Remembering Honor Blackman

The spy genre has lost a Great today. The Guardian reports that Honor Blackman has passed away at the age of 94, "of natural causes unrelated to coronavirus." It's crushing to lose two of the key Bond Girls in a matter of months, Blackman's death coming on the heels of Thunderball's Claudine Auger in December. And while she will probably be best remembered for her definitive portrayal of Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger, Blackman's mark on the spy genre is far greater. For me, she'll first and foremost always be Cathy Gale, John Steed's first regular female partner on the UK TV classic The Avengers.

Cathy Gale was ultimately overshadowed by Steed's more famous subsequent partner, Emma Peel (played to perfection by another future Bond Girl, Diana Rigg), but Gale's and Blackman's place in television history cannot be overstated. Cathy Gale was television's original badass, leather-clad female spy, paving the way not only for Mrs. Peel, but for Honey West (producer Aaron Spelling was inspired to create the show by Avengers episodes he saw in England, and reportedly first offered the role to Blackman, who turned it down), The Bionic Woman, Alias's Sydney Bristow, and every other leading lady of espionage to throw an attacker over her shoulder, as well as non-spy heroines like Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Quite simply, there had never been an action-oriented female protagonist on television before Honor Blackman's groundbreaking performance. She changed the game. In part, this was due to Blackman inheriting scripts that had been originally written for another male partner for Steed (following his first season foil, Ian Hendry's Dr. David Keel), which were hastily rewritten for her, but kept the character involved in the action in a way women hadn't been previously on TV. But in a larger part, it was due to Blackman's undeniable and very physical presence: she played Cathy as a woman definitely not to be trifled with! And she learned judo for the role, impressively dispatching stuntmen twice her size on a regular basis on episodes that were at the time taped live. Her obvious talent even led to the publication of a book, Honor Blackman's Book of Self-Defense.

Prior to playing Cathy Gale, Blackman was known for glamour more than ass-kicking. But she'd already racked up a pretty impressive roster of spy roles. Foremost among them was a regular role on the 1959-60 ITC wheel show The 4 Just Men (review here), in which she played Nicole, secretary to Paris-based Just Man Tim Collier (Dan Dailey). That was a series very much of its time in all respects, so Nicole was no Cathy Gale, but Blackman nonetheless imbued her with the quick wit and spark that would later define her more famous character alongside her martial arts skills. She also made pre-Avengers appearances on other ITC series like The Saint, Danger Man,  and The Invisible Man, as well as U.K. spy and detective series like Top Secret (sadly lost), Ghost Squad, and The Vise, while also turning up in spy movies like Conspirator (with Elizabeth Taylor), Diplomatic Passport, and the original 1953 TV movie version of Little Red Monkey (penned by wartime BSC spy Eric Maschwitz and adapted two years later into a feature film version). Other notable film roles during this period include Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the Eric Ambler-penned Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958), the Dirk Bogarde suspense drama So Long at the Fair (1950), and the Hammer noir The Glass Tomb (1955). Following the international success of Goldfinger, Blackman surprisingly didn't make many more spy appearances. The notable exceptions were the superior 1968 Goeffrey Jenkins adaptation A Twist of Sand (a movie in dire need of a Blu-ray or at least DVD release!), opposite Deadlier Than the Male's Richard Johnson, and a 1983 TV adaptation of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence mystery The Secret Adversary. In the late Nineties, Mike Meyers dreamed of getting Blackman and Connery to play Austin Powers' parents, but that didn't happen and Michael Caine ended up playing his dad. While not playing spies, though, Blackman continued to have a robust post-Bond career, including a re-teaming with Connery in the 1968 Western Shalako, a pair of 1970s cult horror movies, Fright ('71), and Hammer's final genre flick of that incarnation, To the Devil a Daughter ('76), opposite Christopher Lee, and, more recently, a very memorable comedic turn in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). She also continued to make her mark in television, too, with recurring or starring roles on Doctor Who, The Upper Hand, and Coronation Street, and guest appearances in Columbo, Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible, Midsomer Murders, and New Tricks.

Her early fame from The Avengers brought her an unlikely career milestone in 1990 when an infectious novelty single she had recorded with Patrick Macnee in the early Sixties, "Kinky Boots," became a dubious Top 10 radio hit at Christmastime. Some have described it as "embarrassing," but as far as I'm concerned both of those stars had enough infectious charisma to pull it off even if they're not really singers! (I'm also partial to the B-side, "Let's Keep It Friendly," about the characters' platonic relationship on the show.)

Blackman has also had a successful theater career, including productions of "The Sound of Music," "My Fair Lady" and "Cabaret," and a couple of touring one-woman shows. It was one of these performances that brought her into my out-of-the-way neck of the woods when I was in high school in the mid-Nineties. I took in the show, which was amazing, and then managed to meet her backstage. Blackman was the first Bond celebrity I'd ever met, and she did not let me down. She seemed genuinely happy to meet with fans, and gladly signed a Goldfinger trading card for this starstruck teen while regaling me with stories from her days on The Avengers. She even weighed in with a decidedly non-PC answer on a debate I'd been having at the time with a friend about whether Bond and Pussy's roll in the hay was truly consensual. "Darling," she told me, eyes sparkling, "it was Sean Connery. Any woman would have wanted it!"

That sparkle remained ever-present as she remained a public figured right up to the end, always reliable for some media appearances whenever a new Bond movie came out. She never turned her back on the franchise, or publicly showed any resentment for the "Bond Girl" label that followed her throughout her career. She also continued to be a cheerleader for The Avengers, despite having left the series just before its transition to film and color... and the American broadcast that cemented its global fame.

In Blackman's final episode of The Avengers (after her Goldfinger casting was already public news), Steed bade farewell to Cathy Gale with a typical request of a favor, beginning, "And as you're going to be out there anyway, pussyfooting along those sun-soaked shores..."

"You thought I might do a little investigating," she finishes, knowing him all too well. She demurs, asserting her well-earned right to a vacation. "You see I'm not going to be pussy-footing along those sun-soaked shores," she corrects her partner, "I'm going to be lying on them." Pussyfooting or lounging, Honor Blackman has certainly earned her trip to those sun-soaked shores. While more terrestrially, the modern spy genre forever owes her an enormous debt. Blackman was a true trailblazer, who transformed the role of women in the spy genre from femme fatales who relied exclusively on their sexuality to equal participants in the action, undaunted by superior force and unmatched in combat skills.

Shane Black and Fred Dekker Pen AVENGERS TV Reboot

Well, the big spy news of the day is undoubtedly the potentiality of a Shane Black/Fred Dekker-penned TV reboot of the greatest spy series of all time, The Avengers. Dekker dropped the news in an interview with print magazine The Dark Side, which then hit the Internet courtesy of Screen Rant. There are very few solid details available, but here is what Dekker told the magazine, verbatim:

It’s The Avengers, with John Steed and Emma Peel. We’re setting it in Britain in the 60’s, and our approach is The Ipcress File meets Doctor Who. At this moment, it’s my favorite thing we’re working on.

