Although Patrick Macnee was already comfortably installed as erudite, bowler-hatted British secret agent John Steed, the first season of The Avengers bore but scant resemblance to the later internationally popular version teaming Macnee with Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson. For one thing, the season's quota of 26 hour-long episodes were originally telecast live or on videotape rather than being filmed. For another, the series was shot in black-and-white rather than color, and its action was generally confined within the walls of the ITV sound stages. Also, Steed's partner in espionage was not an attractive young woman but instead a handsome young man, Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry) -- though Ingrid Hafner made sporadic appearances as operative Carol Wilson. Finally, during the first episode the characters played by Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry were genuine "avengers," hoping to make a gang of drug dealers pay the ultimate price for the murder of Dr. Keel's fiancée -- after which, Keel agreed to team up with Steed to bring a wide variety of international criminals to heel, thus avenging the deaths of several more innocents. (In most of the later seasons, the series' title generally had nothing to do with the action.) Only one of the first nine "live" episodes of The Avengers is known to exist. Only one and a half of the remaining videotaped episodes survive on kinescope.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
