Imprint Films: The Avengers - The Tara King Collection coming Nov. 29

[paulpdjh]

Yes, I can't remember why Small Faces never went to America, their manager then was Andrew Loog Oldham who managed the Rolling Stones so there was no real barrier but somehow they never got round to it before they broke up at the end of 1968. A great shame, but at least they all went on to have a fun time there afterwards with other bands, like Kenney working in the Who and Mac working in the Stones and then in various bands like the New Barbarians and his Bump Band when he moved to Austin Texas (just as Ronnie Lane was moving out to California, I think, because of his health)... plus loads of guest spots in various short tours and one-off gigs. And we know about Humble Pie (I'm not a big fan of them either!)...

Anyway, Australian Santa has paid me a little visit!!! A parcel of Australian newspapers with something else in it!!! I'm so excited!!!

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That's great! I had a quick look at the Australian newspaper packing too. Was interesting to see the TV guide with ABC, Channel 7, Channel 9, Channel 10 and SBS, etc. As a kid I always assumed Australia had 10 channels and wondered why the UK only had 4!

[Frankymole]

The extra features on this set are incredible--at least 8 new commentaries, including 2 by Linda Thorson--and Mister Jerico on Blu. I didn't pick up the Emma Peel Imprint set because I already have the Studio Canal Blu-ray releases, but I just ordered it because of this release. It'll be great to have a region free set of the last three seasons.

So much stuff - I don't know where to start!

THE AVENGERS SERIES 6 – all 33 episodes on 9 discs

Special Features and Technical Specs:

1080p high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements
Collectable double-sided Hardbox packaging – 1500 copies only
NEW! 120-page booklet featuring an essay by television writer / historian Andrew Pixley, and Press/Story Information from the original studio files
Original ‘as broadcast’ mono audio track (LPCM) and “The Avengers in Color” opening slate
NEW! Audio Commentary on “The Forget-Me-Knot” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
NEW! Audio Commentary on the Terry Nation scripted episode “Invasion of the Earthmen” by writer/film critic Kim Newman and screenwriter/author Robert Shearman (2023)
Audio Commentary on “Split!” by writer/producer Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Waker
NEW! Audio Commentary on “LOOK! (stop me if you’ve heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers…” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
NEW! Never-before-released Video Commentary on “All Done With Mirrors” featuring actress Linda Thorson, director Raymond Austin, composer Howard Blake, producer Brian Clemens recorded on-stage at “THE AVENGERS AT 50” event in 2011
Audio Commentary on “All Done With Mirrors” by actress Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady
Audio Commentary on “Game” by director Robert Fuest
Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by actress Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady
2nd Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by stuntwoman Cyd Child
NEW! 3rd Audio Commentary on “Noon Doomsday” by filmmakers Samuel Clemens and George Clemens (2023)
Audio Commentary on “Killer” by guest actress Jennifer Croxton
Audio Commentary on “The Morning After” by director John Hough
Audio Commentary on “Love All” by writer Jeremy Burnham and guest actress Veronica Strong
NEW! Audio Commentary on “Fog” by film historians Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons (2023)
NEW! Audio Commentary on “Thingumajig” by film historians Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons (2023)
NEW! Audio Commentary on “Bizarre” by television historians Dick Fiddy (of the British Film Institute) and Henry Holland (2023)
Video Introductions to “The Interrogators”, “Love All”, “Take Me To Your Leader”, “Pandora”, “Thingumajig” and “Requiem” by Linda Thorson
Video Introduction to “Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?” by director Cyril Frankel
NEW! Audio Recollection on “Get-A-Way!” by guest actor Peter Bowles
“THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Interviews captured at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the series, held at Chichester University (2011)
Helicopter arrival and Audio Commentary by Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady
NEW! Linda Thorson introduces video message from Patrick Macnee
NEW! “The Impact of The Avengers” – panel discussion with Linda Thorson, Paul O’Grady, director Raymond Austin, actor John Carson and author Alwyn Turner
NEW! “The Music of The Avengers” – Themes from the series (and The New Avengers) performed by the Chichester University Orchestra
Interview with Linda Thorson by Paul O’Grady
“The Two Sides of Tara King” – with Linda Thorson and stuntwoman Cyd Child
Interview with director John Hough
Interview with director Robert Fuest
Interview with composer Howard Blake
Interview with director/stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin (NEW! Complete unreleased version)
“In the Footsteps of Tara King” – interview with Linda Thorson by Oliver Kalkofe (2010)
“Wish You Were Here” – Locations featurette
“Avenging The Avengers” – featurette on the series (1992) plus additional unused interviews
“Thriller: Lady Killer” – complete episode from the ATV series starring Linda Thorson, written by Brian Clemens (in Standard Definition)
“Return of the Saint: The Roman Touch” – complete episode of the ITC action series guest starring Linda Thorson (in Standard Definition)
Archival Vault Material

