5.03 - The Bird Who Knew Too Much

[peabody]

Discuss, review and rate The Bird Who Knew Too Much, production completed October 1966.

Teleplay by Brian Clemens
Directed by Roy Rossotti

[darren]

This episode just feels wrong. It's so non-season 5. It doesn't even really feel very Avengers like. With it being credited as 'from an idea' by Alan Pattillo, I wonder if he actually wrote a script that Didn't work and needed rewriting.

One time series director Roy Rossotti doesn't really have much flair. Again this episode has that particular awful pastelly look, too much light blue.

It's nice to have Ron Moody back though he is especially wasted.

I do like the needle in a haystack gag.

The diving board fight is good fun (strange location mix though with Robin conveniently using this nearby pool to fire at Jordan in an unrelated setting).

Ilona Rogers has a great rapport with Macnee. I love their boating dinner. Rogers is in New Zealand now and full of beans, I listened to a Big Finish (remaking audio season 1 of course) podcast interview with her. It's about Doctor Who but she briefly mentions Avengers and how all these shows have an afterlife and she loves being associated with them.

Like Escape in Time, Steed and Mrs. Peel start in a pathology lab or some such room, I wonder if it was an idea that got subsequently dropped.

3/10

[Frankymole]

I heard the Ilona Rogers podcast interview too. She's brilliant! What an amazing lady.

[Rhonda]

I gave 7

[rmartins]

I turned it off halfway through.

[Ian Wegg]

...With it being credited as 'from an idea' by Alan Pattillo, I wonder if he actually wrote a script that Didn't work and needed rewriting.

I've just watched this episode with the introduction by Brian Clemens who confirms exactly that... Pattillo didn't have enough experience to complete the screenplay so he (Clemens) took it over.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy this one, it has enough Avernerishness for me and Ron Moody's performance is a delight. It's only marred by some continuity holes - possibly as a result of the rewrite - that are just too extreme to ignore (the bomb damage to the photographer's studio and the henchmen ambushing and "killing" Mrs Peel both appear to be wiped from history later in the story).

7/10

[dissolute]

The henchmen do turn up again - Robin is captured by Emma after she fights him in the pool, the other one, Verret, fights her in the stagecoach at the end of the episode while Steed battles with Cunliffe.

[Ian Wegg]

Indeed they do, and that's my point. When one henchman gives the other a rifle and tells him he can "kill that girl you took a fancy to" they seem to have no recollection of their earlier encounter with Mrs Peel at the photographer's studio, when they chloroformed her and left her tied to a chair with a booby-trap gun pointed at her head.

[Allard]

...With it being credited as 'from an idea' by Alan Pattillo, I wonder if he actually wrote a script that Didn't work and needed rewriting.

I've just watched this episode with the introduction by Brian Clemens who confirms exactly that... Pattillo didn't have enough experience to complete the screenplay so he (Clemens) took it over.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy this one, it has enough Avernerishness for me and Ron Moody's performance is a delight. It's only marred by some continuity holes - possibly as a result of the rewrite - that are just too extreme to ignore (the bomb damage to the photographer's studio and the henchmen ambushing and "killing" Mrs Peel both appear to be wiped from history later in the story).

7/10

Very interesting as the episode strength is in the style, it's very sixties, good pace, charming little moments but a bit thin plot, although an original idea. Clemens might really have rescued this one and the plot isnt as "grand" as his episodes usually are.