The Avengers: Tunnel of Fear

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 I watched Tunnel of Fear, a missing episode of The Avengers that was rediscovered a couple of years ago.  This is the John Steed and Emma Peel Avengers, not the Marvel Avengers, except that at this stage it’s not John Steed and Emma Peel or even John Steed and Cathy Gale, but John Steed and Dr David Keel.  I hadn’t bothered to buy the episode until now, as I thought I probably wouldn’t get that much out of it, as I find what survives of the first two series of The Avengers is too dated to be of much interest.  However, the Completist Demon eventually grabbed me and I gave in and bought it. The episode was of mainly historical interest, mostly for its outrageous sexism in having women dancing while wearing not very much for no good reason, which surprised me in something from 1961; that type of exploitation was something I associated more with film and television of the seventies. I thought TV in 1961 was too conservative.  There was a surprisingly “modern” treatment of having a baby out of wedlock, and with someone other than the mother’s (wrongfully imprisoned) boyfriend. The other notable thing was how much more naturalistic Ian Hendry and Patrick Macnee seemed compared with the other cast members, although they weren’t encumbered by having to put on working class accents. The DVD also contains pdfs of all of the missing series one episodes, which is nice, but I’m not sure if I will read them, unless I ever decide to marathon the whole of The Avengers in order, not something I’ve done in the past because of my reluctance to spend weeks watching what survives of series one, two and much of series three, as well as series two of The New Avengers.  Unlike most fans, I actually like the first series of The New Avengers, but series two is mostly awful, except for Dead Men are Dangerous and a couple of others. So, the Completist Demon is satisfied and I can move on.