Naive Avengersthon - 53. The Charmers

The charm of this story wore off very quickly - for about the first 5 minutes I enjoyed the 'Spy vs. Spy' type comedy, but it soon became very tiresome indeed. I hope this isn't the direction that the show is going to go in. I like straight stories with comic interludes, not this broad comedy where they aren't taking it seriously at all. One of my least favourites so far.

Perhaps Fenella Fielding prejudiced me against it - I love her in The Poetry Society, but when I see her in anything else she puts my teeth on edge.

Some of the comedy did appeal to me: the suggestion that Steed was annoyed not to find his picture on the evil spies' Most Wanted board for instance, and also the cab-hailing drill at the charm school run by Brian Oulton (who's crossed my viewing path before in everything from Hancock to The Young Ones via Carry On).

If you're going to have a childrens-TV-style comedy spy chief, then Warren Mitchell is a good choice to play him.

Also seen - Frank Mills, who was the radio telescope Director in Terror of the Autons and Peterson the commissionaire in the Granada Blue Carbuncle, as the dentist.

Naive Avengersthon - 52. The Outside-In Man

Ronald 'the Rook' Radd returns from Bullseye, as Quilpie, Steed's latest boss. He uses a butcher's shop as a front, which leads to fun as he keeps up the butcher's talk and accent until they're out of earshot of the shop, then abruptly assumes his proper persona with 'That's quite enough of that.'

He assigns Steed to prevent the assassination of one Sharp (later seen to be Philip 'Mars/Venus game' Anthony, returning from Man With Two Shadows) who defected to 'Aburania' but is about to visit Britain under diplomatic protection.

Their meeting is interrupted by the unexpected and coincidental return of agent Charter (James 'Jackson in Underworld' Maxwell) who was sent to Aburania to kill Sharp but has spent five years in prison there.

It soon becomes apparent that Charter is still intent on fulfilling his mission to kill Sharp, even though highly important arms sales will be imperilled if he does so. Steed and Cathy have to track him down before he succeeds.

Maxwell is pretty good as Charter - he seems fairly together at first, in the club scene, but gets increasingly edgy and fanatical as the story progresses. He's got one of those no-nonsense 40s George Orwell faces, which really helps sell the idea that he intends to carry out his original orders.

Basil 'Number Fourteen in Hammer Into Anvil' Hoskins as the Aburanian embassy attache, something of the manner of Philip Madoc about him. Ronald 'Dulcian councillor' Mansell as the club butler. The garage owner is Arthur Lovegrove, who was fairly inconspicuously in Carry on Cowboy.

I didn't spot this myself but various web sources point out that Quilpie's (and presumably Steed's) organisation is named PANSAC. I think this is the first time so far that a name has been put to it.

The story itself is a little bit reminiscent of The Decapod - even the twist is similar (but more complex) than the one in that. The problem for me was that I wasn't really that fussed if he killed Sharp, because early 60s Britain had plenty of other potential customers for armaments.

Naive Avengersthon - 51. Trojan Horse

The teaser scene suggests that this episode is going to be about a bookmaker with no-nonsense credit control methods. Then Steed's seen at the stables, representing the Foreign Office's concerns about the security of a sultan's horse - so it looks like doping is going into the mix. But the story then veers wildly off into the methods of a network of assassins, leaving all the racing stuff on the periphery.

Tony Heuston (T.P. 'Captain Cook' McKenna, not William 'Reegan' Dysart as I thought) is the bookmaker at the centre of the plot, Derek 'Greg Sutton' Newark as his head killer Johnson. I enjoyed Newark's toughly-delivered evening class about the use of poisons; he's not quite so good when he has to yell angrily about being treated like a serf.

It felt like there wasn't much Steed, or much Cathy in this - their main scenes (Steed chatting up women, Cathy dazzling Heuston with her ability to work out bets) are good, but feel like set pieces.

Geoffrey 'radio comedy' Whitehead as the aristocratic Fordsham, whose entrapment into the murder network by Heuston and Johnson is used to show us how the operation works. Basil 'the replacement Supervisor in Checkmate' Dignam as Heuston's ally at the stables.

Another episode with an uneasy combination of plot elements really.

Naive Avengersthon - 50. Mandrake

Tin-mining areas have a lot of arsenic in their soil - arsenic which is quickly absorbed by any body buried in it. Which makes it impossible to detect whether or not the deceased was killed by arsenic poisoning. Got that? Good.

We open (like Death of a Great Dane) at a burial service, conducted by the Rev Adrian Wyper (George Benson, who I think is the likeable civil servant in Free For All).

