– Steed! I thought you were an old lady with a bale and knitting needles.
– They do say I take after granny.
This month, we go back to Richard and Brendan’s first love — 1960s spy-fi classic The Avengers. Brendan has taken up knitting, James is achieving better living through self-help books, Nathan is wondering why Graeme Garden left his computer here, and Richard is relaxing in a leotard and a giant birdcage. Watch out, everyone: it’s The Girl from Auntie.
See the show?
The Girl from Auntie is the 17th episode of Season 4 of The Avengers. It’s a bit hard to find now, to be honest, but the existing episodes have been released on boxed sets and can be found on your local version of Amazon. It can’t be watched online, alas. I’ve tried.
You didn’t really think you could take over this country with a few fanatics in fancy dress.
This month, we celebrate the life of Honor Blackman, who died this week at the age of 94, by watching one of her early episodes as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. In this episode, The Mauritius Penny, Mr Steed and Mrs Gale team up to defeat a gang of murderous dentists and stamp collectors who plan to overthrow the British government and install a fascist dictatorship decades before that sort of thing became fashionable.
See the episode
In the US, you can buy episodes of Series 2 of The Avengers on Amazon Prime Video. In the UK, Amazon will let you import a Region 4 box set from Australia, oddly. While in Australia, it seems that Series 2 is impossible to buy. Baffling.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll find you a British Guiana 1856 four-cent black with four perfect margins. (Psych!)
Recorded on Friday, 10 April 2020 ·
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– We shall be gone from here in a few hours. You back to your own country in triumph, me to the foothills of South America. They say there is gold there.
– It didn’t do Humphrey Bogart much good. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Most people think Walter Huston directed it. It was John.
This month, we head back to the gritty and hardbitten 1970s to check in on one of our favourite Bond girls, Joanna Lumley (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond Meets Black Emmanuelle), in the show that made her a household name, The New Avengers.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at bondfinger.com. And if you rate or review us on iTunes, we’ll cook you an omelette with fines herbes so delicious that you’ll forget your lifelong obsession with gold and opt for a long, quiet and socially distanced life with your handsome French boyfriend.
Recorded on Saturday, 11 July 2020 ·
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– You know the Chinese have a marvellous way of releasing tensions. Better than any tranquilliser.
– Hm.
– You just hold it, fondle it, stroke it. You’d be surprised how quickly the tensions drain away.
This month, our Kate O’Marathon continues with an episode from the final series of The Avengers, in which Steed gets repeatedly punched in the face, while some hot O’Mara-on-Tara action takes place in the next room.
See the episode
Delightfully, Series 6 of The Avengers is available in a lavish Blu-ray box set. Which is how we watched it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
– You’re not feeling the part, Mrs Peel.
– I have a feeling I will be feeling it.
This month, we celebrate the life of the late Dame Diana Rigg, who left us earlier this month. And we do this by watching one of the most beloved — and one of the most disliked — episodes of The Avengers. It’s Epic, in which Mrs Peel is kidnapped by three washed-up actors playing two washed-up actors and a washed-up director, who are awful enough to believe that it’s fun to watch Mrs Peel being repeatedly threatened with certain death. And, turns out, it is.
See the episode
Of course, Series 5 of The Avengers is also available in a lavish Blu-ray box set. Which is how we watched it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
– I’ve come here to appeal to you, Mister Cartney.
– You certainly do that!
This month, we all don our flattest Regency trousers and head underground for an evening of wrestling, wassailing and wenching to support the admirable cause of bringing down the British Government. And Peter Wyngarde is here too, looking as devilishly handsome as ever. It’s Part 2 of our Diana Rigg marathon: the 1966 Avengers episode A Touch of Brimstone.
See the episode
Of course, Series 4 of The Avengers is also available in a lavish Blu-ray box set. Which is how we watched it. Again. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Oh, I discovered then, nothing beats a good lashing. (Mind your head.) Take India. You can have a good ten inches overnight there. You know, one should never fear being wet.
This month, we commemorate the death of Sean Connery by revisiting the first nail in the coffin of his movie career, the 1998 film The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman as crude robot replicas of John Steed and Mrs Peel, who go up against the wet sporran of Connery’s single most villainous role, Sir August de Wynter — a man who selflessly tries to provide the population of Great Britain with something interesting to make small talk about.
See the episode
Despite all this, The Avengers is not a bad-looking film. You can almost certainly find it — or a completly different film of the same name — on one of your streaming services. And the DVD is sort of still available (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
– Do I look like a burglar?
– No. You look rather ch— Don’t move, stay where you are, put your hands over your head and lean against the wall.
– Nor am I a contortionist.
This month, it’s a queasy mixture of the Swinging Sixties and the Punching-People-in-the-Face Seventies, as Steed, Purdey and Gambit try to discover who is encouraging so many sweaty government security personnel to discotheque themselves to death, and why. It’s The New Avengers in Angels of Death.
See the episode
No luck finding this one for free online, but the Region 2 version of the DVD box set is still available on Amazon. (Amazon US) (Amazon AU)
– Actually, I wanted a word or five about the old Groupee,
official magazine you know, I’m acting as PRO.
– From the HQ?
– BHQ.
– On TTR?
– JJV. seconded from RHB.
– Oh really, how’s the GCM?
– A-1.
– MY?
– 50 PPR.
– Downgraded to 007, eh?
This month, Steed and Mrs Peel are joined by John Le Mesurier, while we are joined again by Steven B, ably assisting us as we investigate various military bigwigs with improbable facial hair, who appear to be leaking valuable secrets to our enemies. Meanwhile, Diana Rigg’s Spotlight photo is getting one hell of a workout. Which is impossible to object to, really.
See the episode
As is now well established, Series 4 of The Avengers is also available in a lavish Blu-ray box set. Which is how we watched it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
