The Avengers (TV Series) The Grandeur That Was Rome (1963) User Reviews

Will Rome rise again?

[Tweekums · 7/10 · 22 May 2017]

This episode sees Steed and Mrs Gale investigating the possible links between a grain supplier and a series of outbreaks of crop failures and other farming related health scares. We know from early on that the company's secretive owner, Sir Bruno Lucer, is involved in a deliberate plot that will ultimately involve the poisoning of the water supply to kill millions. He and his 'World Empire Party' believe they will be able to control the world that remains and create a new Roman Empire… with Bruno as its Caesar. To do this they must first test the vaccine they have developed to protect themselves… the person they choose to test it on is none other than Cathy Gale. The test is to take place during a bacchanalian orgy that will also feature Bruno's coronation… and a plot by his friend Brutus to assassinate him.

This episode shows how the series is starting to move away from traditional espionage plots to more fantastical schemes with megalomaniacs and over the top plans for national or world domination. The story is pretty silly but still fun enough. The villains are better early on when it appears that their Roman names are just code names rather than a suggestion that their leader really does want to see a new empire based on Imperial Rome. As the end nears and they don Roman costume it gets a bit too silly. The poisoning plot is interesting and the episode touches on some environmental concerns such as the use of hormones and pesticides that kill birds. The conclusion is a bit messy as we don't really see the plot fully thwarted, just the death of Bruno. The cast does a decent job. Overall I thought this episode was entertaining enough but a bit too silly without the more surreal elements that made later episodes such fun.

Caesar and The Black Plague

[profh-1 · 7/10 · 7 March 2023]

A megalomaniacal industrialist who owns a chemical company that manufactures pesticides and other things used in farming, teams up with a radical right-wing "World Empire Party", scheming to create a world-wide panic that will allow them to seize power around the globe. Steed & Cathy are investigating the possible source of crop failures and soil poisoning. Inevitably, the two sides clash.

This struck me as a thematic variation on season 2's "The Mauritius Penny", with would-be Romans replacing neo-Nazis and the goal of taking over England expanded to the entire world.

Steed continues to put on an air of "dandification" with a bow tie and glasses, making it quite a shock when he tackles a brutish security guard who had NO IDEA who he was up against! Similarly, when I suddenly see Cathy putting on her leather outfit, I know a fight scene is not far down the road.

Rex Edwards had a relatively short IMDB resume, and this was his only AVENGERS episode, but he really turned in something amazing here.

The only guest-actor I was really familiar with was Hugh Burden, who played industrialist "Bruno Luca", obsessed with money, power, collecting art treasures, and reviving The Roman Empire (they always go one step too far, don't they?). I've seen him in FUNERAL IN BERLIN, THE BEST HOUSE IN LONDON, BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB, ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING (I bet he wished that was missing from his resume), but mostly remember him for Jon Pertwee's opening DOCTOR WHO story, "Spearhead From Space", where he played a character who was just downright creepy.

A hilarious moment in the episode for me was when Steed got into a fight in a cell with a sword-wielding baddie, got cornered... and then the next time we saw Steed, he was on the loose, having clearly won the fight without ever letting the audience see how he did it! (I guess they were running short on time, and decided it wasn't needed.)

More drama involved Bruno's girlfriend Octavia, who says she "made" Bruno what he is, scheming with Bruno's right-hand man to bump Bruno off once he's not needed anymore. There's also the "public relations" man whose behavior is so devious, we don't find out until right near the end whose side he's really on. The ending is outragious, as the main villain is dispatched not by the heroes, but by his partner (a twist I once did in one of my own stories back in the 70s), and we have to assume the entire scheme was wrapped up afterwards, off-camera.

Said scheme, involving biological warfare, had already been used by Ian Fleming in his novel "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", released in April 1963. This episode was recorded in July 1963 and broadcast in November 1963. THE AVENGERS version certainly expanded the goals of the villain, as in Fleming's book, "all" the bad guy had in mind was blackmailing various governments into granting him AMNESTY for past crimes so he could retire in peace. I've never understood why critics of the 1969 movie have so often dismissed the scheme as "absurd", but perhaps coming 6 years after the AVENGERS tv episode, it already seemed "small" and redundant?

