Series 5 — Episode 8
The Hidden Tiger

Production

Production dates: January 1967

Regional broadcasts

Broadcaster	Date	Time
Rediffusion London	3/03/1967	8.00pm
ABC Midlands	4/03/1967	9.10pm
ABC North	4/03/1967	9.10pm
Anglia Television	3/03/1967	8.00pm
Border Television	5/03/1967	8.10pm
Channel Television	3/03/1967	8.00pm
Grampian Television	10/01/1968	8.00pm
Southern Television	1/03/1967	8.00pm
Scottish Television	4/03/1967	9.10pm
Tyne Tees Television	1/03/1967	8.00pm
Ulster Television	18/01/1968	9.00pm
Westward Television	3/03/1967	8.00pm
Television Wales & West	3/03/1967	8.00pm

TV Times listing

International broadcasts

Broadcaster	Date	Time
ABN2 Sydney, Australia	23/05/1967	8.00pm
ABQ2 Brisbane, Australia	26/06/1967	7.30pm
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia	22/05/1967	8.00pm
ABS2 Adelaide, Australia	4/07/1967	7.30pm
ABC New York, USA	17/03/1967	10.00pm
ORTF2 France
Suisse Romande, Switzerland	20/05/1968	8.45pm
French title	Le tigre caché
ZDF Germany	5/12/1967	9.15pm
German title	Vorsicht Raubkatzen!
KRO Netherlands	14/10/1969	9.45pm
Dutch title	De verborgen tijger / Voor de poes
Svizzera Italiana	28/12/1973	9.00pm
Italian title	la tigre nascosta
Spain	25/09/1967	4.10pm
Spanish title	El tigre escondido / El tigre oculto

Episode Rating

Subject	0–5
Direction	4½ stars
Music	4½ stars
Humour	5 stars
Intro/tag	4½ stars
Mastermind	4½ stars
Plot	4½ stars
Emma	4½ stars
Set Design	3½ stars
Overall (0–10)	9½ stars

My absolute favourite Avengers episode. Elegant, ludicrous, eccentric and just plain joyous. Great clothes, inspired guest performances and an attention to detail make this the episode par excellence.

Redecorations are interrupted by Steed’s message, hidden under the wallpaper.
The Avengers have to track down a vicious cat on the rampage, killing people and animals near an experimental farm. Ronnie Barker plays Cheshire, the innocent proprietor of P.U.R.R.R., excellently — patting his own head and lapping milk in my favourite scene. One by one, the members of the board of P.U.R.R.R. are being killed by cats — the killers are ordinary cats that are being driven wild by brain-wave modulators implanted in their collars. Steed signs up Emma as his beautiful bronze tabby, and Mrs. Peel responds by joining her missing Little John, who’s very grumpy before his first glass of champagne in the morning.
Dr. Manx and Angora, from P.U.R.R.R., plan to unleash every domestic cat on England, using radio waves to make them primeval beasts. Steed is tied to a chair, surrounded by cats, but Emma arrives in time to free him and disable the transmitter. Seeing a now placid cat in his van, Manx panics and dies in a car accident.
Mission accomplished, Mrs. Peel can return to her redecorating — but Steed puts his foot in it.

The Cars

Marque/Model	Colour	Number Plate
Land-Rover SWB soft-top (covered, spare on bonnet)	dark green	OPC 104D
Mini Moke milk truck	blue	LYP 794D
Mini Moke milk truck	blue	LYP 792D
Mini Moke milk truck	blue	LLU 253D
Mini Moke milk truck	blue	AJD 12C
Bentley Speed Six 1926	British racing green	RX 6180
Austin Princess Vanden Plas Hearse	black	-
Lotus Elan S3	glacier blue	SJH 499D
Commer 30cwt van	royal blue, P.U.R.R.R. written in white on the side	396 EUW

Who’s Killing Whom?

Victim	Killer	Method
Williams	Harper’s cat	cat
Sir David Harper	Harper’s cat	cat
George Erskine	cat	cat
Major Nesbitt	cat	cat
Walter Bellamy	cat	cat
Samuel Jones	Jones’ cat	cat
Dr. Manx V*	himself V*	crashes van into a tree
An unusual episode in which no-one is murdered directly; all the deaths (bar the last) being caused by cute, fluffy, enraged moggies.