That's all we know so far from the horse's mouth. (And I have to say... I quite like Dekker's description!) The studio appears to be Warner Bros. Television. We don't know if there's a network involved, but it might be Amazon, for whom Black and Dekker previously penned the Western pilot Edge (which did not go to series), based on the 1970s Men's Adventure paperback series.

While my gut reaction is to instantly decry any attempt at an Avengers revival that doesn't originate in Great Britain, that impulse is checked by the creative talent involved. Shane Black is one of the greatest working screenwriters. He rose to fame on lucrative action spec script sales in the 1980s and '90s, most famously creating the Lethal Weapon franchise. His spy cred includes the 1996 amnesiac assassin thriller Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. In this century, he's reinvented himself writing and directing smart, funny, pulpy neo-noir fare like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys. He's even made a Marvel movie--Iron Man Three.

Early in his career, Black wrote with frequent collaborator Fred Dekker, a partnership that most famously produced The Monster Squad (1987), which Dekker directed. Dekker went on to a less illustrious career than Black, but also earned his bona fides in the spy genre writing the 1991 Richard Greico teen spy comedy If Looks Could Kill and penning a glorious, but un-produced, live-action, 1960s-set Johnny Quest movie. The two partners reunited in recent years to pen the upcoming Predator reboot which Black is directing and the aforementioned Amazon pilot.

All of which is to say that The Avengers are in good hands. American hands, maybe, but hands I'm willing to trust for now. In all likelihood, this will go nowhere. But if it does, I'm willing to take the journey. It can only be an improvement on the 1998 feature film version of the series, which starred Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery.

Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg, of course, starred as agents extraordinary John Steed and Emma Peel in the original TV series. Steed's other partners included Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry), Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), and Tara King (Linda Thorson). The Avengers torch has been kept burning lately in audio dramas from Big Finish (including excellent recreations of lost first season episodes) and comics from Boom! Studios (including a recent crossover with the 1960s TV incarnation of Batman).

Cover Art for Big Finish's Steed & Mrs. Peel Comic Strip Collection

Ever since Big Finish first announced they'd be adapting the Sixties Avengers comics that ran in UK comics magazine Diana (no relation to Rigg), I've been looking forward to their promised trade paperback collection of those gorgeous original comics even more than the adaptations themselves. But it's been a long wait. On the Big Finish website, the collection is still available for pre-order and touted as "out in November..." yet there's very little of November left! (Volume 2 of the Steed and Emma audio dramas also has yet to materialize.) But it is coming. There are now pre-order listings on Amazon and Amazon UK as well, which both state a December 31, 2016 release date. Comixology has a digital version solicited for February 2017. But this snappy cover art would seem to indicate that the book is finally on its way to being a reality, whenever it actually materializes. The rather simplistic stories, intended for children and running just a scant six pages each (originally delivered in two-page installments), aren't very memorable, but Emilio Frejo's artwork is truly stunning, and I can't wait to have an archival collection of it for my bookshelf!

In addition to the 1966-67 comics themselves (listed under the titles Big Finish used for their audio versions), the 96-page trade paperback includes an introduction by Big Finish's David Richardson, interviews with actors Julian Wadham and Olivia Poulet (who voice Steed and Emma, respectively, in the audio adaptations), and an article entitled "From Strip to Script" by Kenny Smith, editor of Big Finish's magazine Vortex.

Read my reviews of two of these Diana comics ("Return to Castle De'ath" and "The Miser," as they're now known—though you won't find any reference to the fantastic Season 4 episode "Castle De'ath" in the strip itself; that connection was a stroke of genius on Big Finish's part for their expanded audio version) on the superb website The Avengers Illustrated.

Lost First Season Avengers Episode Discovered!

Wow, there is a lot of truly exciting spy news breaking today! In addition to the announcement of a new James Bond novel from Anthony Horowitz comes some fantastic news for Avengers fans.My wishful thinking 2010 April Fool's post has come partially true. (Reading that all these years later, I'm kind of astonished at the amount of time I must have spent on that constructing a narrative of so many trivial details!) Not the whole season, sadly, but one more episode of the mostly lost first season of The Avengers has been discovered! Most of the first season has been considered lost for decades thanks to the unfortunate UK practice of "wiping" tapes. Videotaped series, seen at the time (so long before DVD or streaming media) as ephemeral, were simply recorded over to make room. Other notorious victims of wiping include (sadly) many of the monochrome episodes of Callan, most of the second season of Adam Adamant Lives! and, most famously, many early Doctor Who serials featuring the first two Doctors.

Avengers scholar extraordinaire Alan Hayes, co-author of the definitive book on the show's first season, Two Against the Underworld (a must-buy for any curious fan!), provides most of the background in a post on his wonderful Avengers Declassified website, but it was Spyvibe's article on the subject that first caught my attention. A 16mm film print of the 20th episode, "Tunnel of Fear," was discovered by Kaleidoscope's Chris Perry. "Tunnel of Fear," set at a seaside funfair, was one of the highlights of the most recent volume of Big Finish's excellent audio recreations of the lost episodes, so I very much look forward to seeing how close they got it! The episode features both Patrick Macnee's John Steed and Ian Hendry's Dr. Keel, and Steed goes undercover in a harem, which sounds wonderfully appropriate.

For those lucky enough to live near Birmingham City University, "Tunnel of Fear" will be shown in November at this year's annual Missing Believed Wiped festival. As for the rest of us, apparently rights holders StudioCanal have been contacted, so hopefully they will find a way to get it onto DVD for the masses before too long. And hopefully more believed lost first season episodes will continue to turn up as dedicated TV scholars continue to tirelessly search for them!

Batman Meets Avengers Steed and Mrs. Peel For Real This Summer

DC Comics' Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel, uniting the Adam West incarnation of the Caped Crusader with the original Avengers, was first announced at Comic-Con last summer. But after that news on the project was frustratingly scarce. In the fall came the surprising news that Batman would next team up with another pair of Sixties tube spooks, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin in Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Again, details were scarce, and spy fans were left to ponder whether the U.N.C.L.E. series had precluded the previously announced Avengers crossover, or merely preceded it. Thankfully it now seems clear that DC is intent on a series of Sixties Batman TV crossovers, the issues of which appear to have replaced the ongoing monthly Batman '66 comic, which came to a close just before the U.N.C.L.E. crossover began. The publisher officially announced Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel last month (as reported on Comic Book Resources), with the first issue hitting comic shops July 6 (after debuting digitally on June 8) and the second slated for August 3.

The 6-issue series will be a co-publication with BOOM! Studios, who have held the license to publish Steed and Mrs. Peel comics since 2012, and have done so intermittently since then, along with reprinting Grant Morrison's early Nineties run on the title. BOOM!'s most recent stab at Steed and Emma (for my money, bar none the greatest characters in all spy television) came in 2014 with "Mrs. Peel, We're Needed" by Ian Edginton and Marco Cosentino. That series was originally solicited as being six issues, but was alarmingly truncated to just three (and never collected in trade), presumably owing to poor sales. (A pity, too, because Edginton delivered a great story chock-full of amusing references to The Prisoner, James Bond and other Sixties pop culture spies.) Hopefully a meeting with Batman will give The Avengers the higher profile they need to sell more comics of their own, and Boom! will at least allow Edginton to finish out his 6-issue run and then publish a collected edition to match their previous three volumes of original comics. That seems like a possibility because, happily, Edginton is the writer on Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel! Matthew Dow Smith (whose previous TV-based comics include Doctor Who and The X-Files, and who also drew the very first solo adventure of Mike Mignola's Lobster Johnson) provides the art, and the great Mike Allred (Red Rocket 7) continues his cover duties from Batman '66 and Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Additionally, Cat Staggs will provide a variant cover for the first issue.)

