User Reviews

This episode is not as famous The Cybernauts and nor does it have the unforgettable image of Diana Rigg wearing an outfit straight out of a Velvet Underground song in the way that A Touch of Brimstone has but it is a superior episode to both- and they were both very, very good.

Emma Peel (Rigg) learns that she has inherited a mansion from an Uncle Jack- whom she cannot even remember and decides to take a break from Steed ( Patrick McNee) developing his holiday snaps and visit her stately pile. On the way down she encounters an overgrown boy scout ( Michael Wynne) whom she drops off at the gate of her inheritance. When Mrs Peel enters the mansion she enters a surreal world of moving floors, passageways that lead to a room in the centre of which is a glass case inside which is a machine emitting a regular beam of light and a strange noise.

Once Emma begins to work out what is going on the episode things gradually begin to return to something approaching reality and the reason why she has been brought to this place - a sacked former employee seeking revenge by building a giant computer that will drive her insane as she tries to escape- is I suppose fairly banal but as so often with this show the occasional plot holes are glossed over by the sheer inventiveness and originality of the writing and the superb performances of Ms Rigg and her fellow prisoner, an escaped convict (Griffith Davies) who has already gone pretty mad. Good too is Michael Goodliffe as the now dead Keller who has arranged this, the most devilish of all hauntings.

There are some fisticuffs between Rigg and Davies but mostly this is about Mrs Peel showing her greatest asset- her intelligence. She works it out with precious little help from Steed who arrives on the scene pretty much as she is routing the machine.McNee was obviously the mainstay of the show and he does get the best line as quoted elsewhere on the shows entry here but mostly he takes a back seat and the show hardly suffers as a result.

The Avengers was at its peak in this the first of the Emma Peel series and this episode avoids some of the gimmicks and clowning that occasionally marred later shows whilst retaining the style, panache and wit that makes it alongside The Prisoner the best of the 60s Action series made by commercial television in Britain. This episode is, arguably, the pinnacle.

When Mrs Peel inherits a house in from country from her late Uncle Jack things are immediately a bit fishy; she had not heard of the man before. Nonetheless she heads off to her new property leaving Steed to develop his holiday snaps… all of which bear the image of the large key Mrs Peel had placed nearby. Steed contacts Mrs Peel's solicitor and learns she has no uncle jack. As Mrs Peel drives towards the house a man jumps in front of her car requesting a lift; as far as she is going. As she passes road junctions the signs move after she passes making it hard for anybody to follow her. Once at the house she finds something very strange; she leaves a room, walks down a corridor then finds herself back in the same room. Eventually she figures out parts of the house are moving… all part of plan by a scientist she once made redundant to get his revenge and ensure she doesn't leave the house alive.

This enjoyably instalment is very much Diana Rigg's episode as Mrs Peel is on screen for most of the time with Steed only playing a minor role. The house has an enjoyable creepiness about it leading to a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia as Mrs Peel tries to find a way out; this is increased when she finds that she isn't alone; a man is also there and he has been driven insane; endlessly repeating the nursery rhyme 'This is the House that Jack Built'. When she finds out that the house is controlled by a computer built by the antagonist I feared that she would ultimately defeat it by the clichéd method of asking it an unsolvable question… thankfully this was avoided when she took a more direct approach. Also interesting is that we learn something of Mrs Peel's past; most notable as a twenty one year old Emma Knight she inherited her father's business. Overall a really good classic 'Avengers' episode.

If I had seen this as a kid, it would have really creeped me out. Peel is told that she's inherited a house from an unknown relative. The house turns out to be an elaborate trap set by a vengeful ex employee. The episode provides very interesting background information on Peel. It was she who ran the company and very successfully, taking it over from her late father at the age of 21. I love the way Peel is presented so completely as a person, and this episode focuses almost entirely on her. She was beautiful, and that fact was never shied away from. She wore outfits that very much displayed her feminine assets. But she was also displayed as extremely capable and smart. Here she shows her ability to reason through the trap set for her, and the ingenuity to escape it. The creepiness comes from the house itself-the isolation, the elaborate machines, the creepy music. Steed arrives to rescue her, but she's already rescued herself. The respect they show for each other at the end is wonderful. Modern Hollywood would hate it.

As has been said elsewhere this is an excellent, creepy, claustrophobic episode.

It's very much concentrating on Mrs Peel - a device to allow Patrick Macnee a bit of down time apparently. I don't know how things work nowadays in TV, but I would have assumed the actors took their holidays in between seasons. However, it seems that in the 60s at any rate, they got time off during the filming! There are some early Dr Who episodes where certain characters (including the Doctor!) don't appear in an episode because they were, apparently, on holiday!

Anyway, Mrs Peel does an excellent job of rescuing herself, with Steed only turning up right at the end when it's all over. (His friend/agent Pongo, or Withers, manages to appear sinister and untrustworthy, so is not really much use to Mrs Peel)

It is only as Steed offers Emma his hand that we see from her face just how unsettled she has been by the whole episode. She's not unaffected, but Steed will just offer wordless support because he would never want her to think he thought her fragile. It's a clear display of respect and, actually, of love. Maybe not romantic love, but love all the same. Subtle, but very effective.