The Avengers: The Girl from Auntie (Sylvia Coleridge Season)
Content warning: people trafficking and kinky scenes in The Avengers
Absolute fan favourite, this one, to the extent that it's slightly daunting to blog about with the hope of saying anything that hasn't been said online over and over again. I think I can truthfully say that I have found an approach to this episode which hasn't been made yet, though.
It's such a jolly romp through Avengerland and, with contact with the world of the sixties in the shape of the nods to The Man from UNCLE and John, Paul, George and...the other one. It is clear that the cast had a whale of a time making this, and even though I don't normally like shows filled with familiar faces as this one is, in this case it's like being present at a play put on by a cast of old friends who are doing it just for fun. It was apparently Brian Clemens's last one of The Avengers, and he transformed a rather straightforward Roger Marshall script by adding knitted bungalows and what have you, and so it has the feel of an end of term play, where everyone is letting their hair down a bit.
Many reviews of this episode online casually drop in that it's the one in which Mrs Peel basically wears the least she ever wears, and I suspect that is a large part of this episode's popularity (isn't that so, boys?). There are a few comments expressing some disquiet at the fate that's in store for her, however it's apparent that the largely male audience of The Avengers are distracted by the bikini and the way the episode is played for comedy, and don't acknowledge that without Steed's rescuing her Mrs Peel's fate would be cruel indeed.
I think here the show is doing something it occasionally does elsewhere (I have no way of knowing whether this is deliberate, and am not even sure whether anyone else has put it like this before). The best example of the show doing this is found in Caste De'Ath, I think: the show builds on its well-deserved reputation for being kinky by introducing something which is definitely sexy, and then taking it over the top to death, thereby deflating the audience who have got all excited. In Castle De'Ath, for example, we have the man stretched on the rack, the fully fitted dungeon, asyphyxiation, Steed in a kilt, being squashed in the bed, and so on (I did comment that they could be quite extreme). If you were watching this and liking that sort of thing, you would find your ardour considerably deflated when you found that the bed was actually intended to kill Steed, that the man on the rack was being killed, the dungeon is actually in use, and so on. The Avengers rightly has a reputation for being incredibly sexy, but sometimes it takes it well beyond a bit of leather to some extreme stuff, and then messes with the audience if they're actually finding this kinky, by making it clear that the things which it's made look kinky are not at all. Apparently there are people who are into things like torture and asphyxiation, but not to actually being tortured and asphyxiated. Of course the show also has loads of kinky or suggestive scenes where it doesn't then do this: for example the scene in You Have Just Been Murdered where Mrs Peel in her catsuit subdues a man, is all over the naughtier pages of the inernet, as I found when I once searched for it with a view to a blog post.
In the case of The Girl from Auntie, we have to acknowledge that the episode is a humorous show about art theft, extending into the difficult territory of what would now be called human trafficking. Which is one thing, but then when it puts the stolen Mrs Peel in a bikini in a cage, we have to see that this is some messed up stuff going on. We also have to admit that there are probably lots of men who would happily at least fantasise about having Mrs Peel as their property and, er, doing what they wanted with her, which is exactly the show's premise. The episode's humorous treatment softens the blow where it is made clear that a man who is thinking of Mrs Peel like that is definitely the baddie and to be avenged by Steed. I am thinking this scenario well beyond where any of the reviews that comment on the smallness of the bikini have gone, but then I can always be relied on to go too far. And as I say, I have no evidence as to the intentions of the production team. And putting sexy scenes in a TV show is one thing, but pushing them well into dangerous or illegal things before making the audience essentially the show's baddies, is some advanced psychological messing right there.
Otherwise we have to acknowledge the army of old ladies knitting, spying and murdering according to their wont. Again, it may seem humorous to see the bodies heaped up with knitting needles in their backs (certainly the script was altered to have Georgie laughing at the corpses instead or screaming as originally intended), but in my research for this post I discovered that in 2015, 57-year-old Catherine McDonald of Somerset was murdered with a knitting needle (amongst other domestic items) by her son Alex, so perhaps it isn't such a far-fetched method of murder. This blog post is a bit gallows, isn't it.
Of course Sylvia Coleridge features as one of the Arkwright Knitting Circle, the one with all the nephews. Her personality and voice are absolutely perfect for the role. On the subject of familiar faces, of course many commenters online have commented that several actors in this episode have also appeared on other episode of The Avengers, or Dr Who, or both. So perhaps I had better just comment that I think Sylvia Coleridge marvellous as Amelia Ducat or Duckett in The Seeds of Doom. Unfortunately I have never got on very well with the rest of that Dr Who adventure, although I see it's very popular, and in fact have tried and failed to write a blog post about it for this series of posts. So even though it won't be appearing here, I must still say I loved Sylvia Coleridge in it.
It's a bit churlish to make any criticism of this show but if I had one it is that I have found when watching this I keep wondering whether Sylvia Coleridge is the murderous old lady, but again, of course, that may be deliberate.
My absolutely favourite bit is the where Steed and Georgie go into the theatrical costumiers and there is an electric coffee percolator percolating away on its own, surely a sight which isn't seen in any work place nowadays, but the sound and smell of which takes me right back.
A wonderful Avengers episode, but remember, consent is sexy and people aren't property!
This blog is mirrored at
culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)
Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an incomplete index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog
There is an index to posts on the Substack version here: https://culttvblog.substack.com/p/index-of-posts?r=1q6qo6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
About this blog: https://culttvblog.substack.com/about