“Introducing Linda Thorson” – Vintage Promotional Trailer
“Girl About Town” – Vintage Promotional Short Film about Linda Thorson with optional Audio Commentary by Linda Thorson and Paul O’Grady
Artists Screen Tests – vault film of various actresses auditioning to be the new “Avengers Girl” (mute with optional Audio Commentary)
“Invasion of the Earthmen” – Alternative U.S. End Credits
Series 6 Textless Closing Credits with theme music
U.S. ABC Network Commercial Break Bumpers
“Mit Schirm, Charme Und Melone” – German Opening Titles / Closing Credits
“Granada Plus Points” for “The Forget-Me-Knot” featuring Patrick Macnee
Extensive Photo Galleries from the studio archives
Bonus Disc 1: The Avengers – The Early Years

“Hot Snow Act 1” – the only surviving material from the very first episode of Series 1, with optional Audio Commentary by producer Leonard White (in Standard Definition)
“Girl on the Trapeze” – the complete 6th episode from Series 1 (in Standard Definition)
“The Frighteners” – the complete 15th episode from Series 1 (in Standard Definition)
“Bullseye” – the complete 8th episode from Series 2, with optional Audio Commentary by actress Honor Blackman and Paul O’Grady
“Warlock” – the complete 16th episode from Series 2, with optional, NEW! previously unreleased Audio Commentary by Honor Blackman and story editor Richard Bates recorded at “THE AVENGERS AT 50” event in 2011
14 Audio Reconstructions for missing Series 1 episodes
“THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Interview with producers Leonard White and Brian Tessler, actresses Honor Blackman and Julie Stevens (2011)
Bonus Disc 2: Mister Jerico (1970)

1970 crime caper produced by ITC as the pilot to a proposed new Patrick Macnee series, but ultimately aired as a one-off television film, and theatrically exhibited in some territories.

NEW! 1080p high-definition presentation of a 2023, 2K scan from the original camera negative by Imprint, with grading by award-winning colourist Jonathan Wood
Option to view flim in 1.33:1 or 1.66:1 aspect ratio
NEW! Audio Commentary by television historians Dick Fiddy (of the British Film Institute) and Henry Holland (2023)
NEW! The Road To ‘Mister Jerico’ in High-Definition – featurette
NEW! ‘Mister Jerico’: Damage Limitation – restoration featurette
Isolated music score by Laurie Johnson
Original Theatrical Trailer (previously unreleased)
Textless Titles
Photo Gallery

[mousemeat]

Bingo...ho ho ho, indeed...wow, that's quite the offering, sorta mind blowing...heck, you could spent a few days, digesting all the special features..before plowing into the remastered 33 episodes....quite the holiday offering!

[Frankymole]

I am very much enjoying Andrew Pixley's glossy book with this set, which is my current bedtime reading.

Reading about how the series wrapped up, and what Linda Thorson and Patrick Macnee planned to do next (or didn't!) is making me very curious to watch the Mr Jericho disk now! I like that it comes in its own case.

[Andrew Pixley]

I am very much enjoying Andrew Pixley's glossy book with this set, which is my current bedtime reading.

Reading about how the series wrapped up, and what Linda Thorson and Patrick Macnee planned to do next (or didn't!) is making me very curious to watch the Mr Jericho disk now! I like that it comes in its own case.

Very pleased that you're finding some value in the text! It was a great chance to experiment with something that was very kindly offered to me by Grant Taylor; he's been very kind and thoughtful and generous to work with in allowing me to see if there even was something of interest to write or not. Mike Richardson has done such a thorough job of chronicling the series as a whole in "Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots" that in recent years I've been sort of reticent to take on work about "The Avengers" because I really feared that it would simply be a matter of delivering the same old, same old and wasting time reinventing the wheel. But when Grant gave me the offer and a chance to experiment with it for a a short while, I decided to take up the challenge of seeing what I could do within a wordcount limit if I only used contemporary sources from that period of July 1967 to June 1969. Certainly, while I knew in retrospective interviews how Linda Thorson had spoken of the problems she'd faced while on the series, I'd never realised that she had generally avoided the media while working on the show and then very quickly discussed her awful experiences with the press as soon as she could once she was clear of her contract.

