During its first season on Britain's ITV, The Avengers was by and large a "straight" espionage adventure series, with no sci-fi/fantasy trappings, and with two male secret agents -- Patrick Macnee as John Steed and Ian Hendry as Dr. David Keel -- handling the bulk of the action. Beginning with its second season, The Avengers adopts its more familiar format: fanciful, tongue-in-cheek spy shenanigans, occasionally incredible or downright improbable in nature, teaming Steed with a sexy female partner. In fact, during season two Steed is provided with two female teammates: Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), a widowed anthropologist and martial-arts expert with a fondness for leather outfits, and Venus Smith (Julie Stevens), a nightclub singer who manages to perform one song in all of the six episodes in which she appears. Also, briefly upholding the "all-male" tradition established in season one, Steed is partnered in three episode with Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason), who like his predecessor, has joined the secret service in order to avenge the death of a loved one, thereby tenuously "justifying" the series' title. By the middle of the second season, the popularity of Honor Blackman was such that Steed was permanently partnered with Cathy Gale. Not only is the character one of the first British action heroines who was thoroughly capable of fending for herself without the hero's help, but there is also the implication that Steed and Cathy are lovers in their off-hours. Although they seldom touch one another except in the line of duty, the warm and intimate verbal rapport between the two characters speaks volumes! Like season one, season two of The Avengers was produced in black-and-white and on videotape. Several of the season's 26 hour-long episodes survive, albeit in kinescope form.
by Hal Erickson
synopsis
