When Diana Rigg left The Avengers at the end of series 5 the people in charge at the studio decided to make the series more realistic even though the rather silly fantasy stories had proven to be so popular. Why is that you think? It seems to happen so often in the tv industry. You'd think with the plethora of disasterous results, so lovingly documented in the entertainment media, that people would have learned that lesson. No lookin' back, I suspect. They got rid of the current producers and hired the producer of some of the Honor Blackman episodes, John Bryce. He hired Linda Thorson to play the new leading lady and Patrick Macnee returned as John Steed. Linda hadn't acted before and it shows. There's a story out on the internet that says she was Bryce's girlfriend. There was trouble with the production and the studio fired Bryce after he turned in the rough cuts of the first three shows. The old producers, Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell, returned. They binned that realism crap and turned in some whacky episodes, some of which were fun to watch. They did 30 new episodes and re-edited the 3 that Bryce did. I thought they had a weak start but improved as the series progressed.
I never found Tara King as entertaining as Diana Rigg but those were some stylish ass kickin' boots to fill. Linda Thorson is pretty raw as an actress and her fighting skills are poor, though slightly aided by her having been a dancer. There seems to be a bit more romantic interest between Tara and Steed but nothing ever happens. The stories were the usual goofyness that people had come to expect with a mite more slapstick than the previous series. Some of the scripts were better than others but you have to expect that with a 33 show season. Our agents get their orders from Mother. He's a wheelchair bound man who seems to have his office in the oddest places. He's always on the move, especially when his office was the top floor of a double decker bus. Sometimes the absurd jokes worked and others they seemed forced. There were a lot of references to other movies, or tv shows like Mission Impossible. There weren't many big guest stars that I recognized but I knew who Christopher Lee and John Cleese were. Poor John plays a guy who is documenting the faces of the clowns of England. They are painted on eggs, raw eggs, placed on flimsy shelves. When he's murdered his eggs get broken. It's sad but there's a lesson to be learned here. I enjoyed most of it but was glad that I NetFlix'd them and hadn't bought them.
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