I thought I would watch The Avengers again. I don't have the whole series and probably won't pick up anymore than I have; though I am thinking about putting the 6th series on my NetFlix queue. The show had 6 series in it's run from 1961 to 1969. In the first series the BBC made 26 episodes that were broadcast from January to December 1961. Ian Hendry was a medical doctor that meets Steed in the first episode. The two of them team up to avenge the murder of the doctor's fiancee by a drug gang. They worked together for the rest of the series. Before the second series was started there was a strike and Ian took off to work in movies. Only two and a half of the shows from the first series exist and I don't have them. I 
don't think I am missing too much if I don't see them. I don't have the second season either. I wasn't that hot on the Honor Blackman character and I waited to find those cheap before I picked them up and never found the 1962 set that had 14 episodes of the second series cheap enough. Now it's pricey on Amazon. Typically A&E never bothered to release the other half of series 2. With Ian moved on Steed takes over as our main character and he's helped by a couple of gals and another doctor. Honor Blackman and Julie Stevens played the gals in alternating shows with the new doctor. Stevens would leave near the end of the series, once she started baking that bun in her oven, and the doctor was only in 3 or 4 episodes. I guess he wasn't that popular.
A&E put out the series 3 dvd's in four different 2 disc sets that at cheap prices were still about 25 bucks a set. Those are the covers, if you haven't guessed. They only put 25 of the 26 episodes on the 8 dvds. They left out the very first episode of the season and I'm not 
sure why. Maybe it's because A&E just out and out sucks as a dvd producer. I can't say much good about them, too bad someone else didn't get their hands on the BBC catalog of tv programming. Am I wrong but didn't their network used to have some good programing on it? Now it's filled with shows like Hoarders, Billy the Exterminator and Storage Wars. There might be some entertainment but not much art anymore. I understand, there's no money in art.
The shows were shot on video in studios for the most part. There were occasional filmed segments shot outdoors which were cut into the video when they were broadcast. A film camera would be set to record the show on film if they thought it was something they should bother with. They weren't thinking much of the future back then. They used those films to make the dvds and they look pretty darn grainy and low res but watchable for the most part. The sound isn't that great either. They would switch to shooting the show on film, and editing that, in the 4th season. The sound improves too. Finally in the 5th season they'd switch to color film. Watching a tv show in black and white isn't something that bothers me any. The dvds don't have any extras for the most part. Some production stills, whoopee! The British dvd is packaged by series and they are complete and have a great bunch of commentaries and extra features. Did I say anything about A&E sucking.
The episodes are mostly pretty standard tv fare, someone's in trouble, Steed and Mrs Gale have to figure out what's going on and solve the puzzle. It was the same with The Saint, or Dangerman - Secret Agent, or any number of similar British action shows. They always catch the bad guy by the end of the episode. There's a certain level of goofiness in some episodes but it's pretty much serious, nothing like it would get in the later series. The plots of the episodes are varied while still keeping the formula intact. There's an episode about a missing Nuke, one about a company that's bootlegging cosmetics to sell in the Middle East, one about some crooked sailors, one about a gang of undertaker hit-men, and one where everyone dresses up as ancient Romans. There are some fun characters in the series and the dialog is often entertaining. The fights aren't much, kind of typical for the time, and there aren't a lot of them. They use a lot of obvious stunt doubles in the series.
I'm not sure if I saw these when I was younger. They probably would have been broadcast in Canada when they were new, much of British tv, mostly dramas and sitcoms, were sold to the CBC. I know I watched the Emma Peel episodes back then and in reruns but these just don't ring a bell. If you had to choose between these and the Emma Peel episodes go for the later. More on John and Emma in a following post. I have to finish the 5th series first.
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