TV SERIES · 1961– · UK
The Avengers
70 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (70)
- #001
Diana Rigg was horrified to learn that in her first season the cameraman was paid more than she was. She demanded a raise to bring her to the same level as her co-star, or she would leave the series. Thanks to the show's huge popularity in the US, the producers gave in.
- #002
Steed's appearance and character are a blend of Patrick Macnee's father (a racehorse trainer and a dandy), the fictional character The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Macnee's commanding officer in the Navy.
- #003
Emma Peel's name was derived from "man-appeal" (abbreviated to "m-appeal"), the phrase from the British film industry that the producers were looking for in the character.
- #004
In Too Many Christmas Trees (1965), John Steed received a Christmas card from Cathy Gale stamped "Fort Knox". This is a reference to Honor Blackman's role as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger (1964).
- #005
Patrick Macnee and Dame Diana Rigg remained close friends from the time they made this series until his death at the age of 93 on 25 June 2015.
- #006
At the end of Bizarre (1969), Anne speaks directly to the audience and promises that The Avengers will return. They did not return until The New Avengers (1976).
- #007
The vast majority of the first season is missing from television archives. Of the 26 episodes made, only the opening act of the first fifteen minutes of Hot Snow (1961) and three complete prints — Girl on the Trapeze (1961) (one of the two stories in which Steed does not appear), The Frighteners (1961) and Tunnel of Fear (1961) — are known to have survived.
- #008
After her time on the series, Diana Rigg remained reluctant to discuss anything to do with the show. She softened somewhat when her former co-star and close friend Patrick Macnee died and gave a private interview about the series.
- #009
This series was the first British television series to be sold to an American network.
- #010
Honor Blackman left the series to appear in Goldfinger (1964).
- #011
A film version of the series was in the early planning stages in late 1963, after the completion of the third season. The first story proposal paired John Steed and Cathy Gale with a male-and-female duo of American agents to help the film appeal to the American market. Before the project could gain momentum, Honor Blackman was cast in a role in Goldfinger (1964), which required her to leave the series.
- #012
Emma's fighting outfits were called Emmapeelers.
- #013
Patrick Macnee had a great deal in common with John Steed. Both attended Eton, though both were expelled, and both served in World War II.
- #014
Footage of Emma Peel from one of the colour episodes was reused in an episode of The New Avengers (1976).
- #015
There were several occasions on which Diana Rigg strongly advised Ian Hendry to avoid consuming so much whisky because of how it affected his behaviour. Macnee confirmed this in his book about the making of the series.
- #016
Eleanor Bron was the producers' first choice for Emma Peel, but she turned the offer down.
- #017
The idea of giving Steed a female partner came from a news story from Kenya about a woman whose family had been destroyed by terrorists. This woman became the basis for Cathy Gale.
- #018
Steed's full name, sometimes claimed to be John Wickham Gascoyne Beresford Steed, was never given on screen and was used only in the series' 1971 stage version. In this highly comic take on the main series, written by Brian Clemens and Terence Feely and directed by Leslie Phillips, Simon Oates played Steed and Sue Lloyd played his assistant Hannah Wild (a name recycled from Clemens's The Superlative Seven (1967)). The play was staged at the Birmingham Theatre (from Thursday 15 July to Saturday 24 July 1971) and at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London (until Monday 2 August 1971).
- #019
During the first season, when the budget was limited, Patrick Macnee supplemented his on-screen wardrobe with numerous items from his own closet, including a bowler hat and an umbrella.
- #020
During production of the Emma Peel episodes, Patrick Macnee and Dame Diana Rigg visited the set of The Nanny (1965). A photograph was taken with Bette Davis.
- #021
Patrick Macnee disliked Steed's car being changed from a Bentley to a Rolls Royce, feeling it was ostentatious and that Steed would not be flashy enough to drive a Rolls Royce. Moreover, he did not know how to drive the Rolls Royce, so he either had to start it on a hill or was pushed into frame by studio technicians.
- #022
Elizabeth Shepherd was originally cast as Emma Peel. She filmed The Town of No Return (1965) and parts of The Murder Market (1965) before it was decided she was wrong for the character. She suggested that Mrs Peel have a built-in wardrobe and a watch that could stop time.
- #023
To maintain pure fantasy, when the series switched entirely to film production from the fourth season there were strict rules about what could be shown in an episode: * no "uniformed policemen". * no "coloured people". * no blood. * no women dying. * no explicit sex.
- #024
When Patrick Macnee was offered the idea of playing John Steed, he had just returned to England after achieving limited success in Canada and America.
