Get your kicks with The Avengers '66. This two-volume set uncorks six sought-after episodes from this cult classic series' fourth season. Patrick Macnee, the umbrella-toting gentleman spy John Steed, and Diana Rigg, the ravishing Mrs. Emma Peel, investigate further extraordinary goings-on in the most ordinary of places, including a swank hotel ("Room Without a View") and a golf course and dance school ("The 13th Hole" and "The Quick-Quick-Slow Death"). Suitable for framing is "The Girl from Auntie," in which an art dealer, who supplies his clients "anything for a price" (including the Mona Lisa!), kidnaps Emma for auction to enemy agents. Perhaps members of Monty Python's Flying Circus got the inspiration for their "Hell's Grannies" sketch from this episode's quaint assassin, an elderly "lady" who does in her victims (including four chaps named John, Paul, George, and... Fred) with knitting needles. For new fans, the episodes found in The Avengers '65 sets are of a better vintage, and The Avengers '67 offerings give more of a campy, effervescent kick. But '66 was still a very good year, and Avengers aficionados will, of course, want to own every episode from the Mrs. Peel era. "What's so special about Mrs. Peel?" a woman asks in "Auntie." "You'd think she was Madame Curie and a half-dozen others all rolled into one." She is, to borrow a phrase, all that. A second Avengers '66 boxed DVD set is also available. --Donald Liebenson
