Smoking in the Avengers

[Halfhide]

My word there's an awful lot of cigarettes smoked in this season. I bet the studio was constantly surrounded in a tobacco haze. I can't recall many cigarettes being smoked in the Rigg film series. Maybe cigarettes were frowned upon in the studio by that time.......

Just watched Propellant 23. The scene with Steed and Cathy in the lingerie department is priceless!

[Rodney]

That may be something to do with the American market. Off screen, Diana Rigg was and remains a champion of smokers and many of the stills from Season 4 show her smoking cigarettes and Macnee smoking cigars. There's a classic COLOUR still from the boat scene in Silent Dust taken during a break in filming. On screen the only exception to the smoking 'ban' I can think of is the cigar club in my father's £50,000 Breakfast in Season 5.

[Timeless A-Peel]

That may be something to do with the American market. Off screen, Diana Rigg was and remains a champion of smokers and many of the stills from Season 4 show her smoking cigarettes and Macnee smoking cigars. There's a classic COLOUR still from the boat scene in Silent Dust taken during a break in filming. On screen the only exception to the smoking 'ban' I can think of is the cigar club in my father's £50,000 Breakfast in Season 5.

I've always wondered why there was the sudden switch on smoking on the series. Steed, Keel, and Cathy all smoke pretty heavily, but as soon as the Emma era rolled around, Steed and all of his subsequent partners were non-smokers. By the time TNA rolled around, the characters were actually actively anti-smoking. I thought it was due to some sort of health study that came out around that time or something, but I never considered that it might have been banned because of the Americans. It certainly couldn't have been down to the actors, every single one of which smoked. That seemed to be the thing to do in the sixties. Thinking on it, American TV I've seen from the time was usually smoke-free. That might just be it.

[MRotten]

It would be interesting if someone who worked on the series would comment about the smoking. Lots of it going on with Steed and Gale, but zero thereafter. Perhaps it was considered a distraction, which is true. Same goes for eating. Steed and Gale have scenes where they are eating or have just dined in a restaurant, whereas very little of that is found in the later seasons. I think it was a "time waster" to show them doing these things. But not wasting as much time as, for instance, hearing Venus Smith warble a tune!

[Dandy Forsdyke]

I agree with all the reasons above. I would imagine smoking a cigarette is also continuity nightmare. A videotaped episode was more 'real time' but there could have been many takes on film.

Did I read a directive about smoking in one of the books?

[Timeless A-Peel]

It would be interesting if someone who worked on the series would comment about the smoking. Lots of it going on with Steed and Gale, but zero thereafter. Perhaps it was considered a distraction, which is true. Same goes for eating. Steed and Gale have scenes where they are eating or have just dined in a restaurant, whereas very little of that is found in the later seasons. I think it was a "time waster" to show them doing these things. But not wasting as much time as, for instance, hearing Venus Smith warble a tune!

I like the eating scenes and drinking, actually, particularly because all the shows around this time actually poured real coffee into the cups, as opposed to having the actors pretend to be drinking something out of an empty mug. You can see it steam! It adds a bit of realism to the proceedings. There's something wonderfully humanising about watching Mrs. Gale talk about the day's case over a bowl of cornflakes. (Cornflakes: fueling Avengers from Cathy to Gambit since 1962. ) There's less of it in the later seasons, but the few times it pops up, I enjoy it. Emma's speed lunch in Death at Bargain Prices is just priceless. And Purdey always seems to be eating, or at the very least thinking about food. I'm glad they nixed the smoking, but I would have gone for more meal scenes.

[Johnny O]

In many interviews given by Joanna Lumley at the time TNA was first on screen in the UK, she frequently said that although they were always drinking alcohol, smoking was banned on screen as otherwise it could not be shown on US TV. I don't know when American TV banned smoking, but I guess it was many years earlier, hence the lack of fags when the filmed Peel series was made.

[Rodney]

One has to bear in mind that a chasm separates the policing moral code of American tv and the laissez faire attitude to cinema. You can have Kill Bill in the cinema, no problems. But the restrictions on tv were and still are draconian. Even Mrs Peel's belly button was a problem.

[mousemeat]

That may be something to do with the American market. Off screen, Diana Rigg was and remains a champion of smokers and many of the stills from Season 4 show her smoking cigarettes and Macnee smoking cigars. There's a classic COLOUR still from the boat scene in Silent Dust taken during a break in filming. On screen the only exception to the smoking 'ban' I can think of is the cigar club in my father's £50,000 Breakfast in Season 5.

could be, but somehow, blaming the 'U.S. ' MARKET, COULD BE A TAD FAR FETCH..Then again, who knows ? Heck, the British always seem to have enjoyed a smoke and a pint...

interesting thread...

[kim]

During the sixties, smoking wouldn't have been too much of a problem in American tv. Heck, even cartoon characters...i.e..the Flintstones, did commercials for cigarettes during that time frame...Was it a problem during the seventies? Well...kinda sorta...censors were trying to discourage smoking in teenagers and cigarette commercials were banned during that period, however, it wasn't totally banned on television shows...Bad guys could smoke, good guys didn't, and if teens were involved, there had to be a lecture or a consequence...