- #025
Patrick Macnee, one of television's best-dressed men, was in fact a nudist. Honor Blackman once claimed she invited him to play nude tennis. He politely declined.
- #026
Fenella Fielding was considered for both Cathy Gale and Emma Peel. She appeared in The Charmers (1964).
- #027
Original season cast member Ian Hendry (Dr. David Keel) appeared in an episode of The New Avengers (1976). Steed's closing line to him is: "Welcome back."
- #028
Honor Blackman was reportedly asked to return as a guest star but declined because she wanted to look forward rather than back.
- #029
Linda Thorson took the role of Tara King because she was dating producer John Bryce at the time.
- #030
In the fifth season, the original plan was for Steed to move to the Hertfordshire countryside and live in a traditional oak-beamed cottage.
- #031
At the time episodes were shot on videotape, scenes had to be successfully filmed in a single continuous take to save money. Patrick Macnee would wear one outfit over another to save time while moving to another set for the next scene.
- #032
When the series began, Ian Hendry was the main star, and the idea was for him to work alternately with different partners (an early version of the Mission: Impossible (1966) format). The series title referred to Hendry's character Dr. David Keel and Steed, who worked together in the first episode to find those responsible for the murder of Keel's fiancée. The early episodes focused more on Keel's character, and Steed does not even appear in a couple of them. When the first season was interrupted by a strike, Hendry left the series after the break to continue his film career. The same format was used for Steed, and several remaining Dr. Keel scripts were reworked for a new character named Dr. Martin King, but other scripts originally written for a male character were rewritten for another new addition: Catherine Gale.
- #033
In the first season, Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee usually learned their dialogue together while sharing a bottle of whisky.
- #034
Steed's London address varies: 5 Westminster Mews (during the Cathy Gale run), 4 Queen Anne's Court in the monochrome Emma Peel episodes, and 3 Stable Mews for the colour episodes.
- #035
Given the production speed of the videotaped episodes, actors flubbing a line or sets malfunctioning quickly became the norm.
- #036
Honor Blackman said she wanted to see the series shot on film rather than videotape. This came shortly after she left the show.
- #037
Joyce Blair, Pamela Ann Davy, Vera Day, Shirley Eaton, Anita Harris, Kathy Kirby, Gabriella Licudi and Millicent Martin all auditioned for the role of Venus Smith in the second season.
- #038
ABC, which handled the final season in the US, chose to schedule it against Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967), then the country's number one show. Steed and King could not compete and the series was cancelled in the US. Without that vital commercial support, production could not continue in Britain and the show ended in May 1969.
- #039
In 2007 the series ranked twentieth on TV Guide's list of the Top Cult Shows Ever.
- #040
After Diana Rigg left the series, the producers considered the idea of having guest actors serve as John Steed's sidekick.
- #041
John Dankworth's distinctive jazz music was altered slightly for the third season.
- #042
The naming of this series was the reason it was retitled "Avengers Assemble" in the United Kingdom, because The Avengers (2012) took the original title there.
- #043
Nineteen gallons of champagne were consumed over the course of the series.
- #044
Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg both preferred the black-and-white era to the colour era. Macnee felt the concept was fresher at that point, while Rigg had always preferred films and television programmes shot in monochrome, partly because of the skilful use of lighting and partly because she thought it suited a woman's face better.
- #045
While Patrick Macnee got along with Patrick Newell, he regarded the character Anne as an unnecessary strain on the series and felt viewers did not care where Steed got his orders.
- #046
Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman had a falling-out around the time she left the series. According to the book Macnee wrote about the show, he verbally abused Blackman while drunk. The argument stemmed from their disagreement over organising security staff for a party hosted by the studio.
- #047
Cathy Gale's iconic leather outfit did not become part of her wardrobe until the third season.
- #048
As a rule there was little location shooting in the first season. However, the first publicity photos with Ian Hendry, Patrick Macnee and Ingrid Hafner were taken at various locations in London. Interestingly, Macnee wears a trench coat instead of his usual outfit.
- #049
In a scene cut from Pulp Fiction (1994), Vincent Vega admitted to Mia Wallace that he fantasised about Emma Peel beating him up. Uma Thurman, who played Wallace, went on to play Emma Peel in The Avengers (1998).
- #050
A number of options were considered for Cathy Gale's exit, including killing her off.
- #051
Millicent Martin and Maggie Smith were considered for Emma Peel.
- #052
Honor Blackman and Dame Diana Rigg died in 2020, five months apart.
- #053
The missing first-season episode Dragonsfield (1961) involves the preparation of spacesuits for a manned orbiting platform. A manned orbiting platform had in fact been planned, but new technology rendered it obsolete before it was ever launched.