Some fans complained about the artwork because the publisher apparently didn't obtain likeness rights for Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, but I thought DC really knocked it out of the park with Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which will be collected in hardcover in September. I sincerely hope that Batman Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel maintains that high level of quality and fun, and with Edginton (who also penned a quartet of outstanding Sherlock Holmes graphic novel adaptations) at the helm, I'm confident that it will. Furthermore, if I may dare to dream a moment, I hope that the two miniseries are successful enough to warrant follow-ups. I would love to see more U.N.C.L.E. from DC (and I suspect the only way that will happen is with Batman along for the ride), and I would love even more to see some sort of jam-packed hullabaloo with Batman, Steed, Emma, Napoleon and Illya all together! (While I'm dreaming big, such an epic event should definitely be drawn by Allred. He loves hullabaloos.) At the very least, it will be nice to have a pair of Batman '66 superspy crossovers next to each other on my bookshelf by early next year. (The hardcover volumes DC has done with Batman '66 are very attractive indeed.)

I have no doubt that this series will yield an umbrella fight between John Steed and the Penguin, and a catsuited cat fight between Emma Peel and Catwoman. And obviously (judging from the cover for #2), Cybernaughts show up too. And I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Hellfire Club make an appearance. But here's what we know for sure, in the form of DC's solicitation copy for the first two issues.

BATMAN ’66 MEETS STEED AND MRS. PEEL #1England swings and so does the Dynamic Duo in this historic pairing of two of the hippest shows from 1960s television. DC Comics and BOOM! Studios join forces to bring these iconic characters together for the first time!
As Bruce Wayne shows the beautiful head of a UK electronics company the sights of Gotham, they are interrupted by the felonious feline Catwoman! Unwilling to leave Miss Michaela Gough unprotected, Bruce resigns himself to the fact that Batman cannot save the day. But some new players have arrived in town—though even as the lovely, catsuit-clad Mrs. Peel and her comrade John Steed take control of the situation, nefarious plots continue apace!  

BATMAN ’66 MEETS STEED AND MRS. PEEL #2Gotham City’s police headquarters have been besieged by mysterious metal men, and our heroes are put in an unlikely position: as Catwoman’s saviors. And when even Batman’s best efforts falter, John Steed’s trusty umbrella plays a key role in the rescue! Co-published with BOOM! Studios.

Like Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Batman '66 Meets Steed and Mrs. Peel will be a digital first comic. This means that the comic will be published digitally on a bi-weekly schedule in advance of its print publication. Each digital issue contains half the contents of each print issue, so digitally it will amount to twelve parts total.

Pre-order Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E. here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel: The Golden Game here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 1 here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 2 here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 3 here.

Read my review of Steed and Mrs. Peel #0 here.
Read my interview with Steed and Mrs. Peel writer Caleb Monroe here.

Big Finish Finds Their Emma Peel

Ever since Big Finish announced they'd be following their fantastic series of Avengers audio dramas based on the lost first season Steed and Dr. Keel episodes with an Emma Peel series, we've been waiting to hear who would step into Diana Rigg's kinky boots. This weekend the company announced that The Thick of It's Olivia Poulet will play the role opposite Julian Wadham, reprising his role as John Steed from The Lost Episodes. (Thank goodness! Wadham is amazing, striking the perfect balance between homaging the generally inimitable Patrick Macnee, and putting his own spin on the role.) Poulet, whose credits also include Sherlock, In the Loop, and Dead Air, will give voice to Mrs. Peel in eight audio adaptations of the comics that originally ran in the UK children's magazine Diana in 1966 and '67. (Read my reviews of some of those comics here.) The Avengers: Steed and Mrs. Peel - The Comic Strip Adaptations will be released in April 2016, and is available to pre-order now. Judging from the titles alone, Big Finish has already improved on the original comics! And I'm sure they will in many more ways spinning 6-page stories aimed at kids into hour-long audio dramas for adults. (I love that they've tied in the first, Scottish-set story with one of my favorite TV episodes ever, "Castle De'ath.") I can't wait to hear, and to here Ms. Poulet's repartee with Wadham. Here are the descriptions Big Finish provides for the first batch of episodes:

1. Return to Castle De'ath by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris

Steed is left hanging, Emma pays the piper

2. The Miser by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris

Steed has a nasty scare, Emma has a pressing engagement

3. The Golden Dresses by Paul Magrs

Emma hits the heights of fashion and Steed plumbs the very depths

4. The Norse Code by John Dorney

Steed has the horns of a dilemma, Emma milks her moment

Thanks to David for the heads-up on this news!

Bryan Fuller Wants to Reboot The Avengers on TV with Eddie Izzard as Steed

Bryan Fuller, the visionary showrunner behind Hannibal, Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls, would like to reboot The Avengers (the real Avengers, not the superhero team) on television. He told TVLine (via Dark Horizons), "I would love to reboot The Avengers with Eddie Izzard as John Steed. That would be wonderful." That's the full extent of his quote, given in a survey that asked successful showrunners what series they'd most like to reboot. So, to be clear, this is Fuller picking a dream job, not a pilot sale or even a pitch. But it's certainly a provocative notion!

The Avengers is my favorite TV show of all time. It has already been rebooted once, in the Seventies, by Brian Clemens as The New Avengers, and turned into a less than satisfying feature film in the late Nineties. I am not a knee-jerk reactionary against remakes and reboots of things that I love. After the failure of the 1998 movie (at least partly due to studio tinkering; I would certainly love to see a director's cut to judge the film properly), the show could definitely use some rehabilitation in the public's eyes. And I would love to see it get enough exposure that it could reclaim its own name, which has been appropriated by Marvel. Of course I would only want to see a reboot in truly capable hands... but Bryan Fuller's might be the perfect hands. He is both a storyteller and a stylist, a crucial combination for The Avengers. And he's got a decidedly offbeat point of view, which also helps. The sort of quirkiness he's demonstrated in cult favorites like Pushing Daisies or his one prior foray into spydom (sort of), the supremely, deliciously weird Amazing Screw-On Head (a bizarre animated steampunk pilot based on Mike Mignola's exquisitely weird comic book of the same name - full review here) makes him a good fit for the material. I also like that he starts in the right place, by choosing a Steed. Many fairweather fans of the show might pick a new Emma Peel first (and such casting, whichever female partner they went with, would of course be crucial), but Fuller seems to recognize that no matter which partner he was paired with, it was always Patrick Macnee as Steed who held the show together. That's the right starting point, and from there you should look for an actress with chemistry with your Steed - in this case Eddie Izzard. Which I think is another excellent choice. Izzard is on record as being a fan of the series, but also may have a black mark against him in many fans' eyes for his participation in the '98 movie, in which he played a (mostly) mute henchman for Sean Connery's diabolical mastermind. But anyone who's ever seen his standup act knows that Izzard oozes charisma (and, of course, he's got style - and a predilection for kinky boots!), and in my opinion he might just be the one man who could revive John Steed on television. Fuller and Izzard have previously worked together on two other reboots, the Munsters-derived Mockingbird Lane, and Hannibal. Yes, after careful consideration, I quite love the idea of a Bryan Fuller/Eddie Izzard Avengers reboot! Come on, Esteemed Representatives of Television, make it happen!

