In layman’s terms, he was shot.

The Avengers

3.15: The Gilded Cage

An engaging episode on several fronts, from JP Spagge and his scene-stealing major domo to the significant detail that our villains keep keeping one step ahead of Steed and Cathy. It’s also a tour de force for the latter, with Honor Blackman first under the illusion that she’s been banged up for murder and then finding herself out-on-a-limb, trying to walk the tightrope of convincing the bank robbers she really is intent on robbing the bank.

Cathy: How can I go through a whole trial and not remember anything?

That’s because Steed, who has procured the services of Spagge (Patrick Magee, possibly best known for A Clockwork Orange these days, he also featured in Season 2’s Killer Whale), “a sort of entrepreneur of crime”, has been shut out of the picture as the gang attempt to assess Mrs Gale’s bona fides and straight-up-ness, or lack thereof. She first appears to have been banged up for the murder of Spagge, although this is never the most convincing of ruses, as Cathy points out.

Abe Benham: Friends, I give you my latest offering. It’s simply called ‘Gold Vault’.

Edric Connor, a rare prominently-cast black actor in the show, registers solidly on the plank-ish scale, which is a tad unfortunate as Abe Benham is the gang leader and so gets the lion’s share of the dialogue (also featuring is Martin Friend, Styggron in The Android Invasion). He has gusto, though, I’ll give him that.

Cathy’s coolness under pressure is the main appeal of these scenes, as they move up the date of the robbery and grill her on her knowledge of gold (for which she has to prove well-versed about Fort Knox, handy for her 007 outing the following year). The actual robbery, gas mask clad and in a rush of knockout fumes, is memorable, but Cathy having done all the hard work, it’s for Steed to show up and start shooting the bad guys; he even exits set left with those he’s apprehended/maimed, leaving Mrs Gale to have a roll around with one of the remaining villains.

Spagge: I do believe you’re a snob, Fleming.

Fleming: Naturally, sir. That’s what I’m paid for.

Engaging as the heist plot is, though, easily the best part of the episode is Norman Chappell’s erudite butler Fleming (Chappell’s third of six Avengers guest spots). He’s entirely enamoured of Steed’s boundless class (“A gentleman of obvious quality”), and most upset to find he’s working with the police.

This element too, with Steed realising his phone has been tapped and staging his own death (very symmetrical) in order to fool the villains, leads to amusing exchanges, as Fleming, who has “seldom known a man with such exquisite taste” expresses the inclination to send him a floral tribute (“Thirty bob in exchange for forty years”).

Roger Marshall’s teleplay is a solid one, then, but The Gilded Cage doesn’t quite ascend to the level of first rate, partly down to Blackman having to pull all the weight in her scenes. The ending's very good fun, though, as Spagge tries to dob his manservant in while Steed is having none of it (“He’s also a very good butler. I can find a niche for him”) … until Cathy tells him there’s a 10% reward for the man’s arrest.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Imagine a plant that could think... Think!

The Avengers 4.12: Man-Eater of Surrey Green
Most remarked upon for Robert Banks-Stewart having “ripped it off” for 1976 Doctor Who story The Seeds of Doom, although, I’ve never been wholly convinced. Yes, there are significant similarities – an eccentric lady who knows her botany, a wealthy businessman living in a stately home with an affinity for vegetation, an alien plant that takes possession of humans, a very violent henchman and a climax involving a now oversized specimen turning very nasty… Okay, maybe they’re onto something there… – but The Seeds of Doom is really good, while Man-Eater of Surrey Green is just… okay.

Why are you painting my house?

mother!
(SPOILERS) Darren Aronofsky has a reasonably-sized chin, but on this evidence, in no time at all he’ll have reduced it to a forlorn stump with all that stroking. And then set the remains alight. And then summoned it back into existence for a whole new round of stroking. mother! is a self-indulgent exercise in unabated tedium in the name of a BIG idea, one no amount of assertive psued-ing post-the-fact can turn into a masterpiece. Yes, that much-noted “F” cinemascore was well warranted.

