The Avengers International Fan Forum

just MY favourite episode...

n°1...always.

tension,suspense.

total adoration of fenton grenville !

Who would have thought he would end up advertising stairlifts and sofas eh?

mariocki wrote:Who would have thought he would end up advertising stairlifts and sofas eh?

I'm afraid to ask who you are referring to, but I will anyway.

mariocki wrote:Who would have thought he would end up advertising stairlifts and sofas eh?

I'm afraid to ask who you are referring to, but I will anyway.

anti-clockwise wrote:

mariocki wrote:Who would have thought he would end up advertising stairlifts and sofas eh?

I'm afraid to ask who you are referring to, but I will anyway.

He speaks about tom adams/fenton grenville
see the link page 1.

He was about 31 when he did this episode.

mariocki wrote:Ol' Fenton-Grenville seems to have been doing quite well for himself in recent years with an interesting sideline in commercials, so for the benefit of those outside the UK, here are a selection:

From 2011:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AefSQtxc ... ata_player

From 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo6k85Tj ... ata_player

From 1994:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo6k85Tj ... ata_player

Down right depressing

magnificent, terrifying, like a stage play crackling with malevolent energy.

Grand episode all around, with not just one but four fabulous villains, all with their own brand of smarminess. Grenville reminds me of James Bond gone bad, in the best possible way, and he's good match for Steed. I love their little competition at the dinner table and Grenville's evident relish in trying to kill the man who bested him. It's sort of Steed's version of The Joker/Don't Look Behind You. Tara, of course, shows up just in time to get herself tied up, though at least she demonstrates one moment of cleverness in all this. But the episode belongs to Steed, through and through, and Macnee proves that he carry it.

One caveat is their little plot to assassinate the foreign minister (?). It seems like a painfully elaborate way of going about it, though if we take the idea that Grenville's just a sadist, then I guess it makes sense. Then there's Tara's inability to be apart from Steed for more than a day without writing him letters, but that's par for the course.

Might have been slightly improved by keeping to Steed's perspective rather than giving us much of the plot at the start before Steed arrives. It would have extended the mystery and allowed the viewer to occupy the same position of Steed as he figures it all out (as they do in The Joker and Don't Look Behind You).

All in all, a spectacular Steed episode. There should have been more like this.

I am glad you liked it, it is a nice example of The Avengers still managing to come up with something new within its "format". I think Tom Adams (Grenville) got to play a Bond style "hero" in some cheap espionage films of the time, so the Bondishness of his villain is a great observation. I like to think this is how Steed and Bond might have been at loggerheads if they ever met. Bond, overconfident with his superficial details of composers and other high-class fripperies, Steed having subsumed such aristocratic hauteur early in his life and moved on to more moral and humanistic pursuits whilst never being afraid of pleasure or overly elevating the 'perfection' of self-denial. Steed actually lives life, whilst Grenville analyses it.