Fuller wasn't the only producer polled to pick The Avengers. Gabrielle Stanton, executive producer on The Flash, showed similar good taste. "I would love to reboot Space: 1999 or The Avengers – not the bad movie version, the really cool TV version. Both those things would be really great science-fiction genre properties to bring back."

Watch Video of Dame Diana Rigg's BFI Avengers Q&A

As we first heard back in September, the greatest female spy star of all time, Dame Diana Rigg (star of The Avengers and On Her Majesty's Secret Service) did a Q&A following a screening of a classic Avengers episode at the British Film Institute last week. I was so disappointed not to be able to fly to London for that event, but now BFI has been kind enough to put video of that Q&A (moderated by BFI curator Dick Fiddy) up on their website! She is completely open, candidly discussing a number of aspects of The Avengers and her career at large. Wearing a scarf that evokes the door to Emma Peel's flat, Rigg happily discusses a number of topics including her co-star, the late, great Patrick Macnee ("He was a deeply generous, dear, dear man, and I grieve his passing"), her predecessor Honor Blackman ("who's wonderful"), her character Emma Peel ("Dear God, was I lucky to get a chance to play this woman!"), the leather catsuits ("They were deeply uncomfortable, and hot, and sticky"), the cars ("they were very hard to drive!"), her delight at the remastering of the episodes on DVD ("I've been restored!"), the directors ("I was working with these brilliant men, and I didn't know it, and that is a great regret of mine, because I would have paid them homage had I known"), Emma's place in feminism ("I truly do think that she was a very, very potent influence in women claiming their place in the world"), Theater of Blood ("that film was such fun!"), Avengers writers ("Brian Clemens was brilliant"), On Her Majesty's Secret Service ("they had pots of money to spend on the Bond, which we didn't on The Avengers"), and George Lazenby ("George was not bad! He was not. He was just boring off [camera]!"). She also touches on The Sentimental Agent, "The Hothouse" (which she'd never seen), Euripides, Ian Hendry, Guy Hamilton, Vincent Price, Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who, and even Friends. This video is just so must-watch you shouldn't even still be on this page. Go watch it! Now! It's great!

Watched it? Great! Now for more on that auspicious day at BFI, check out a fan's perspective on meeting an icon at Home Arty Home, and then check out a collection of Avengers-inspired pop art that was on display at the event at Art & Hue. Great stuff! (Thanks to Art & Hue for the links.)

Londoners: Watch The Avengers on the Big Screen With Diana Rigg in Person

Lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg herself does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode "The House That Jack Built." It's one of a pair of absolute classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a better Emma double feature, in fact, than the monochrome "House That Jack Built" and the color "Return of the Cybernauts," which guest starred the great Peter Cushing. "Cybernauts" will be accompanied by "a compilation of oddities and rarities from the world of Emma Peel and The Avengers." Avengers fans will be aware that Dame Diana rarely speaks about her seminal work on the classic Sixties spy series, and even more rarely participates in any events pertaining to it. So this is a truly unmissable opportunity... and I've never been so jealous of my London friends! Even if you've never seen the show (though I can't imagine why not!), do yourself a favor and get tickets for this event. The greatest female spy star ever live on stage, and a screening of two of the greatest episodes of the greatest spy series of all time? How can you pass it up? Well, unfortunately I'll have to, as I don't have the means to get to London just now. But for those who do, tickets go on sale on October 6 at 11:30am for £16. What better way to celebrate the lives of the two luminaries of that series we've lost this year, Brian Clemens and Patrick Macnee?

Holy Emmapeeler, Batman! DC Comics Announces Batman/Avengers Team-Up!

The best news out of Comic-Con came on the final day. DC co-publisher Dan Didio announced a forthcoming comic book crossover between Batman and The Avengers. Yes, those Avengers! The real Avengers, Steed and Mrs. Peel! They will be crossing over with, most appropriately, the Adam West TV version of Batman from the Sixties. There aren't many details yet (no creators announced, no promo artwork, and no number of issues), but Batman '66/Steed and Mrs. Peel is coming, and that is wonderful. Hopefully a high-profile comic like this will revitalize Boom!'s flagging Steed and Mrs. Peel line and lead to more solo comic book adventures for the most dynamic duo of Sixties television. (I'm assuming this is an inter-company crossover with Boom!, but I suppose it's possible that the Steed and Mrs. Peel license has shifted to DC, which would also be an interesting development.) DC has been publishing a Batman '66 line, based on the West TV series, for a few years now, and it's already included a lengthy crossover series co-published with Dynamite Entertainment featuring the Caped Crusader and the Green Hornet, who had previously crossed over in a memorable TV episode. No doubt in this Avengers crossover, we'll get to see Steed in an umbrella duel with the Penguin, and Emma in a catsuited catfight with Catwoman. I can't wait!

Big Finish to Produce New Steed and Mrs. Peel Audio Dramas; Classic Sixties Avengers Comics to be Reprinted

For the past two years, UK company Big Finish has been producing top-notch, full cast audio dramas (what we might have once called radio shows) recreating the lost episodes from the almost entirely missing first season of The Avengers. These episodes predate any of gentleman secret agent John Steed's more famous female partners like Cathy Gale or Emma Peel, and find him teamed with a male amateur instead—Dr. David Keel. On TV Dr. Keel was played by Ian Hendry, and Steed was of course played by the incredible Patrick Macnee. In the Big Finish audio dramas, Anthony Howell (Foyle's War) and Julian Wadham (Double Identity) step into those respective roles and do so as perfectly as any fan could hope for. Steed in particular is at once instantly recognizable as Macnee's Steed, and yet at the same time very much Wadham's. It's a brilliant interpretation.

Last month the company (who made their name producing quality Doctor Who audio adventures) announced the next phase of their Avengers license. Alongside the continuing Lost Episodes line of recreated first season episodes, they will introduce Steed's most famous partner, Mrs. Emma Peel (originated on the series by the frankly inimitable Diana Rigg). Wadham will continue to play Steed, and the company are currently searching for an actress to play Emma. Presumably it has not escaped their attention that the perfect choice would be Dame Diana's daughter, Rachel Sterling (The Game)! She actually sounds quite a lot like her mother while being a supremely talented actress in her own right, who would no doubt bring the same blend of new and old to the role that Wadham does with Steed. I suppose it's possible that Ms. Sterling might not wish to step into her mother's most famous role, but she's shown no qualms in the past about aligning her career with Rigg's. She played Rigg's role from the film in a stage version of Theater of Blood, and appeared alongside her mother in familial roles on a recent episode of Doctor Who. Yes, Rachel Sterling would be the perfect choice to revive Emma Peel in new audio dramas! I hope it happens.

