowledge of the disreputable tattoos, it becomes very clear indeed that what we are seeing as nothing happening, is The Avengers depicting an early 1960s idea of the underworld in which a dodgy woman who wears leather has gone to find out about a murderer.

Something the reviews are all agreed on is that the exchanges between Cathy and Steed are the best part of this one. There is one in particular where they discuss what to do about their Mafia clown which reveals some depth and ambiguity to the question of how to resolve the problem. 

In terms of criticism, although I'm determined to recast this one as aspiring towards the feeling of later series, it would be remiss of me not to admit that it could be better paced and it is doing whatever it's trying to do in a rather cack-handed way. The dissolute site has quite a lengthy list of production disasters. There are two things specofocally about this episode which strike me as not being right, on repeated viewings. Mrs Gale's reaction to being in the circus is slightly wrong, in my opinion. She is too amused, as if she's there to be entertained, whereas I think the circus people would reasonably expect her to be more business-like. This cannot just be her maintaining a (slightly incongruent) facade: as an anthropologist she would be more than capable of giving the right impression of someone interested in the circus. The other thing is right at the beginning, when the circus agent man is more hysterical than you would reasonably expect him to be. Perhaps I've seen far too much of life's rich tapestry, but I would expect a man working as an agent for the circus to be a complete misnthrope.

My absolute favourite bit is the scene where Steed asks Cathy how she knows so much about tattoos and she says she took it at school, instead of needlework.

All in all a series 2 episode which holds some promise of what later series would be like despite generally getting a drubbing online.