The Avengers International Fan Forum

darren · Posted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:21 pm Post subject: 3.15 - The Gilded Cage

Written by Roger Marshall

Directed by Bill Bain

Production completed: 25 October 1963

Rhonda · Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 3:18 am Post subject:

6 for me. A police story like in the earlier ones but with a few good moments.
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Ron
Last Watched : Stop Me If You've Heard This One, But There Were These Two Fellers...

cyberrich · Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:43 am Post subject:

Very slick with no noticeable mistakes, which is unusual for a 'live' episode. Honor gives a stellar performance here. A terrific script, and one of the better Cathy episodes that predates her future experience with gold bullion by over 6 months. Like all UK viewers my age, this was the very first Cathy episode I saw when channel 4 showed it in 1992, the first time since 1964 that Cathy Gale had been on UK TV. A solid 9 out of 10 Exclamation

Frankymole · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 4:03 pm Post subject:

So Cathy Gale lived at 14, Primrose Hill, and Tara King lived at 9 Primrose Hill, (which is in real life no 19 Chalcot Crescent). Just a few doors apart.
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"

Frankymole · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 4:06 pm Post subject:

Good Roger Marshall script with a well-depicted criminal gang, all with their own personalities (we see no other characters but the criminals and the two Avengers, you can't count the faceless gold-guards). Cathy is back in Holloway again (see Intercrime). The to's and fro's between the villains are well-played.

Cathy's "post trial" episode is genuinely disorienting, preceding the Prisoner and its Thomas M. Disch novel by some years.

8/10.
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"

Frankymole · Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2021 4:13 pm Post subject:

Strange that the ersatz prison wardress claimed "they topped her last week" when the last woman to be executed in Britain was Ruth Ellis in 1955. Were they trying to give Cathy a clue that this wasn't real?
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"

Allard · Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2021 11:35 am Post subject:

From memory: the death penalty was abandoned in the UK in the (late?) sixties and not made illegal until the nineties.

Frankymole · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:41 am Post subject:

True for two very limited crimes (e.g. treason, and piracy with violence) but it is interesting how its use was really ramped down in the 1950s, especially after the Homicide Act 1957. The sudden execution of a woman after over 8 years would've been so noteworthy as to render their pretence incredible.
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"

mousemeat · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 5:08 am Post subject:

Frankymole · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:22 pm Post subject:

The studies at the time concluded there was no proof it deterred crime (see the articles). The miscarriages of justice, that they'd been covering up (especially Christie's murders and necrophiliacism - immortalised in many films and TV series since - being blamed on a man with mental incapacities who got killed, after his wife was raped and killed his daughter murdered, the ultimate insult) turned us against it.
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"

mousemeat · Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2021 11:57 pm Post subject:

Frankymole · Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:05 am Post subject:

I was reading up about Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's public executioner who executed John Christie (of 10 Rillington Place infamy), along with around 200 other people, very interesting man. I think there's a Patrick McGoohan film sort-of based on him, though maybe I'm mixing it up with something else, where the hangman goes on a drunken night out and loses the rope and has to search for it!
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Last watched: "The Gilded Cage"