But what are these dramas based on, if all the Emma Peel era episodes thankfully survive? In an interesting choice, Big Finish will adapt them from the Avengers comics that ran in the UK children's magazine Diana (not named after Rigg) from 1966-67. That's... an interesting choice. The Diana comics are highly sought after and well worth reading, but that's for their gorgeous artwork (by Emilio Frejo), not for their stories. The storylines tended to be rather sophomoric, relying on the cliches of kiddie comics of the era rather than the sophisticated wit of the TV series. (One adventure saw Steed and Emma protecting England from a new wave of Viking invasions, a theme that seemed to weigh heavily on the minds of British children in the Sixties. That plot was, if you can believe it, used twice in Avengers comics, and also in comics based on other popular spy shows of the decade!) Since the artwork can obviously not be translated into an audio drama, the story is the aspect that will carry over. Luckily, each of the eight Diana storylines ran for only six pages, spread out over the course of three issues. So Big Finish's writers will have plenty of room for embellishment and improvement in the course of adapting them into hour-long audio dramas! The advantage the comics had over the TV show was that they weren't restricted by budget, and so we saw things like ski chases and helicopter crashes that simply wouldn't have worked on the series. The best place to learn more about these comics, including complete synopses of each one, is on the wonderful website The Avengers Illustrated. You can even read my reviews (as a contributor, before I had my own spy blog) on the first two Diana stories there! (My review of Story 1, and Story 2. And for fun, but with no bearing on this news story, you can also read my reviews of some New Avengers comics here.) You can also see examples of Frejo's beautiful artwork.

Which brings me to the other exciting aspect of this venture. In addition to putting out audio dramas based on the comics, Big Finish will also publish a graphic novel collecting all of those rare and sought after Diana comics for the first time ever! This is huge news in its own right. None of the Sixties Avengers comics have ever been reprinted before. (Though Boom! Studios have done a great job of collecting the 90s Steed and Mrs. Peel comics by Grant Morrison along with several volumes of their own current take on the characters.) It will be great to have all that beautiful Frejo Avengers artwork bound together in a single bookshelf volume! (I wonder if it would be possible for Big Finish to secure the rights to the terrific black and white comic strip "The Growing Up of Emma Peel," which ran in the comics anthology June and followed the adventures of 14-year-old Emma Knight long before she ever married pilot Peter Peel or met the mysterious John Steed? It would make a fantastic bonus feature in such a collection!)

Now for the bad news: all of this is a long way off. A whole year away in fact. According to Big Finish's website, the eight episodes of The Avengers - Steed and Mrs Peel: The Comic Strip Adaptations will be released over two box sets in April and November of 2016, and the graphic novel will also be out that November. All of them can currently be pre-ordered in various configurations, as either digital downloads or lavish CD box sets. There are also cost-saving deals on various bundles. (And you always save money by pre-ordering with Big Finish.) In the meantime, though, be sure to pick up the continuing releases of The Avengers; The Lost Episodes! Volume 4 is due this July.

As previously reported, Big Finish also have new audio dramas based on The Prisoner in the pipeline. I hope they continue to add other classic British spy and adventure series from the Sixties to their roster! It would be great to hear new adventures of Jason King or Man in a Suitcase... though what I'd like most of all would be to hear audio adaptations of the lost episodes of Adam Adamant Lives! and Callan.

A big thanks to Phil for the tip on this exciting news!

Mr. Porter Examines Spy Style

Mr. Porter, the menswear fashion retailer offering a line of bespoke suits, trench coats, umbrellas, tortoiseshell glasses, and other style items inspired by the movie Kingsman, posted a cool video essay last month on the history of spy style. James Bond, John Steed, Illya Kuryakin and other Sixties icons are all covered. The essay is by Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp, and the stylish photo animation is by Mosaic Films. Check it out:

Movie Review: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

NOTE: This review contains some SPOILERS.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a nasty, hateful poison pill of a movie wrapped in delicious candy coating. That candy coating includes not only cool, colorful, slick, budget-stretching production design, but also knowing nods to an encyclopedia’s worth of past spy movies and TV. For these reasons, it’s safe to assume that it might appeal greatly to readers of this blog and spy fans in general… but ultimately that appeal will depend on the spy fan’s individual tolerance for truly excessive violence, gleeful and graphic slaughter of innocent people, on-screen murder of world leaders played for laughs, and pervasive misanthropy. While I was genuinely torn, for me, sadly, the latter ultimately kept me from enjoying the former. As a self-confessed aficionado of the teen spy subgenre to which this movie belongs and someone who enjoys James Bond imitators almost as much as James Bond movies, and as an avowed fan of director Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: FirstClass), I really, really wanted to love Kingsman. I was greatly looking forward to it. But I’m afraid it comes off as my first major letdown of 2015.

Based on the comic book The Secret Service by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, Kingsman tells the story of Eggsy (Taron Egerton), a working class teenage London street punk whose life is transformed when he’s recruited by Harry Hart (Colin Firth), a British spy of impeccable breeding and John Steed-like class and sophistication, and trained to be a gentleman and a spy. It’s a My Fair Lady story (acknowledged in one of the movie’s funniest exchanges), a teen agent in training story, and a paranoid global conspiracy story all in one. Eggsy’s father was a Kingsman candidate killed while saving Harry’s life in the movie’s opening moments. For that, Harry feels a sense of debt, and promises the late agent’s widow and young son one favor in their moment of need. Eggsy’s moment of need comes years later, when he’s in jail for stealing a car and needs a way out. Harry not only offers him that way out, but offers him a new future following in his father’s footsteps.

During the first half of the movie we follow Eggsy’s Alex Rider-style training as part of a group of cadets competing for the single spot on the Kingsman roster, while Harry pursues a mysterious threat that leads to celebrity kidnappings, sudden outbursts of extreme violence from ordinarily peaceful people and exploding heads. (There are a lot of exploding heads in this movie. If that’s not your thing, stay away.) And ultimately, probably, the annihilation of all life on earth outside of the proverbial Ivory Tower. The man behind this threat is social media mogul Richmond Valentine (a lisping Samuel L. Jackson in full over-the-top mode). In the second half of the movie Eggsy ends up with a mission of his own, and of course finds himself using his training to take on Valentine.

The candy coating I mentioned really is delicious stuff. It’s lots of fun to spot the spy references. I won’t itemize them all here because that would be a bigger spoiler than anything I could say about the plot, but they range from broad tropes of the genre (which the film attempts to both celebrate and subvert at once) to specific details from Bond movies or classic TV shows like The Avengers or Get Smart. The best ones manage clever new twists upon the tried and true. It was a brilliant idea, for example, to relocate The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’s tailor shop entrance to the secret spy headquarters to Savile Row. What could be more classically spy than entering the office through a Savile Row tailor?

