The New Avengers Season 1 Eps 7 -9

 

In the Dennis Spooner penned `Target!` several agents die soon after taking part in a shooting range exercise and while the viewer pieces this together quite soon, Steed and co take a little longer. Inevitably this makes the episode repetitive but luckily this deadly facility  is more imaginative than you might expect. Mocked up as a country village street it has an armoury of doors, windows and roofs from which potential assassins, all looking like shop window dummies, can let loose their firepower. It’s surreal in true Avengers fashion and somehow director Ray Austin manages to find new angles to shoot it from each time. His busy cameras rush and zoom keeping things fresh. It is not apparent- and neither should it be- just how the mannequins are operated or if some of them are stuntmen in masks.

A plethora of familiar television actors of the Seventies populate guest roles including Keith Barron, John Paul, Frederick Jaeger and Robert Beatty. Barron is the villain of the piece, a planted Russian agent whose dapper appearance and casual demeanour masks a calculated killer. His sidekick is the diminutive Deep Roy who adds a disturbing feel to some scenes, especially one where he’s dressed as a girl with balloons! It does seem a pity to use John Paul, at the time well known as the star of Doomwatch, in the supporting role of a doctor but he makes the most of his screen time. 

While the audience is meant to know something of how our villain achieves his aim of somehow poisoning the pellets that are fired in the range it’s only later we discover it’s a fatal South American poison that is responsible. While it extends the tension, I have to say that it does start to become a tad silly that someone with Steed’s experience doesn’t figure it out earlier. The episode touches again on Gambit’s slightly unhealthy obsession with Purdey though she can take care of herself. It’s a great episode for all three leads actually. There is also a well composed final act as a race to save both Purdey and Steed is left to Gambit to survive the range and find the cure which is supposedly hidden in the hat of a mannequin Steed.

The first thing you notice about `Faces` is that the title sequence has changed replacing the episode clips with a more stylised motif and posed images. An appropriate episode to make that alteration as this Dennis Spooner / Brian Clemens co-write concerns identity swapping. The premise, unlikely even by Avengers standards, sees drop puts and tramps being plucked from a refuge due to their resemblance to influential figures. They are schooled into acting just like those powerful people and then replaced after the real ones have been killed using, for some reason, a bow and arrow. If you tried to analyse this seriously you’d stack up the questions quickly. How come the pathologist never notices the arrow wounds? How come all the doubles are in fact identical rather than just lookalikes? What are the chances of that occurring in the same refuge multiple times or in fact more than once? Why do these down and outs acquiesce so easily? And so on. The key to enjoying the episode is that none of that matters a jot!

Instead enjoy the playful tone that prevails despite the multitude of deaths (poor Steed is losing old friends every episode!). By the twists of the tale we end up with Purdey pretending to be someone pretending to be her while Gambit is doing the same only neither of them know the other is the real one! It’s fun and the actors probably had a ball with it. Joanna Lumley in particular shows the comedic timing and fluidity of accent that would one day lead her to become the fabulous Patsy. Its surprising too how with just a change of expression Patrick MacNee can extinguish Steed’s customary twinkle and become quite menacing. Gareth Hunt gets a thick Oirish brogue to boot. The results are engaging even if the intended tension the story is clearly meant to evoke is side tracked by the parade of wigs and confusion.

This is the second episode in a row by the way which neglects to mention Purdey’s full name when it would be appropriate to do so. Steed is John Steed, Gambit is Mike Gambit but what about Purdey? Is she Purdey Something or Something Purdey? The answer would appear to be just Purdey and for good measure she has her singular name emblazoned on a jacket she wears while riding a motorbike in `The Tale of the Big Why`. Something of a lighter tone pervades this hide and seek caper in which a newly released informer, Bert Brandon is trailed by two less than totally competent Poole and Roach who are trying to find out a big secret he has threatened to reveal on his release. Trailing them are Purdey and Gambit, the latter without a jacket that has his name on it. With interludes of busy jazz as incidental music and a lot of chasing around the countryside the episode is in no hurry to play its hand. In fact we don’t find out what’s in a mysterious box that Brandon hid until the very last scene. By then we’ve been led a lively dance speculating what it might be so the final reveal of some compromising photos showing financial corruption seems a little dry after what’s gone before.

While fun to watch it doesn’t actually hang together too well, there’s an issue with timescales especially with a sequence where Purdey appears to ride around for ages while Brandon’s car is taken to pieces. Later developments also make it unclear just how much time Brandon has from his release to his demise. There are a few clever conceits and the location filming is a good mixture of scenery and vehicle action. Unusually for the series there is a lack of conviction in the stand off where Purdey has been caught with clear moments for each side to take action but that could be down to editing.  It often feels like this story could be in any series with only the dis-assembled car and some of the dialogue seeming like an Avengers story.

The inimitable George Cooper gets too little screen time as Brandon but enough to give an impression of a larger than life figure up to no good in a posh suit. There’s also a scenary chewing performance from Jenny Runacre as Brandon’s daughter Irene whose villainous cackle sums up the tone throughout.