Episode
47
Friday, 22 January 2021
– You wouldn’t trust your mother, would you?
– Her least of all. She used to spy for the Egyptians.
This month, we resume last year’s abortive Kate O’Marathon with an episode of The Persuaders! from 1972, in which Tony Curtis and Roger Moore join forces to fail to recover a retired spy’s sensational memoirs, while Marla and Melania conceal a dark secret about their husband’s astonishing hairpiece.
Episode
46
Saturday, 12 December 2020
Oh, I discovered then, nothing beats a good lashing. (Mind your head.) Take India. You can have a good ten inches overnight there. You know, one should never fear being wet.
This month, we commemorate the death of Sean Connery by revisiting the first nail in the coffin of his movie career, the 1998 film The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman as crude robot replicas of John Steed and Mrs Peel, who go up against the wet sporran of Connery’s single most villainous role, Sir August de Wynter — a man who selflessly tries to provide the population of Great Britain with something interesting to make small talk about.
Episode
45
Saturday, 31 October 2020
– I’ve come here to appeal to you, Mister Cartney.
– You certainly do that!
This month, we all don our flattest Regency trousers and head underground for an evening of wrestling, wassailing and wenching to support the admirable cause of bringing down the British Government. And Peter Wyngarde is here too, looking as devilishly handsome as ever. It’s Part 2 of our Diana Rigg marathon: the 1966 Avengers episode A Touch of Brimstone.
Episode
44
Saturday, 26 September 2020
– You’re not feeling the part, Mrs Peel.
– I have a feeling I will be feeling it.
This month, we celebrate the life of the late Dame Diana Rigg, who left us earlier this month. And we do this by watching one of the most beloved — and one of the most disliked — episodes of The Avengers. It’s Epic, in which Mrs Peel is kidnapped by three washed-up actors playing two washed-up actors and a washed-up director, who are awful enough to believe that it’s fun to watch Mrs Peel being repeatedly threatened with certain death. And, turns out, it is.
Episode
43
Saturday, 5 September 2020
– You know the Chinese have a marvellous way of releasing tensions. Better than any tranquilliser.
– Hm.
– You just hold it, fondle it, stroke it. You’d be surprised how quickly the tensions drain away.
This month, our Kate O’Marathon continues with an episode from the final series of The Avengers, in which Steed gets repeatedly punched in the face, while some hot O’Mara-on-Tara action takes place in the next room.
Episode
42
Saturday, 1 August 2020
– Well, it’s going to be a lovely day.
– Why not, it was a lousy night. Where were you? I left a message for you at midnight.
– Chasing a bag of peanuts.
This month, our Kate O’Marathon commences with a 1968 episode of The Champions, in which Miss O’Mara does some light shoplifting in the hope of scoring some deadly crack for the weekend, and the four of us team up to use our slightly racist superpowers to stop her.
Episode
41
Sunday, 12 July 2020
– We shall be gone from here in a few hours. You back to your own country in triumph, me to the foothills of South America. They say there is gold there.
– It didn’t do Humphrey Bogart much good. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Most people think Walter Huston directed it. It was John.
This month, we head back to the gritty and hardbitten 1970s to check in on one of our favourite Bond girls, Joanna Lumley (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond Meets Black Emmanuelle), in the show that made her a household name, The New Avengers.
Episode
40
Saturday, 30 May 2020
– A journalist? I hope you haven’t come to write lies about us.
– Well, that’s a difficult question, Colonel, because what is truth to me could be lies to you.
This month, our guard of honour continues with an episode of Danger Man from 1960, in which the glorious Honor Blackman stars as the wife of a journalist falsely accused of espionage. Will the eponymous Patrick McGoohan be able to save him from the clutches of the opportunistic Colonel Rodriguez? And, more importantly, can he do it in less than 25 minutes?
Episode
39
Saturday, 2 May 2020
– Well, well. The Saint, no less. I know a great deal about you.
– I’m flattered.
– Don’t be. I follow your exploits with extreme distaste. That article about you in The Times last Sunday was the most nauseating thing I’ve seen in print.
– Tried reading your own columns?
This month, our tribute to Honor Blackman continues as we revisit the earliest days of Rogertainment with the seventh episode of The Saint — The Arrow of God. A gossip columnist and blackmailer has been murdered, but who is the perpetrator? Richard, with his history of embezzlement? Peter, who can’t stop cheating at tennis? Nathan, with his dubious parentage? Or James, with his dark, bigamous past?
Episode
38
Saturday, 11 April 2020
You didn’t really think you could take over this country with a few fanatics in fancy dress.
This month, we celebrate the life of Honor Blackman, who died this week at the age of 94, by watching one of her early episodes as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. In this episode, The Mauritius Penny, Mr Steed and Mrs Gale team up to defeat a gang of murderous dentists and stamp collectors who plan to overthrow the British government and install a fascist dictatorship decades before that sort of thing became fashionable.