The Fashions

Emma’s Fashions

Steed’s Fashions

blue/pink catsuit mid-tan/camel coat, with white shoes & skivvy & knee length skirt plaid sports coat, white skivvy, tan trousers & white ankle boots yellow jacket with large A shaped lapels, white skivvy & trousers & ankle boots pink sleeveless sundress, white stockings, br open-toes shoes (sandal-like) … & red quilted jacket black catsuit with silver trim, high neck, ring at neck ,zippered, black ankle boots (1)

navy single-breasted 3-piece suit with a peaked collar with blue & white cravat, white shirt grey double-breasted overcoat, cream shirt, red tie, grey bowler hat & umbrella pale grey double-breasted suit, felt collar, flap pockets, 2 very long vents, wide skirt, grey chelsea boots, umbrella and bowler, white shirt, dark brown paisley cravat brown and green hunting blazer with dark brown paisley cravat, houndstooth trousers, pale khaki shirt, brown suede boots dark taupe jacket, green waistcoat, brass buttons, pale brown shirt, deep gold tie, beige trousers, brown bowler and chelsea boots, black umbrella

Continuity and trivia

1. 5:32 — “We’ll check around the grounds” Really? It’s two stand-ins who do the walking around. The woman’s stockings are a completely different colour to Diana’s.
6:13, 7:38 etc. — set within the set — the exteriors glimpsed through the open French doors are painted backdrops, making the teleplay appear like a stage play, bringing a level of unreality to the show.
2. 7:53 — The footage of the attacking lion is taken from the Patrick McGoohan film “Nor the Moon by Night”.
3. 8:27 —
   
   While at Nesbitt’s, Steed crosses the room followed by Nesbitt, and the shadow of the boom microphone dances across his forehead.
4. 9:33 — As the camera pans across, following Peters, you can see a glimpse of the studio ceiling and lighting gantry in the top left corner. It would have been considered to be outside the scan area for Sixties television sets but even so there’s a clear corner in the “sky” above the shed in the corner. However, as the entire set is obviously fake, maybe it’s deliberate.
5. 10:08 — When Emma is speaking to Erskine in the milk room, you can briefly see the shadow of the boom microphone at the top right corner.
6. 13:00 onwards — the milk cans have the names of the cows, one is an Angus called Cornflower, another from a Jersey cow called Barbara, but several are from a Guernsey cow called Diana.
7. 14:09 —
   