As to what Patrick and Linda did next... back in 2020, Network had hopes of releasing a Blu-ray set of "The New Avengers" and commissioned me to deliver two sets of viewing notes to accompany it. By the time I delivered the project had already been sadly abandoned, but if it's of interest this is part of the unchecked and unedited opening chapter, January 1969–December 1975: THEY KEEP REVIVING STEED.

==================================================================================================

Patrick Macnee had finished being John Steed shortly after noon on Friday 28 February 1969, having spent a morning shooting inserts and completing Paradise Plot scenes on Stage 2 for the episode Bizarre. By the start of the following week, he was settling into a small apartment in California – the result of being informed (quite incorrectly) by his agent that he owed the British Inland Revenue £40,000 in tax and that he faced the threat of imprisonment. Because he had been instructed to lose weight during the making of the final run of The Avengers, he had been prescribed drugs – not realising that he was now hooked on amphetamines and losing touch with reality. He also believed that he was now associated with a series that was a flop – the American ABC network having not renewed the series for the 1969/70 season.

By early April 1969, Patrick was back in the UK and starring as a British military attaché in the horror film Doctors Wear Scarlet (latterly released in 1972 as Incense for the Damned); this continued to shoot in Cyprus through to June. His next starring vehicle was Mr Jerico, an ABC Movie of the Week being made by ITC – the distribution arm of the Midlands ITV franchise ATV. In this he played the title role of Dudley Jerico – a con man with a conscience – after Robert Wagner had dropped out. Developed as The Jerichos from a story by Philip Levene, the hope was that this would be the pilot for a seven episode series made by producer Julian Wintle with a lot of the other former crew from The Avengers. Filming commenced on Monday 14 July in Malta and then a fortnight later continued at ABP Elstree through to mid-August.

By the end of August 1969, Patrick was in Australia where he began rehearsals for a stage production of The Secretary Bird, a comedy which had enjoyed success in London with Kenneth More. Opening at the Palace Theatre in Sydney on Thursday 18 September, this ran to Wednesday 10 December, after which he returned to USA and filmed an episode of the Universal western series The Virginian playing a villainous Englishman in a segment entitled Hounds; by the time the episode aired on NBC on Wednesday 25 February 1970 it had been renamed A King’s Ransom. This commitment meant that he was unable to spend Christmas with Honor Blackman and her family as he had done for the last three years, and was only able to telephone through a message for his dear friend when she was the subject of Thames’ This Is Your Life programme on Wednesday 17 December.

In January 1970, Patrick appeared on an edition of the syndicated talk show Della! recorded in Los Angeles. Mr Jerico screened as ABC’s Movie of the Week on Tuesday 3 March and was subsequently released by Rank in UK cinemas from July (sometimes as a support film to Carry On Loving). Having contributed to the documentary The Fountain of Groovy for the syndicated Special of the Month strand, Patrick was then back in Australia where The Secretary Bird re-opened in Melbourne on Tuesday 31 March, touring through to the end of July via Newcastle, Canberra and Brisbane, and then playing a six-week tour of theatres in New Zealand from mid-August.

The Avengers remained popular in Germany where it was still airing as Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone [With Umbrella, Charm and Bowler] on ZDF. Patrick Macnee and Linda Thorson were reunited for an edition of the variety special Die Rudi Carrell Show in which the pair removed some unlikely disguises for St Nicholas Day to the strains of Laurie Johnson’s theme and then joined their Dutch host in a rendition of Together built around Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone. This show – with Patrick dressed as Steed – aired on ARD on Tuesday 8 December 1970. At the same time, the pair recorded a magic act for ZDF’s festive charity show Stars in der Manege [Stars in the Ring] which aired on Sunday 27 December.


Since production of The Avengers had concluded, Linda had returned to the stage, appearing at the Bristol Little during September 1969 and then in Glasgow in It’s a Two Foot Six Inches Above the Ground World from September 1970; during April 1970, she had been in California recording more songs for release by Ember who had handled her previous single Here I Am in 1968, but her singing career had stalled at this point.

