Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Mega-Set (Full Screen) [16 Discs]

 

 

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Quirky, off beat British TV series of the Golden age..the 60's of course. Cold war spy drama--tongue and cheek--corny at times. I personally favor the older B&W shows. The later color shows were (over-all) just not as well written..they carried the tongue & cheek just a little too far. Thus the four stars--otherwise this is a fantastic package--the DVD's are flawless--great transfer from video. As a testosterone charged teenager I was (like many other males of all ages) was in love with Mrs. Peel.

Sorry, but I just had to get that out of the way. Dame Di spent her teen years in my home town of Leeds in the UK. Swoon.

Emma Peel was an incredibly important female role model at a time when blond bimboes were pouting, being dumb and twisting their ankles while being led by the heroes as they fled from the bad guys.

Emma Peel, warrior woman, took on the bad guys, and usually won. Xena: Warrior Princess, played so masterfully by Lucy Lawless - also 5'10", owes a great deal to Mrs. Peel, who was immortalized by the insanely talented, classically-trained actress, Diana Rigg.

I actually loved the black and white episodes - apart from the stories themselves being intriguing, they have an Art House quality about them.

Likewise, the color episodes, which are of superior quality, are just as magical in their own way. The Avengers, even down to the score by Laurie Johnson and unmistakable indidental music, was just flawless, with Macnee and Rigg beng every bit as magical and compelling a screen couple as Bogie and Bacall.

Absolutely wonderful to have these as a single package. If I recall, the name Emma Peel came from the time when they were trying to develop a female character who would have Man Appeal or M-Appeal... hence Emma Peel.

Whatever the reality, in Diana Rigg's Emma Peel, they succeeded mightily. Possibly the most perfect woman who ever walked the Earth.

Did I say 'possibly'? Tsk tsk.

<The Avengers> The immensely popular ABC series called "The Avengers" has long since achieved legendary status since it appeared back in January 1961. Since then there have been 161 episodes, which break into four major sections. We have the early episodes (1-26) with Patrick Macnee as John Steed and Ian Hendry as Dr. Keel. Then the "Cathy Gail" series (27-78) with Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, the man-tossing, leather-covered intellectual who broke new ground for female characters on television. Even more popular was the black and white series (79-104) with Diana Rigg and Emma Peel (read "M[en] appeal "), which led not unexpectedly to the color series with Rigg (105-129). Then the final section with Linda Thorson as Tara King (129-- in which she co-starred with Rigg-161).
As of this writing, the early episodes in the Gale series and all of the King series are not yet available. However, A&E has just released all of the Rigg entries, both the black and whites and the color, in a wonderful boxed set called "The Avengers: the Complete Emma Peel Mega-Set." And Mega, I suppose, is as good as any adjective to describe the enjoyment value of the contents therein. We have here all the Rigg episodes, including the transition entry in which Tara takes over for Emma, on 16 DVDs, each holding 3 episodes with an occasional 4th as a "bonus."
Those who have never seen them before will want, of course, to watch them in order. Others will want to jump to their favorite episodes, which is pretty easy on DVD. You will notice that the black and whites were less studio-bound and the sets in general more realistic. With the first color episode, the series took a strong science fiction bent; and the sets, as the producers admitted, were more a view of England as the Americans would like to think it is.
You will also have a lot of fun spotting stars-to-be. There is Donald Sutherland, Brian Blessed and Charlotte Rampling in "The Superlative Seven," Peter Bowles in "Dial a Deadly Number" and "Escape in Time," Geoffrey Palmer in "A Surfeit of H2O," and Christopher Lee in "Never, Never Say Die." It was a policy that no actor could appear more than once a season, so Bowles and Lee, for example, would have to wait for the King series to play other characters. In fact, the only characters as such to reappear in the color Rigg series from the black and whites is the bumbling Brodny (Warren Mitchell) who can be found in "Two's a Crowd" and "The See-Through Man" and the evil assistant (Frederick Jaeger) to the Cybernaut-master.

And for more fun, see how many actors from "Are You Being Served?" you can spot? There are three in all.
The most frequent repeat actor seems to be comedian Roy Kinnear, who also has the honor of being in the very last King episode in the role of Bagpipes Happychap. And then we have rotund Patrick Newell who was murdered in the very first Rigg entry, drugged in a color one, and wound up as Mother in the King series.
But all in all, it is the interplay between Macnee and Rigg that really made this program work. Unlike Cathy Gale, who seemed actively to dislike Steed when she was not merely tolerating him, Mrs. Peel had a genuine fondness for him and was not averse to stirring his tea (anticlockwise, as he preferred it). And as for the question of Peel and Steed being lovers, recall that they are fictional characters and have no life off the screen.
The dialogue was light hearted, and you seldom if ever saw blood after a mere trickle in their third episode. You also never saw a policeman, an element that for some reason the producers thought would be a jarring note. (You figure out why; I cannot.)

The best episodes? There is no question that "The House That Jack Built" leads the pack. This is the one in which Emma finds herself in a house designed to drive her mad and Steed appears only at the start and end. The worst? Possibly "Silent Dust." The silliest? That has to be "Epic." The most serious? "Murdersville." So what if the package costs a small fortune? You could purchase them separately, of course; but think of what you would be missing.

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5.0 out of 5 stars DIANA RIGG IS EMMALICIOUS !
Thank you A & E Home Video for giving us fans the Emma Peel megaset. This amazing box set contains all 51 episodes of the Diana Rigg era of The Avengers TV series from 1965-66 to... Read more

Published on Dec 15 2006 by The Critic

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible
I am a HUGE fan of this series, specifically the Emma Peel years, I find all of the Avengers good but when Diana Rigg did the show it became a classic. Read more

Published on Mar 1 2004 by Lotus Scrum

5.0 out of 5 stars Another woman's opinion
Since the bell has been chimed for, er, middle-aged women to stand up, I'll put in my two cents. This is an extraordinary series for having been so very ahead of its time for... Read more

Published on Jan 5 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars A whole lotta Emma!!!
This wonderful 16 DVD set contains the all of the Avengers episodes with Emma Peel(Dame Diana Rigg)and John Steed(Patrick Macnee). Read more

Published on Dec 29 2003 by Jason P. Pumphrey

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Too British, Not Too American, Just Right!
The Avengers episodes with Diana Rigg rank up there with The Twilight Zone and Star Trek as being among my all-time favorite programs to ever appear on the small screen. Read more

Published on Aug 4 2003 by JON STRICKLAND

4.0 out of 5 stars Steed and Peel -- you either get it or you just don't
Like a lot of classic TV, this show's appeal (ahem) is hard to explain to the uninitiated. To call the plots outlandish would be gratuitous understatement; they border on... Read more

Published on July 4 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars The Joanna Lumley Years
In response to "A Viewer from San Fransisco" (March 7, 2003), Joanna Lumley appeared in the series "The New Avengers" from 1976-77, not in the... Read more

Published on Jun 12 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars No Missing Episodes
Reviewer Heath4906 mentioned five episodes that are supposed to be missing but I recently received my mega set and all those episodes are included. Read more

Published on May 3 2003 by Zach Scott

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes but there is more.
And what about the episodes with Joanna Lumley? They' re not mentionned anywhere. Has anybody even ever heard of them? Where can I find them on DVD or VHS?

Published on Mar 7 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Yes but there is more.
And what about the episodes with Joanna Lumley? They' re not mentionned anywhere. Has anybody even ever heard of them? Where can I find them on DVD or VHS?

Published on Mar 7 2003

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