I mean Emma peel avengers not marvel.which 60s spy series was the best?
Both were good, but if I had to choose, I’d watch The Avengers.
My wife and I both watched Man from UNCLE as kids, and got a DVD of the first few episodes. It was awful.
Anyhow, Mrs. Peel beats Ilya any day. I have fond memories of that show.
The Avengers was the better show and the show that has held up. Man from Uncle now feels like a terrible 60s show. Of these type of shows, Mission Impossible was the better American one; but **The Avengers **was still better.
Not if you were a teenaged girl. 
If you’ve only seen David McCallum on NCIS, you missed something.
But yeah, The Avengers was a better show.
The Man From UNCLE had better gadgets (which meant better toys), better guest stars, better locations, better transitions, better production values and better pulp paperbacks. All The Avengers had going for it were Patrick Mcnee and Diana Rigg.
The Avengers win by a landslide. Not even close.
How quickly they forget.
The Avengers also had Venus Smith, Cathy Gale, and Tara King. And we shouldn’t forget the original avenger, David Keel. Who was the only one who was actually avenging.
Not to mention Purdy and Gambit. (just not in the 60s)
I always thought I was the only person to like The New Avengers. As for the others, since IIRC the first 3 series never aired in the US during their original runs, they don’t count. Tara King was an embarrassment and should remain in purdah, as opposed to Purdy.
My first official introduction to The Avengers was the Gambit/Purdey era. I had heard of Emma Peel, (and was aware of Cathy Gale) and knew what the show was about, but no one was showing episodes in my market. I think I picked up a lot from osmosis before I finally saw a real original Avengers episode. It was everything I’d read.
The New Avengers is my first association with the actors. When Ab Fab became a hit, I’m like, “It’s Purdey!” 
Emma Peel seals the deal for me. I’m on team Avengers.
As far as theme songs go, I’d give the edge to The Avengers.
The writing for The Avengers at its peak was the best on television in its time. The best. Brian Clemons wrote weird atmospheric shows that were decades ahead of their time. The Prisoner matched it in some ways. Nothing on American tv came close.
There are many reasons why Americans especially think of The Avengers as Steed and Peel. Those seasons were the first to be played on American television. (ABC started running them in 1966. The producers had pre-sold the season giving them the money to film in 35 mm, making the look far better.) The second Peel season was the first in color and color changed everything. Personally I believe it’s the I-can’t-believe-my-eyes writing. The show changed slowly from spy stories to odd spy stories to amazing psychological psychedelia that didn’t have a category or antecedent. If “cult tv” has a definition, those shows are next to it in the dictionary.
The Tara season was a waste of photons. Steed needed an equal, not an acolyte. The New Avengers had that in Purdey and Gambit; Steed might have come in and mopped things up at the end but they did the heavy lifting. And Joanna Lumley could run full speed in high heels. Diana Rigg never did that!
Definitely. The opening credits were always better, too.
I was living in Cambridge (England) when the series debuted in January 1977. The TV lounge in the Student Union building was packed on that occasion and every week thereafter. The only other times I saw SRO in the lounge was when Monty Python and I, Claudius were on.
Patrick MacNee said in an interview (I don’t remember where) he knew The Avengers was over when Diana Rigg left the show.
I had the hots for both of them back in the day.
I did like U.N.C.L.E. a lot when it was on* but overall, I’d go with The Avengers
*I was one of the few people in my school who could watch it: you could only get NBC if you had an externa UHF tuner, which very few people had. I’d go to school and talk it up and no one would have heard it. “What channel is it on?” “Channel 30.” <confused look> “The tuner only goes up to 13!”
I would add to the above list, that UNCLE had better fight scenes.
One of the obscure TV channels (I think it was Charge!) just finished running some Cathy Gale episodes and all the Peele/King series. (Tara’s fights were more convincing the Emma’s or Cathy’s). The Avengers was just so damn British. The dialog was sharp, the scripts always seemed to have supervillains pop up in the pastoral countryside, and Steed was far more dapper than Solo.
Much, much cooler.
UNCLE had the better remake movie.
By far.
Honor Blackman did a really good job as Steed’s partner. Her episodes would have been great if it wasn’t for the very low production values. Re-use of crappy little sets, B&W, etc.
Julie Stevens just wasn’t up to the job at all. Oh, and the stupid singing. In a spy/crime show!
Once ABC got a deal with ABC* to air episodes in the US more money rolled in and the quality went up. This magically coincided with the beginning of the Rigg era and things got a lot better.
They still re-used episode plots a lot, however. Brain switching, killer robots, etc.
Cozi ran all the episodes a couple years back. Especially nice to see people like John Cleese and Carol Cleveland pop up in them.
Outside of Leo G. Carroll who often didn’t have a lot to do, U.N.C.L.E. was a poor second in most respects.
- Yes, this makes sense.
Yep. My cousins and I had such crushes on Ilya Kuryakin, and even though we were kids and not allowed to see the spy films it was spoofing, we enjoyed the humor. We also loved The Avengers, wanted to be Diana Rigg. We recognized the greater intelligence and wit in the Avengers, too. We watched and enjoyed Secret Agent (I think it was called Danger Man in its British home) (and it made me a lifelong fan of Patrick McGoohan) and The Prisoner.
Back to the OP: The Avengers, definitely.
Gotta go play some Johnny Rivers now.