[citation needed] Cast: Unless noted in the table below, all episodes in the first series feature Ian Hendry (as Dr. David Keel) and Patrick Macnee (as John Steed).
When The Avengers eventually returned, Macnee had become the show's lead, accompanied by a range of male and (predominantly) female co-stars.
At the end of the third series, Honor Blackman left The Avengers to star in the James Bond movie Goldfinger.
With an eye toward getting the series shown on US television, the show was now shot using 35mm film instead of being videotaped, leading to an increase in picture quality.
This brought The Avengers in line with other contemporary ITV series such as Danger Man (airing in the US as Secret Agent) and The Saint.
Actress Elizabeth Shepherd was originally cast as Emma Peel; one complete episode, "The Town of No Return", was filmed.
Partway through filming of the second episode, "The Murder Market", the producers closed down production in order to recast the part.
"The Strange Case of the Missing Corpse" was filmed in colour on the set of "Honey for the Prince" and was, as Brian Clemens originally wrote it, intended to be tagged on to the end of the final b/w episode transmitted in America to advertise the upcoming colour episodes (though the b/w sequence titled "Preamble for USA", written by Brian Clemens to introduce the item, which was to have featured Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg explaining/introducing this short colour test film, is either lost or was never filmed).
There is a myth that it was to have originally been a twenty-minute mini-episode, but the version presently available on video is three minutes long and doesn't appear to be missing any substantial narrative content.
Cast: This series featured Patrick Macnee (as John Steed) and Diana Rigg (as Emma Peel).
The remaining 8 episodes were broadcast in the UK as a continuation of the fifth series from September to November 1967, but in the US they were delayed until January 1968 where they formed the first half of a new season.
For the remainder of "Killer", Patrick Macnee as John Steed is paired with Jennifer Croxton as Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney.
The standard title sequences, the 'field/suits of armour' opening and 'playing card' ending, were filmed by Robert Fuest, originally for the first US transmission of the final 26 episodes, which made up the fourth series on the ABC network in America.
[citation needed] By the time the sixth series came to be broadcast in the UK, ABC Weekend TV had ceased to exist: it had merged with Rediffusion London to become Thames Television.