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"Genuine eccentrics are a dying breed. Could be amusing," notes a character in "Build a Better Mousetrap," one of the six rarely seen black-and-white episodes in this three-volume boxed set from the third season of The Avengers. Genuine eccentrics and diabolical madmen plotting to plunge the world into chaos were The Avengers' stock in trade. Nobody on TV did it better. As with the first set, which contains volumes 1 to 3, what makes this set a must for collectors is that these episodes, virtually unseen in the United States, feature Honor Blackman as Mrs. Cathy Gale, who preceded Mrs. Emma Peel as the leather-clad partner to Patrick Macnee's urbane, umbrella-toting gentleman spy John Steed. Blackman left the series after two seasons to star as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. In "Lobster Quadrille," which concludes this set as well as the Gale era, Steed remarks that he expects the departing Gale to be "pussy-footing along sun-soaked shores." Volume 4 contains two topnotch episodes. "Mousetrap" revolves around the Peck sisters, two "wicked" old ladies who seem to have put a curse on the surrounding countryside that causes all mechanical devises to stall. In "The Outside-In Man," James Maxwell steals the show as an agent presumed dead who materializes just as the man he was once assigned to assassinate arrives in Britain for arms talks. Volume 5 contains "The Charmers," which was remade in 1967 as "The Correct Way to Kill." "Concerto," in which Steed must cooperate with the Russians to prevent an assassination at a recital, is a classical gas. Even a weaker episode such as "Esprit de Corps," which opens volume 6, has its bizarre charms, as renegade Scotsmen plot a coup and plan to install Gale on the throne as Queen Anne the Second. --Donald Liebenson
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