The Avengers 1965

1) Which institution (channel) produced the show?

ITV/ABC/Thames

2) Who was the primary and secondary audience (age rating/gender/interests etc).

Adults, female, 15 years+, working class, 

3) When did the first episode air?

January 7 1961

4) How many viewers followed the show?

6.3 million

5) How many seasons were made?

6 series

6) What date/year was the last episode aired?

1968-69

7) What was the budget for series 4?

$2 million, budget of each episode $56,000.

8) The Fourth series was different to the third due to a $2million deal with ABC. It was shot on film. What did this mean in terms of:location, product values, editing, camerawork, and sound?

British television did compete on the world market, with prestige productions such as The Avengers being sold to many countries overseas (90 countries by 1969). A lucrative deal with the American Broadcasting Company (reportedly $2million) required the fourth series of The Avengers to be shot on film and allowed high production values for television of that era. Previous series were very studio bound, as was conventional for television of that era, and so appear to be very 'stagey' by contemporary standards. Videotape editing was difficult and costly process so most television was mixed live, with mistakes and fluffed lined left uncorrected. Many programmes were lost as expensive videotape was re-used for new programmes. Shooting on film for a higher budget enabled more sophisticated camerawork, greater use of locations, more controlled editing and a more sophisticated soundtrack, with a through-composed score.

9) Who were the stars of series 4 Episode 1: The Town of no return? Name the actors, include images and background information on them e.g. age, gender, previous rates.

• Patrick Macnee as John Steed
• Diana Rigg as Emma Peel
• Alan MacNaughtan as Mark Brandon
• Patrick Newell as Jimmy Smallwood
• Terence Alexander as 'Piggy' Warren
• Jeremy Burnham as Vicar, Johnathan Ainsbury
• Robert brown as Saul
• Juliet Harmer as Jill Manson
• Walter Horsbrugh as School Inspector

10) ITV was seen as the working class channel, compared to the BBC's middle class. Now did The Avengers compare, in terms of representation of rising youth culture, compared ti the BBC's flagship drama: The Forsyte Saga?

The BBC was slowly weaned away from its stuffy 'auntie' image by the rigours of competition with ITV. However, channel loyalty tended to split on class lines, with ITV seen as the more working class channel- at a time when, with the rise of youth culture, it was suddenly 'cool' to be working class- and the BBC seen as more middle class. Thus the BBC's flagship drama of the mid 1960s, The Forsyte Saga, was a serialisation  of a set of novels by Galsworthy, a Nobel prize-winning British author. In comparison, ITV series such as The Avengers appeared much more daring, youthful, irreverent and sexy.