The Avengers

Series 3, 1963-4

Episode Guide

Clicking the randomly-selected images above takes you directly to the episodes pictured.

Episodes are listed in the order of production. You may resort the table by clicking on the headings.
Legend for this table - all dates are in dd/mm/yy format

Legend and cast lists

• The television channels are listed with their acronym or short name, hovering over them will give you the full name. On small screens, these are automatically expanded as the table is redrawn.
• The cast and crew lists are as complete as possible, and readers should note that they are often more informative than the originally broadcast credits; that is, I have included complete character names, if known, in place of a single name - the addition in italics - (e.g. “Esther Jones” instead of “Esther”); and uncredited characters are also listed. Some of these have been identified by a combination of script listings, call sheets, research and good luck; if you see a mistake or can identify someone, let us know.

Media and archive status

All episodes have been recovered from private collections and film libraries and are now available to the public on DVD or digital download.

Episodes are listed in the order of production (and, coincidentally, the order of the Contender and Optimum DVDs); it seems strange that some episodes were broadcast within a week of filming finishing, while others were in limbo for months. “Lobster Quadrille” apparently was broadcast the day after filming finished, while “Concerto” gathered dust on the shelf for 48 weeks.

The earlier A&E DVDs were released in broadcast order.

Many of the scripts and promotional photos for the episodes are available as extras on recent DVD sets.

Production dates are from Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots (Mike Richardson, Telos Publishing 2014, First paperback edition) and The Avengers Declassified; they are unverified by me, but all the sources seem to agree on them.

Broadcasting

• Teledu Cymru (WWN) only showed series 2 and series 3, having started broadcasting on 14 September 1962, and going out of business on 26 January 1964.
• In the North, ABC North ran weekends and Granada ran weekdays and in the Midlands there was the same arrangement between ABC Midlands and ATV Midlands.
• In London, this was inverted, with ATV doing weekends and Rediffusion running weekday schedules. Confused yet?
• The Medicine Men was not shown by Grampian, probably because of their switching the show from Sunday night to Saturdays, to come into line with other regions, around the end of November 1963.

The Avengers Down-under

In Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne, 24 episodes of series 2 were screened, immediately followed by 11 out of the first 13 episodes of Series 3, making a first Australian “series” of 35 episodes (although initially announced as being 39 episodes, but the censors and worried programme controllers hadn’t seen the episodes yet then!)
The episodes from series 2 that were not broadcast were Warlock and Man in the Mirror while the episodes from the first half of series 3 that were not broadcast were Man with Two Shadows and Don’t Look Behind You.

When the remainder of series 3 was shown in Australia, it was promoted as a “second series” of twelve episodes in Sydney and Canberra (as The Little Wonders was not shown). Melbourne, being a year behind other regions, screened only seven of the last thirteen so that they could go straight into showing series 4 without a break. This resulted in a second series of thirty-two episodes in Melbourne as Too Many Christmas Trees was held back to be a Christmas special.

The Australian broadcast dates are all confirmed but there are four episodes that were not explicitly named in the listing in Canberra and Sydney. From my notes, I found this information in the Sydney Daily Telegraph but I do not currently have access to these listings to verify.

The Little Wonders appears to have never been broadcast in Australia. The television censorship board in Australia was remarkably harsh and would have been unlikely to approve a show which had criminals masquerading as clergymen.

No episodes of series 2 or series 3 were ever repeated in Australia.