The Fair to Middle Rome

[create · 6/10 · 26 February 2015]

Update: In The Grandeur That Was Rome, Steed & Dr. Gale investigate farm soil and stock poisonings that had been occurring over the past few months. From the first scenes the audience knows those poisonings are part of a plot to overthrow the government with a new Roman Caesar rule. With the use of a new plague, the megalomaniac (with the Shakespearian name) Sir Bruno Luca, hopes to reestablish the glory of the Roman Empire.

This is another attempt to try and bring other English cultural writings into The Avengers' fold - in this case William Shakespeare. This "diversified tele-writing" was mostly done in the third seasons, even though it was Sydney Newman that asked for these types of episodes before he left at the end of the second season. One tried reimagining the Jackobyte/British conflict in Espirit De Corps. And they had some modern Robin Hoods in The Golden Fleece.

The Grandeur That Was Rome was okay. The story honestly acknowledged its Shakespearian influences. They brought in Shakespearian actors John Flint and Colin Rix. (In his only The Avengers shot, Flint made a good villain/thug.) They quickly moved to the part of Julius Caesar most beloved: The backstabbing. And they kept the line stealing of the play to a minimum.

This episode was put in the capable directing hands of Kim Mills, who was really gifted at guiding thrillers. She kept most of the scenes with Dr. Gale trying to discover the cause of the poisonings taunt and quick. Again, Cathy's dialogues were not confusing, no matter how scientific the exposition became. Also this is the first undercover role for Gale that didn't need to be explained - and wasn't. Dr. Cathy Gale's history was the reason for the role she played. If this was the first The Avengers episode that you had watched, you would have wondered what she did. (Remember she and her husband ran a farm in Kenya.)

Considering Rex Edwards only wrote this episode for the program, credit really has to be given to the scripting department, John Bryce, the producer; Honor Blackman and possibly Richard Bates, the story editor. These guys really knew how to keep the science in sci-fi understandable, and not over your head.

There was fun using sexual trechery to advance the storyline. But overall the story wasn't strong. It was witten as a parallel storyline (Uggh.), so it sometimes got boring that main characters didn't meet until the third act. And then they rushed to an end that wasn't good. Face it, at the end of the story do you feel the plague has been contained? A constant throughout the Gale and Peel years was the quick ending, but a certainty that the problem had been resolved. I felt that any of those unnamed henchmen had the right psychosis to go and release Pandora's Box.

Brilliant episode!!!

[bobforapples-40146 · 10/10 · 9 August 2023]

Tons of storyline. Somebody is poisoning the crops of the Mediterranean making even the pigs that eat the posionous crops walk backwards. It is up to Steed and Mrs. Gale to find the culprit before agricultural conditions get way worse. The guilty party is a rich industrialist who is also a Roman era fanatic. He wants to achieve world domination and do it in the style of Ancient Rome.

The episode also boasts great sets unlike some Avengers eps ( see my other reviews). The only drawback to this ep is very beautiful Honor Blackman never got a chance to dress in Roman ladies clothes with a Roman hairstyle. A look she indeed would have been a natural for.

Fall of the Roman Empire

[kevinolzak · 5/10 · 24 January 2011]

"The Grandeur That Was Rome" was an early indication of the change in direction from ordinary espionage tales to larger-than-life villainy, or "diabolical masterminds." Sir Bruno Lucer (Hugh Burden) is an admirer of ancient Rome, who thinks himself capable of being a modern day Caesar, and heads up a small band of radicals hoping to rule the world using a new form of bubonic plague. The Avengers discover that Sir Bruno's manufacturers of pesticides and insecticides are responsible for food grains infecting livestock around the world, marking the meddlesome Cathy Gale as the perfect guinea pig to test their plague antidote. Lovely Colette Wilde is best remembered as the first beauty victimized by Anton Diffring's obsessive plastic surgeon in 1960's "Circus of Horrors," also appearing in "House of Mystery" (1960) and "The Day of the Triffids" (1962). Previously seen in "A Chorus of Frogs," she easily stands out as the bewitching Octavia, supported by Ian Shand (previously seen in "Traitor in Zebra"), Raymond Adamson (previously seen in "The Decapod"), and Kenneth Keeling (previously seen in Mr Teddy Bear).