Here in Blighty, ITV 4 have started showing re runs of The New Avengers, and I being a bit of a cult TV nut have been tuning in.
I decided to dig out my meagre New Avengers stuff that I'd picked up at the time.
First off my Purdey TR7 - Dinky intended to bring other New Avengers cars out but sadly they never appeared. I would have liked Steed’s Jaguar 5.3 coupe for starters.
The obligatory annuals.
The paperbacks - very important in pre video tape times.
Although the original series is considered quite avant-garde with a strong fantasy element mixing spy stories with science fiction, the New Avengers tried to concentrate more on the straight forward spy story making it less of a parody of the former series.
That being said The New Avengers still had quite a few sci-fi aspects - In ‘The Eagle’s Nest’, Nazi monks try to bring Hitler back to life through cryogenics, while the episode ’Last of the Cybernauts’ dealt with cybernetics. The episode, ’Gnaws’ featured a giant rat roaming the sewers. This was apparently based on the Thunderbirds episode ’Attack of the Alligators’.
The New Avengers aired in 1976 and unlike the premise of the original series which, with the odd exception tended to deal with bizarre situations in London and the Home Counties, the new series had French and Canadian backers so several of the stories were actually filmed abroad.
Patrick Macnee returned as the impeccable, John Steed. Producers considered, wrongly that as Macnee was now the rip old age of 53 he would need a younger male side kick to do the action stuff.
Enter Gareth Hunt as Mike Gambit, an ex mercenary and a bit rough round the edges.
The lovely Joanna Lumley played Purdey - an ex ballet dancer turned spy and pretty much the main reason most blokes tuned in.
I think she fancied me!
