Ra-Boom De-Aye!

 

Revisiting the Tara King Avengers

There’s a lot of received wisdom in popular culture. It’s hard to approach any book, film, comic or TV series without being influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the prevailing consensus of opinion. You don’t need to have seen any of the Bond movies to know that, for most people, Sean Connery was the best in the role; and it goes without saying that Thunderbirds was Gerry Anderson’s finest hour. That’s all well and good: but what if you don’t happen to agree? In this blog, I’m going to argue for a contentious point of view regarding one of cult TV’s most beloved properties: The Avengers.

I first got to see The Avengers towards the end of the Diana Rigg era, when it was being shown late on Saturday evenings by ABC television. The company had less than a year left of its franchise, and when it ended, in August 1968, it effectively became Thames. This move signalled a shift in scheduling for the series, and here in the Midlands it now occupied a Friday evening slot when, in September 1968, the Tara King episodes began transmission. When this run ended, in the spring of 1969, it was replaced by Diana Rigg repeats. Thereafter, it would be almost a decade before I saw anything more of The Avengers. Late night repeats continued until around 1971, but these were well after my bedtime.

By the late 1970s, my friend Tim Beddows and myself were soon trying to launch an Avengers Appreciation Society, unhindered by the fact that we’d seen barely half a dozen episodes from only one of the six original series. In the second edition of our very occasional newsletter, I found myself with half a page to spare and for want of anything better to go in it, I wrote a short critique of the Tara King era, arguing that the introduction of Patrick Newell as ‘Mother’ had been to the detriment of the series. The article prompted at least one letter of criticism, from no less an authority than Brian Clemens. A nerve had clearly been touched, and knowing what I now know, I can understand why. Clemens himself had brought in Mother as part of an attempt to salvage the series which was failing under the production of John Bryce.

When I wrote that short critique, I’d not had sight of a ‘Mother-era’ episode in over ten years. Not long afterwards, Channel 4 began a repeat run of The Avengers, beginning, logically enough, with the most popular era, series five… the colour Diana Rigg episodes. The repeats continued into the Tara King era. And then I lost interest…

It wasn’t until a few years ago, and a repeat run on ITV4, that I finally sat down to watch the Tara King era in earnest, and when the channel ran them again, I watched them once more. At time of writing, I’ve just completed a third run through, this time on the That’s Action channel, which means that I’ve now seen most of the Tara King episodes at least four times.

It was around the beginning of this fourth time around that realisation dawned – I was enjoying the Tara King episodes more than those of the Emma Peel era. This couldn’t be right, could it? But more to the point, why did I prefer them? 

I will, of course, concede that there are episodes from series six that are almost without merit – Terry Nation’s Invasion of the Earthmen is diabolical, and The Rotters plays out like an amateur’s attempt to create a ‘classic’ Di Rigg episode. These are by no means the only examples. Yet, taken as a whole, the series has, for me, something that the Emma Peel episodes lack.

One aspect of this was the more imaginative use of location filming during series six. The Emma Peel era established a milieu for the stories that has since become known, quaintly, as ‘Avengerland’, typified by the bucolic scenery to be found in the immediate environs of the series’ production base at Elstree studios. Aside from the London mews where Steed lived, the location work never ventured into urban areas: it was all country lanes and chocolate box villages, like Aldbury (used as a location in Murdersville and Dead Man’s Treasure). Watching the Tara episodes, I began to notice a greater diversity in the location work, none more so than The Morning After, which all takes place in the streets of St. Albans. Elsewhere, we even get to see some council estate backdrops (False Witness), and a memorable lighthouse (All Done With Mirrors). The whole look of the series is different.

On top of all that scenery, we now have Mother: Patrick Newell’s irascible performance definitely adds entertainment value, and his ever-changing headquarters provide some of the most bizarre visuals seen in any of the six series. Newell may have been ten years younger than Patrick Macnee, but there’s no denying he was perfect casting as Steed’s superior.

Perhaps the most important aspect that sets this series apart from its predecessors is the direction, and here I would argue for Robert Fuest as the most creative and innovative director the show ever employed. His name on the credits can salvage an otherwise average episode like Game or The Rotters. Fuest directed only seven episodes, including the oft-reviled Pandora (which I actually rather like), but his style feels like a signature for the whole series.

The stories themselves are different – there’s less of the tounge-permanently-in-cheek vibe that had become a calling card of series five in particular, and some of the stories are much darker in tone, occasionally venturing into the realm of the psychological dramas that Brian Clemens would explore in his famous Thriller series. There are, of course, a few duds, or episodes that try too hard to be off the wall – I don’t personally like Look… Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One (etc), which is too campy and theatrical and plays like a bad Emma Peel storyline, but on the whole the series managed to maintain quite a high standard of writing and direction. Most fans agree that it all ended on a sour note with the oddity that is Bizarre, and it’s clear that Brian Clemens had by this point totally lost interest and simply played the self-indulgence card: "Bagpipes??" The tag scene with Steed’s home-made space rocket is preposterous and Mother even breaks the fourth wall. It’s all a bit end of term, frankly.

Then, of course, there’s Tara herself. I’d never argue for her in preference to Emma Peel, and outside of the tag scenes her character never quite develops quite the same on-screen chemistry with Steed; but she works. She’s tough, but also vulnerable, and in some episodes actually arrives at the eleventh hour to save the day. Perhaps the producers sensed that the Steed/Tara relationship wasn’t as successful as Steed/Peel because the characters are kept apart for whole episodes at a time – The Morning After sees Tara sleep through the whole story, and in Killer she’s on vacation, replaced by Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney. On the other hand, Tara does get to carry several stories almost single-handed, including All Done With Mirrors and the Prisoner-inspired Wish You Were Here, both superior entries in the series.

I think the problem with series six is inconsistency: after a shaky start, it takes several episodes to establish a style and atmosphere, but once it does, there’s enough variety both in terms of ideas and visuals to keep viewers hooked week after week. With the few notable exceptions I’ve mentioned above, none of the episodes is quite as bad as popular opinion seems to suggest, and for myself, I’d still rather watch Bizarre than almost any episode of The Champions.

The Avengers series six may be a bit of a curate’s egg, but where it’s good, I’d argue it’s up there with the best of Diana Rigg. Maybe I’m biased, as series six was the first Avengers era that I got to watch from start to finish, but even allowing for nostalgia, I still feel that these episodes have much to recommend them. Perhaps it’s time to set aside received wisdom and bang the drum for Tara King: “Ra-boom de-aye!”