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Emma Peel Was My Role Model
R.I.P, Diana Rigg. You Rocked My World
When I was 12 years old, back in 1967, I discovered “The Avengers” a British TV show about two agents, John Steed and Emma Peel, who fight crime together.
It changed my life.
The episodes were tongue-in-cheek. The plots were implausible. Week after week the duo were called upon to save the world from villains who were more than a little bit over the top. But it wasn’t the plots I was drawn to.
It was the characters of Emma Peel and John Steed.
Unlike every relationship between a man and a woman I’d ever seen on TV (or anywhere else, for that matter), he wasn’t in charge. John Steed (played by the estimable Patrick Macnee) and Mrs. Peel (played by the extraordinary Diana Rigg) were equal partners.
Every week, they solved mysteries and defeated bad guys together, while sharing witty repartee. They both knew how to fight, and how to quip. He had her back. And she had his! By the episode’s end, Steed was often the one who has managed to get himself captured by the bad guys, and Mrs. Peel saved him.
I’d never seen anything like it. I instantly fell in love with the show, as only an adolescent girl can fall in love. I lived, breathed and dreamed “The Avengers.” I never missed an episode.
