The Champions

The Champions
Created by	Dennis Spooner Monty Berman
Starring	Stuart Damon Alexandra Bastedo William Gaunt Anthony Nicholls
Theme music composer	Tony Hatch
Composer(s)	Edwin Astley Albert Elms Robert Farnon
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	30 (list of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	Monty Berman
Production company(s)	ITC Entertainment
Release
Original network	ITV
Picture format	35 mm film 4:3
Audio format	Mono
Original release	25 September 1968 – 30 April 1969

The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company. The series was broadcast in the US on NBC, starting in summer 1968.

The series features Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett as agents for a United Nations law enforcement organization called "Nemesis", based in Geneva. Barrett is a code breaker, Stirling a pilot, and Macready a recently widowed scientist and doctor.

During their first mission as a team, their plane crashes in the Himalayas. They are rescued by an advanced civilization living secretly in the mountains of Tibet, who save their lives, granting them perfected human abilities, including powers to communicate with one another over distances by ESP (telepathy), to foresee events (precognition), enhanced five senses and intellect and physical abilities to the fullest extent of human capabilities.

Many stories feature unusual villains, such as fascist regimes from unspecified South American countries, Nazis (a common theme of ITC 1960s and '70s TV, in part due to both the domestic audience and writers having been the war generation) or the Chinese. The villains' schemes often threaten world peace – Nemesis's brief is international, so the agents deal with threats transcending national interests. The main characters have to learn the use of their new powers as they go along, keeping what they discover secret from friends and foe alike. Each episode begins with an advert, followed by the title/theme song. Immediately following that is a post-title sequence vignette in which one of The Champions demonstrates exceptional mental or physical abilities, often astonishing or humiliating others. In one example Stirling participates in a sharpshooting contest. Stirling hears the ticking of his girlfriend's lost wristwatch in a large field and finds it. In another, Macready's car is blocked in, two laughing passing drunks try to lift it out but she goes round to the other side and pulls it out of the parking space one-handed. Paradoxically, the narration during these often public demonstrations usually mentions the need to keep the powers a secret.

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Wikipedia