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The story
is that Honor Blackman left 'The Avengers' to take up the role of Pussy Galore in maybe
the best James Bond film ever 'Goldfinger'. In fact a comedy aside in one of the episodes
is that Cathy Gale has sent them a postcard from Fort Knox (get it?). Regardless, the show
really fell on it's feet when Diana Rigg was recruited to play the role of Emma Peel. The
first Emma Peel series, like it's predecessors, was filmed in black and white though the
stories had a much stronger fantasy/sci fi element to them compared to the Blackman era.
An example of this is 'How to Succeed at Murder' which featured a group of modern day
amazons planning to take over the country by killing the captains of industry.
On the face of it 'The Murder Market' (short clip on the MPEG page) is a more conventional story. Basically it is about a 'killers for hire' organisation. The typical 'Avengers' twist is that the star operative is a woman Barbara Wakefield (Suzanne Lloyd) and the front for the organisation is a marriage bureau. Here she is showing she is as ruthless with a gun in her hand as a knife.
The second Diana Rigg season saw a switch to colour. As if to complement this
the stories became a lot more colourful too. Typical of this is 'The Supelative Seven'
which is a tribute to the Agatha Christie story 'Ten Little Indians'. A group of people
are lured to a remote hideaway and one by one they are killed. The story features a young
Donald Sutherland and featured Charlotte Rampling whose six shooters in her cowboy fancy
dress outfit are more than decorative.
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The classic episode of this highly productive era is probably 'The House that Jack Built' but doesn't feature any female protagonists. 'Don't Look Behind You' is a close second and in some ways is similar. Diana Rigg is lured to a house where she is systematically driven towards insanity. Is the fey Ola (Sally Nesbitt) a friend or a foe? Judge for yourself.
Another top notch episode from the colour period is 'Escape in Time' about criminals apparently being transported to the past to escape justice. The delectable Judy Parfitt was chief aide to the villain. Ms. Parfitt had appeared in several previous Cathy Gale episodes and always played the bad girl. This episode was no exception. Also there are some clips from 'The See Through Man' where Moira Lister plays a Russian spy aiding an apparently invisible man.
Another villainess sprung up in 'The £50,000 Breakfast'. This episode was a recycled story from an earlier episode and had few of the outlandish characteristics of the other episodes from this era. Yolande Turner did make a fetching murderous money grabber though. There's also a couple of vidcaps from 'The Fear Merchants'. The woman scientist here had a novel way of killing her victim as well as more traditional methods.
Just so this page doesn't go on forever (I told you this series was damn good) I've lumped the following lethal ladies in together. You'll recall that the 1960's was at the height of the cold war and it's fair to say espionage was given the typical 'Avengers' treatment. The vidcaps are from the following episodes: 'Who's Who' which had a Russian agent (Patricia Haines) swapping bodies with Emma Peel: 'The Correct Way to Kill' where Steed is teamed up with a Russian agent; 'A Funny Thing happened on the way to the Station' with Isla Blair as a plotter in an attempt to kill the British PM and last but certainly not least another classic 'The Living Dead'. In this episode Pamela Ann Davey is part of a plot to invade England by constructing a huge underground city beneath old mine workings. As part of this subterfuge she poses as part of a paranormal investigation society until her true colours are revealed.
As you can tell I've struggled to keep this article to a manageable size and haven't even shown a good cross section of Diana Rigg's groundbreaking performances in the series so to make up for that here are a few pics of the lady herself.
Some time in the future they'll be an article on Diana's successor, Linda Thorson, and the follow up series 'The New Avengers' starring the absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley.
