I’m sure much has been written about Diana Rigg’s turn as Mrs. Emma Peel in the 1960s British TV show The Avengers. I’m rewatching it now and I have my own thoughts.

I first watched this show when I was a kid. My dad and I loved it. The rest of the family didn’t care one way or the other. Years later I bought my dad a boxed set of VHS tapes of the show. I inherited them back when he died, and they sit forlornly in my basement with no way to view them.

Streaming to the rescue. I’ve subscribed to Peacock for the Olympics and, lo and behold, I give you The Avengers! The streaming series starts with Honor Blackman as Dr. Cathy Gale, but the production values are so cheesy, I skipped right to Season (series in Brit speak) 4 and the introduction of Mrs. Emma Peel as she practices fencing.

Just realized the joke in “The Cybernauts” where the sensei suggests Mrs. Peel study fencing instead of karate (he will regret that comment).

The show dates back to the 1960s, but I’m not sure when it came to American TV, so I’m not sure how old I was when I watched it the first time, but yee gods, what I see now is a light year’s evolution in how women were depicted elsewhere at the time.

I mean, that latent young lesbian loved Emma Peel for very confusing reasons. This older, out, and wiser woman now sees the sheer revolution that is Emma Peel. (And in the days before Ms. took over, she was given a missing husband to keep the relationship with Steed believably platonic. I applaud that!)

Three episodes in, she’s already shown off her fencing chops in her apartment, announced she’s written “an article for Science Weekly,” gone undercover as a teacher and a nurse, shown up a sexist karate sensei, and driven her Lotus Elan with aplomb. When faced with death, she does not scream in panic. Sure, she shows fear, but she’s thinking the whole time of how to get out of whatever mess she’s in, or that Steed got her into (I love John Steed! He fully respects her and never assumes she’s not up to a job).

There were lots of good roles for women back then, including:

Mary Tyler Moore as Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show (she went on to her own iconic show)

Diahann Carrol, groundbreaking as Julia

Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stevens on Betwitched

Barbara Eden in the title role in I Dream of Jeannie

Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 in Get Smart came closest to Mrs. Peel

And, of course, Lucille Ball

Notice these are sitcoms. There were others, but you get the idea. I should include Nichelle Nichols, but I didn’t watch the original Star Trek. My loss, but the few episodes I did see left me thinking each plot was an excuse to present Captain Kirk with some buxom alien and get his shirt off.

We underestimate the power of media representation at our peril. Children and young adults look outside themselves to help form an opinion of who they are, how they fit into the larger world, and to imagine who they might become. To say that outside world these days is vast is an understatement. In my day (yeah, grouse like an old fogy), there were three TV VHF and a couple UHF channels that went off the air at midnight or soon after, radio, and, thankfully, books! Movies generally had to wait to arrive on TV before I saw them. Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music being exceptions, and which perplexed me no end how the same woman could be both Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp!

Mrs. Peel didn’t make me want to become an amateur sleuth or wear stylish clothes. Maybe drive a kickass car, though. The influence was subtle and she still resonates with me all these years later. Maybe because The Avengers takes me back to a simpler time (if you ignore the whole Cold War thing) when extraordinarily dangerous events could be resolved with wit and charm and by a more-than-capable woman.

We could use that now, couldn’t we?