The Avengers International Fan Forum

denis rigg

Recently, I pondered on the interesting topic:

We all know that John Bryce produced three episodes of Tara King, when he left, Clemens and Fennell back.

An interesting reflection to the dates of events.

According 'Daily Sketch', John Bryce "walked out" series on early December 1967 (1 or 2 December, most likely 1 December), so he already not continued as the producer of the episode The Great Great Britain Crime since this point.
Accordingly memories of Don Sharp (from the book "Avengers and Me"):
"During the prodiction of 'A Murderous Connection', John Bryce's name was deleted from casting advice notes and Brian Clemens name was added to distribution list".
Come to the conclusion, that although Bryce actually was not the producer, when the episode The Curious Case of the Countless Clues went into production, he still was listed in some papers of the studio on this appointment, that is formally he still remained as a producer.
In this way, if Clemens and Fennell returned to Studio on 6 December 1967, we get in the end, that in period 2/3 - 5 December 1967, The Avengers were seems without "main producer" at all.
Moreover, thanks to book of Michael Richardson, "Bowler Hats and Kinky Boots", we can make an interesting study in details:

Bryce no produced the episode The Great Great Britain Crime in final three days! On final day, Clemens and Fennell already were on place. Smile

Frankly, it would be interesting to know the date when John Bryce exactly left the Avengers.
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Denis

anti-clockwise · Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 12:42 pm Post subject:

Yes I wish we could have been there to know but I am afraid that is one of those mysteries we probably will never know. It is striking that Bryce left TA sort of quietly and never really explained anything about the sudden change. Is that correct Denis? If you could not find the information ( and you can find just about anything), then I think they did not really want the us to know what occurred. But it does make us wonder, even the more.
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denis rigg · Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 11:20 pm Post subject:

Darren · Site Admin Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Posts: 1718 Location: UK

I do think that although they botched the change in approach, it's difficult to see how the show would have gone within some sort of intervention.

But then having said that maybe it would have happened organically. The later season 5B episode show the series was starting to get less frivolous and move into a darker more emotive area. Murdersville is worlds away from Escape in Time - we see Emma get visibly upset! Maybe Clemens and Fennell would have naturally gone for a straighter/darker approach to season 6 is they'd just been allowed to continue without interference.

I wonder how the production crew organisation would have worked. Season 6 as it is, brought in new writers. Philip Levene possibly had a falling out with Clemens over the direction of the show - without all the shenanigans of the switching teams, would there have been no falling out and would Clemens and Levene continued to write the bulk of the episodes.

Of course there would have been no Tara King, that would assume Clemens wouldn't have invented Mother so we would have been less likely to see 'The Organisation'.

I do love 'What ifs..'