The Avengers & Me (TV Series)

Rating:
Summary: STEEDs VIEW
Review: "The Avengers & Me" is a very good book if you love that wonderful British import to American TV. Patrick MacNee is really at the core of this book as he is without a doubt the one and only John Steed. It's really from his perspective. It is very insightful and full of great stories about the workings of this great TV show. A must have if you grew up with it.

Rating:
Summary: STEEDs VIEW
Review: "The Avengers & Me" is a very good book if you love that wonderful British import to American TV. Patrick MacNee is really at the core of this book as he is without a doubt the one and only John Steed. It's really from his perspective. It is very insightful and full of great stories about the workings of this great TV show. A must have if you grew up with it.

Rating:
Summary: A Smile, a Song and an Umbrella
Review: As humble as ever, Patrick Macnee takes us on a trip behind the scenes of the making of the international hit television series of the 1960s--The Avengers. He builds up the talents of his co-stars--especially Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson--at the expense of his own ego. While he submits that he was often weak in dealing with the producers, the reader who remembers well the series will have no doubt but that this is none other than the legendary John Steed himself writing. And the pictures, which appear on every page, are exceptional. These alone are worth the price of this large-format paperback book. Add in the wonderful anecdotes and--well, Mrs. Peel, this book is needed!

Rating:
Summary: A delight for fans of the series
Review: If you are a fan of "The Avengers" series and even have a recollection of "The New Avengers" series, you will love <TheAvengers and Me" (TV Books, 1998) by Patrick Macnee "with" Dave Rogers. Now that I have all the Diana Rigg episodes on VHS and the last season of the Honor Blackman ones on DVD, while my fuzzy copies off late-night tv of the Linda Thorson entries await replacement by commercial ones--well, this book was a wonderful reminder of how much fun it was to await eagerly each new episode when they were still new and unabridged by the increasing time allowed for commercials.

What this book also tells us is how the participants did not particularly have as much fun making the series as we did watching them. When Diana Rigg announced that coal miners were making more than they were--a remark that did not endear her to coal miners--or when the cast of "The New Avengers" found they were not going to be paid--or when Joanna Lumley stood up at a gathering and let the others know how hard the cast worked while everyone else partied, we begin to reconsider what came over the tube in a new light and admire the actors even more for not showing their displeasure before the cameras.

As is common today in "confess all" autobiographies, Macnee is quite honest about his weight and drinking problems; and more interestingly, about his feelings of inferiority before such "real" actors (as he puts it late in the book) as Diana Rigg and Ian McKellen (but not Orson Welles, for reasons that you will find in the last chapter).

This edition boasts lots of good stills, especially the color shots of Honor Blackman episodes which we know only in black and white. I feel it could have used more behind-the-camera anecdotes and I certainly miss an index. But what there is is quite good and fans will certainly love it all.

Rating:
Summary: With quiet understatement, We realize just how Great...
Review: Macnee is. "The Avengers and Me" gives the reader a true sense of just what type of man Patrick Macnee is, more so, I feel, than his autobiography, "Blind in One Ear."

And while he downplays his role and acting abilities, we all know better. During the past few years, I'd taken to listening to his audio tapes of the "Sean Dillion" (Jack Higgins) stories, and his ability to take other's works and add so much character to them is astonishing. This book will not disappoint.

For true lovers of the show, this is a "must have" book. For those who strive to learn what makes the best actors tick, this is a "must have" book. Finally, if you want to learn a little more about British culture, this is a "must have" book.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Avenger books
Review: Reading this book is like having a personal chat with Patrick MacNee as he recounts his experiences while making the avengers series. He is unassuming and generous in praising his co-stars, and colleagues although he is critical of some people who were behind the scenes. Patrick downplayed his own capabilities and contribution to the series.

Sure he had the support of many good female partners, but his own character was very integral to the series. Wild and outrageous ladies with this gentleman spy to balance the story.

The author also reflects on how he might handled things differently with his co-stars, vis-a-vis the producers, if he could do it again. As an avengers fan, i always wondered why Diana Rigg did not stay for more than 2 seasons. I also thought that the Linda Thorson series was under-rated. Some answers are offered in this book and i am glad i read it.

Though the stories were fantastic, and sometimes ludicrous, but it was a fun series to watch.

I also think Patrick deserves a little more credit han he has given himself in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Behind the scenes.
Review: This admirable TV Series, "The avengers" has been always running somewhere since its first release, back in the sixties. It is also available on video. It is highly enjoyable. And one wants to know more about it and about the people who did it. This is what the book does, letting us on some important aspects that are behind the scenes that we watch with so much pleasure.

Reading the book -and watching its magnificent pictures- it has struck me that the people who did the shows where not at all happy at the time, however smiling and care-free they look, beginning with Patrick MacNee himself and Diana Rigg. Apparently, they felt mistreated by the management, particularly Diana Rigg. And I don't like it very much that she has sometimes hinted that she did the series reluctantly or thinking that it was a minor work. She has never looked better or displayed a more wonderful personality than there, for all the Chejovs, Brechts or Shakespeares she has played on the stage. Of course, she was paid little for that. Instead, MacNee's agent -we learn in the book- was clever enough to secure a share of 2'5% for the actor. So "The Avengers" is still his bussiness, but not hers.

This book is illustrative also of some of MacNee's personal concerns, including his recognition -that he didn't make before- that he felt strongly attracted for the women who played his partners, and how did his overtures fared in this respect. And MacNee confesses what he calls his "kinky" personality. In fact, the series is full of clues and hintings in this respect. It is one of the secrets of its success.

Patrick MacNee is "The Avengers", although Diana Rigg set an unsurpassable standard as Miss Peel. The show worked also with Linda Thorson as it had worked and succeeded with Honor Blackman. That's why the film was such a failure. Fiennes is quite a different kind of man. He can't do what MacNee did. Maybe Kenneth Brannagh, among the younger, could.

The book is very, very interesting and a "must" for any Avengers fan.

Rating:
Summary: An Avengers Retrospective
Review: This is a "Must Have" if You are an Avengers Fan. The book focus mostly on Mr Mc.Nee history along the show from the begining to the end,included The New Avengers. It also includes a number of interviews to the different people involved in the show. Is like "The Biography of Mr Mc Nee". The photographs are great and it has plenty. Just a small complain:The book does not extend too much about the musical scores. But is a great book! Perhaps readers will be disapointed if they looking for an episode guide because that is not included. A detailed ep.guide can be founded in the other book of the Avengers "The Avenger Companion" But the two books does not repeat any information, so is great to have both and both complement each other.

Rating:
Summary: What a very enjoyable book
Review: This is a good book. It is very good reading about that famous British import TV show. It is very insightful. I recommend this highly. Good reading!