Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Martin Hutson, Richard Hope, Alisdair Simpson, Rosanna Miles, Penelope, Rawlins, Jonathan Forbes, Derek Carlyle, Nigel Carrington, Terry Malloy.

There is nothing quite like the intrigue that a good spy story to bring to the collective conscious of a nation. Whether based in the murky world of politics or in industrial espionage, a mole in the machine is one to in which the public salivates over with the kind of relish normally reserved for the most salacious of tabloid journalism. For The Avengers, all of that intrigue is one in which was a daily occurrence, something to be taken seriously and for the listener become an infiltrator of the very best kind.

Please Don’t Feed The Animals is a classic spy story, one in which John Dorney’s adaption is of a particular high quality and in which Big Finish have done marvellously to capture in the grandest way the post-war suspicion of espionage and recruiting vulnerable people into double crossing their own country and selling secrets to an enemy power. In perhaps a nod at the time when the original episode was written by Dennis Spooner, the British Government was suffering embarrassment after embarrassment with the unveiling of John Profumo/Christine Keeler scandal, the Portland Spy Ring and perhaps most infamously the Cambridge five which included Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and an unknown fifth member, Please Don’t Feed The Animals lives in that world perfectly.

Even for television, still very much in its infancy at the time and arguably not a polished medium such as literature, the episode stands up well to the works of John Le Carré and Graham Greene. Whilst having only the 50 odd minutes in which to pack the story into, Dennis Spooner got to the heart of matter and delivered a script in which would have wetted the appetite of spy novel and film fans of the day, it also would have appealed greatly to fans of John Steed and Dr. David Keel.

Writer John Dorney, actors Julian Wadham and Anthony Howell and audio drama makers Big Finish have captured the intensity of investigation, of getting to the point of what makes a Government nervous, that human beings, no matter how outwardly honest, are driven by their own desires and needs, those desires are what ultimately leads to greed or excess, to being used in blackmail. It is a complex state of affairs that still resonates over 50 years later as many a spy novel or film still has that at its heart.  

The Avengers: Please Don’t Feed The Animals is available to purchase as part The Lost Episodes collection Volume 2 from Worlds Apart, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall