Series 6 — Episode 17
The Morning After
Teleplay by Brian Clemens
Directed by John Hough
Production No E.67.9.20
Production completed: November 11 1968. First transmission: January 10 1969.
Regional broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
Thames Television | 29/01/1969 | 8.00pm |
ATV Midlands | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Granada Television | 11/05/1969 | 8.25pm |
Anglia Television | 25/06/1969 | 8.00pm |
Border Television | 5/02/1969 | 8.00pm |
Channel Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Grampian Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Southern Television | 23/04/1969 | 8.00pm |
Scottish Television | 1/05/1969 | 8.00pm |
Tyne Tees Television | 29/01/1969 | 8.00pm |
Ulster Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Westward Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Harlech Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
Yorkshire Television | 10/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
TV Times listing



8.0 The Avengers
Patrick Macnee
Linda Thorson in
The Morning After
By Brian Clemens
With an unexpected ally, Steed and Tara do battle with an Army man who is using an explosive ploy in his scheme to hold the Government to ransom.
In the hands of John Steed, a bowler and a brolly can be as deadly as a machine gun so he never carries firearms. Tara is surprised, therefore, when he produces a pistol while the pair are waiting for a visitor in Steed’s flat. Their visitor is Merlin, one of the most cunning, charming and dangerous spies of them all. He lives up to expectations, arriving with a flourish. In the resulting melee a gas capsule is smashed and all three fall unconscious.
When they wake up on The Morning After, death and high adventure welcome them back from the arms of Morpheus…
John Steed | Patrick Macnee |
Tara King | Linda Thorson |
Merlin | Peter Barkworth |
Jenny | Penelope Horner |
Brigadier Hansing | Joss Ackland |
Sgt. Hearn | Brian Blessed |
Major Parsons | Donald Douglas |
Yates | Philip Dunbar |
Cartney | Jonathan Cartney |
Executive in Charge of Production Gordon L. T. Scott; Designer Robert Jones; Director John Hough; Producers Albert Fennell, Brian Clemens
The TV Times gets a bit confused and says Cartney is played by Jonathan Cartney instead of Jonathan Scott.


International broadcasts
Broadcaster | Date | Time |
---|---|---|
ABN2 Sydney, Australia | 25/04/1969 | 8.00pm |
ABQ2 Brisbane, Australia | 30/05/1969 | 8.00pm |
ABV2 Melbourne, Australia | 15/04/1969 | 8.30pm |
ABS2 Adelaide, Australia | 8/05/1969 | 8.00pm |
ABC New York, USA | 27/01/1969 | 7.30pm |
ORTF2 France | 9/1/82 TF1 | |
Suisse Romande, Switzerland | 22/07/1974 | 8.50pm |
French title | Le Matin d'après | |
ZDF Germany | ||
German title | Sag mir, wo die Menschen sind | |
KRO Netherlands | 18/12/1970 | 9.35pm |
Dutch title | De volgende morgen | |
TTI Italy | 30/12/1981 C5 | |
Italian title | Il giorno dopo | |
Spain | ||
Spanish title | El Día Después |
This episode was not shown in the initial Swiss run of series 6 in 1969, but was the one of six previously unbroadcast episodes shown there in a new run of the series in 1974.







