This was excellent, exactly the kind of story that the current format is suitable for telling. In this regard it's like The Winged Avenger, and it takes some similar liberties with form (like Mrs Peel's impression of the MGM lion).
There are some interesting parallels with several Prisoner episodes - Arrival when Mrs Peel is gassed and wakes up in what seems to be her flat, Living In Harmony with the Wild West scenes and the confusion between reality and a script controlled by someone else, The Girl Who Was Death with the WW1 machine gun attack and the continuous succession of bewilderingly different settings.
In the light of my earlier complaints about the tweeness of the London 'exterior' sets in this series, it was interesting to see them being presented as, well, sets.
What I particularly liked is the way that the people behind the Epic start off seeming all-powerful, and able to manipulate Mrs Peel at will, but then the cracks begin to show and we end up seeing them as two aging luvvies and a mad director. Peter Wyngarde (returning from A Touch of Brimstone) as Kirby is pivotal in conveying this change, with his un-epic expressions of pain when being punched by Mrs Peel, defensively muttering afterwards 'I'm not a stuntman.'
Not so much for Steed to do in this, mainly trying to work out where he's heard Kirby's voice before. Now he knows what an Avengersthon feels like.
A couple of good closing gags, including the balsa chair/real chair one that was used in that episode of The Young Ones.
This must have been one of my favourites so far, because I couldn't stop watching it once I'd started. Normally I watch the eps in 2 or 3 chunks.
Previously seen: Kenneth J Warren making his fourth appearance. Anthony Dawes from The Outside-in Man as the corpse.