Steed is unobtrusively in the background, because it's an old friend of his being buried. And he has suspicions about how he came by his death, causing him to make some visits to the deceased's son (Robert 'Major Hunda in Traitor' Morris). On the second occasion he displays some unusual anger - which, like everything else Macnee does, nevertheless seems perfectly Steed-like.

We're shown exactly how Steed's friend ended up dead in the progress of the latest undertaking of Mandrake Investments - proprietors Roy Hopkins (Philip 'Bigon' Locke back again) and Dr Macombie (John Le Mesurier as the second bent doctor in as many episodes).

Cathy is despatched to the churchyard in Cornwall for some misdirection about exactly who's involved in the scheme at that end, while Steed visits Hopkins' Christmas cracker factory to sweet-talk Annette 'the watchmaker's daughter in It's Your Funeral' André. And from there it's not far to the compulsory winding-up of Mandrake Investments in the public interest.

Not a bad episode - Benson's playing in particular keeps us in doubt for as long as possible about whether or not the vicar is part of the scheme.

Naive Avengersthon - 49. The Little Wonders

This one falls into the Box of Tricks category of episodes which unsuccessfully mix very disparate plot elements. The conceit about criminals using clerical titles is amusing, if not very original, but it doesn't seem to fit with the strand about the dolls' hospital and hiding microfilm in dolls.

Steed's guise as 'Johnny the Horse' is quite pleasing, and Tony Steedman's suave bent doctor held my attention.

Lois 'Moneypenny' Maxwell as the 'Bishop of Winnipeg''s nurse/concubine. Frank 'again' Maher as Hasek the doll doctor. Kenneth J Warren, returning for a third appearance, Christopher 'Cyberleader/Karkus' Robbie and Mark 'Ralph in The Moonbase' Heath among the fake prelates.

Naive Avengersthon - 48. The Wringer

Steed is accused of sabotaging the Carinthia Pipeline, a secret transit route for spies out of Eastern Europe, by giving away information leading to the deaths of 6 agents. His colleague Anderson (Peter 'also Penley' Sallis) has all the evidence that Charles (Paul Whitsun-Jones - the first actor I've noted so far who's returned as the same character) needs to hear, and Steed is sent away to 'the unit'.

In charge of that facility is 'The Wringer' - a brilliantly punchable portrayal by Terence 'Orum' Lodge, returning from Man With Two Shadows. He and his colleagues proceed to subject Steed to psychological torture and brainwashing - thus suggesting where Anderson got his fixed ideas about Steed's guilt from.

Luckily Cathy comes to the rescue once again, first by using persuasion on Charles' sidekick Oliver (our own Barry Letts in his previous incarnation as an actor), then by bravely visiting the unit and engineering an escape. Anderson is deconditioned and Steed, presumably, restored to his position...

Lodge is the star of this one, no question. My only disappointment was that the unit was very quickly revealed to be a renegade operation; if their methods had been officially sanctioned, like in The Nutshell, it would have been a whole lot more sinister.

I liked the carthartic/purifying imagery of the escape via the drains into the rain-flooded ditch.

Also returning: Gerald Sim from Mission to Montreal, and Douglas Cummings from The Gilded Cage.

Naive Avengersthon - 47. Dressed to Kill

Someone is using jamming to create false alarms at Britain's missile radar stations. And someone has invited Steed and six other people to a mobile fancy dress New Year's Eve party on board a train - and then left them at an abandoned station in the middle of nowhere.

This is one of those 'Six Napoleons' stories, with a limited number of possible explanations - though the setup (the idea that six people would all have options on parcels of land in a particular area) is incredibly contrived. But it does feature a Napoleon, as well as a returning Richard 'Gatherer Hade' Leech as a Victorian peeler, and two prize catches in Leonard Rossiter as Robin Hood and our very own Anneke Wills in a sexy cat costume. You can see why the last two went on to better things - Rossiter in particular seems to jump off the screen demanding our attention.

The abandoned station is quite eerie, with things changing behind the characters' backs, people being killed or knocked out and a mysterious hooded friar hanging about. Mixed with this there's a 'New Year special' comedy feeling, with Steed's cowboy costume leading to a couple of enjoyable Western-style shots.

Leon 'Jabel' Eagles as the jammer, Frank Maher returning from November Five as the barman.

Quite enjoyed this one. I've made it sound as though the chills and the comedy didn't mix, but they do work together pretty well. Also there are plenty of reasons to suspect all the characters, so the identity of the villain comes as a surprise - most Avengers eps fail in this regard, it's usually blindingly obvious.