3.19 - The Wringer

[Rhonda]

Nice to find out on the Dissolute Avengers website that the scene at 42mins (Steed and Cathy in the culvert & bushes, escaping the interrogation facility) was a VTR insert. There's no way Steed and Cathy could have been dry enough for filming anything after going through all that water!

[darren]

Nice to find out on the Dissolute Avengers website that the scene at 42mins (Steed and Cathy in the culvert & bushes, escaping the interrogation facility) was a VTR insert. There's no way Steed and Cathy could have been dry enough for filming anything after going through all that water!

Yeah, that's one of the most obvious examples. I believe by this stage they were pre-filming quite a few of the fight scenes (the self-contained ones anyway).

[darren]

I haven't watched this one is quite a while so it was lovely to revisit it.

I do enjoy the harder edge and the darkness. Steed's department having a facility to deal with agents which they turn a blind eye to regarding its methods. It's great to have Terence Lodge as the Wringer in his second guest role in season 3 (Man with Two Shadows) - He's such an interesting actor, shame he didn't do more episodes. A very different kind of role for Wallace & Gromit voice actor Peter Sallis. Not just Lodge returning from Man with Two Shadows but the actual character of Charles (Paul Whitson-Jones) as Steed's boss alongside future Doctor Who director and producer Barry Letts.

Don Leaver does a great job directing the episode. He has a very clean yet sophisticated style. I wish he'd done more episodes in season 3 (like Peter Hammond there's so much of his work still missing as he they shared season 1). There's a pleasing lack of music - on my recent rewatch of this season, the music has been a bit irritating.

I always feel sorry for the poor guy playing the prison guard, he has such a hard time with the locks on Steed's cage and almost spills Steed's tea everywhere trying to get through the door.

I wouldn't want the show to always be this dark but it's one of the best things about season 3 - the diversity of styles and tones.

[Frankymole]

An influential episode.

On the DVD introduction, Patrick Macnee discusses how The Avengers started doing psychedelia and electronic mind-manipulation before it was fashionable or even thought of in popular TV/film culture. We also get Barry Letts playing a fairly large role as an important cog in Steed's HQ; Letts would go on to be a BBC director and to use techniques pioneered here by Don Leaver, like back projection in place of sets and Op-Art film and sound effects, eventually developing them into the extensive early Chromakey/CSO experimentation at the BBC.

Leaver's direction leads to a well-designed, speedy episode and Martin Woodhouse's ideas never flag, though clearly influenced to some extent by The Ipcress File novel (the film came later). Like parts of Don't Look Behind You, this points the way to the future, not just for The Avengers but for Swinging Sixties pop culture as a whole - trippiness combined with Cold War paranoia.

Truly excellent, an easy 10/10.

[Frankymole]

I think some spies did disappear quietly at that time.

But that is speculation. What is fact is that these 2 atomic spies for the Soviet Union lived out their lives in peace after early release from prison. One got to continue helping the Soviets. If anyone was a candidate during the Cold War for being "disappeared," these 2 would have to head the list.

The author of this well-written episode portrayed British justice as a clone of justice in Stalin's Soviet Union. It just wasn't so.

Steed was accuse of getting multiple agents killed and closing off an important route into and out of the Warsaw Pact countries through the Iron Curtain, not just for Britain but for other allies. That's not the same as selling a few technical secrets.

He was also too important and too secret to merit a trial or public newspaper reporting. Charles was judge, jury, and sanctioned his potential execution by "the Unit" or "the Dump". This is more like Callan with its "the Section" than gentlemanly George Smiley type stuff.

For an alternative view of what happens to agents who have outlived their usefulness, read up on Inverlair Lodge, The Cooler novel by George Markstein based on the place, or watch The Prisoner.

[Frankymole]

Nice to find out on the Dissolute Avengers website that the scene at 42mins (Steed and Cathy in the culvert & bushes, escaping the interrogation facility) was a VTR insert. There's no way Steed and Cathy could have been dry enough for filming anything after going through all that water!

Yeah, that's one of the most obvious examples. I believe by this stage they were pre-filming quite a few of the fight scenes (the self-contained ones anyway).

Weirdly, the entire tag scene back at Steed's flat (with Lovell the tailor and Cathy spilling coffee on Steed's suit) is a VTR insert. Perhaps to allow Steed time to get changed from his highland gear from the fire observation tower during his final meeting with Anderson and the Wringer?

Why does the TV Times tagline say "In which Steed is sentenced as a traitor and Cathy helps to brainwash him" -- she does quite the opposite!

[darren]

The TV Times sided with the Wringer:)

[Frankymole]

Haha! Maybe. Perhaps they meant she "washes" his brain free of the interference that had been fed into it. Or something,

[mousemeat]

Haha! Maybe. Perhaps they meant she "washes" his brain free of the interference that had been fed into it. Or something,

SURE, a whole other spin on ' brain washing '....