The Avengers : Series 4 : What the Butler Saw : trivia

Subject	0-5	Subject	0-5	Subject	0-5	Subject	0-5
Direction	3½ stars	Music	4½ stars	Humour	4½ stars	Intros/tags	3 stars
Villains	3½ stars	Plot	4 stars	Emma	3½ stars	Sets/Props	3 stars
Overall (0-10)	A gritty drama as a turn about from the previous week's fancy dress, and it plays out well. Fine performances by all involved, but it's a bit staid.					7 stars

The Cars

Marque/Model/Type	Number Plate
rowing boat	-
RN motor launch	-
Saracen armoured car	-
Helicopter	G-ASHD
Lotus Elan S2	HNK 999C
Austin Taxi	VGF 345

Who's Killing Whom?

Victim	Killer	Method	click a name to see the face
Walters	Sergeant Moran ^V*	shot
Barber	Sergeant Moran ^V*	stabbed
Reeves	Sergeant Moran ^V*	bayonetted
Hubert Hemming	Benson ^V*	shot

continuity and trivia

1:35 + 32:25 - The villains use a silenced revolver, which simply doesn't work. Silencers don't work on most revolvers due to the gap between the barrel and the cylinder.
4:50 - Pamela Davies plays the WRN, as evidenced by this newspaper clipping.
5:00 - the Admiral's house set was reused as an Admiral's office in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Station.
4:50-13:30 - Steed disguises himself as three different officers - one for each force - to infiltrate the abodes of the suspects in the case, sporting different false facial hair and medals for each one.
He patriotically gives them the names red, white and blue.
My favourite is his R.A.F. officer, all enormous curled moustache and "what ho! jolly good show!" accents.
He later enrolls at the Butling academy run by Hemmings and Benson and is sent to Group Captain Miles, dressed in butler's garb

Commander Red (4:50-6:20)

Major White (6:28-10:36))

Squadron Leader Blue (10:37-15:00)

Butler Steed (23:00-49:00)
10:35-11:23 - There's a hair stuck to the top edge of the transfer plate, from the location shot of the helicopter approach to Steed entering the house.
11:59 - Another Bond reference: In the scene where they parody the RAF's love of abbreviations, SL Hogg asks, "Downgraded to double-O 7?" and Steed replies, "Upgraded to BB5".
15:55 - Mrs Peel has a telephone in her car.
17:10 - The picture of Emma in Miles' bin is a publicity still from Man-eater of Surrey Green, the other photos of Emma are publicity photos.
19:50 - Patrick Macnee is replaced by a stand-in for the car ride and getting out to approach the butling school
22:15 - Steed's references are from the Duke of Duffup, the Earl of Isley, & The Honorable Flegghorn. Benson checks them and finds they're all the names of pubs (33:54).
29:14 - Shades of Get Smart as the officers climb into a polythene bag of silence to try to ensure complete secrecy.
30:45 - The enormous washing machine is a Brill Twenty.
31:32 - The photo of Steed is another publicity photo.
32:18/31:45 - there's no way Hemming would ever have fit through the washing machine door.
34:34 - Obvious product placement for Bollinger champagne.
34:41+47:39 - There are significant streaks on the RHS of film.
43:22 - Steed catches the tail of his jacket in the car door.
47:45 - A brilliant bit of editing in the fight sequence, as we cut from the two stuntmen back to John vLe Mesurier & Patrick Macnee.
The new DVD masters have a superb picture compared to earlier releases, but the PAL masters seem remarkable at odds with the old NTSC masters, as these two pictures below will attest - the new release is significantly cropped at the top and right of the screen.
Even more strangely, the test-run timecoded episodes had more visible screen area but nothing like the NTSC version, so something may have gone wrong in the DVD pressing phase AND not every scene is affected.
Running time: 49'46"

A note on the timecodes
Where I have listed two sets of timecodes, the first is from the 2009-11 Optimum Releasing/Studio Canal DVD sets, any other timecodes are from the A&E and Contender DVD sets from a decade beforehand.
The new releases have been remastered and their frame rate has been changed, resulting in a shorter running time. However, the picture quality has increased markedly. I assume this is because they used a simple 2:2 pulldown (24 @ 25) when converting from the original film masters (film runs at 24 frames per second, while PAL runs at 25fps, the new DVDs are in PAL format).
This pulldown was also the cause of audio errors on many episodes, especially for Series 5, as the audio sped up to match the new rate (4% faster), rather than being properly pitch-shifted. Checking the dialogue sheets, which list the feet and frames of the reels, it looks like the speed change is around 5.04%, so there may be some cuts as well - probably from around the commercial breaks and ends of reels, as they amount to about 25 seconds. All my assumptions are based on the episodes having been filmed on standard 35mm film, which has 16 frames per foot and runs at 24 frames per second, so a minute of footage uses 90 feet of film (1,440 frames).
These audio errors have been corrected in the currently available DVDs, but the 2:2 pulldown remains. There is also the addition of a Studio Canal lead-in, converted to black and white to match the episode for Series Four, but colour for Series Five, adding an extra 18 or 19 seconds to the runnning time and making it harder to match timecodes with previous releases. It's annoying that it has been slapped on every single episode, Series 1-3 didn't suffer this indignity.
The previous Contender and A&E DVD releases didn't seem to suffer from these problems, so I assume they either used soft telecine and preserved the original 24fps rate of the film (my preferred option in DVDs) or they used 24 @ 25 pulldown (2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 Euro pull-down). Let's hope the much-rumoured bluray release will revert to native 24fps with soft telecine so we won't have these problems again.

Cast notes

John Le Mesurier (Benson) is beloved by fans of Dad's Army worldwide - he normally plays quite pleasant chaps, unlike his rôle here.
Howard Marion Crawford (Brigadier Percy Goddard) - who normally plays unpleasant chaps - turns up again as The Sixteenth Duke of Benedict in The Living Dead.

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The Episode Guide to Series 4 (1965-6) of The Avengers

Episode 22 - What the Butler Saw

Episode Rating

The Cars

Who's Killing Whom?

continuity and trivia

Cast notes