The Avengers International Fan Forum

Anthony seems like a sociable kind of actor, and some of my friends that have enjoyed long chats with him at conventions agree. His idea of Doctor Keel tends to reflect this, and if Julian Wadham's version of Steed is a bit harsher than Patrick Macnee then Anthony appears to have gone the other way and softened his character...

I think he's excelent as Keel. Really engaging. I think Ian Hendry would be very pleased.

DerekD wrote:I think he's excelent as Keel. Really engaging. I think Ian Hendry would be very pleased.

Engaging is a word I would use too. He's very easy to listen to, and I find myself really wanting to hear how Keel deals with things. Anthony plays him in such a way that I genuinely care what happens, and how his relationships with other protagonists finish at the end. For me he's a true hero, in the 'real life' sense of the term rather than the fantasy usage: a genuinely decent person who is caught up in a bad world, not someone with their own 'bad' traits who happens to be on the same side as the viewers (something Steed does fall into, as Keel has occasional cause to point out)

I like Howell's performance much better than Wadham's - he's got a gentleness that's quite likable. Keel seems a tad humorless, though.

I personally prefer Steed's slight amoral attitudes to Keel's "holier-than-thou" moralism. Steed is perfectly suited to his profession, which has to bring with it a certain tendency to bend the rules. A character with no bad traits is not a particularly interesting character. Human beings tend to be a mix of good and bad - and often Keel comes off as just a bit patronizing, especially towards Carol and other female characters.

I think Anthony Howell's performance as Keel, along with the excellent production values and the genuine vintage feel of the audio's are what make these releases so successful. I'd certainly love to hear the series continue after the initial 26 episode run is completed.

The interviews on the Volume 1 disks are a delight. I love how Anthony breaks into laughter as he recalls how immensely stoic and unreactive Dr David Keel is especially in his response to his fiancée being shot dead right in front of him! But this is a vital part of the character, as the wonderful Dr Tredding dialogue to Carol makes clear in episode 2. Rather than go mad, Keel will either avenge his lover's death and find a new life to live, or if he tries his damnedest and fails, he will accept it and partition it away so that at least his doctoring can bring relief to others. That Anthony Howell totally "gets" Keel is clear and he can stand at an amused - but admiring - distance from the character and objectively analyse what makes Keel work so well.

It's a huge loss to us that a strike hit series 1 and then Ian Hendry left the show, an even huger loss that his episodes were mostly junked; sure, I wouldn't want to lose Cathy Gale/Honor Blackman but I'd gladly lose all the Venus Smith episodes for some more David Keel ones to come back.

Yes, they had planned to run to 39 episodes instead of the 26 we ended up with in series 1.

The Actors' Equity strike had them abandon the extra production run completely.

Three of the lost 13 were rewritten for Jon Rollason but the others were junked - although Honor Blackman said a lot of her early episodes were written for a man and edited for her character, it would certainly account for her abrasive nature in some of the episodes.

dissolute wrote:Yes, they had planned to run to 39 episodes instead of the 26 we ended up with in series 1.

The Actors' Equity strike had them abandon the extra production run completely.

Three of the lost 13 were rewritten for Jon Rollason but the others were junked - although Honor Blackman said a lot of her early episodes were written for a man and edited for her character, it would certainly account for her abrasive nature in some of the episodes.

yes, have read that...many times about Honor's take on Cathy Gale, and how initially, her role was written early on for a man..

no matter what, Honor's nature certainly changed how the public perceived Cathy Gale..as a pardner