   When Erskine is attacked outside the barn, we get a superb low angle shot — to represent the cat’s POV — unfortunately, you can also see the studio ceiling.
8. 15:17 — They’ve used the American spelling of “pasteurized” on the milk can.
9. 17:42 — Product placement for Moët et Chandon.
10. 24:00–24:25 — Going through the gates of P.U.R.R.R. are a lot of mokes — actually, it’s four, which go through the gate three times, giving the impression that 10 mokes had entered. (all 4; then 2 in front of Steed and 2 behind as he stops at the gate; then we cut to Steed, with all four queued up behind him again).
11. 24:09 — that’s probably Paul Weston driving the Bentley up to the gate but it might be Jim Mitchell, the driver hired by J. N. Gooch Esq. to deliver the car to the show, it’s definitely not Patrick Macnee.
12. 24:26 — The first cat-shaped sign is green, followed by a red and then a yellow one in the long shot, but the close-ups following are a dark grey sign then bright blue.
13. 25:00 — Cheshire is mourning the passing of “Prince Courtney of Chippenham” when Steed arrives.
14. 26:23 — Cheshire bids adieu to Prince Courtney by saying, “Farewell, faithful, fair and fulsome feline friend!”
    Fulsome? The word used to be a positive adjective but these days it suggests “overweight” or “overfed” or, worse, “offensive” or “excessive”. Perhaps Prince Courtney was a fat cat.
15. 26:00–26:20 — Distinct innuendo from Cheshire. He asks Steed, “The name of your beloved pussy?” Steed looks blank then replies, “Oh, err, Emma”.
    A moment later Cheshire observes, “And what a joy for you it must be when she’s curled up in your lap.” to which Steed replies, “Well, I’ve never thought of it like that.”
16. 27:28 — Cheshire offers Steed a drink — of milk! : “Homogenised, pasteurised, full cream, dairy special or perhaps you prefer a short?”
17. 27:44 — When Cheshire has a drink of milk, the cat he’s holding tries to drink it so Angora quickly takes the cat off him.
18. 28:00 — in some marvellously underplayed humour, Ronnie Barker pats himself on the head then laps at his milk. like a cat.
19. 28:47 — That’s Paul Weston leaving the house to go back to the Bentley. When Patrick Macnee takes a seat and looks at the brochure, he’s in the studio and the set behind him is the one that had been used for Harper’s farm and looks nothing like the P.U.R.R.R. building.
20. 32:00–32:32 — Contrary to what you might have read elsewhere, there is no continuity error when Cheshire’s playing with the Identi-Cat system — true, he replaces the nose, which is the top sheet, with another. However, when Mrs. Peel says the eyes are wrong, he places another sheet over the top (32:28) — on top of the nose and smaller eyes below [see enlargement].
21. 32:55 — Emma tells Cheshire her “Little John” is “very bad tempered before his first glass of champagne”.
22. 33:30 — When Emma and Cheshire first enter the yellow hallway, there’s the briefest glimpse of the top of the set and the lighting gantry
23. 33:55 — Diana Rigg must be allergic to cats, her eyes are all puffed up as they walk down the hallway.
24. 35:15 — Angora is wearing Mrs. Peel’s pink and black woollen suit from The Cybernauts
25. 36:40 — Peters is talking to Angora and goes to pour himself a glass of milk, only to find it almost full already, so he just tops it up and drinks. Must have required a couple of takes for that one.
26. 38:31 — Another driving stand-in for Patrick Macnee, it looks like Paul Weston again.
27. 38:57 — Samuel Jones lives in Maida Vale according to the label on his telephone.
28. 40:17 — This sequence with Mrs. Peel answering the phone was reused in The New Avengers in the episode K is for Kill — The Tiger Awakes.
29. 41:17 — Paul Weston stands in for Macnee, trying to grab the cat in the flat (but he’s the one in a hat).
30. 42:14–42:50 — Paul Weston stands in for Macnee, approaching the van, then running for the wall and leaping over it.
31. 42:35 — You can tell this was filmed in the studio as the floor is visible under the gravel when Steed picks up Peters and dumps him in the van.
32. 43:27 — The view from the peephole that we see from Steed’s point of view is impossible — he’s in a side room and yet he can see straight down the middle of the hallway.
33. 44:06 — there’s some damage to the film — white and black flecks almost dead centre — as Cheshire attacks Steed.
34. 44:30–44:45 — A stand-in does a lot of the running around in the dark, standing in for Diana Rigg. It could be Diane West or Annabelle Heath who are both mentioned in paperwork but I don’t know what they look like to be sure.
35. 46:45 onwards — The cat Cheshire gave Mrs. Peel and which escapes from her car to the van clearly walks across the middle of the hallway (47:33) when the cats are released by the villains, but reappears in the van (48:19) in the next scene, scaring Dr. Manx into crashing the vehicle. Samuel Jones’ cat is also in the hallway along with Sir David Harper’s.

    In Emma’s arms	…in the hall	…in the van

36. 47:43 — When Emma arrives to saves Steed she purrs, “Pussies Galore!” after running down the hallway full of cats.
37. 48:46 onwards — stand-ins do most of the running around in the dark to reach and then leave the crashed van.
38. 48:57 — When Dr. Manx falls out of the cab you can just see the head of a crew member at the bottom of the screen, waiting to catch him. The close-up was of course done in the studio.
39. Running time: 51′09″

Cast notes

1. Gabrielle Drake (Angora) went on to star as Lt. Gay Ellis in the TV series UFO. She is also the sister of the tragic musician Nick Drake.
   
2. Several actors are uncredited — the undertaker and pallbearers who leave P.U.R.R.R. with a cat-sized coffin when Steed arrives. Anyone know them?

   Pallbearer	Pallbearer

3. There are also the hearse driver and four milk float drivers, but they’re too indistinct to be recognisable.