The Avengers Dossier, Page Nine

It's time for another quick look at a supporting player from the Fourth Season of the classic television series, "The Avengers".

SUE LLOYD

In "A Surfeit of H2O", Sue Lloyd was Joyce Jason, the owner and operator of a winery that produced its wares with a secret, scientific method.

Sue Lloyd began her show business career as a dancer, but soon transitioned into modeling and then acting. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she balanced her projects between television and films, with a particular focus on espionage-themed comedies and dramas. She appeared in 60 different films and television series, with some of her noteworthy parts being in "The Ipcress Files" (1965), "The Man in a Looking Glass" (1965), "That's Your Funeral" (1972), and "Bullet to Bejing" (1995), in which she played the same character she had in "The Ipcress Files". Lloyd also had recurring or co-starring roles in such television series as "The Baron" (1966-1967, a series based "The Man in a Looking Glass), "The Two Ronnies" (1972), and "Crossroads" (from 1979 to 1985).

By the early 1980s, Lloyd had shifted her professional interests from acting to painting, and, although she continued to accept acting jobs every now and then, her on-screen appearances became fewer and farther between. In 2001, she retired from acting all-together.

Sue Lloyd passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer in 2011 at the age of 82.

(Sue Lloyd is not to be mistaken for Suzanne Lloyd, even if both are brunettes who appeared in back-to-back episodes of "The Avengers" in 1965. Sue Lloyd was in "A Surfeit of H2O" and Suzanne Lloyd was in "The Murder Market".)

The Avengers: A Surfeit of H2O

A Surfeit of H2O (1965)

Starring: Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, Noel Purcell, Albert Lieven, Geoffrey Palmer, Talfryn Thomas, John Kidd, and Sue Lloyd

Director: Sidney Hayers

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A doomsday prophet (Purcell) and a winery with secret, highly scientific production methods are at the center of the mystery when agents John Steed (Macnee) and Emma Peel (Rigg) are tasked with uncovering how a man drowned in the middle of an empty field.

This is another excellent episode that features a tight script; a brilliant mix of sci-fi and investigative secret agent action; and an assortment of interesting and quirky characters that make it tricky to pinpoint who the bad guys are and what they are actually up to until the Big Reveal. It also features another nice "damsel in distress" riff along the same lines as what we had in "The Gravediggers", but with a stronger sense of danger than comedy. There's also a great bit with Steed's steel-plated trick bowler as an adjunct to that business.

Character-wise, the wisecracking between Steed and Mrs. Peel is topnotch, and some of the incidental characters here are so interesting and well-acted that I sorry to see them meet a violent end, or I wished there could have been a reason for them to make reappearance in a future episode--Noel Purcell's doomsday prophet Jonah Barnard being prime among these. The different approaches that Steed and Peel take to investigating the mysterious deaths also lend a great deal of entertainment value to this episode--Peel remains methodical and cautious in her approach, while Steed starts out that way but quickly starts resorting to antics to see what he can stir up. At the end, though, it's a combination of the two approaches that leads to the good guys ultimately winning the day. Peel's dignified unflappability also leads to one of the most amusing (and possibly one of the most British) witness interviews ever committed to film. Another nice bit in this episode is the way Steed and Peel turn firmly to science to help them figure out what's happening with the weather around the winery--which also gives the writers an opportunity to show that Mrs. Peel is also knowledgeable in the field of meteorology.

As great as this episode is, it's another instance of where the creators don't quite pull off the ending. It's got a dramatic set-up and the location in which it unfolds should make it one of the deadliest fights our heroes have ever been in--since they are exchanges punches with the bad guys at the very heart of a mad science experiment that has claimed three lives that we know of--but it's almost like the actors, director, and writers have forgotten what's happened earlier in the episode.

All in all, though... some 55 years after it first aired, "A Surfeit of H2O" is still highly entertaining and well worth the time you'll spend watching it.