Continuity & Trivia
- This episode shares plot points and is something of an homage to the 1950 film Seven Days to Noon, in which a scientist steals a portable nuclear device and blackmails the government, causing the evacuation of London. It even borrows footage from the film for the evacuation sequences, see below at 28:36.
- 1:11 — The episode starts with a close-up of the Ministry of TSI sign used in Split!
- 1:37 — Just who is so obsessed with clowns?
We have:- Maxie and Jennings in clown make-up in Look- (stop me if you’ve heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers…,
- the gang of mercenaries wearing clown masks in Have Guns — Will Haggle,
- Merlin wearing a clown mask in The Morning After,
- and Miranda Loxton wears a clown costume for the first quarter of Requiem.
- 4:03 — Steed locks the door as he closes it, but when we cut back to the long shot he’s nowhere near the handle anymore.
- 4:04 — The shadow of the boom dances across the wall above Steed’s head.
- 5:17 — There’s dust on the opening title captions.
- 6:00 — Macnee’s suit has a large stain on the back.
- 7:39–7:52 — That’s a stand-in for Macnee walking out of the building in the long shot and going to the phone booth, probably Paul Weston.
- 9:47 — The boom itself (rather than the microphone) appears in the top right of the frame as Macnee walks around the front of the car.
- 12:44 — Brian Clemens’ personal sports car is one of those aandoned in the street.
- 13:01 — The shot has been flipped horizontally, making the “The Blue Anchor” sign on the end of the building back to front.
- 13:30 — There’s a jarring switch to the standing set of the street after all that location work.
- 15:31 — Paul Weston stands in for Macnee for the stunt when Merlin tries to escape. I’m not sure who’s doing Peter Barkworth’s stunt work.
- 15:45 — The studio set as seen in Killer revealed for the first time.
- throughout — Brigadier Hansing’s medals are identical to those of Colonel Mannering in The Interrogators:
Distinguished Service Order, British Empire Medal
1939–45 Star, Africa Star with 8th Army clasp, Italy Star, France and Germany Star
Defence Medal, War Medal 1939–45 with oak leaf for being mentioned in dispatches, Korea Medal, United Nations Service Medal for Korea
General Service Medal (1918–61), General Service Medal (1962), Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal, Croix de Guerre 1939–1945. (Note, the oak leaf might be for a King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct) - 20:46 — This is the first appearance of Tara for a while, Linda Thorson must have been on holidays at the time and her scenes recorded separately to the rest.
- 23:14 — Steed and Merlin escape Sergeant Hearn and his men and steal their Land-Rover (dark green with military markings and the number plate [22 AP 46] — we even see them driving around it (once, hilariously, tearing out of a no through road that they must have entered earlier) [see below]. However, when they pull up in a back street at 24:13, they’re in a civilian Land-Rover (a slightly paler green, with the number plate [KJB 27].
- 24:05 — Steed drives the Land-Rover out of a no through road and later on, after apparently going to the other side of town (25:02) Steed and Merlin walk out of the same street again.
- 24:47 (25:14) — The footage of Hearn arriving at the bank from 21:56 (21:37)is repeated, slightly differently edited.
- 24:49 — Hearn is back in his own Land-Rover, previously stolen by Steed.
- 25:08 — Hearn finds the replacement Land-Rover.
- 25:15 — The factory chimney is smoking, so the town hasn’t been completely deserted after all.
- 28:36 — There are very antiquated cars and buses in Jenny’s footage of the evacuation, it looks like stock WW2 footage, and director John Hough confirms it was stock bought from a library. BUT there's more to it than that! The choice of stock film is important because it is taken from Seven Days to Noon, a 1950 film which has a plot that has London evacuated because of a nuclear bomb, just like this episode! You can see the "Area K Section 1" sign on one of the buses in "The Morning After" at 29:30, and similar shots are in the Friday evacuation scenes starting around 1:10:00 in the film. The very distinctive W.S. Hunt bus is in both as well. Plus you get a snippet of the army trucks from later in the film.
- 31:56 (33:00) — Steed’s security clearance code is KR5.
- 32:22 — It looks like repeat footage of the door-to-door searching from 27:19 but I suspect they filmed several scenes at once in the same street, the corporal in one scene is a private in the other.
- 34:05 (35:27) — More repeated footage, this time of the soldiers disembarking from Hearn’s Land-Rover to search houses Hearn shouts, “Right then, on the double, search those houses!” Previously — 28:04- he’s shouted, “Right then [you lot] on the double, move yourself!”
- 37:30 — It sounds like the dramatic, mysterious nusic from Man-eater of Surrey Green.
- 43:10–43:30 — Tara wakes, knocks out Hearn and then Merlin puts her to sleep again with another capsule.
- 45:41 — The trucks outside the commission are the same trucks in which Steed found the unconscious troops in the backstreet.
- 48:10 — You can see a slight jump in the film as Steed cunjors the key for the handcuffs.
- 48:24 — In the closing tag scene, Steed has just watched a television programme; we can discern the closing sounds of “Laugh In”, the sound of one person clapping. Steed turns off the television set and reflects, “Sock it to me” — a catch phrase from the same show. “Laugh In” was in the same time slot as “The Avengers” in the USA and easily winning every ratings survey which led to the demise of the show.
- Running time: 50′14″
Production notes
- Most of the location work was done at St Albans, with the entire population agreeing to evacuating the town for filming.
- 18:50 — Regents Park Barracks in Albany Street used as the location for Easter Hemisphere Trade Building.
- Director John Hough recalls that working on The Avengers was different to working on ITC shows like The Saint. ITC was driven by schedules and finishing on time while Brian Clemens focused on quality output.
- John had been working on The Saint as a second unit director and more or less swapped jobs with Ray Austin as they each wanted to work on the other’s shows.
The Transport
Marque | Colour | Number |
---|---|---|
Triumph Herald | white | 690 MGO |
Milk Float | white with blue \"STB Dairies\" sign | TLH 794 |
Morris Mini Traveller | pale green | CYR 893C |
Rolls-Royce 40/50 h.p. ‘Silver Ghost’ 1923 H.J.Mulliner tourer (chassis number 46LK) | pale lemon | KK 4976 |
Ford Thames Trader flatbed truck | grey | 916 MAA |
Triumph Vitesse | blue, with black hood | ? |
Marcos 1800 GT | red | CYB 756C? |
Austin Cambridge | royal blue | 612 DLA |
Volkswagen Combi | black | 112 GXV |
Land-Rover | dark green | 22 AP 46 |
Land-Rover | green | KJB 27 |
Triumph Vitesse | dark grey | KAM 548F |
Morris 1100 | red | PLE 831 |
Rover P5 3 litre MkII saloon | dark grey | 639 CMW |
Austin 100cwt military truck | dark green | 22 44 02 |
Austin 100cwt military truck | dark green | 22 44 06 |
Austin 100cwt military truck | dark green | 22 44 00 |
Who’s Killing Whom?
Victim | Killer | Method |
---|---|---|
Cartney | Sergeant Hearn | Firing squad |

The Fashions
Tara | Steed |