Even better than the references are the performances. There is a lot of strong acting talent in Kingsman. Egerton is all charm and makes an easy to root for protagonist; I look forward to seeing where his career goes from here. I find Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) infinitely more enjoyable as a good guy than a bad guy, so it’s nice to see the former ubiquitous villain following up his scene-stealing turn in The Imitation Game with another savory spy role. Edward Holcroft (London Spy) makes a good impression as a sneering fellow cadet. Jack Davenport and Mark Hamill have entertaining cameos. And Michael Caine is Michael Caine! But the performance of this movie is Colin Firth’s. The role of Harry Hart (changed in a stroke of genius from the comic’s Bond-inspired “Jack London” to a more original Steed-inspired part) is Kingsman’s best creation, and Firth inhabits it brilliantly. Good as Egerton is, I couldn’t help but wish that the whole movie was about Harry Hart, and that there would be a long series of others to follow! Firth combines Patrick Macnee’s refined wit and sophistication with Daniel Craig’s brutality in what really might be the ultimate British gentleman spy role. Sadly, there is ultimately too little of Firth in the movie, and Kingsman suffers for it.

Then there are the trappings. Kingsman gets the trappings just right for the most part. There’s gadgetry galore, and Vaughn demonstrates how to handle spy gadgetry in the modern age. Some Bond screenwriters have gone on record saying that there’s not much you can do with gadgets in an era when we all have amazing smartphones in our pockets, but Kingsman makes a good joke out of that. When Harry first shows Eggsy the room full of meticulously organized Kingsman gadgetry, the teen takes in the pens and shoes and gold cigarette lighters—all with secret lethal functions—and then his eyes land on a wall of cell phones. “What do those do?” he asks. “Nothing,” says Harry. “That technology has caught up with the spy world.” So it has, but that doesn’t diminish the coolness of a good old fashioned poison pen!

There’s impressive production design, including the immaculate tailor shop and Kingsman headquarters, a secret subway from London to the countryside, and an airplane hangar and landing strip built inside a mountain. There’s even more impressive clothing, thanks to costume designer Adrianne Phillips (Knight and Day). Men’s fashions haven’t looked this good on screen since the Sixties. And there’s a great spy score full of Barry-esque horns and a strong theme courtesy of composers Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson.

All that candy coating crumbles away upon closer inspection though. The sets, though initially impressive, show at the seams. The score is great, but too often it’s ignored for key sequences in favor of uninspired pop songs. The giant spaces are too obviously digital, lacking the grandeur of those cavernous Ken Adam physical sets. Even Eggsy’s epic third act shootout in the villain’s lair loses some of its luster when you realize he’s just running through the same white hallway set again and again. Maybe that, too, is a reference—a nod to the Eurospy movies and PovertyRow spy pictures of the Sixties that somehow maintained a shabby dignity in their attempts to achieve Bondian spectacle when they had to use curtains to stand in for walls—but I doubt it.

Like the sets, when you see past the spectacle, the movie itself loses a significant amount of its luster. Vaughn again and again promised in interviews a return to the sense of fun that modern spy movies have lost since the Sixties. But he doesn’t deliver. Kingsman doesn’t convey the sense of fun of a Sixties Bond movie. It’s far too misanthropic for that.

Rather than tantalizing us with the horrifying prospect of sadistic violence, as Goldfinger did when Bond came within inches of being sliced in half by a laser, Kingsman indulges that violence. Valentine’s henchwoman, Gazelle (dancer Sofia Boutella) has razor-sharp prosthetics for legs. That’s kind of a cool deformity/weapon, like we might have seen in Bonds of old, but Vaughn can’t resist wallowing in the violence of the weapons. Kingsman doesn’t stop at the prospect of a person being sliced in half; it gleefully slices them before our eyes, delighting in the shoddy digital effect of two halves of a severed body splitting.

With Kick-Ass, Vaughn and co-writer Jane Goldman cut out a lot of Millar’s mean-spirited violence, creating a movie that was far more fun than its unpleasant source material, but in Kingsman they wallow in Millar’s misanthropic excesses. This is a movie where a character with a vomit-inducing aversion to bloodletting is destined to be brutally impaled and then vomit at the sight of his or her own blood while expiring. Perhaps you find such an image as funny as Vaughn seems to, but it’s not something that screams “the fun of Sixties Bond movies!” to me. And lest I come off as squeamish, let me state that I am no prude when it comes to screen violence. I’m an ardent Tarantino admirer, and I like my horror movies as gory as possible. But gore has a place in horror that I don’t think it has in a Bond-type movie. I find Milton Krest’s exploding head in Licence to Kill to be a step too far for 007 (or even Imitation 007), and Kingsman is full of exploding heads. Like The Interview, it even explodes the heads of sitting world leaders, including President Obama and the Royal Family. I found this rather tasteless in The Interview (even with a dictator!), and I find it tasteless again in Kingsman.

The deaths of world leaders comes in keeping with Kingsman’s confused anarchic politics. There’s a reason that the Kingsman organization, despite being so obviously British in every way (right down to its name), is not tied to any one government. (In the comic it was MI6.) That’s because Vaughn and Goldman want to tap into a prevailing mistrust of governments in general… though they don’t seem to know why. (Or at least they don’t share that with the audience on screen.) Where Bond is for Queen and Country, Eggsy ends up fighting that system—and even facilitating the death of that Queen 007 would lay down his life for.

Like all the best British spy stories (and, well, pretty much all British fiction in general), Kingsman is obsessed with class and the British class system. Unlike the works of masters like John le Carré, Len Deighton and Graham Greene (whose The Human Factor may contain the best class commentary in all spy fiction), Kingsman doesn’t seem to know what it’s saying about class though. Eggsy finds himself competing with a bunch of snobby Etonian types for a spot on the roster of the ultra-secret, non-governmental spy agency, and we certainly side with him against their class-based bullying. His own trajectory is to become a sophisticated gentleman and prove that a man can defy his origins and achieve class status without the prerequisite birthright, yet the head of the snobbish Kingsmen opposed to his progress is played by Michael Caine, spydom’s leading working class hero, who seems to betray similar origins to Eggsy in a crucial cockney slip.

Like John Steed, Firth’s Harry Hart is the epitome of class and breeding, yet he is the one who believes steadfastly in Eggsy. In its macro plot, Kingsman espouses full-on class warfare, essentially advocating the slaughter of the One Percent (lest they slaughter the masses), yet in its micro arc Eggsy’s personal growth is demonstrated by his rejection of his roots and adoption of Harry’s exquisitely tailored upper-class ways. The politics of Kingsman are more The Spook Who Sat By the Door than The Spy Who Loved Me, but unlike that revolutionary classic, Kingsman doesn’t convincingly portray social ills in need of such drastic countermeasures. The upshot is offensive to liberal and conservative alike, but not in a biting satirical way. In fact, despite seeming to want to be political, it’s really just crass. Because the enemy to Vaughn isn’t so much the upper class as humanity itself. And when Harry, the movie’s most likeable character, is written into a situation where he must use his previously cool fighting prowess to brutally slaughter a church full of unarmed civilians (racist, hateful civilians, in a slight attempt to make the scene more palatable than in the comic, but civilians nonetheless), that’s when the movie loses me.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a contradiction. Part of it is pure, reference-loaded spy fun, and part of it is hopelessly misguided and terminally half-baked social commentary soaked in far too much blood and viscera for me to find enjoyable. Harry Hart is perhaps the best new spy hero since Steed himself, but stuck in a movie that misuses him. But I will enjoy those trappings. I will buy the soundtrack and revisit its terrific spy score frequently. I will even download the surprisingly hummable Take That theme song, “Get Ready for It.” And if I could afford them, I would also buy the Kingsman suits and cravats from the Mr. Porter menswear tie-in. But I probably won’t find myself revisiting the film itself too frequently. It’s just not as fun as the sum of its parts. 

