Roots, Grapes, and Horses

As we get closer to the end of The Avengers‘ third season, you can sometimes almost sense a battle in progress for the soul of the series: one week there’s a fairly ‘straight’ espionage episode like Death A La Carte or The Wringer (both of which are pepped up in different ways by unexpected elements, admittedly), the next there’s something much more whimsical and ironic. Shot on film, these latter episodes could easily have appeared in the following season. Watching The Avengers transform from a relatively gritty spy series into a fantasy and science-fiction show, by tiny, stealthy increments, is one of the most peculiar but enjoyable experiences available to the vintage TV watcher.

The style of Roger Marshall’s Mandrake (good title) is certainly more Peel than Keel; the episode opens with Steed attending the funeral of a former colleague who has passed away with somewhat suspicious abruptness, and been buried – for no very obvious reason – in a remote Cornish churchyard. What’s going on? Steed’s olfactory rodent detection system is fully operation, especially after an interview with the dead man’s son produces no very convincing answers as to why he ended up buried there.

Mrs Gale visits the same churchyard and comes away with the surprising news that a large number of wealthy businessmen and other people of significance have recently been interred there, most of them from well outside the parish. Even more suspiciously, all of them were ministered to in their last days by the same medic – one Dr Macombie (John Le Mesurier). What’s going on?

Possibly less than meets the eye, to be honest: it transpires that Macombie has set up in business with a cracker factory owner named Hopkins (Philip Locke, another semi-regular Avengers villain) and they are basically running a murder racket, to which the final resting place of the bodies is absolutely crucial. Is it all just a little bit contrived? Well, maybe. Are the scenes with the cracker factory just there so Patrick Macnee can flirt with the ever-telegenic Annette Andre? Yes, that too. But the performances and convolutions of the plot are easily good enough that you don’t really think about any of this while you’re watching it.

Discovered in a graveyard.

This is the episode in which the famous wrestler Jackie Pallo appears as a special guest heavy, and inevitably gets to take on Honor Blackman at the end of the second act. The ensuing fight sequence is perhaps not one of the series’ best, but is mainly notable for Blackman accidentally knocking Pallo unconscious for something like seven minutes (she was apparently very contrite). Amusingly, accounts as to exactly what happened differ – Honor Blackman recalled mistiming a move, so that rather pushing Pallo away with her foot, she ended up kicking him full-force in the face. Pallo, however, was adamant that he banged his head on the set when falling into a grave, insisting it was absolutely impossible he could ever be knocked out by a woman. Big strong men have fragile egos, maybe. Nevertheless, a strong episode.

Ludovic Peters’ The Secrets Broker is also pretty solid, but the essentially pedestrian nature of the story should be clear if I reveal it has nothing to do with finance or the stock market: that title is a definite single entendre. The best moment of the story comes near the start, where one of the attendees at a seance is told that there is a message for him from the other side – the gag, of course, is that they’re not talking about the spirit world but the Other Side politically.

There are fears that plans for a new gadget being developed for the navy are in danger of being pinched – this is a complete maguffin, by the way – and an agent checking on security for the lab where it is being worked on has turned up dead. It’s avengin’ time! Steed inserts Mrs Gale into the lab to see what she can turn up, and retraces the footsteps of the dead man, which leads him to a rather unusual wine merchants.

Well, some good stuff with Steed tasting wine ensues, as you might expect, but the business with the lab is very second-season-ish and a bit soapy: it turns out the chief boffin’s wife is having an affair with someone mixed up with the fake medium (the seances are run as a sort of second string by the traitorous family in charge of the wine merchants). Jack May has fun chewing the scenery as one of the chief villains; this is a big performance even by Avengers standards. May’s character smokes cigars and carries a sword-stick, which might lead you to expect Steed getting a proper sword fight come the climax: alas, this seems to have been beyond the means of the fight choreography budget. Shame: would have lifted a rather average episode.

Malcolm Hulke contributes the next episode, Trojan Horse, which opens with a hapless youg posh chap being led to believe he’s an accessory to murder – the kind of plot device it feels like we’ve already seen at least once before, though this may not be the case. This is one of those stories where managing to get Steed and Cathy inserted into the plot seems to have been a bit tricky: most of the action takes place in and around a maximum security stable (no, really), and it initially seems that Steed is here to see to the welbeing of a visiting dignitary’s favourite horse, and thus avoid a diplomatic incident. This sounds pretty spurious even for The Avengers, if you ask me, and later on there’s a suggestion it may be a cover for an investigation into a string of unsolved murders.

Well, it turns out the stable is mixed up in another assassination racket being overseen by a mathematical prodigy turned turf accountant named Heuston (T. P. McKenna): he and his chief henchman (Derek Newark) have been training the stable lads and jockeys to become assassins, using such unlikely gadgets as dart-firing binoculars. The hapless posh chap from the start is just the latest unwilling recruit to the operation.

It does have some interesting angles to it, and Patrick Macnee is again in his element talking about horses and gambling – he gets a nice scene where he flirts with one of the tote girls at the race course. Mrs Gale, meanwhile, gets to show off yet another facet of her astounding polymathic genius by doing all sorts of complicated gambling-related sums in her head and virtually running Heuston’s bookies for him for a while. (After a while you do get the sense that Cathy is really the brains of the outfit, and what Steed actually provides is an acceptable face, a little low cunning, and a ruthless streak as wide as the North Sea.) On the other hand, there is yet another scene where an assassin is gravely given a photo of his next target, which turns out to be – yes, you’ve guessed it – Steed. I forget how many times a version of this moment has played out in this season and the previous one. Either the show is running out of puff or I’m watching too many episodes in too short a period of time. Still, a bit better than The Secrets Broker, but nowhere near as good as Mandrake.