Review: The Champions, The Complete Series
- Article 5 of 7
- Action TV, September 2006
They don't make them like The Champions any more. A classic ITC show from the 60s, it featured three agents of the international 'Nemesis' organisation, travelling around the world fighting dastardly evil-doers.
What lifted The Champions out of the ordinary and made it just so fun to watch was its premise.
Our three heroes' plane crash-lands in Tibet during the first episode, The Beginning. On the point of death, they get rescued by a lost civilisation, which saves their lives. But their rescuers do more. They 'enhance' them to the limit of human abilities. They make them as smart as Einstein, as strong as Olympic champions, able to hear the slightest sound, see in the dark and more; they even get a form of shared ESP.
The Champions' somewhat silly sounding premise did at least have a good rationale behind it. Watch any TV show fight scene and often you'll come away with the impression that all you have to do is punch someone once and they'll fall over unconscious. In the real world, that doesn't happen.
Wrestling with this thorny problem, which beset shows of the time including ITC's own The Saint, the producers eventually came to the conclusion that you'd pretty much have to be super-human to knock someone out with a single punch. Couple that with a dimly recalled memory of the myth of Shangri-La and the then spy show trend (The Avengers, The Man from UNCLE, I, Spy and others were around at the time) and you have the premise of The Champions.
Apart from the superhuman theme itself, the main draw of The Champions is the interaction between the characters: Craig Stirling (Stuart Damon), Sharron Macready (Alexandra Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (William Gaunt from 80s sitcom No Place Like Home), a “two guys and a girl” combination of leads that the show pioneered and which still exists in action shows to this day.
Stirling is an easy-going but intense US pilot, while Barrett is a slightly more staid character with a sardonic sense of humour. New girl Macready, still traumatised by the death of her husband, is cooler, but is able to tease as well as she is teased by her two 'surrogate brothers'. A neophyte agent when the show begins, her character grows during the show's run to become as steely-eyed and as competent as the others. Together, they try to do their jobs without alerting their salty sea-dog of a boss Tremayne (Anthony Nicholls) to their new powers.
Unlike similarly themed shows, 'The Champions' don't actually know what powers they have once they leave Tibet. Each time a new one is revealed, they're as astonished as anyone - or embarrassed, as when they suddenly start getting extrasensory glimpses of one of their compatriots having sex, for instance. Many of the show's opening introductions depict them exploring just what they can do, whether it's through doing judo blindfolded or trying to beat the odds in a casino using their photographic memories and rapid calculations.
There are plenty of fun moments, since the show didn't take itself too seriously, some relatively good stunt work, and sets that were lavish by the standards of the time.
It's not all great. The acting has a tendency towards the wooden, although Gaunt is always good. Many of the scripts are crime tales more or less lifted wholesale from other shows, with the occasional super-power moment added to make the plot more 'Championsy'. There's also far too great a reliance on submarines, hidden Nazis and trips to snowy wastes, all lovingly interspersed with stock footage from the ITC film library.
Notable episodes, however, include:
- Episode 4: The Experiment: someone tries to create his own set of 'Champions', and Sharron has to infiltrate their ranks, even though it's an obvious trap for her. As a slight twist, the villain of the piece is also the narrator of all the other episodes.
- Episode 5: Happening: Barrett is trapped in 'the Outback' with amnesia. He has to remember who he is while learning about his powers again so he can foil a Russian plot. I've added quotes to the Outback, because it's not like any version of Australia you'd actually recognise.
- Episode 18: The Interrogation: Stirling is abducted and interrogated by Tremayne, who is suspicious of his high success rate. Macready and Barrett have to help him, but without revealing their own abilities.
- Episode 30: Autokill: Barrett is abducted and brainwashed into trying to kill Stirling. Notable for its rather brutal fight scenes and a ridiculous amount of blood being spilled.
Along with Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), The Champions is one of the most distinctive and fondly regarded of the ITC shows. Although quality was variable, it was always worth watching and frequently exceeded expectations. Fun, thrilling and unique, it's one to watch as soon as you can.
