The Avengers is one of the most stylish and influential television series of all time, blending action and adventure with outrageous villains and a camp sense of fun. It introduced the public to the central characters of John Steed, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, and made international stars of actors Patrick Macnee, Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson. This is the most in-depth reference work about the show. It covers all aspects, going through the production episode by episode, with full behind-the-scenes details. Assembled from ABC Television documentation, including daily progress reports and internal letters and memos, to give a complete picture of how the series progressed from videotape to film and from black and white to colour. In addition, the author has spoken and corresponded with many people who worked on the series, to give the fullest picture yet of how this classic British production was assembled...

It’s just too bad that all the best superlatives have already been used in the titles of Avengers guidebooks. The Complete Avengers would have been a fitting title for this publication, but it’s been done. So too has The Ultimate Avengers. Such previous works look like mere pamphlets compared to this mighty doorstep of a tome, which weighs in at over 700 pages and actually makes my arms ache if I hold it up for too long. The hefty page count is not the result of padding, however. On the contrary, facts and figures fly past at a breakneck pace. All in all, I’m exhausted!

Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots does not get off to a brilliant start, though, it has to be said. Season One doesn’t get much of a look in compared with other eras of the show, being dealt with in the space of about 40 pages. In fact, author Michael Richardson rather snubs the debut season, not even mentioning Dr Keel or Ian Hendry (the actor who played him) in the back-cover blurb. Fair enough, most of the episodes from Season One don’t exist any more, but many of the scripts do, as does much of the production documentation. By comparison, another recent Avengers book, With Umbrella, Scotch and Cigarettes, goes into much greater depth, devoting more than 300 pages to this one season.

I have been reading up on this period of the show, so unfortunately I did notice some errors. For example, the duration of the surviving fragment of the opening episode Hot Snow is 15 minutes, not 21 as stated. The needle with which Keel threatens Spicer in Brought to Book contains “a harmless barbiturate”, rather than witch-hazel (which is what it contains in The Frighteners). There were seven live episodes of The Avengers, not nine. Frank Gatliff appeared in One for the Mortuary, rather than The Springers, having previously appeared in the Police Surgeon episode Man Overboard, rather than A Home of Her Own. It was Donald Morley who appeared in both The Springers and A Home of Her Own.

Things get better from Season Two onwards. For example, I learned new things about script changes that took place during this season, and how ITV coped with the Equity strike that halted the production of The Avengers and other shows for five months during 1961–2. I was also surprised to read about certain job offers that were made to Honor Blackman, 8mm films starring Diana Rigg, and much more.

The coverage of each season gets progressively more detailed, and the film era is where this book really comes into its own. There is an impressive level of detail here, especially from Season Five’s Epic to the end of Season Six, which boast day-by-day records of how the filming progressed. This is the most exhaustive reference guide I have ever seen regarding the filmed Avengers.

The largest part of the book (six sections totalling 470 pages) takes the form of a more or less chronological production history of the franchise in all its many forms – not just Seasons One to Six, but also The New Avengers and the 1998 feature film, plus the wilderness years in between. The latter often make for the most intriguing reading. Here Richardson covers official spin-offs such as the 1971 stage play and the South African radio adaptations, unofficial oddities such as the television pilot Escapade (which started out under the working title of The Avengers USA) and the Hardy Boys episode Assault on the Tower (which featured Patrick Macnee as John Steed in all but name), and projects that never made it off the drawing board, such as The First Avengers Movie and The Avengers … International! Various items of merchandise are mentioned along the way, from books to toys and from vinyl records to DVDs.

This is followed by 50 pages of biographies of the principal cast and crew, 180 pages of production details (all that is known in terms of credits and dates), and smaller appendices on the motor vehicles featured in the series, a brief history of ABC Television, and even commercial clothing lines tied in with The Avengers. I have a slight issue with this structure – for me, information such as cast and crew credits, and rehearsal, recording and transmission dates, are the meat and potatoes of an episode guide, not a side dish to be tucked away at the back of the book.

Nevertheless, in terms of facts per page and pages per pound, this volume cannot be beaten – the most comprehensive information source about The Avengers ever published.

9

Chris Clarkson