The Avengers Return to Comics With New Boom! Series

Boom! Studios may have wrapped up their ongoing Steed and Mrs. Peel comic, based on the greatest spy series ever The Avengers, but that doesn't mean they're done with the classic characters! They've just solicited a new six-issue Avengers miniseries, Steed and Mrs. Peel: We're Needed, written by Ian Edginton and drawn by Marco Cosentino. I'm very excited to hear this, because Edginton is one of my favorite comics writers. He's shown that he can be very faithful to source material in his four excellent Sherlock Holmes adaptations (and one equally excellent John Carter one) with I.N.J. Culbard. (I'm sure Cosentino will be great, but I can't help wishing Culbard were illustrating this one too.) Let's hope he brings that same fidelity to The Avengers. It sounds like he will from this interview on Bleeding Cool, in which he says that he grew up with The Avengers and also name-checks his favorite ITC shows. According to the plot description in Boom!'s solicitation, it sounds like Edginton's Steed and Mrs. Peel will also reference one of those ITC series pretty directly: "When an old associate of John Steed is killed, a grand conspiracy is suspected. This will take Steed and Peel to a strange village, where one of the spies finds themself a prisoner." The Avengers originally sent up The Prisoner and his Village in the classic Tara King episode "Wish You Were Here," but I look forward to reading Edginton's take. Steed and Mrs. Peel: We're Needed #1 is solicited in the current (May) Previews for a July release, so place a pre-order now at your local comic book shop.

I've been a fan of all of Boom!'s Steed and Mrs. Peel comics so far (as well as their reprint of the 90s Grant Morrison miniseries, "The Golden Game"), so if you're a fan of the show and you've missed any, check out the collected editions. (Obviously the name "The Avengers" couldn't be used for comics since Stan Lee blatantly stole it for that other comic back in the Sixties!)

Order Steed and Mrs. Peel: The Golden Game here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 1 here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 2 here.
Order Steed and Mrs. Peel Volume 3 here.

Read my review of Steed and Mrs. Peel #0 here.
Read my interview with Steed and Mrs. Peel writer Caleb Monroe here.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service Radioplay Now Streaming On BBC Site

BBC Radio 4's fourth James Bond radio drama starring Toby Stephens (Die Another Day, Cambridge Spies) as 007, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," is now available streaming on the BBC website. It will be available for six days, so be sure to listen to the 90-minute radioplay sometime this week! Alfred Molina (The Company, Raiders of the Lost Ark) plays Bond's arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and Joanna Lumley (The New Avengers), a veteran of the feature film version of this story, plays his consort Irma Bunt.  Alex Jennings (Ashenden, Smiley's People) co-stars as Marc-Ange Draco, Lisa Dillon (Cambridge Spies) as Tracy, and Joanna Cassidy (The Fourth Protocol) as Ruby. John Standing, Julian Sands and Janie Dee reprise their roles as M, Q and Moneypenny, respectively. Martin Jarvis again plays Ian Fleming in a narrator role. The previous BBC radio adaptations starring Stephens have been "Dr. No," "Goldfinger" and "From Russia With Love."

Alfred Molina to Play Blofeld in New BBC Radio Drama of On Her Majesty's Secret Service

It's been rumored for a long time, but now an announcement in RadioTimes (along with a photo) makes it official: the next James Bond radio drama on BBC Radio 4 will be "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," and will air on Saturday, May 3. Toby Stephens (Die Another Day, Cambridge Spies) reprises the role of 007 for the fourth time, and Alfred Molina (The Company, Raiders of the Lost Ark) continues the BBC tradition of casting big name actors (Ian McKellen, David Suchet) as villains in these radio productions, playing Bond's arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld. This will mark only the second appearance of Blofeld in any medium since Never Say Never Again in 1983 when Max Von Sydow played the SPECTRE mastermind. (The other occasion was also on radio, when Ronald Herdman voiced the part opposite Michael Jayston's 007 in a 1990 adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice.) It's possible that might change soon, however, since after years of court battles over the ownership of the character, Bond filmmakers EON Productions have officially reclaimed the right to use the villain in films from Thunderball and Never Say Never Again producer Kevin McClory's estate. Molina would actually be an excellent choice, though I would personally hope for a more radical reinvention of the character should he ever face off on screen against Daniel Craig's Bond.

Stephens, who himself once squared off against Pierce Brosnan's 007, won't be the only Bond film alumnus involved in this production. Joanna Lumley (The New Avengers), who played one of the Piz Gloria girls in the 1969 film version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, will return to the story in a different part. RadioTimes reports that Lumley will play the villainous Irma Bunt, but other sources have pegged her as Bond's wife to be, Tracy (the role Lumley's fellow Avengers heroine Diana Rigg played in the film). I suppose it's possible that she could play both roles; Lumley is certainly talented enough! The trade adds that Joanna Cassidy (The Fourth Protocol) will co-star. Additionally, Janie Dee is rumored to be returning as Miss Moneypenny. Martin Jarvis once again directs and stars as Ian Fleming, the narrator.

The previous BBC radio adaptations starring Toby Stephens have been "Dr. No," "Goldfinger" and "From Russia With Love."

The Avengers Return to DVD in America!

Here's the news American spy fans have been longing to hear for years! After way too long out of print (and commanding super-steep prices in the second-hand market), the greatest spy show ever, The Avengers, is returning to DVD in Region 1. Well, some of it anyway. On October 8, A&E will reissue their Complete Emma Peel Megaset. While the 16 discs themselves appear to be identical to the previous incarnation of this set, the packaging is substantially slimmer (a major plus on any shelf buckling under the weight of too many spy shows) and the retail price substantially more affordable. According to TV Shows On DVD, the new release containing all 51 Avengers episodes featuring Diana Rigg will cost just $49.98. (The out of print edition currently goes for as much as ten times that price!) So that's the good news, and it's very good news indeed. Now for the inevitable gripes.

