Review for The Avengers – The Complete Series 4

Despite the persistent insistence that the days of physical media like DVD’s and Blu-Rays will soon be over, it seems as if we are in a golden age for collectors like me. Particularly when it comes to getting complete collections of retro TV shows like ‘The Avengers’. Sadly, the acquisition of this Blu-Ray set will be for me a shameful quadruple dip – probably my first ever.

First up were the VHS’s of this brilliant season of ‘The Avengers’ – the first shot on film and the first with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. They were eventually replaced with an imported Emma Peel Megaset from the US which in turn was replaced with the excellent (bar a few technical bugs) releases from Studio Canal a couple of years ago. Now we have Season 4 of this utterly brilliant series on Blu-Ray and I can sum up this review by stating quite simply, it’s so deliciously good that you really won’t mind making that final dip. Surely it can’t get any better than this?

Of course the only real difference between this set and the previous Studio Canal DVD release is image quality. Remember how good it looked on those DVD’s? Well, this looks twice as good, really showing off not only the quality of the cinematography but also the set and costume design to a level of detail that I thought I’d never see.


Some may be wondering what happened to Series 1-3; why start with a release of Season 4 on Blu-Ray? Well, that’s because all the previous seasons were shot on video tape at a measly 405 lines (excluding a few exteriors shot on 16mm). Season 4 brought in a whole new level of production value, being shot on 35mm with bigger episode budgets and a more ambitious approach which meant far more exterior work too. The show had been sold to the US in 1965, the first UK show to command a prime-time networked slot and the producers were paid some $2m for 26 episodes which was utterly unprecedented at that time.

A Blu-Ray of the earlier seasons just doesn’t make sense as the original tapes just won’t scale up to high definition and they are all available (well, from Season two anyway – there are only a couple of episodes available of Season 1, the rest missing presumed wiped).


For me ‘The Avengers’ sums up the atmosphere of the swinging sixties in Britain. Style over substance to a large degree, often surreal and always funny, ‘The Avengers’ is a cold-war spy programme that defies further definition. By Season 4 it had really found its feet and Patrick Macnee had become synonymous with the character of Steed, the bowler hat-wearing agent who always had a quip regardless of the situation and who wielded a fabulous walking stick which housed a secret sword and which could even fire a bullet. I remember marching around the garden with a plastic one as a child.


Although I (retrospectively) loved the Cathy Gale episodes (with Honor Blackman) the one’s I remember most clearly from a miss-spent and under-supervised childhood in front of the box are those featuring Emma Peel.

Season 5 would see the introduction of vivid colour although Season 4 was still black and white. (In truth, they were all black and white back in the day in the UK as colour broadcasts hadn’t yet started).

Finding the right Emma Peel was no easy task for the producers of the series who were anxious to get the casting right after Blackman had left. They apparently looked at more than before settling on …wait for it …Elizabeth Shepherd.

In fact the first episode (‘The Town of No Return’ and half the second) were shot with Shepherd but nervous producers felt that she lacked Honor Blackman’s presence and was not right for the role after all. In a telephone interview for this release Shepherd felt that actually it was more likely to be her insistence on contributing to the writing / direction that put the crew off. Whatever the case, the search was on for a replacement and Diana Rigg got the part, having turned in some previously impressive performances in TV plays and so on prior to this casting.

A screen test with Macnee showed that the two sparkled together and history was made, creating a season which had more humour than previous with constant verbal sparring between the two leads – not to say a sexual tension which was destined to remain unrealised.

The series also introduced spacey and sci-fi elements which have become lovingly referred to as ‘spy-fi’ into the series in episodes like ‘The Cybernauts’ and ‘The Man Eater of Surrey Green’.



Emma Peel will be best remembered for wearing her tight-fitting leather cat-suits and kinky boots, a look that is much enhanced on this excellent transfer, and this is the series where such get up is most prevalent. The episode ‘A Touch of Brimstone’ where Rigg dresses as the ‘Queen of Sin’ may well be the best remembered episode from the season. By Series 5, Rigg was fed up with being asked to wear the outfits with increasingly sexual undertones like spiked collars and instead insisted on wearing smart looking all-in-one sports outfits which, it must be said, did look great in colour.

Car lovers will also be able to feast their eyes on Peel’s wonderful Lotus Elan, a great contrast to Steeds more grand and austere cars. We even see Emma Peel and Steed share a Vespa at the end of 'The Town of No Return'. Whatever the case, the mix of clothes, style, cars and street fashion makes this a great reflection of swinging sixties Britain – FAB!

The series boasts a veritable who’s who of cinema and TV talent using directors like as Roy Ward Baker, Sid Hayers, James Hill and Ealing stalwart Charles Crichton as well as a wealth of on-screen acting talent, including Terence Alexander, Ronald Fraser, Gordon Jackson, Patrick Cargill, Penelope Keith and tens of others. 




The extras on the set are plentiful though of wildly varying quality. I think they’re the very same set of extras that shipped with the DVD set but here the hidden extras are freely accessed from main menus.

Typos abound which for a set so meticulously restored is pretty unforgivable (for example, in the Elizabeth Shepherd phone interview on Disc 1 you get captioned questions like: ‘ Where you ever told why the production was stopped?’) but this is a very slight groan compared to the delight at having so many extras packed into the package.

I particularly enjoyed the inclusion of the Armchair Theatre episode, ‘The Hothouse’ featuring Diana Rigg and a very compelling performance from her on-screen husband, Harry H. Corbett. Great stuff!

The audio commentaries were generally excellent too and always good to hear the recollections and views of Roy Ward Baker and the mighty Brian Clemens.



Bonus Features:
· Exclusive audio commentaries with: director Roy Ward Baker and scriptwriter/producer Brian Clemens on The Town of No Return, scriptwriter Robert Banks Stewart on The Master Minds, scriptwriter Roger Marshall on Dial A Deadly Number, director Gerry O’Hara on The Hour That Never Was and director Don Leaver on The House That Jack Built.
· The Series of No Return - Exclusive audio interview with Elizabeth Shepherd
· Armchair Theatre – The Hothouse (starring Diana Rigg)
· USA Chessboard opening sequence
· Strange Case of the Missing Corpse promotional trailer
· Alternative end tag from Death At Bargain Prices
· Episode reconstructions for series 1 scripts Kill The King and Dead of Winter
· Colourised test footage from Death At Bargain Prices and A Touch of Brimstone
· Reconstructed ‘The Avengers are back’ John Stamp trailer
· Alternative UK opening and closing credits
· Alternative UK animated bumpers
· UK animated bumper
· Variant opening title credits for The Gravediggers
· French opening credits
· German opening credits
· ITN Newsreel footage
· Stills galleries

The series is one of the two best in my humble opinion (the other being Series 5) and it’s great to finally have it on Blu-Ray. I can’t wait to get hold of Series 5 and who knows, maybe even the Tara King series will get a Blu-Ray release. If you buy this it may help that cause!
Television at its best. An absolute no-brainer of a purchase.