The Avengers
4.19: Quick-Quick Slow Death
Coming straight after The
Girl from Auntie, it’s impossible to ignore the similar “villains cover
their tracks by whacking wacky eccentrics” structure, but since I’m a sucker
for such Avengers tales, it scarcely
matters. Robert Banks Stewarts writes, but particular laurels are due James
Hill for his deft touch during the musical climax.
The episode’s main thrust concerns a dance school “for infiltrating foreign agents into the
country”, in which the students are offed and replaced with trained operatives.
This eventually explains the dual Arthur Peevers, the one found dead in the
teaser, in a pram in full evening dress, and the one who shows up at the dance
school Terpsichorean Training Techniques Inc (James Belchamber).
The dead man’s inked arm leads to the first in a mounting
series of dead bodies, as Emma visits tattooist Fintry (Alan Gerrard, Bovem in The Dominators). Diana Rigg seems
genuinely amused during her scenes with Gerrard, as he recounts with gusto the
most popular designs (“I love whoever it
is” and “a mother’s loving touch”)
and how a certain inscription needs sufficiently sizeable clients or the
results can be undesirable (“So it ended
up ‘What is home without a moth’”). When Fintry is shot in the head, he
still has the wherewithal to tattoo his Italian sausage with vital information
about the murderer before expiring (“Killer
has tattoo on right wrist”).
Steed: You’ve seen pictures of those Russian
diplomats?
Huggins: Hmm.
Steed: Well, where do you think they get those
terrible clothes from?
Steed, posing as a representative of Baggy Pants Limited,
who do “top secret work – Diplomatic Corps
only”, visits Litchen & Co and attempts to mine information on Peever
from Huggins (Graham Armitage, Barney in The
Macra Terror), who is stabbed in the changing room, much to his colleague’s
alarm (“Why, without us, Ascot would look
like a nudist convention!”) He then finds his way to Mulberrys Bank, where
the manager (Ronald Govey, Relf in Ultraworld)
is most upset about losing a client (Manager:
Bad. Steed: Very bad. Manager: Very, very bad”), and his
next lead sends him – nowhere. Opening the door to Purbright & Co onto an
empty space, he very nearly plummets to his doom.
Peidi: Such expressive feet. Look, ah they talk-a
to me. You naughty little chatterboxes, you.
Diverting, undoubtedly, but Emma’s on the receiving end of
the best encounters in this one, particularly as the Italian sausage isn’t the
only dubious European in Quick-Quick Slow
Death. At Peidi’s shoe repair, Peidi (David Kernan) feigns a continually
slipping Italian accent as he obsesses over Mrs Peel’s feet (“So pale, so tender, so exquisitely elegant…
Oh senora, they’re a poem, they sing and they soar”) and gets quite excited
over what he might be able to make for her once he has cast them (“A pair of slippers for the boudoir?
Wellington boots in the kinkiest black leather?”) Peidi doesn’t end up
dead, but his assistant Bernard (Colin Ellis) does, drowned in plaster of Paris.
Steed: Now you, Mrs Peel, back to your pupils, and
be quick-quick slow about it.
After this succession of curious characters, the main action
at the dance school isn’t, initially, quite as scintillating, with Emma posing
as an instructress and Steed brushing up on his technique. Eunice Gayson
(Sylvia in the first two Bond films)
scores as the head of the school, Lucille Banks, and has some particularly fine
interaction with Macnee (she notes his good English name, and he replies “Came over with the Vikings. They were
between raids and discovering America at the time”).
Lucille Banks: Are you attempting a reverse, double clip feet?
Steed: With you, Miss Banks, I reach for the
rainbow.
Lucille Banks: You mad, impetuous man!
However, the grand finale at the gala dance contest, as
Steed is targeted for elimination and Emma proves more than effective at
turning the tables, is a delight. He shows off his acumen to Miss Banks as he
and Emma warn each other of dangers (“You’re
Number Nine”: “And you’re dancing
with garlic sausage!”). Each time someone dances around the back of the
dance floor, they mess up their adversaries’ plans. Emma changes Steed’s 9 to a
6, 9 being the identifying number of the intended target. Steed turns Ivor
Bracewell’s (Maurice Kaufmann – the tattooed killer) 6 to 9. She dances with
Ivor round the back so the spy coshes him, and Steed consequently coshes the
spy, with Emma dispatching the drunken commander Chester Reed (Larry Cross): “Keep ‘em coming”.
Other amusing moments include the opening sequence, in which
Steed, who has been shooting empty beer cans, hits a full one Emma has let fly
(“That was my lunchtime refreshment”).
John Woodnutt (Terror of the Zygons, The Keeper of Traken, Jeeves and Wooster) is on top form as
Captain Noble; having survived an attempted choking to death, he can only croak
at Steed (and, we are informed, phone Emma via whistling Morse Code at her).
The laugh off is also particularly good, with the duo dancing into the darkness
as Emma delivers a breathless sentence:
Mrs Peel: Steed.
Steed: Mrs Peel.
Mrs Peel: Did you know they’ve just arrested a band
leader for being drunk in charge of a pram containing a man in full evening
dress with a plaster cast on his dead, tattooed on his right wrist, clutching a
dance diploma in one hand and a garlic sausage in the other?
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.