I had hoped that when The Avengers was eventually re-released Stateside, American fans might be treated to the same stellar remastered picture and fantastic extras that graced Optimum's Region 2 UK releases (though ideally without all the glitches that plagued those sets). While this set does indeed co-opt Optimum's attractive cover scheme (albeit slightly altered), it doesn't appear to port over the wonderful bonus features. Since the article makes no mention of bonus content at all, I suppose it's possible that I could be wrong (and in this case I'd be delighted to be proven so!), but basic math indicates otherwise. The two Optimum Emma Peel sets added up to a total of 14 discs (and didn't include Rigg's swan song, "The Forget Me Knot," which appeared on the R2 Tara King set), and this A&E set promises 16 discs, the same as were in the previous R1 Emma Peel Megaset. So I'd say it's likely that this is simply a repackaging of that collection. Still, it's excellent news that any seasons of The Avengers will be back in print in the USA! Hopefully this release will sell well and pave the way for a Complete Cathy Gale Megaset (incorporating what survives of the earlier material as well) and a Complete Tara King Collection and eventually a Complete New Avengers Megaset... and maybe even some Blu-rays down the road. (A&E reissued the same DVD set of The Prisoner in new packaging when they put out the feature-laden Blu-rays of that show, but in that case Network had already paved the high-def path in Britain.) Fingers crossed, anyway!

New Spy DVDs Out Today: James Bond and Beyond!

Today is a huge day for spy DVD and Blu-ray releases! The celestial body around which all of these releases are orbiting is, of course, Skyfall (review here). The 23rd official James Bond movie is available on DVD and Blu-ray from MGM and Fox. Special features include two audio commentaries (perhaps to make up for none on Quantum of Solace?), one featuring director Sam Mendes, the other with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and Production Designer Dennis Gassner, an hour-long making-of documentary called "Shooting Bond," a featurette on the premiere, a 1-minute spot advertising the soundtrack, and the film's theatrical trailer. The film is presented in a 2.40:1 widescreen aspect ratio, which is somewhat controversial because it could be seen in two different aspect ratios theatrically. Personally, I preferred the taller 1.9:1 presentation seen in IMAX theaters. Mendes and cinematographer extraordinaire Roger Deakins shot with both formats in mind, but claimed not to have framed specifically for one or the other. The 1.9:1 version cut off some information on the sides of the frame, but the 2.40:1 version cut off some information at the top and bottom. To my eye, the IMAX image looked more natural. But the difference is really negligible enough that it's not worth dwelling on this much; I just wanted to let people know which one is on the disc. Had they provided both options, I might well end up so paralyzed with Hamlet-like indecision every time I put the movie on that I would never end up actually watching it, and that would be a tragedy! Skyfall is a wonderful Bond movie, and it really goes without saying that it belongs in every Bond fan's library. Retail is listed as $39.99 for the Blu-ray and $29.98 for the DVD, though both are already significantly discounted this week on Amazon and at other retailers. Amazon also has the Bond 50 Blu-ray collection on sale this week for just $129.99, and that's even got an empty slot reserved for Skyfall. So if you held off buying it last year, pick it up now and you'll have all 23 official 007 movies to date in one convenient, attractive package!

Also out today (though pre-orders have been shipping early), and making its high-def debut, is Twilight Time's Blu-ray of In Like Flint. Last month the specialty label released its predecessor, Our Man Flint on Blu-ray, and the sequel comes just as loaded with special features as that one was! And like on the first release, I'm on some of them (under my actual name, Matthew Bradford, and billed as a "Spy Film Historian," which is certainly accurate), discussing the impact of the Flint movies and their star, James Coburn. I'm in these ones a lot more, in fact, than I was on Our Man, so if you're among the millions and millions of fans buying these for me rather than Coburn, you're in luck! Bonus material on In Like Flint includes an audio track featuring Jerry Goldsmith's complete isolated score, an audio commentary with Cinema Retro's Lee Pfeiffer and film historian Eddy Friedfeld, trailers, a rare screen test, and the featurettes "Derek Flint: The Secret Files," "James Coburn: The Man Beyond the Spy," "Designing Flint," "Flint vs Zanuck: The Missing 3 Minutes," "Puerto Rico Premiere," "Future Perfect," "Feminine Wiles," "Spy School," "Musician's Magician," "Spy Vogue," and "Take It Off." That last one is a vintage featurette that seems to be promoting the movie to women(?) while at the same time insulting them (?), and doing it via a weight-loss advertisement. If you manage to make it all the way through its interminable running time, I sincerely doubt you'll ever revisit that one, but it's still nice to have, of course, as a weird, unwatchable time capsule. Fortunately, the rest are all fascinating! Some of these are retained from the previous DVD edition, but some are brand-new documentaries created exclusively for the Blu-ray release by John Cork, co-producer of those wonderful documentaries on the James Bond Special Editions. Sadly what's missing from this release that was on the DVD edition is the attempted Seventies TV revival of the character, Our Man Flint: Dead On Target, starring Eurospy leading man Ray Danton as the irrepressible Derek Flint. It's true that the TV movie is far from essential (in fact it bears little resemblance to the Sixties films, and Flint himself is a mere private eye, not an international playboy superspy) and that poor Danton (who was excellent in some of his Eurospy work) struggles to fill Coburn's large shoes... but as a spy completist I still want to own it. That means I'll have to hang onto my DVD set despite buying these new Blu-rays. Oh well. The new special features on Twilight Time's edition certainly make this Blu-ray a must-buy for Sixties spy fans even without the TV movie! Seriously, this is sure to be one of the major spy releases of the year. The region-free Blu-ray is a limited edition of just 3,000 units, and retails for $29.95 exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment. These limited editions do sell out, so be sure to order soon!

Also timed to piggyback on Skyfall's release is BBC's DVD of the Top Gear special 50 Years of Bond Cars. The special, presented by Richard Hammond last fall to tie in with the theatrical release of Skyfall, is one of the best James Bond TV specials I've ever seen. It's a must-see for fans of Bond cars especially, and I'm so glad that it's getting a DVD release because it's one I definitely want to own for posterity. Not only does Hammond interview a number of 007 production personnel (including Guy Hamilton, Roger Moore and Daniel Craig) and test drive some original Bondmobiles, but he also pilots an actual working Lotus submarine car! Top Gear's version is based on an Excel rather than an Esprit, but unlike the production version(s) used in The Spy Who Loved Me, this one actually functions as both a street car and a submarine! Seriously, this is one you want in your Bond collection. Best of all, it's a real steal with a bargain SRP of just $9.95... and it's even less than that on Amazon.

What's this doing on here? Avengers fans, take note! Six years after the first two seasons of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries came out from Universal, Shout! Factory is releasing the third Hardy Boys season, sans Nancy this time, on DVD today. Why is this of particular interest to spy fans? Well, the show does sometimes deal in espionage, and in this season the Hardy men have graduated college and are official government agents themselves. In one two-parter, they even help a Soviet defector wishing to relocate to Hawaii... but that's not why I'm mentioning it. Not specifically, anyway. No, I'm mentioning it because Patrick Macnee (who celebrated his 91st birthday last week) turns up as a guest star in the episode "Assault on the Tower" playing a debonair, bowler hat-wearing British agent identified only as S. This was just a year after The New Avengers went off the air, so fans of John Steed will probably want to add the DVD to their library. (Well, completists, anyway, like myself.) The 3-disc set retails for $24.97, though it can be ordered through Amazon for significantly less.

I know I've been remiss on my weekly spy DVD alerts lately. So later this week I'll do a post rounding up all the spy releases so far this year. Stay tuned!