Cult TV Blog

For many years I have wanted to know what the books were in Steed’s flat at 3 Stable Mews. I mean specifically the collection of uniformly-bound leather volumes, one of which he is seen reading in only one episode. It is evident that they are not just a random collection of brown-back books, because of the uniform binding. They are clearly a set, they were either bound all together or one at a time in imitation of the others, maybe even by the same binder. The number of them mean that they are unlikely to be a set of encyclopaedias or even a set of one of the English writers. I had always theorised that they could be court reports, bound magazines of a previous age, or a set of books uniformly bound; standard authors, type of thing. Because these books have a very distinctive red and black band a little down the spine, I have taken the liberty of assuming they were the same set of books when I have seen something that looked like them appear in other TV series of the 1960s. If...

It's difficult to see how you could fail, when you open a show with an external of the house used for The Avengers' episode The House That Jack Built! On the other hand, this one shows how truly incestuous 1960s TV was by using Gerald Harper as a totally convincing & chillingly calm villain, who nonetheless makes me wonder what Adam Adamant is doing in The Champions! It's not really a TV star as such, but Steed's library turns up here with some good shots, sadly not good enough to be able to read the titles on the books. I like the plot of this Champions very much: this may be because it is essentially a straightforward detective story (with a supernormal twist of course, in terms of knowing who the fanatics' next victim is. I feel this makes it much more believable: the swap of an agent for a convicted criminal is a simple espionage trick that would be believable in the real world, which contrasts favourably with the sheer fantasy of some Champions scr...

I've neglected to comment so far on how much I love the very obviously hand-dran maps that announce the location of each adventure. You wouldn't catch that happening nowadays! Shades of The Man from UNCLE in this episode, with a tailor's shop (admittedly not a cleaner's) providing a cover for a secret vault, accessed through the changing room. I feel the sheer complexity & quaintness of the security system suggests the consultant who devised it was a very elderly lady! There are also shades of The Avengers episodes The Mauritius Penny & The Hour that Never Was in the use of a dentist, which is bound to cause a sensation of at least discomfort if not fear, in any number of people. I feel this Champions episode is unusual in its all-out use of technology, which is needless to say trumped by the Champions' super powers. It is unusual to find such technology in this show. If the language of props is to be understood, Steed's books are displayed to bes...

Another great favourite Champions episode of mine, this one, & once again one that gets very close to The Avengers' formula of diabolical masterminds infiltrating the Establishment. It also draws on the feel of the real history underlying The Prisoner. The reason the research establishment feels so real is that we know there were secret government establishments based in Scotland after World War II, & the inmates were often there because they were a risk or were at risk, so could not leave. The pre-titles prologue is strongly Prisoner-influenced. It must be possible to think of a village post-Prisoner without The Village's influence, but this sequence clearly draws on & parodies it, since the man wants to ring the authorities urgently. The fact he goes into the village shop is a Prisoner reference, & the fact the shopkeeper is a law unto himself is, too. The Prisoner is further drawn on in the sequences where a sound torture technique is used to get informa...

I think this may be one of my favourite episodes of The Champions, not least because of the feat of speed displayed at the beginning catching up with a van. There is some seriously strong acting ability here - I wonder whether 'alcoholic homeless person' is a stock character at drama school, but some actors get the feeling of fragility just right, as Harry Towb does here. There are some of the sixties recurring faces here as well, unfortunately I did find it distracting here, working out just which episodes of which shows I've seen them in. Anthony Bate is superb as the doctor, just chilling enough. It would be dangerously easy to spoil the role by giving even the slightest hint that it is not serious, but Bate plays it completely straight. I just wonder whether Steed resents him going off with his books from Stable Mews. I feel the role of the nurse doesn't suite Patricia Haine as well as the role she played in The Avengers' Who's Who - she seemed to relis...

I was all prepared not to like this Champions, since it draws heavily on the (usually misunderstood) African diasporic tradition of Vodou. In fact - to get this out of the way - it's not really about it at all, it's all a cover. The only thing it gets really wrong is to refer to the Spirits as gods - they're not, it's actually monotheistic. Rant over. Actually the vodou thing is handled with an incredible sureness, that means it isn't overdone in an attempt to instil fear. I think it's the fact that the lift is involved, that you see people going into the lift & emerging apparently zombies, gives it a lightness it wouldn't otherwise have. I suppose technically the whole vodou element is a red herring, because even that's a front. Everything is a front in this one, & vodou makes a good one because people will either dismiss it or be frightened of it. The effect on the people is caused by plain hypnotism: in most series this would seem a bit e...

Some may disagree with me about this (I wouldn't go to the stake for this opinion) but I would like to call this a Champions show set in Avengerland. I don't literally mean the countryside round the Borhamwood studios, but even though its location is Cornwall it's actually set in an England of decayed gentry, frightening locals & megalomaniac plans hidden under the - naturally completely unconvincing - cover of Cornish witchcraft. This is exactly the sort of cast found in later Avengers episodes! There are even shades of the Avengers in the false replacement for Sharron McReady. Several 60s regular actors in this episode: my favourite is Trennick, played by Terence Alexander. It isn't so overdone here, but I love him in ex-RAF mode in the Avengers episode The Town of No Return. I previously associated him too much with Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac, a character with whom I had no naturally affinity. I had no idea the poor man died of Parkinsons's Disease...

The great & glad news is that I've ordered a single disc of the last episode of The Prisoner so will soon be able properly to finish my survey with an eye to whether John Drake is Number 6. Since my last post I've been watching mainly The Professionals, I think as a natural antidote to the weirdness of The Prisoner, but it's back without a pause into weird shit territory with this episode of The Champions. In fact, a friend originally recommended The Champions to me, saying I would like it because it's weird! On the surface the plot of this one is fairly typical of 60s eccentric TV shows - megalomaniac wants to sell us out to 'the opposition' - but here with the added touch of General Patterson's body in suspended animation being held hostage. Definite shades of The Avengers episode Split! This was a definite 60s preoccupation, the process being new & famously used at the time to preserve Walt Disney. Another visual reminiscent of other 60s seri...

I was hoping to begin on The Champions with one of the less-outlandish episodes, but when I noticed last night that Steed's books from his Stable Mews flat make an appearance (in Dr Newman's room in Cambridge, amongst other leather-bound books, they're the ones with the red & black band) in this episode, I knew I had to start with this one. The Champions is one of those ITC series, like Department S, that had both British & American stars, with a view to appealing to American audiences. It's also another late-sixties series with bizarre touches: in this case the bizarre touch is the super powers the three protagonists have been given in the Himalayas. My personal opinion is that this makes them relative lightweights in the 1960s television stable, despite some strong scripts, because it is a step too far into weirdness. The success of The Avengers, in contrast, lies in playing a pastiche of the spy genre & British society, completely dead-pan, while...