The Avengers

Rating:
Summary: It may not be your cup of tea.
Review: The oft-quoted maxim "never judge a book by its cover" can be dismissed on this occasion, for the cover of this one accurately imparts the nature of its contents: uninspiring (as if the unremarkable title wasn't enough of an indicator). It is strictly for the hardcore fan looking for intellectual analysis taken to an absurd extreme. Bearing the air of "no book, no tenure," the university professor's weighty, witless prose is padded out with a gaggle of fine monochrome photos, so while you're enjoying the images, you can impress your friends with your apparent taste in high-brow literature.

While it is true that the quality of writing is generally superior to that of the rest of the Avengers offerings, it is so dry and thick with Ph.D.-grade philosophy-speak as to make for rather tedious reading, and Dr. Miller, clearly quite pleased with his own literary skill, too often gets carried away in yawn-inducing tangents that seem to go nowhere. It's all well and good to be an intellectual, but it's another thing to be entertaining. It's a shame, too, since he teases us with some interesting nuggets of information here and there, and to his credit he does something no one else has bothered to do: place the show in the context of its cultural time-setting. In someone else's hands it might have been a 5-star hit.

But to make matters more dire, Dr. Miller's tome is also rife with factual errors, some of which give rise to serious misinterpretations about the show and its characters. In his Acknowledgement the author thanks more than 70 individuals for their assistance with his book; one should think that this number would be sufficient to ensure a reasonably accurate manuscript, but sadly this proved not to be the case. Sorry, but if this is the best the intelligentsia has to offer, I'll take Dave Rogers, warts and all.

Rating:
Summary: This book is needed!
Review: What makes "The Avengers" one of the most popular spy/action shows ever produced? How has the naive conception of a show, that started by two male lead actors, turned to be an outstanding, successful outlet for daring, witty, subversive and sexy aspects? All the features that contributed to this huge success are depicted in this book: the atmosphere, the beauty, the locations, the taboos of an era, the charming automobiles, the leather fetishism, the good humor, the coreographing fights, the Cold War, and why not to add, the social political symptoms of hard times that fortunately seem to have passed away. All these aspects make this book a real need. Film scholar Toby Miller reveals the details of the show by bringing fan opinions, focusing on the scripts and writers of the series, allowing us to know some interesting behind-the-scenes aspects that also contributed for the huge success of "The Avengers". This is a good book not only for the millions of fans, but also to the ones who want to understand a very controversial period of time in plain English. The author also emphasizes the Emma Peel phenomenon and the involving equilibrium of the opposite sex in the series with the explicit inversion between the male and female lead roles. Thus, this book is an appeal for anyone who, for just once, had the opportunity to see a full episode of such admirable, charming tv show.

Rating:
Summary: This book is needed!
Review: What makes "The Avengers" one of the most popular spy/action shows ever produced? How has the naive conception of a show, that started by two male lead actors, turned to be an outstanding, successful outlet for daring, witty, subversive and sexy aspects? All the features that contributed to this huge success are depicted in this book: the atmosphere, the beauty, the locations, the taboos of an era, the charming automobiles, the leather fetishism, the good humor, the coreographing fights, the Cold War, and why not to add, the social political symptoms of hard times that fortunately seem to have passed away. All these aspects make this book a real need. Film scholar Toby Miller reveals the details of the show by bringing fan opinions, focusing on the scripts and writers of the series, allowing us to know some interesting behind-the-scenes aspects that also contributed for the huge success of "The Avengers". This is a good book not only for the millions of fans, but also to the ones who want to understand a very controversial period of time in plain English. The author also emphasizes the Emma Peel phenomenon and the involving equilibrium of the opposite sex in the series with the explicit inversion between the male and female lead roles. Thus, this book is an appeal for anyone who, for just once, had the opportunity to see a full episode of such admirable, charming tv show.