Tuesday, 21 February 2023

Look - (stop me if you've heard this one) But There Were These Two Fellers...

Yes that is the title.


The Avengers had been getting increasingly comedic for a while, but did it ever get more overtly comedic than this 1968 tale of two clowns bumping board directors off under orders from a Punch & Judy Show? The way the killers dance off after every murder is genuinely funny though, and there is an additional meta-element to the amusement because they are breaking the fourth wall to do it, acknowledging and playing up to the camera and, thereby, the viewers at home.

John Steed and Tara King try to get in on the double-act game, but Steed works better as a witty character, not an outright clown indulging in cheap gags and slapstick.


And another thing that makes this episode remarkable is the presence of John Cleese, in what was (probably, based on a minimal amount of internets research) his first TV role outside of sketch shows. The absurdity of storing hundreds of fragile eggs on rickety shelves is amplified by Cleese's character's eggsaggerated nervousness around them. It is obvious from the moment we first see thee gees that they are going to end up smashed, so there is joy to be found in the eggspectation.


And another guest-star of note is Bernard Cribbins, playing the former gag writer for one of the killer clowns. We meet him surrounded by thousands of discarded pieces of paper, each one a rejected gag. A year before "Ernest Scribbler" would appear in Monty Python's Flying Circus's 'funniest joke in the world' sketch, Cribbins's character shows that this particular stereotype was already well-established, and this a particularly outrageous example of it.


Killed off in case he can identify the clowns, Cribbins still manages to do exactly that, and gives Steed the clue that sets him on their tail. Though in order to find the clue he has to go hunting through the masses of paper, a situation as inevitable in its own way as the breaking of the eggs was.

And Talfryn Thomas makes a creepy late entrance as pyromaniac magician "Fiery Frederick," the member of the evil entertainers gang who is prepared to murder Tara (as a part of his magic act, naturally) when the killer clowns themselves prove too squeamish. This walks the line between remaining comedic and being genuinely tense, a blending of the two tones that was practically a trademark of The Avengers in its last few seasons, before spreading to become a staple of late '60s/early '70s telefantasy in general - no doubt because of the significant overlap in writers and script editors.


And as the evil entertainers have their final meeting with their leader (the Punch & Judy Show concealing his identity like he is Blofeld in the early Bond films), Steed and Tara infiltrate it disguised as a pantomime horse, leading to a confrontation with the real ('real') pantomime horse that is already a member of the gang. They club all the gang members over the head until only the two clowns and the boss are left. Steed has to club the ventriloquist's dummy as well as the ventriloquist, because of he course he does.

Steed's fight with the clown who is also a quick-change artist sees Steed having to defeat each of his costumes (acting like extra lives) in succession, with the final punch sending him speeding back through all the changes we have just seen before he collapses. Tara fights with the mute sidekick mostly offscreen, vanishing into a magician's cabinet before emerging with her defeated opponent. Steed and Tara reunite to easily defeat the boss, then dance off the screen in the manner previously used by the clowns - they don't normally break the fourth wall in this way, or even imitate their antagonists for that matter, but in this case it is symbolic of their ultimate triumph over an opposition who did get to play around with the format.


I could say the same about the coda involving Steed quick-changing, but that's just the usual sort of lame joke these episodes end with as standard.
I suppose it does prove that the normal level of humour has been restored. Mew.

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