Now, Mr Steed, you’re going to have to work for your supper.

The Avengers

4.9: Room Without a View

If The Gravediggers’ eccentricity feels entirely natural, Room Without a View’s seems plastered onto a standard issue spy plot, one that wastes the talents of the majority of its cast and leaves Steed polishing off the best table leavings.

Even the premise of Roger Marshall’s teleplay is the sort of thing we’ve heard every other week, with seven physicists having disappeared “over the past year or so”, accompanied by then-topical references to the Brain Drain. One of boffins has resurfaced, though, Dr Wadkin (Peter Madden, coming on like Father Jack), who “suddenly popped up in the middle of the chop suey”.

Lest this seem like a casually racist reference to Wadkin’s wife Anna (Jeanne Roland of You Only Live Twice), Marshall tempers Steed’s stereotyping by having her observe the doctor can’t bear to be around her anymore: “It’s because I’m Chinese that my husband can’t stand the sight of me. It’s like that bad joke; now we all look alike to him”.

Carter: In a Chessman Hotel, all service is superlative.

Yes, Marshall has been watching The Manchurian Candidate, quite overtly grafting a brainwashing plot line onto the otherwise innocuous Chessman Hotel setting, in which the kidnapped are led to believe they have been sent to a prison camp in Manchuria (that it is actually a mock-up of one in North Korea may be intended to emphasise such blasé stereotyping). Add in the Canton Chinese Laundry and some yellow face, and Steed’s stunt double pulling a rickshaw at the coda, and the attempts at sensitivity are, shall we say, somewhat insufficient. The broader problem with the episode, however, is that this simply isn’t inventive stealing. It only ever feels like a cheap rip-off.

Carter: I, er, hope you’ll give us your award of merit, sir.

Steed: You mustn’t ask that! Makes me quite nervous. I’m likely to get quite severe indigestion.

So it’s fortunate that Steed, posing as M Gourmet, the famous food critic, is on hand to enliven the proceedings. He has decent foils in hotel manager Carter (Philip Latham, The White Dwarf, and considerably livelier than as the final Borusa in The Five Doctors) and Paul Whitsun-Jones, Sir Charles in the previous Season’s The Wringer and Man with Two Shadows, and of course the Marshall in The Mutants).

The latter, a fat man with thin blood (he maintains the room temperature at 80 degrees) is on a diet – a pea and mineral water for lunch, forgoing the banana – living vicariously through his critic (“He’s very much looking forward to testing your reputation as a gastronome” – “Delighted!” responds Steed) and mortified when “Gourmet” informs him that salted Normandy butter was used on the rye bread. Steed also gets quite carried away describing his Cuban cigar (“Rolled against the thigh du jeune fille”).

Carter: For a receptionist, you undertake a great many tasks, Mrs Peel.

Mrs Peel: As a receptionist, I expect to, Mr Carter.

Emma, having decried the suggestion of going undercover (“I dislike the idea of working in a hotel”), soon finds herself in hot water when she comes under suspicion, gets gassed in the dreaded Room 621 and interrogated by a Chinese soldier and a made-up English actor, requiring Steed to rescue her.

Pushkin: It took nineteen seconds for this lift to arrive. This would not be tolerated at home.

The rest of the cast are put to mostly below-their-station work. Peter Jeffrey (The Macra Terror, The Androids of Tara), in his first of three Avengers appearances, probably enjoyed playing the buttoned-down, by-the-book Varnals, there to have his sexist assumptions about Mrs Peel dashed, but we can’t help but wish he was better serviced. Likewise, Peter Arne, who stole Warlock in Season Two, is all but forgettable as a red herring chemical company tout. In a more minor role, Vernon Dobtcheff fares better as a very precise Russian Chess grandmaster (working for the Ministry of the Interior and interested in doing a deal with Chessman in return for the latter building hotels on the Black Sea coast).

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

Comments

You know, I think you may have the delusion you’re still a police officer.

Heaven’s Prisoners (1996) (SPOILERS) At the time, it seemed Alec Baldwin was struggling desperately to find suitable star vehicles, and the public were having none of it. Such that, come 1997, he was playing second fiddle to Anthony Hopkins and Bruce Willis, and in no time at all had segued to the beefy supporting player we now know so well from numerous indistinguishable roles. That, and inane SNL appearances. But there was a window, post- being replaced by Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, when he still had sufficient cachet to secure a series of bids for bona fide leading man status. Heaven’s Prisoners is the final such and probably the most interesting, even if it’s somewhat hobbled by having too much, rather than too little, story.