Following another promotional visit to Germany with Linda in mid-February 1971, Patrick returned to the USA where he filmed Hunt, an episode of Universal’s new Western adventure series Alias Smith and Jones; retitled The Man Who Murdered Himself, this aired on ABC on Thursday 18 March. By now, Patrick had managed to get his health under control; via psychoanalysis he had managed to kick his considerable smoking habit of 80-a-day during the 1960s, and was now shedding the weight that he had battled with towards the end of the previous decade. Furthermore, he had been having psychiatric treatment in Los Angeles for three years.

==================================================================================================

Hope that's of interest!

All the best

Andrew

[Frankymole]

Wow, that's stunning! Loads of new facts I had not read before. Especially about Patrick spending Christmasses with Honor Blackman's family. Also the troubles he had with the amphetamines they put him on. He bore all the troubles with great fortitude. I am glad he knew in later years that the series was essentially not a flop after all. As well as being hugely popular in most of the world, the Tara episodes have had a re-evaluation here in the UK too. They're some of the very best, in my opinion. Which leads us to this set! Oh how I wish the Australians would do similar for The New Avengers. That's the unloved offshoot now

[Andrew Pixley]

As well as being hugely popular in most of the world, the Tara episodes have had a re-evaluation here in the UK too. They're some of the very best, in my opinion.

I have a lot of time for these episodes because there's so many flavours to them and some of them try to do things that are a bit more daring and experimental; some of the later instalments have a very nasty air of menace to them, while there's a move back to "reality" in many respects, away from the somewhat cartoon-like setting that had formed the backdrop to the enjoyable excesses of the earlier filmed instalments. And I like it when an established show tries something show - and I'm still often charmed by it even if the experiment doesn't quite work.

I think it's one of the reasons that "The Avengers" still holds such affection for me. I do like all these different flavours and watching how the series changes and develops over its lifetime - delivering so many very enjoyable but very different sorts of story as it adapts to technical, cultural and market changes.

All the best

Andrew

[Frankymole]

Yes, exactly. You put it very well. For a show in its 8th year to keep trying new things, especially given the pressure they were under to produce stuff in time for American screening, was remarkable. I like it when they move away from a formula, and something like Take-Over feels very harsh and dangerous because you don't expect it from a series that was producing stuff like the Emma colour episodes. It sticks out more than the average episode of The Professionals which you know what to expect from. Similarly, The New Avengers occasionally put the whimsy on hold entirely and did something like Dead Men Are Dangerous. It's nice to take a walk outside the comfort zone occasionally.

[mousemeat]

Both Andrew and Franky, nailed it..with their assumptions on the series...myself, never felt the show was running out of gas, when Tara took over for Emma..it was simply in another direction..and if U.S. ABC, haven't cancelled the series, and pulled their 'funding', I suspect, the Avengers would have found it's 'third' wind..so to speak...running perhaps until the mid 1970's....lots of peaks and valleys over the course of the misc seasons

[Andrew Pixley]

Yes, exactly. You put it very well. For a show in its 8th year to keep trying new things, especially given the pressure they were under to produce stuff in time for American screening, was remarkable. I like it when they move away from a formula, and something like Take-Over feels very harsh and dangerous because you don't expect it from a series that was producing stuff like the Emma colour episodes. It sticks out more than the average episode of The Professionals which you know what to expect from. Similarly, The New Avengers occasionally put the whimsy on hold entirely and did something like Dead Men Are Dangerous. It's nice to take a walk outside the comfort zone occasionally.

I think that if it hadn't been pitched again Rowan and Martin and had been renewed for the 1969/1970 season, "The Avengers" would have moved very much towards what became "The New Avengers". By 1968, the SF/spy-fi vibe was very much on its way out and there was then the industry scare about violence on television (supposedly to blame for incidents such as Robert Kennedy's killing, etc.)... and so I think the move towards realism and violence that was shown to hurt and have consequences as opposed to being "comic strip" in nature would have continued. "Take-Over" is a superb example - there is a true sense of danger and menace to it that I think hadn't been a regular component of the series for some time, yet presented in a very different manner to how it manifested itself in the early days of the show. And by the time you get to "The New Avengers", that air of menace is even more apparent; the early scripts such as "The Eagle's Nest" and "The Midas Touch" both contain some very nasty threats made towards Purdey which position it far more as something "post-watershed".

Successful long-running shows learn to develop and evolve and try new things. And I'm so pleased that Steed and his colleagues took this approach for so long... :)

All the best

Andrew