This is a wonderful, ludicrous, eccentric Avengers (quite surprisingly bonkers for an Eric Paice script). The Avengers are battling a criminal organisation (again – this one’s called Bibliotek) but with the inspired conceit that all the kingpins travel as clerics to make it easier to get through customs (with perhaps a hint of not-so-subtle satire at Church politics). Hence the Fingers “The Frog” is Vicar of Tawombas and, wonderfully, Louis (Moneypenny) Maxwell is a nun with a (machine) gun. It’s splendidly surreal watching a group of grown men, dressed as vicars, sat in a school classroom, hamming it up as gang bosses.
Steed goes undercover as the Rev “Johnny the Horse” Steed (only a couple of episodes back he went by a real pseudonym as Sebastian Stonemartin, but later he will only go by his own name).
One of the clerics is black – his nickname ‘The Coalman’. Oh dear.
And there’s the kiss…
It’s a silly episode, with bags of pace, an abundance of twists, a memorable collection of characters. A minor classic.