- #054
Production of the first season was cut short by a strike. By the time production of the second season could begin, Ian Hendry had left the series.
- #055
Despite its fame, the series ranked in the top 10 of programmes watched in Britain only four times between 1960 and 1969: February 1964, November 1965, March 1967 and February 1969. Ian Hendry's later series The Informer (1966) was more popular at the time. As a result, it was easy for the new company (Thames TV) to cancel the series, since the production company had no connection to the American ABC [ABC (Associated British Corp.)], which in July 1968 was ordered to be wound up (over a breach of licence on another matter).
- #056
Roger Moore was lined up to direct an episode in the fourth season.
- #057
In a 1983 interview with Starlog, Michael Sloan explained that he had spent years planning a two-hour made-for-TV film called The Avenging Angel, which would have served as a backdoor pilot he was considering presenting to CBS. The proposed story would have opened with what appeared to be John Steed's funeral, with Cathy Gale, Emma Peel, Tara King and Purdey from The New Avengers (1976) serving as pallbearers. In the end only Patrick Macnee, Honor Blackman and John Bryce were interested in appearing, and the idea was abandoned.
- #058
In 1985 Brian Clemens, together with Michael Grade and his wife Sarah Lawson, developed an idea called The Avengers… International!, with Patrick Macnee returning. In it, John Steed would have met Samantha (the character's original name), Emma Peel's daughter-in-law, who also drove a Lotus and had a missing husband named Peter who had disappeared four years earlier on an espionage mission in Eastern Europe, along with an American agent named Christopher Cambridge who was there to pitch to the American networks. The pilot episode, "Reincarnation" (written by Clemens), borrowed elements from Split! (1968) and expanded on them. An old enemy of Steed's named Lomax (whom he had shot and believed he had killed years earlier) returns with a new appearance and takes revenge. Using an advanced brain-transplant technique that had fallen into the wrong hands, Lomax keeps coming back from death in a new body, the last of which is a woman's. Cathy Gale and Purdey from The New Avengers (1976) would have been mentioned in dialogue. There was also a character named Weir who believed in reincarnation and stated that in a past life he had been an elephant until killed by a hunter, after which he returned as a soldier in Wellington's army at Waterloo. Although Clemens was paid for his script, none of the American channels considered his proposal viable.
- #059
The card displays seen in Tara King's closing scenes were performed by the magician John Wade.
- #060
Twenty actresses auditioned for Emma Peel and eight were screen-tested. Among them were Sarah Brackett, Shirley Eaton, Rosemary Martin and Moira Redmond. Brian Clemens's favourite before Diana Rigg was Redmond, who had appeared in Hot Snow (1961) and Kill the King (1961).
- #061
Lyn Ashley, Susan Engel, Anne Lawson, Gabriella Licudi, Jill Melford, Aleta Morrison, Jane Murdoch, Mary Peach, Penny Riley, Toby Robins, Barbara Steele and Christina Taylor were screen-tested for the character who would become Tara King.
- #062
Steed is accompanied by Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason) in three episodes of the second season. This was to use up the remaining scripts planned for Ian Hendry's Dr. David Keel from the first season.
- #063
Patrick Macnee readily admitted that his portrayal of John Steed was in many respects inspired by Sir Ralph Richardson's performance as the foolish, hat-wearing, umbrella-carrying Major Charles Hammond in Clouds Over Europe (1939).
- #064
Several candidates for Tara King appeared as guest stars: Diane Clare in Death at Bargain Price (1965), Valerie Van Ost in Mission… Highly Imposable (1967) and My Wildest Dream (1968), Susan Travers in Dead Man's Treasure (1967) and Wanda Ventham in The Gravediggers (1965).
- #065
Angela Browne was screen-tested for Venus Smith. She appeared as a guest star in Intercrime (1963) and How to Succeed… At Murder (1966).
- #066
Angela Douglas was screen-tested for Venus Smith. She appeared as a guest star in Dance with Death (1961) and Requiem (1969).
- #067
Sally Smith was screen-tested for Venus Smith. She appeared as a guest star in Toy Trap (1961).
- #068
Julie Paulle was screen-tested for Venus Smith. She appeared as a guest star in Killer Whale (1963).
- #069
Laurie Leigh was screen-tested for Venus Smith. She appeared as a guest star in Bullseye (1962).
- #070
Gabrielle Drake was screen-tested for Tara King. She appeared as a guest star in The Hidden Tiger (1967). She would later audition for Purdey in The New Avengers (1976).
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