You better watch what you say about my car. She's real sensitive.

Christine (1983)
(SPOILER) John Carpenter was quite open about having no particular passion to make Christine. The Thing had gone belly-up at the box office, and adapting a Stephen King seemed like a sure-fire way to make bank. Unfortunately, its reception was tepid. It may have seemed like a no-brainer – Duel’s demonic truck had put Spielberg on the map a decade earlier – but Carpenter discovered “It was difficult to make it frightening”. More like Herbie, then. Indeed, the director is at his best in the build-up to unleashing the titular automobile, making the fudging of the third act all the more disappointing.

This isn't fun, it's scary and disgusting.

It (2017)
(SPOILERS) Imagine how pleased I was to learn that an E Nesbitt adaptation had rocketed to the top of the US charts, evidently using a truncated version of its original title, much like John Carter of Mars. Imagine my disappointment on rushing to the cinema and seeing not a Psammead in sight. Can anyone explain why It is doing such phenomenal business? It isn’t the Stephen King brand, which regular does middling-at-best box office. Is it the nostalgia factor (‘50s repurposed as the ‘80s, so tapping into the Stranger Things thing, complete with purloined cast member)? Or maybe that it is, for the most part, a “classier” horror movie, one that puts its characters first (at least for the first act or so), and so invites audiences who might otherwise shun such fare? Perhaps there is no clear and outright reason, and it’s rather a confluence of circumstances. Certainly, as a (mostly) non-horror buff, I was impressed by how well It tackled pretty much everything that wasn’t the hor…

Let the monsters kill each other.

Game of Thrones Season Seven
(SPOILERS) Column inches devoted to Game of Thrones, even in “respectable” publications, seems to increase exponentially with each new season, so may well reach critical mass with the final run. Groundswells of opinion duly become more evident, and as happens with many a show by somewhere around this point, if not a couple of years prior, Season Seven has seen many of the faithful turn on once hallowed storytelling, and at least in part, there’s good reason for that.

Some suggest the show has jumped the shark (or crashed the Wall); there were concerns over how much the pace increased last year, divested as it was of George RR Martin’s novels as a direct source, but this year’s succession of events make Six seem positively sluggish. I don’t think GoT has suddenly, resoundingly, lost it, and I’d argue there did need to be an increase in momentum (people are quick to forget how much moaning went on about seemingly nothing happening for long stretches of previ…

It could have been an accident. He decided to sip a surreptitious sup and slipped. Splash!

4.10 A Surfeit of H20
A great episode title (definitely one of the series’ top ten) with a storyline boasting all the necessary ingredients (strange deaths in a small village, eccentric supporting characters, Emma even utters the immortal “You diabolical mastermind, you!”), yet A Surfeit of H20 is unable to quite pull itself above the run of the mill.

He’s a good kid, and a devil behind the wheel.

Baby Driver (2017)
(SPOILERS) Pure cinema. There are plenty of directors who engage in superficial flash and fizz (Danny Boyle or JJ Abrams, for example) but relatively few who actually come to the medium from a root, core level, visually. I’m slightly loathe to compare Edgar Wright with the illustrious likes of Sergio Leone and Brian De Palma, partly because they’re playing in largely different genre sandpits, partly because I don’t think Wright has yet made something that compares to their best work, but he operates from a similar sensibility: fashioning a movie foremost through image, supported by the soundtrack, and then, trailing a distant third, comes dialogue. Baby Driver is his most complete approximation of that impulse to date.

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

Don't worry about Steed, ducky. I'll see he doesn't suffer.

The Avengers 4.11: Two’s A Crowd
Oh, look. Another Steed doppelganger episode. Or is it? One might be similarly less than complimentary about Warren Mitchell dusting off his bungling Russian agent/ambassador routine (it obviously went down a storm with the producers; he previously played Keller in The Charmers and Brodny would return in The See-Through Man). Two’s A Crowd coasts on the charm of its leads and supporting performances (including Julian Glover), but it’s middling fare at best.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog