User Reviews

Series Three of 'The Avengers' gets underway at a treason trial at the Old Bailey; Cathy is convinced that the accused is guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt but a well briefed defence barrister gets the accused acquitted. She is rather surprised afterwards when she sees the man celebrating his freedom with Steed; and referring to him as 'Johnno' the nickname of the mysterious foreign agent the man had allegedly been working with. Somewhat outraged she confronts Steed and he threatens her. The next day Steed goes to see the Lakin Brothers, the two defence solicitors who had helped his friend go free. He has a strange request… he wants them to get him off a murder charge, a murder he has yet to commit; the murder of Cathy Gale!

This was a fine opening to the third series; the story is intriguing from the start. While I'm sure nobody will believe that Steed is really a traitor it is far from obvious where the story will be going; I certainly assumed he was working to unmask who was really behind the traitor rather than trying to expose a couple of old solicitors… at least till he approached them for help getting away with murder. The way the 'murder' is set up is enjoyable to watch and once he has 'killed' Cathy it was fun to see how Steed was going to get away with it. The cast does a fine job; it was fun watching Patrick Macnee play a 'bad' Steed and John Laurie and Harold Scott were impressive as Jasper and Miles Lakin. Overall this was a high quality episode which featured a solid central story with just the right amount of humour.

A pair of crooked solicitors specialize in preparing absolutely air-tight "briefs" for barristers to defend obviously-guilty clients in court. They do this by also preparing "briefs" for their clients to carry out crimes before-the-fact, so the defense is planned out before the crimes are even committed! Steed & Cathy go "undercover" IN PLAIN SIGHT as she accuses him of being a foreign agent and he hires the lawyers to arrange her murder.

One of my favorite writers ever, Brian Clemens, returns to the show with his first of many, many terrific scripts. In addition to the usual "technical and talky" stuff (in this case, all the "legal" details), the plot itself is more complex and twisted than usual, making this episode function on several levels at the same time. It almost starts out in "Twilight Zone" territory, as you wonder, WHAT's going on here? You KNOW Steed can't be a baddie, but it's not until halfway in that you begin to find out where it's going, and even then you're still left hanging on the edge of your seat wondering HOW it's going to get there.

John Laurie steals the episode as one of the 2 brothers who've decided to take their extensive knowledge of legal history and turn it to their advantage in the most crooked way imaginable. He really goes off the deep end when, in the 3rd act, Cathy (posing as someone else) shows up with an idea to commit fraud-- but, she wants her (non-existent) partners charged with the proposed crime. One can see serious monomania exploding in Laurie's eyes as he envisions some of the things he and his brother could do with the legal system. "Why didn't I think of this before?" (He would have made a great "Doctor" on DOCTOR WHO.)

OF COURSE, whenever any character in one of these stories goes undercover, it always gets blown eventually, and in this case Cathy is recognized despite a false name and a brunette wig (which she looked really good in). That's the problem when Steed's "team" is so small in number, and he's forced to have a woman supposedly "dead" putting a con on the baddies.

It struck me that "Brief For Murder" was almost a variation on "Mr. Teddy Bear" in having one of our heroes involved in the murder of the other one. I can really see why this was used as the 3rd season opener. While the show was still VERY talky, studio-bound and shot on video, the writing really brought it up to a whole new level almost never seen before. It's no wonder that Brian Clemens became one of the show's producers the following season.

The 2010 Region 2 Studio Canal DVD had excellent picture, but, unfortunately, REALLY rough sound, making it difficult for me to make out maybe a third of the dialogue. I can't remember if my earlier 90s videotape recorded off A&E had this problem.