International Scene
Page 5 of 6
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International Scene |
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In the early 1990s The New Avengers were sold to TELE 5, a private German satellite broadcasting company, where at least 23 episodes were broadcast and the last three omitted — although they've got German titles, too! (Even some relevant German web sites about the TV series in Germany have summaries of the transmitted 23 episodes only!) Anybody still with me? But some time later TELE 5 ceased to exist, and the package was given to TM3. Here, in 1997, poor Steed, Purdey and Gambit once again weren't allowed to fight crime in their last three adventures in Canada. The following summer only the first New Avengers season had a rerun; it was the last time the 1970s-Avengers had been seen on German television. Come on, The New Avengers weren't so bad that they deserved the uncaring shoving around for all those years!
Stay Tuned Fortunately, the 1960s-Avengers escaped such a fate. In the mid 1980s a whole package of old serial dynamite from the TV veterans ARD and ZDF were sold to the upcoming private cable and satellite programmes. Mainly it was SAT1 in Munich, which revived classics like Mission.. Impossible, Star Trek, Hawaii 5-0, High Chaparral a.o., which hadn't been seen for years and now regained old fans and found new ones. The Avengers were no exception. But a new trend had set in. Standards and ethics had changed; "unsuitable" episodes, which had been abandoned before by the editors, had been bought and dubbed to complete the catalogue. Responsible for all those transactions throughout the German TV scene was the Kirch-Group (a huge German media company, comparable to the Murdoch empire) which was in possession of TV stations like SAT1 or PREMIERE (pay-TV). One of the first "completed" series was the classic Star Trek for which in 1987 nearly all original dub voices could be re-employed, including Gerd Guenther Hoffmann as Kirk. About six years later he did the same for the relaunch of The Avengers. In May 1993 SAT1 began a daily (!) rerunning of the classic Emma Peel episodes, including — as a "special summer feature" (or whatever you may call it) — all the previously unreleased colour episodes.
This time Gerd Guenter Hoffmann not only took over Steed's part again, he also directed the German dubbing. But now he had to face a slight problem: His present elder voice suited the elder Newman, Shatner or Macnee. Now he had to sound as if he was about thirty years younger! He covered up this little flaw by giving Steed a more distinguished, snobbish note than he did before. Unfortunately, Margot Leonard wasn't available anymore. In her place came Joseline Gassen, whose soft and warm voice fit perfectly to that of Diana Rigg (IMO). Love All Did they all catch fire, or what? Three years later it was back to the studio to dub the remaining b/w-Emma Peel- and Tara King-adventures, to finally show Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone in its entirety after 30 years. Now the "third Emma" (this time: Marietta Meade) and the "second Tara" (Madeleine Stolze — replacing 1969s Renate Kuester) were advised by Hoffmann to get their parts right. But a funny thing happened on the way to broadcast: In the course of dubbing the huge bunch of episodes, instead of the missing "The Murder Market," "The Master Minds" was dubbed again by mistake, leaving "Market" still unreleased! Blame it to the alliteration of both titles! Latest news (April 1999) reported that "Market" was to be worked on, but it is unclear what happened to that very last missing episode. It would be interesting to know who took over Hoffmann's/Macnee's part. Let's wait for the next rerun... A Sense of History... nearly Indeed, in the course of the release of the Avengers movie in summer 1998, SAT1, seemed to have a certain sense of history by broadcasting the original 60s Mit Schirm, Charm und Melone shortly after — in total! The b/w episodes were aired Wednesday nights around 11.30—somewhat late, but mainly without any commercial break and uncut! Too good to be true, you think? No catch to it? You're right! Air date for the colour episodes (Emma & Tara) was Saturday, around 11 AM! Interrupted by three commercial blocks and sometimes severely edited at the end (Whatever happened to some end credits or, worse, to the tags of "The Winged Avenger" or "You Have Just Been Murdered"?), but who will grumble about, hey? There was some hope when the episode was repeated the next morning around 2.30, where you got the chance to tape it entirely (sometimes even without any commercials!), provided that you didn't forget to program your VCR or the station didn't confuse or shut down its VPS (and so the next day you're watching a taped episode of Heartbreak High)! And so, finally, the (nearly) complete run of the latest Avengers adventures in Germany (pink cells denote previously unaired episodes):
*This is the only new episode that was aired before at TVB, a local Berlin TV station, on 15 Nov 97. Small Game for Big Hunters That's it so far for the sometimes really confusing history of The Avengers on German television (not my fault, I hope). Although some of the above-named episodes are severely edited by commercial times, they are still an important source for the German Avengers-fans, because they are not yet available on video or DVD in German language. The only possibility you have is to purchase some of the CANAL+ editions available in electrical, video or comic stores, but only a few have these in stock. Somewhere you may have the chance to buy the original Corgi-models of Steed's Bentley and Emma's Lotus. The bigger or specialized book stores in the big cities may keep the latest releases, the books of Dave Rogers, Alain Carrazé, Toby Miller or Patrick Macnee's The Avengers and Me. The only German compendium available is Franziska Fischer's Mrs. Peel, wir werden gebraucht, by Edition Splitscreen, Beltz: Berlin 1996, which I highly recommend. I've taken some of the quotes from there. The demand for The Avengers in Germany is just too small. Unlike Star Trek, Star Wars or The X-Files, for Avengers-collectors Germany is real wasteland. Happy hunting... It's a paradox, isn't it? In the 60s the fans in Germany went as wild when Emma Peel left the series, as they did when Star Trek was abandoned by the ZDF in 1973. And yet the series didn't received that enormous hype Star Trek got. Fortunately, I sometimes say. Collecting Star Trek articles in the late 70s and early 80s was much more fun for me when it was only seldom spread. Somewhere in the mid-90s I gave up, it was all to much. What's it good for to have a Klingon-dictionary, Ferengi-masks or "Cooking with Neelix" — when you can have everything, useful or useless? Let's rummage around in the compendiums or read about Macnee's times at Teddington, filmed live on video tape. What would have happened if the film wasn't that ill-fated? Let's see what's out there... "They'll be back... They're unchaperoned up there!" (Mother) |
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