Champion stuff

If you don’t remember, here is a summary:

three agents of the secret organisation Nemesis are on a mission when their plane crashes and they nearly die. They are treated by a mysterious character (played by Felix Aylmer) who not only saves their lives, but gives them extra-ordinary powers. They use their new skills, which they keep secret, to thrash baddies all round the world.

The Champions were Richard Barrett, a whizz codebreaker, Craig Stirling, an American James Bond type, and Sharron Macready, with medical and science knowledge.

Their superpowers varied between episodes, presumably at the whim/needs of the scriptwriter. They had fantastic hearing (which they used a lot) and eyesight, great strength and speed (sometimes), could control people’s minds (occasionally), precognition and perfect memories for a start.

Of anyone, I wanted to be Tremayne, the boss, who lived in Switzerland, drank whiskey and was suspicious of his agents and how they accomplished their missions with such ease.

Each episode began with a zoom onto a map where a location had been lettrasetted on, usually wonky too.

Watching it on dvd today, it looks cheap. There is an enormous amount of stock footage. It doesn’t blend with the original stuff, but at the time it probably looked fine. Sets are recycled – how many times do we see that blooming submarine? The characters don’t quite gel and there are few stories where they all work together as a team, but when they do it can be fun.

Stuart Damon played Craig and I suppose he was the big star, and an attempt to appeal to the American audience.

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