Series 4 — Episode 24
A Sense of History

Production

Production dates: 20–31/01/1966

Brian Tesler, Programme Controller for ABC, received Martin Woodhouse’s draft script in February 1965 but was underwhelmed — he had read better scripts but it was viable if tightened up. A revised script was finally delivered on 4 October 1965 but revisions were still requested and the script wasn’t approved until the final script was delivered on 4 November. Woodhouse was a convivial writer and happily shared his thoughts and process with members of our The Avengers International Fan Forum. He revealed that, like many of his scripts, he was inspired by older texts and made jokes within the script about them. Here he started with a dream about Diana Rigg dressed as Robin Hood (I think we’ve all had that dream by now) and made all the character names derivations of characters from the original tale. You might remember he drew tenuously on Greek mythology for The Golden Eggs and A Chorus of Frogs. This was his last script for The Avengers as his script for Rip Van Winkle, a science fiction story involving suspended animation to rig the stock market, was predictably rejected by Brian Tesler back in October 1964.

There was less location work than it seems for this episode, just the drives through the country side and establishing shots of the college, all filmed around Letchmore Heath, Elstree and Bushey along with stock gilm of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Henshaw’s Blind Asylum, Manchester. The quadrangle and classroom were all realised as sets on the sound stages at Elstree studios, once again constructed by Harry Pottle and Charlie Hammerton’s team.

The ever-dependable Peter Graham Scott was called on to direct this, his fourth episode and does a wonderful job. Filming was fairly straightforward although the existence of several real St. Bede’s required some overdubs during editing, changing it to St. Bode’s although the original name was still evident on the props. The original name was of course another joke from Martin Woodhouse, as The Venerable Bede was an Eighth Century monk who compiled one of the first Histories of England, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum.

Regional broadcasts

Broadcaster	Date	Time
Rediffusion London	11/03/1966	8.00pm
ABC Midlands	12/03/1966	9.20pm
ABC North	12/03/1966	9.20pm
Anglia Television	12/03/1966	8.15pm
Border Television	12/03/1966	9.20pm
Channel Television	12/03/1966	9.05pm
Grampian Television	11/03/1966	8.00pm
Southern Television	12/03/1966	9.20pm
Scottish Television	8/03/1966	8.00pm
Tyne Tees Television	11/03/1966	8.00pm
Ulster Television	11/03/1966	8.00pm
Westward Television	12/03/1966	9.05pm
Television Wales & West	12/03/1966	9.05pm

TV Times listing

International broadcasts

Broadcaster	Date	Time
ABN2 Sydney, Australia	26/07/1966	8.00pm
ABQ2 Brisbane, Australia	16/08/1966	7.30pm
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia	5/08/1966	8.00pm
ABS2 Adelaide, Australia	29/08/1966	8.30pm
ABC New York, USA	20/06/1966	10.00pm
ORTF2 France	30/05/1967	8.00pm
Suisse Romande, Switzerland	22/10/1966	9.25pm
French title	L’économe et le sens de l’histoire
ZDF Germany	1/08/1967	9.15pm
German title	Robin Hood spielt mit
KRO Netherlands	11/07/1968	8.55pm
Dutch title	Het Europaplan
Italy
Italian title
Spain	14/08/1967	4.10pm
Spanish title	Un sentido de la Historia / con sentido historicó

Italy appears to have never broadcast this episode but pretty much everywhere else did. Note that the French title varies — econome, economie, economiste .

Some Swiss newspapers (e.g. La Liberté) report A Sense of History being on 23^rd May on ORTF2 and then again a week later on the 30^th. But L’Impartial has Abus de confiance (How to Succeed …. at Murder) on the 23^rd so it would seem that A Sense of History was moved down the order and pre-empted by the other episode.

Episode Rating

Subject	0–5
Direction	4 stars
Music	3½ stars
Humour	3½ stars
Intros/tags	4 stars
Villains	5 stars
Plot	5 stars
Emma	5 stars
Sets/Props	4 stars
Overall (0–10)	8½ stars

Funny, sexy, furious — and that’s the whole episode, not just Rigg. All the characters are drawn from the Robin Hood saga that the story becomes at the fancy dress rag, a clever twist on the set-up.

The Fashions

Emma’s Fashions

Steed’s Fashions

Double-breasted white woollen jacket with six large black buttons, thin piping on collar and pocket flaps (on hips, slightly slanted down towards hips), worn with herringbone hipster pants with a large black leather belt, rollneck blouse with large loose cuffs and a honeycomb patterned black and white head scarf, plus Edward Rayne’s b/w boots (1) without the head scarf, with an academic gown on top Robin Hood costume Rollneck blouse with turned back cuffs and leather motorcycle pants, Edward Rayne’s b/w boots

single-breasted overcoat with slit breast pocket, 2 covered hip pockets (probably brown) over a navy chalk stripe three-piece suit, single button on cuff, dark bowler and umbrella with a white double-cuffed shirt and dark tie, chelsea boots (1) with an academic gown instead of overcoat (1) (1) without overcoat (1) (4) Sheriff of Nottingham costume mid-brown overcoat and three-piece suit with dark bowler and tie, white shirt

The Cars

Marque/Model/Type	Number Plate
Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith LWB, with ‘Teviot’ Touring Saloon coachwork by Hooper & Co Ltd	KXQ 777
Lotus Elan S2	HNK 999C
Gypsy Caravan	-
BSA motorcycle and enclosed sidecar	FYK 76C

Who’s Killing Whom?

