[2] A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production,[2] the series picks up the adventures of John Steed (again played by Patrick Macnee) as he and his team of "Avengers" fight evil plots and world domination.

The verbal interplay between Gambit and Purdey, with her humorously keeping his romantic advances at bay, harks back to the Steed/Cathy Gale era of The Avengers.

One reason for the addition of Gambit was the question of whether Macnee, aged 53 when the series began production, could handle the potential stuntwork and action scenes.

The first series featured several episodes using science fiction themes similar to those of the classic "Emma Peel" Avengers era.

"), mind transfer ("Three-Handed Game") and even a giant rat ("Gnaws", a title patterned after the hit movie Jaws).

An attempt to get Diana Rigg to appear as Emma Peel in the new series was unsuccessful, although old footage of her on the phone from two 1960s episodes of The Avengers ("The Winged Avenger" and "The Hidden Tiger") were used to allow the character to make a cameo appearance in the episode "K Is For Kill Part One: The Tiger Awakes": Sue Lloyd provided the voice of Mrs Peel for these sequences.

"Obsession" features two of the stars of the Brian Clemens/Albert Fennell British crime-fighting action series The Professionals: Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins.

Two series totalling 26 episodes were produced, which were aired on CBS in the United States, CTV in Canada, ITV in Britain, RTÉ in Ireland, ABC in Australia, TF1 in France, TVE1 in Spain and in syndication elsewhere.

Brian Clemens was by this time heavily committed to working on The Professionals for LWT, and control of the series passed to a largely local crew.

Subsequently, however, strong sales to many countries—notably CBS in the United States—saw two attempts to revive the show (in 1979 and 1980), though co-financing arrangements proved impossible to agree upon.

Entitled Escapade, the pilot episode was broadcast on CBS in 1978, and starred Granville Van Dusen and Morgan Fairchild as Joshua and Suzy – Gambit and Purdey equivalents.

At the time, French company Canal Plus held transmission prints for the series, but upon delivery the BBC considered that those for several early episodes were not of "broadcast quality".

All prints of the final four episodes of series 2 begin with a sting of the theme tune over a cue card, which reads The New Avengers in Canada.