No, I haven’t killed anyone all week.

The Avengers

3.24: The Charmers

Steed’s identification as the perfect gentleman has been a gradual process for the show, although it may now seem it was never anything but. Signposts on the way include the in-awe butler of The Gilded Cage, but The Charmers fashions probably his most legendary representation to this point, in a Brian Clemens script, as he visits a charm school for killers and is instantly recognised as the peak of the proper.

This is also Warren Mitchell’s second appearance, as Russian boss Keller. His very broad appearances as Brodny would be forthcoming, something of The Avengers equivalent of Harry Mudd, and a similarly acquired taste. Here he’s less in the spotlight and more effective for it, as Keller and Steed nominally join forces to discover who has been tapping Russian agents (initially, he thought Steed was at it, but “No, I haven’t killed anyone all week”).

Keller’s entirely duplicitous while Steed is straight up, however (those dirty Russkies!) Mrs Gale is sent to work with Keller man Martin (John Barcoft) to find what is going on, but the latter is killed at the dentist (this is one of those where the presence of the dentist is rather irrelevant, but at least, unlike Trojan Horse, the whole thing is so absurd that it doesn’t really matter). Meanwhile, Steed is teamed not with a Russian agent but actress Kim Lawrence (the Blue Queen and Carry on… screamer Fenella Fielding, a more-than-effective match for Macnee).

Mitchell’s best moment, infectiously funny, finds Keller reminiscing about the murder of the Swede, when he removed the bottom from a lift (‘He laughed all the way down!”). There’s also an obvious-but-amusing fnar-fnar gag about the bullet Keller still carries; he was shot “In the Dardanelles”. The spy master gets a curiously ruthless demise, stabbed in the back by Fielding (her great grandma had a knife-throwing act).

Steed’s investigations lead him to a gentlemen’s outfitter (“I can see you’re Eton, sir”; he asks for a tie for The Old Irascible Fencing and Tottering Club, intending to do a spot of fencing and then drinking), with its expected air of insularity (“Vinkle. That’s a foreign name, isn’t it sir?”)

Mr Edgar: I mean, clearly, you could have no need of my services. The cut of your coat, sir, The run of your tie. I’m lost in admiration.

It’s Brian Oulton’s villainous Mr Edgar, head of the Academy of Charm for Aspiring Gentlemen, who is most impressed by Steed, however. You rather wish Clemens would have lingered on this longer, as it produces the episode’s best scenes and interactions. Sinisterly, the trainee killer gents are educated in etiquette by women in masks that give them an Auton-ish aspect.

Cathy meanwhile goes for a check-up, and surprise-surprise her gnashers are perfect (is that the vegetarian diet, the chain smoking or just being generally dazzling of intellect?) Where we meet dentist Frank Harrap and his assistant Vivian Pickles (a one-time Aunt Dahlia in Jeeves and Wooster), who are obviously up to no good, the latter doubling as the Auton lady. But, while Mrs Gale is given a masked fencing bout (usually a sign of a stunt man) at the conclusion, this is definitely Steed’s show. He even gets a better showing at the dentist, bringing Kim in for an emergency appointment with “We were on the baked Alaska. And then, a sudden twinge”.

Steed: I suppose he warned you to be on guard.

Kim: My mother did that, when I was twelve.

Fielding takes to the show like a natural, and has much more relaxed fun than Blackman’s character allows; the only surprising element is that Steed remains blissfully unaware of Kim’s actress status until Cathy sets him straight. Generally, this would easily slot into the Peel era, replete with memorably self-reflexive lines (Edgar introduces the short stab in the back, ‘Otherwise known as show business”), which is probably why it was remade as The Correct Way to Kill.

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

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No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018) (SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop .

That’s what people call necromancer’s weather.

The Changes (1975) This adaptation of Peter Dickinson’s novel trilogy carries a degree of cult nostalgia cachet due to it being one of those more “adult” 1970s children’s serials (see also The Children of the Stones , The Owl Service ). I was too young to see it on its initial screening – or at any rate, too young to remember it – but it’s easy to see why it lingered in the minds of those who did. Well, the first episode, anyway. Not for nothing is The Changes seen as a precursor to The Survivors in the rural apocalypse sub-genre – see also the decidedly nastier No Blade of Grass – as following a fairly gripping opener, it drifts off into the realm of plodding travelogue.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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