Victim	Killer	Method
James Broom CBE	Duboys V*	arrow
Grindley V* FAKED	Millerson V*	arrow
John Petit V*	Grindley V*	crushed by bookshelf

Continuity and trivia

1. 1:18 — Broom approaches the fairly large college down an almost unused one-lane dirt road, I can only assume it was the shorter router for the direction he was coming from as the villains are lying in wait there. Talk about backwoods education! Strangely, we later see a much grander entrance (4:29 — actually The American College at Raddlett, seen again in Death’s Door).
2. 
   1:56 and throughout — Throughout the episode, all the characters refer to St Bode’s Academy, but it was obviously a late change — the original name of the university in the script was St. Bede’s (as in The Venerable Bede, the Anglo-Saxon chronicler).Only the introductory scene where Carlyon gets out of the boot of Broom’s car do they say St Bode’s without it being redubbed.
   Anthony John. legal consultant at ABC Television, must have been concerned about legal action from a real St Bede’s, there are several schools with the name. At 14:49 there’s an incredibly obvious over-dub when Grindley says the name. The props are all emblazoned with St Bede’s as well.
3. 2:31 — the arrow that stick in the garage wall is different to the suckered one in the close-up a second later.
4. 3:06 onwards — Steed and Emma discover Carlyon in the boot of Broom’s car, although the tarpaulin over the car would have made it very difficult for him to have got there.
5. 8:16 — Staircase 3 is the haunt of the protagonists: Room 16 is R. Millerson, J.W. Pettit & C.D.N. Allen are in Room 17; Eric C.N. Duboys gets Room 18 to himself.
6. 9:12— Steed says “pretty strong stuff”, referring to the fascistic thesis, then adds, “Yuck, so is this” and hands Carlyon his coffee. Carlyon replies, “What do you mean? It’s continental roasted!”. However, some time later (29:18), Steed says that he’s very partial to Carlyon’s “continental blended”.
7. 11:50 — Despite the fact that Carlyon’s a marked man, Steed leaves him alone in a brightly-lit wagon in the deserted woods for most of the episode; even more incredibly, the woods-savvy students don’t manage to kill him, only making the one attack which is foiled by Steed.
8. 12:54 — Getting around censorship: Mrs. Peel says she likes her students to be wide-eyed and innocent as she opens a desk. She discovers a pin-up of a girl in black garter belt, stocking and see-through underwear inside and hurriedly closes it.
9. 13:16 — She also finds a 15th May 1965 edition of Lion comic and quickly flips through it.
10. 14:07 — Steed cheekily quips, “an awful lot of theses” (i.e. faeces) when Henge is carrying on at length about how many dissertations had been written at the university over the years.
11. 14:25 and throughout — Grindley is wearing prop spectacles with a hole in the middle of the lenses to help him see properly.
12. 20:50 & 34:36 etc. — Some of those manuscripts in the archive are obviously screen plays.
13. 22:42–7 — The caravan is on a studio set with fake woodland but the location footage of the attack has it parked in the exact same part of the woods where Broom was killed — the trees are quite distinctive and the students attack from the same direction as they did Broom.
14. 
    23:50/24:30 — Richard Carlyon puts out a flaming arrow with a prop bottle of bourbon whiskey — looks like someone had been watering it down!
15. 31:22, 33:11 & 34:50 — Lightning strikes twice! In fact, three times — it’s the same thunderbolt footage used in all the lightning strikes.
16. 34:49 — The shelves that fall on Petit look too flimsy to kill anyone they might land on.
17. 35:51 — Emma puts the books carefully in order, while Steed piles them onto the shelf all over the place and upside down.
18. 38:54 — you can just see the wire that the arrow comes in on as Steed and Emma walk down the side of the cloister.
19. 41:27–41:40 — the students behind Mrs. Peel’s shoulder when Duboys complains about her costume are behind his shoulder in the reverse angle shot a second later.
20. 48:03 — once again, you can just see the wire for the arrow.
21. 50:25–9 — The picture quality is suddenly worse with the change of camera angle.
22. 50:54–6 — The Avengers depart down the same stretch of road (at Silver Hill) as most of the rest of the season. Billy Westley Jr seems to be the stand-in for Doian Rigg riding the motorcycle.
23. The late, great writer of the episode, Martin Woodhouse, confirmed in 2009 that the “sense of history” runs deep in the script — there’s the university named after The Venerable Bede, the Eighth Century monk who compiled one of the first Histories of England, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, and the character names are derived from the Robin Hood chronicles, thus the rag week scene with Robin Hood fancy dress.
    • Robin Duboys is a name sometimes given to Robin Hood (Norman for “Robin of the woods”),
    • Millerson is Much the Miller’s son,
    John Pettit is Little John; Marianne Grey is Maid Marion; Richard Carlyon is Richard Coeur de Lion, (i.e. King Richard I, the Lionheart) and the almost completely superfluous Allen is Alan à Dale.
    Woodhouse did a similar thing with his script for A Chorus of Frogs, the inspiration coming from an Ancient Greek play.
    • Running time: 51′50″