The Avengers: Quick-Quick Slow Death
The Avengers is simultaneously the easiest and most difficult cult TV series to blog about. Easy, because everything has been chewed over at length over the past sixty years so the blogger has the ultimate get-out clause of being able to direct people elsewhere online for information and analysis. Difficult, because everyone has an opinion and it's a bit difficult to know what to say.
In the case of Quick-Quick Slow Death, I have been listening to the Springbok Radio version as well as watching the TV episode, so while this won't be a comprehensive comparison, I will make my usual semi-formed observations and will no doubt compare at various points. I have seen a couple of criticisms online from people who find the music in the TV version intensely irritating, and listening to the Springbok version may be better for them because it uses different music.
Piers Johnson of dissolute.com.au gives as a possible reason for his liking of this episode, that the plot is utterly improbable, and I can only agree. We are in true Avengers territory here, and the improbability starts off with the man pushing the pram. And this reveals how the TV series was adapted for radio, because in having to describe the action for an audience who couldn't see pictures, the radio show reveals something in the script which is toned down in the TV version. The radio version describes the pram as being more like a bassinet than a pram, and this phrase is actually in the first line of the script, which you can download from the Dissolute site. This phrase from the original script brings out a point which doesn't come across in the TV version, where the pram is one of those old monsters built like a tank. To my frustration I have tried and failed to find a definition for bassinet over pram, however from searching bassinet and antique, I have found pictures of small, delicate prams, shaped like upside down helments or basins, and made of wicker. Of course it's entirely possible I've misunderstood what a bassinet is, but rewatching the TV version, that pram's a monster in comparison to some of the ones I've seen.
While the TV show is clearly absurd enough with the idea of a grown man being pushed along in a pram, it has lost that the script dictated that the pram should be an especially small and delicate one, which of course cranks the absurdity up to ridiculous and I love it.
I have seen it suggested that other Springbok Radio versions of the show also reflect earlier versions of the episodes than were eventually recorded, and seen it suggested that often these changes can be explained by money. For example, They Keep Killing Steed is recorded as Too Many Oles and set in Spain, and I have seen it suggested that it was relocated in Britain to make it cheaper. Quick-Quick Slow Death, on the other hand has relatively few changes from the TV show.
A major one, which really hits you, is that they considerably tone down Piedi. In comparison to the Springbok version of this, where it seems that Piedi just has a thing about shoes and feet, it is very apparent in the TV version that Piedi is a foot fetishist. In fact Mrs Peel spends quite a lot of the episode being perved over in one way or another. I wonder whether this was toned down deliberately for South Africa's conservative Calvinist people, who would have found that a bit racy.
On the other hand, the tattooist comes across as a proper villain in the radio version, rather than the sweet guy he is in the TV version.
But don't worry, the sausage is still there. Although I would note that on the radio what it looks like would of course be up to the listener rather than seen, and there's no guarantee that the listener would visualise the huge, phallic tattooed length, with which Mrs Peel plays Hide the Sausage. In the radio version Steed actually tells her to eat it. Can you imagine how popular an instructress in a dance school would be if she ate garlic sausage? Now you may think that I'm overstating it and a monster of depravity to match the baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells, but I'm not impressed with the criticism I've seen that after Steed tells Mrs Peel to hide the sausage she does nothing of the sort. That's the point. She leaves it in the hall, proud, exposed, and that's the point. Basically what Springbok Radio took out was the running theme of Mrs Peel as sex on legs.
I have no criticism of either version of the episode, and they are both Stonking Good Television or Radio.
The only thing I would say is that if you want to listen to the radio version, a lot of the uploads online have cut out the advertisements completely, and I honestly think it's better with them. If you get episodes starting 'Now, from the makers of Cold Water Omo', and with another ad for Omo straight after the title music, you know you've got the full version. I just think that the adverts bring home that this isn't British radio, although the actors were British so you could be mistaken for thinking so. Apart from anything else Omo is a South African imstitution, and the housewives interviewed in the adverts are what really brings home that this is not being made in Britain. Apologies for the sound in this clip but there really isn't a better one:
It also brings home that Black people may have been servants or running errands, but were largely excluded from the world the shows were recorded in. It is very strange, and I've deliberately picked that picture to bring home that The Avengers was broadcast against the bizarre facade of apartheid, to create a European country in an African country. No wonder the utter absurdity of The Avengers was so well received, it must have seemed sensible in a country where a Japanese person was considered white on one side of the street and Black on the other.
Meanwhile, in another part of Africa (sorry, I don't know where, and Omo seems to have been sold pretty well internationally, although we don't have it here any more):
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