This one is pretty good, but some of that is contrast with the quite poor episodes either side of it.
Top clown Carlo (Robert 'police chief in The Italian Job' Rietty) visits a circus agency and meets an unwelcome face from his past in the shape of Mafia representative Sgr Sica, who orders him to assassinate Steed. A welcome bit of location filming here, with Steed happily taking Sheba for a walk in some woods - then the shooting starts...
Carlo's shots go wide, and he flees the scene, conveniently leaving his briefcase for Steed to find and deduce that his would-be assassin was a clown. Cathy is duly dispatched to the agency, and then to Gutman's Circus in the guise of a journalist. (Roy 'President of the High Council' Purcell as the eponymous owner).
The episode thereafter revolves around different clowns being the same person/impersonating each other, and Sica's henchman's undercover presence at the circus. The two-clowns-are-the-same-clown thing is extremely confusing and I don't really understand how it can work: if the pretence has been going on for a long time, surely someone would have become suspicious; if it's only just begun, how come the false identity clown has been so rapidly accepted into the circus without anyone thinking he seems familiar?
Alec Mango as Sica is suitably dangerous for a Mafioso. Unusually for an Avengers villain, he's initially quicker on the draw than Cathy. I don't think I've seen one of her moves fail before this. Still, she's too quick for him the next time.
John 'Gaffer Gamgee' Church as circus handyman Terry, Willie 'Chumbley' Shearer as the trivia-spouting Professor.
Rather a good final scene where Steed churlishly upsets Cathy by making fun of her for thinking he'd been killed. I like it when they don't get on and I like it when Steed's charm fails to work, so I particularly enjoyed that.
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