They wanted me back for a reason. I need to find out why.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021) (SPOILERS) I wasn’t completely down on Joss Whedon’s Justice League (I had to check to remind myself Snyder retained the director credit), which may be partly why I’m not completely high on Zack Snyder’s. This gargantuan four-hour re-envisioning of Snyder’s original vision is aesthetically of a piece, which means its mercifully absent the jarring clash of Whedon’s sensibility with the Snyderverse’s grimdark. But it also means it doubles down on much that makes Snyder such an acquired taste, particularly when he has story input. The positive here is that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has the luxury of telling the undiluted, uncondensed story Snyder wanted to tell. The negative here is also that Zack Snyder’s Justice League has the luxury of telling the undiluted, uncondensed story Snyder wanted to tell (with some extra sprinkles on top). This is not a Watchmen , where the unexpurgated version was for the most part a feast.

Oh, I love funny exiting lines.

Alfred Hitchcock Ranked: 26-1 The master's top tier ranked from worst to best. You can find 52-27 here .

I don't think this is the lightning you're looking for.

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Now all we’ve got to do is die.

Without Remorse (2021) (SPOILERS) Without Remorse is an apt description of the unapologetic manner in which Amazon/Paramount have perpetrated this crime upon any audiences foolish enough to think there was any juice left in the Tom Clancy engine. There certainly shouldn’t have been, not after every attempt was made to run it dry in The Sum of All Our Fears and then the stupidly titled Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit . A solo movie of sometime Ryan chum John Clark’s exploits has been mooted awhile now, and two more inimitable incarnations were previously encountered in the forms of Willem Dafoe and Liev Schreiber. Like Chris Pine in Shadow Recruit , however, diminishing returns find Michael B Jordan receiving the short straw and lead one to the conclusion that, if Jordan is indeed a “star”, he’s having a hell of a job proving it.

Suspicions of destiny. We all have them. A deep, wordless knowledge that our time has come.

Damien: Omen II (1978) (SPOILERS) There’s an undercurrent of unfulfilled potential with the Omen series, an opportunity to explore the machinations of the Antichrist and his minions largely ignored in favour of Final Destination deaths every twenty minutes or so. Of the exploration there is, however, the better part is found in Damien: Omen II , where we’re privy to the parallel efforts of a twelve or thirteen-year-old Damien at military school and those of Thorn Industries. The natural home of the diabolical is, after all, big business. Consequently, while this sequel is much less slick than the original, it is also more engaging dramatically.

Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody loves a tax inspector. They’re beyond the pale!

Too Many Crooks (1959) (SPOILERS) The sixth of seven collaborations between producer-director Mario Zampi and writer Michael Pertwee, Too Many Crooks scores with a premise later utilised to big box-office effect in Ruthless People (1986). A gang of inept thieves kidnap the wife of absolute cad and bounder Billy Gordon (Terry-Thomas). Unfortunately for them, Gordon, being an absolute cad and bounder, sees it as a golden opportunity, rather enjoying his extra-marital carry ons and keeping all his cash from her, so he refuses to pay up. At which point Lucy Gordon (Brenda De Banzie) takes charge of the criminal crew and turns the tables.

A subterranean Loch Ness Monster?

Doctor Who The Silurians No, I’m not going to refer to The Silurians as Doctor Who and the Silurians . I’m going to refer to it as Doctor Who and the Eocenes . The Silurians plays a blinder. Because both this and Inferno know the secret of an extended – some might say overlong – story is to keep the plot moving, they barely drag at all and are consequently much fleeter of foot than many a four parter. Unlike Malcolm Hulke’s sequel The Sea Devils , The Silurians has more than enough plot and deals it out judiciously (the plague, when it comes, kicks the story up a gear at the precarious burn-out stage of a typical four-plus parter). What’s most notable, though, is how engaging those first four episodes are, building the story slowly but absorbingly and with persuasive confidence.

When I barked, I was enormous.

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Well, it must be terribly secret, because I wasn't even aware I was a member.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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