Swinging London and The Avengers

[mousemeat]

I think that one of the cool things about The Avengers is that it has what you described, yet it is timeless and watchable unlike other shows like Dragnet or some episodes of Hawaii Five-O that are almost unwatchable because they seem so dated and cliched...JMO

I agree - the TV shows from back then that I remember as being pretty good, such as Mission Impossible, The Fugitive, and the ones you mentioned, do not stand the test of time like The Avengers does.

how true...how many times have you revisited a show or movie, from years past, only to discover how dated it has become, or hasn't held up..???

on the flip, the Avengers still holds up well for me...I'm sure many of us, feel the same way!

[Frankymole]

on the flip, the Avengers still holds up well for me...I'm sure many of us, feel the same way!

The black-and-white shows seem better than ever to me; the Tara King series just as brilliant as before. Only the color Emma Peels seem duller than before.

[Frankymole]

I like the Floyd, but for me it's the Beatles, the Kinks and the Who from that time. I'm a Mod, really.

Me too, but the Small Faces were the Mod-est of the Mods...

[Ketman]

^Ha! You're probably right.

[Brian Flagg]

Watched Room Without a View the other day, which has the rare reminder of the time period when one of the prisoners asks "What year is it?" and is answered with "Nineteen Sixty-Five."

[JohnSteedFr]

Watched Room Without a View the other day, which has the rare reminder of the time period when one of the prisoners asks "What year is it?" and is answered with "Nineteen Sixty-Five."

Seen it today, too !

[Dandy Forsdyke]

With (especially) the Peel-era Avengers, I often get the feeling that the rest of the "Swingin' '60s" is happening just off camera and that the show is a part of the whole "scene" of the time. I'm sure I'm just romanticizing the time but somehow the strains of Sgt. Pepper's and the sights of Carnaby Street are vivid in my mind, especially in the monochrome season.

I always think in terms of the Beatles' films.

A Hard Day's Night = series 4
Help! = series 5
Yellow Submarine = series 6

[Rodney]

The scene that best sums up the 60s fashion/culture context is in The Murder Market when a trouserless model is in a photo shoot and Steed puts his hat on her to complete the picture. It's one of those rarities: a perfect scene and one which encapsulates that mid60s context.

[Brian Flagg]

Oddly enough, Ketman's reply all those years ago fits in with what this thread was all about: the belief that the Sixties were raging seemingly everywhere, except where one happened to be; this was also the case with The Avengers.

In the 1999 film The Limey, the character played by Peter Fonda--a Sixties icon himself--ruminates aloud some hard-won conclusions about the 1960s, as he attempts to explain the decade to his much-younger girlfriend:

Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before? A place that maybe only exists in your imagination? Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up. When you were there, though, you knew the language. You knew your way around. *That* was the sixties. [pause] No. It wasn't that either. It was just '66 and early '67. That's all there was."

[mariocki]

A fascinating thread this and one that reminds me of most of the people I’ve spoken to who were around at that time and who say pretty much the same thing - Britain felt like the centre of the universe for a very short time but it didn’t change their lives. Most had mundane jobs and the Swinging Sixties always seemed to be just out of reach around the corner.