By Alain Carraze, Jean-Luc Putheaud, Alex J. Geairns. 1998, Bay Books.

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I saw this book reviewed somewhere as "the book that wants to be a video compilation," and nothing I could dream up in my twisted little mind could describe it better. The book has a tremendous look to it, all glossy and full of photos both color and black and white, many of them never before published. And hell, most of the pictures are of Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman, and Linda Thornson. Frankly, this make the visual accomplishments of this book less impressive. I mean, a blind monkey could put together a book full of photos of Diana Rigg, Honor Blackman, and Linda Thornson and have something worth looking at. And who know what an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of photos could pull off?

The problem that soon emerges, however, is that this is a book. Not a photo book, but a book with lots of photos accompanied by lots of words. Unfortunately, most of the words are incredibly uninteresting. Given that The Avengers was one of the most bizarre, quirky, and delightfully twisted television series ever to make it onto the small screen, you'd think that any text purporting to be a definitive companion to such an outlandish series would at least try to have as much fun with the source material as the source material had with itself. After all, The Avengers was about "solving crime with a wink." It was intentionally weird and often tongue-in-cheek. It relished taking everything over-the-top, and it's not served well by dreadfully dull commentary, which is about all this book has to offer.

We start off promisingly, with a chapter of interviews. Among other, Diana Rigg, Linda Thornson, and Patrick MacNee are interviewed, but the interviews turn out to ask only the most superficial questions, things just about everyone who followed the show already knew. Rehashing material for the new fans is a must, but collecting together some new insight is for old fans is also helpful. Unfortunately, these interviews are puff pieces that shed very little light on the making of the series and the people behind it.

The bulk of the book is comprised of an episode guide which offers very little you couldn't get for free online. Most of the episode synopses sound like they were cribbed from the back of a video box or promo teaser. Some of them are only a couple lines long, giving the impression that the authors hadn't even seen much of the series but wanted to cash in quick on the resurgence of interest in the show. Again, everything is totally devoid of wit and insight, two things that The Avengers had in spades and should have been reflected in books about the series.

Next up we get some incredibly meaty looking examinations of particular episodes, many of which seem chosen at random (why would you not to an in-depth look at the episodes in which Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg departed the series?). However, quantity and quality remain worlds apart, and for all their verbosity, these selections are nothing more than painfully drawn-out recounts of the plot. And I mean painfully drawn-out, as in one step away from doing things like "Emma Peel takes eleven steps forward, looks to her right, then continues on for seven more steps. During this period, she breathes approximately fifteen times."

Man, if you are going to dwell on every teeny tiny detail, you should mix in some comedy or interpretation, some sort of explanation for why what's going on is important, why this episode was chosen to be scrutinized. Ken Begg of Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension loves to examine bad films in great detail. That involves recounting a lot of the plot, but he also remembers to slip in jokes, critical comments, and interesting insights. This book contains none of those, and could use a good lesson from Ken on how to write incredibly long material and still remain highly entertaining from beginning to end. Instead we get the literary equivalent of sitting on the toilet counting the number of little hexagonal tiles on the floor. Sure, it's difficult to do. Sure it's pain-staking and takes a lot of effort, but what the hell is the point? It doesn't make you trip to the john any more enjoyable. These long-winded, completely dry synopses add nothing to watching the episodes, offer nothing other than a translation onto paper of what you would be seeing if you were watching the show instead of wasting time reading the synopsis.

The final chapters fair better because they're really nothing more than collections of photos, which is probably what this book should have been in the first place. One thing that did strike me is how similar the entire structure of the book is to the superior Complete Avengers, which also had short chapters dedicated to photos of the various fancy cars and clothes of the series. Coincidence, I suppose, but still not above suspicion.

This book should have been a slickly laid out collection of photos and captions with minimal writing. Collecting rare and interesting photos is something the creators of this book do well, but filling up the pages with words is something they should reconsider. Had this been like one of those fancy-pants art books where some lazy hack goes through and gets pictures of lots of stuff other people have done, then publishes it as an exploration of cutting edge digital design, they would have been set, and I would not have been at all disappointed. Unfortunately for us all, they tried to write, and that's one thing they show very little flair for. Granted, nothing is awful, but it is dry, uninspired, and totally devoid of any sense of insight into or adoration for the show. Unlike the series it covers, this book attempts to do nothing different, takes no risk, and has to literary style.

If you can manage to read the entire thing, which is not unlike eating five loaves of dry white toast without anything to drink, you won't learn much about the wonderful show other than the fact that the shoots were difficult, Diana Rigg was cool, and various things happened in each episode. Analysis? Not here. Exploration of themes and symbolism? Forget it. For a show that could have volumes written about it, what we get here is pretty tame, meager, uninteresting stuff.

All those negative comments made, I still recommend the book solely for the pages and pages of wonderful photos. They alone make this a valuable collector's item worth picking up next time you have some spare cash lying about the place. It's too bad the prose fails utterly to live up to the slickness of the photos, the layout, and the show. Better luck next time.

Labels: Film Studies