The Avengers Forever: Rodney's Reviews

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The Gravediggers
By Rodney Marshall

My father maintains elsewhere on the website that The Avengers reached its artistic peak in the second Blackman series and the Rigg monochrome one. I would go a few steps further by suggesting that the beginning of the Rigg era—the first dozen or so episodes—is The Avengers at the very pinnacle of its achievement. We have the delights of watching Steed and Mrs. Peel building up their working relationship, the screen presence of the greatest ever Avengers actress, far more subtle music, the higher quality of production brought about by the move to film, Steed at his playful best and lashings of eccentricity colliding (and interacting) with a serious dramatic undercurrent.

There is a less well-known reason as well. Before production started on the season in November 1964, a number of episodes had been written—at a more leisurely pace—by writers such as my father and Brian Clemens. The plots and locations were extensively researched, whereas once filming began—and new scripts failed to arrive or were rejected—scriptwriters no longer had the luxury of time and corners were, inevitably, cut. If the final colour Rigg episodes have an elegiac quality, then these first black & white ones have an exciting newness to them.

The eccentricity of Sir Horace and his passion for railways offer "The Grave-Diggers" a quite fantastic eccentricity which lightens what would otherwise have been too sombre an episode. Once again, graveyards and coffins build a wonderfully macabre atmosphere, aided by Laurie Johnson's Hammond organ score. While the deadly mastermind is not particularly memorable, the baddies' headquarters of the Hospital for Ailing Railwaymen makes up for it and there can be few scenes more memorable than the train fight: Steed imitating a commuter waiting on the platform, the grin on the face of the hit man as he stokes the engine—a boyhood dream fulfilled—and the silent movie music as Mrs. Peel lies tied to the track. Ronald Fraser's performance as Winslip almost sends the episode off the tracks into Warren Mitchell-style OTT territory but, ultimately, this is great fun and Macnee has rarely been on better form.