The Town of No Return
| "The Town of No Return" | |
|---|---|
| The Avengers episode | |
Screen title.
|
|
| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 1 |
| Directed by |
Roy Ward Baker Peter Graham Scott (uncredited) |
| Written by | Brian Clemens |
| Produced by | Brian Clemens Julian Wintle |
| Featured music | Laurie Johnson |
| Production code | 4-1 |
| Original air date | 28 September 1965 |
| Guest appearance(s) | |
The Town of No Return is the first episode of the fourth series of the 1960s cult British spy-fi television series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg on her Avengers debut, and guest starring Alan MacNaughton, Patrick Newell, Terence Alexander. It was first aired on ABC on 28 September 1965. The episode was directed by Roy Ward Baker, and written and produced by Brian Clemens.
On a beach a shifty man is attending to his lobster pots when a man emerges from the tide concealed in a water tight black covering; he walks up the beach, removes the covering, and says good morning to the man and walks off.
After a bout of fencing at Mrs. Peel's flat, Steed and Mrs Peel leave on a train to visit Little Bazeley by the Sea, a village in Norfolk where agents have been reported to go missing. On the train they share a carriage with a portly gentleman, Jimmy Smallwood (played by Patrick Newell who would later play Mother), who is going to visit his brother the local blacksmith. On arrival Steed, Peel and Smallwood are shadowed by the shifty local man from the beach. At the local inn, the Inebriated Gremlin, they are served by landlord Piggy Warren, who introduces them to Mark Brandon, the school inspector, and Jill Manson, a teacher. Mrs Peel announces herself as a new teacher, assigned by the ministry to the local school. When Smallwood leaves to visit his brother the blacksmith, several strange men in boots with rifles depart through the inn and follow him. Meanwhile Steed and Mrs Peel find their rooms in a shabby state, with the shutters nailed shut. Smallwood fails to find his brother, and heads for the church, followed by the shifty local. Later the shifty local is seen hunting Smallwood across the landscape with bloodhounds. This is heard back at the village and dismissed by Piggy as "badger hunting".
The following morning Steed and Mrs Peel examine strange footprints leading out of the sea and up the beach, and find Smallwood dead and buried in the sand.
Mrs Peel visits the school and finds it and the teachers very unusual. She discovers that the school has been unused for years and a large number of adult sized Wellington boots are stored there. She visits the local church where the vicar shows her the parish records, of which several decades are missing.
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