Extras
Compared to previous releases of The Champions and indeed other older TV series, this special edition release is absolutely full of extras:
- We Were The Champions, a documentary on the making of The Champions, featuring contributions from William Gaunt, Alexandra Bastedo, Stuart Damon, Johnny Goodman, Malcolm Christopher, Ken Baker, Cyril Frankel and Brian Clemens.
- An audio commentary on The Beginning featuring Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt.
- An audio commentary on Autokill featuring Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt.
- A second audio commentary on Autokill featuring Malcolm Christopher, Ken Baker and Roy Ward Baker.
- A previously unseen extended version of The Beginning featuring specially shot bookend sequences.
- Artistes test footage.
- Nearly 30 minutes of incidental music by Edwin Astley, Robert Farnon and Albert Elms, prepared as a musical suite and accompanied by an image gallery including many behind the scenes stills.
- The Legend of the Champions, a feature-length compilation of The Beginning and The Interrogation made by ITC for the overseas market in the early 1980s.
- A gallery of the 19 remaining trailers for The Champions, with both US and UK soundtracks, specially transferred from the original film elements for use in this set.
- A gallery of various generic trailers of differing lengths which have been transferred from the original film elements for use in this set.
- Original 'Channel 9' promos.
- A merchandise image gallery, including all the fronts and backs of the trading cards.
- A PDF of The Champions Joe 90 Top Secret comic.
- Reconstructed ad captions.
- A variant title sequence featuring the unused title music composed by Robert Farnon.
- A booklet featuring an essay on the making of The Champions, by Mike Richardson.
We Were The Champions is clearly the main attraction, since it unites the original cast after nearly 40 years. The documentary is surprisingly good, although perhaps more time could have been spent with The Champions together discussing the series, rather than their thoughts on meeting up with their former co-stars. It also commits the sacrilegious crime of spelling Sharron Macready's name wrong. It's a little short to really detail the making of the series fully - something for which Mike Richardson's booklet is better suited - so lacks true depth. Like the other extras on the DVDs, it also shows a slight obsession with the episode Autokill, undoubtedly one of the show's finest, but there are others that are worth equal attention, too. All the same, it's still a remarkable achievement to get so many of the original production team and the stars themselves together.
Similarly, the audio commentaries aren't really very informative, although they have their moments. The commentaries by Damon, Bastedo and Gaunt on The Beginning and Autokill give more information on their work than We Were The Champions does, although when they turn their attentions to the episodes themselves, they tend to mock them rather than give anecdotes about the filming. Notably, Gaunt reveals himself to be one of the most politically incorrect human beings alive, and to have an often Champions-like memory for names, while Damon spots the obvious parallels between their commentary style and Mystery Science Theater 3000's. Nevertheless, the chemistry between the cast even now is clear.
The commentary by the production team on Autokill is at least informative about the industry at the time, although again, it's short on actual detail about the episode being watched. Quite why Autokill deserves two commentaries, when even The Beginning only deserves one is something best asked of Network.
The alternative version of The Beginning is interesting to watch, since it features The Champions recording an explanation for Tremayne of how they received their powers. In some ways, it's a better, more tantalising set-up for the show than the official version and clearly shows that the production team planned from the outset that Sharron would develop into a stronger character: her flinty qualities in the bookends are a marked contrast to her more nervous, neophyte qualities in the episode-proper.
The Legend of the Champions is a curiosity, since unlike similar compilation films of the early 80s, such as Invasion: UFO which was based on Gerry Anderson's UFO, it actually changes the plots of the episodes used. In this case, The Interrogation forms the bulk of the script, with flashbacks to The Beginning interspersed; however, the 'Retford Case' referred to in The Interrogation becomes the events of The Beginning, with Julius Retford revealed as one of the Chinese scientists. It requires a big change in mindset for anyone familiar with the episodes and isn't totally coherent as a plot, but it works reasonably well as a standalone movie.
Most of the other extras are good for completists, although probably require only a single viewing each. Probably the most intriguing is the alternative title sequence, featuring a Bonanza-esque theme by Robert Farnon, which did at least get reused in several episodes as incidental music. It's spectacularly ill-judged in the context of the series, although is still a good tune in and of itself.
All in all though, a fine collection of extras that put most other similar DVD sets to shame.