 | Don't watch the film, whatever you do. Ever. Watch, instead, the leather-clad Diana Rigg in the original Avengers TV series - and watch it over and over again. Rigg's Emma Peel is quite simply TV and film’s most gorgeous woman. (There are people, it is true, who watch Avengers series without Mrs Peel. Those people should be shunned.)
Over fifty episodes, John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel battle with perhaps the most bizarre set of villains ever to be conjured up from a fevered imagination; they do so with the assistance of a three-piece suit, bowler hat, Bentley, and sword-cane (Steed), and cat-suit, leather, Lotus Elan, and abundant charm – and the occasional karate kick (Mrs Peel).
Here is intelligent and sophisticated style in action. "I don’t use a gun," said Macnee in an interview, "I use my brain." It shows in this series. Personally, I can never get enough of it.
[Public Health Warning: Do not on any account be seduced into watching the recent Avengers remake – it’s a serious stinkeroo! But do be prepared to be seduced by The New Avengers series starring Joanna Lumley; her Purdie does provide a delightful replacement for Rigg, who the producers struggled to replace after she ran off to join James Bond On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.]
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