The Champions: Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett. The possessors of fantastic skills and qualities, both mental and physical. Powers bestowed upon them when their plane crashed in Tibet and they encountered the lost people of a hidden civilisation. Powers that are a secret known only to them. Powers that they are able to use to their best advantage as the Champions of law, order and justice. Craig, Sharron and Richard; operators of the international agency of Nemesis.

Back in the Silver Age, super-hero fans didn’t get a lot of satisfaction from television.  There were the Saturday-morning cartoons -- because super-heroes were considered kid stuff.  However, the prime-time hours were the province of adults, whom the network -- and more important, the sponsors -- presumed had no interest in comic books.  So the outlook was bleak for a serious treatment of super-heroes.

The Bat-craze burned out in 1968 and prime-time television’s brief age of super-heroes seemed to die with it.  However, there was one last attempt at a serious drama involving characters with super-powers, and it was the best attempt at it for many years thereafter.  Yet, it slipped completely beneath the radar.

How many of you remember “summer replacement” shows?  (O.K., both of you can put your hands down, now.)  For reasons mostly do to with paying residuals to the appearing performers, when variety shows went on hiatus in the summer, instead of airing them in repeats, new shows, intended to run just until September, were slipped into their time slots.  In June, 1968, the British-produced The Champions debuted on NBC as the summer replacement for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

The big three U.S. networks loved British shows then.  At least, they did ever since The Avengers (no, not that one from Marvel, either; the one with Steed and Mrs. Peel) became a ratings-hit.  Buying British programmes was cheaper for the networks than producing their own shows, so quite a few shows from across the pond aired here:  Secret Agent Man, The Saint, The Prisoner.  It was a good deal for the British producers, too.  If they could sell a series to the American market, it meant immediate profit.

Even though thirty episodes of The Champions were in the can and would be seen by British audiences, NBC only needed to fill the three months between seasons of Laugh-In, so only ten Champions episodes were ever first-run aired over here.  That’s probably why you don’t remember it, even if you were around then to see it.  And that’s a pity, because it was one of the most intelligently written dramas about heroes with powers ever seen on television.

The Champions was the brainchild of English scriptwriter Dennis Spooner.  Spooner and producer Monty Berman wanted to deliver an adventure show with the twist of having the heroes possess abilities beyond those of mortal man, but they wanted to ground it with a healthy dosage of reality, to make it fantastic but plausible.  As Spooner put it, his goal was “to make incredibility credible.”

“Everything [the Champions] do is within the bounds of possibility,” Spooner insisted. “They can't perform miracles because they are not super-humans; but they can do anything within the limits of human capabilities.

“Someone on earth possesses each quality that has been granted to them. Each field of endeavour has one champion -- one man or woman who is better than anyone else in the world in his or her particular sphere. One person holds the record -- for high-jumping, running, swimming, boxing, wrestling, racing, diving, and physical endurance of every kind, even flagpole-sitting. And there is one man who is better than any others in every other physical and mental sphere.

“The three characters in The Champions possess all these superlative qualities, but they can't do anything that some other human being hasn't achieved, somewhere, sometime.”

This was the hook for the series.  Everything the heroes could do was remarkable, even wondrous, but not impossible.

The premise was established in the first episode, “The Beginning”.  Craig Stirling and Richard Barrett and Sharron Macready are operatives for the peace-keeping organisation known as Nemesis.  We meet our heroes in a cold open, on a mission to steal plague specimens from a Chinese military laboratory before they can be used as a biological weapon.  Stirling and Barrett are veteran operatives, but it’s Sharron’s first field assignment for Nemesis.  According to the dialogue, she volunteered for a field assignment following the death of her husband.

Though the trio accomplishes its mission, mischance tips off the Red Chinese soldiers guarding the complex, and as the three Nemesis agents escape in a jet, enemy gunfire damages the aircraft badly.  The plane crash-lands in the Himalayas.  There, they are found, barely alive, by the inhabitants of a lost city, who repair their injuries -- and more.

When Stirling and Macready and Barrett awaken, they are back in the wreckage of their downed plane, completely healed and feeling better than they ever have in their lives.  Piecing together vague, dream-like memories, they suspect the existence of the hidden city.  Stirling and Macready are determined to complete their mission; however, Barrett insists on staying behind and learning the secret of their remarkable recoveries.

Eventually, the high priest of the hidden city presents himself to the determined Barrett.  The greybeard relates how the people of the city found the three stricken agents and not only healed them, but improved them.

“Sometimes, a person is born with a gift,” the priest explains.  “These gifts can come in many fields.  You and your friends are now able to receive all of them.”  For Barrett and the other two, their physical strength has been enhanced, the efficiency of their minds and senses transformed, to the peak of human capability.  However, the old man cautions, their newfound talents will not come to them automatically; they must be learnt, as a child must learn how to walk.  Moreover, the three agents are not infallible, nor immortal.

Barrett rejoins Stirling and Macready in time to help them overcome a squad of Chinese soldiers that has tracked them down.  The Nemesis operatives are nearly as amazed as the enemy soldiers at the feats they are now able to perform.  After Barrett explains what has happened to them, the three agree to keep their newfound abilities a secret, to protect the secret of the existence of the lost city.

Over the course of the series, the three main characters are fleshed out.  Craig Stirling, an American (played by Stuart Damon), is the most traditional television hero.  Tall, good-looking, and calmly authoritative, Stirling, established as a former U.S. Air Force pilot, relies a great deal on instinct and gut hunches.  Stirling’s character doesn’t include all the stereotypes, though.  While handsome and dashing, he isn’t a magnet for anything in skirts.  He is seen to date a few times in the series, but the female guest stars don’t fall in love (or in bed) with him every episode, as it always seemed to happen to Joe Mannix and Mike Hammer.

Nor is Stirling promoted as “first among equals” (as was probably initially intended by Spooner and Berman, along with hiring American actor Damon for the rôle, to make the show more marketable to the U.S. audience).  In any given episode, he or Barrett or Macready might take the lead in the investigation.

Sharron Macready (played by Alexandra Bastedo) is just plain fun to watch.  She is more than just window dressing for the two male heroes.  Yes, many of the scripts make use of her medical and scientific knowledge, but that’s not a bone tossed in to make her seem useful.  She is as sharp and alert and as capable of taking the point on a case as Stirling and Barrett, all the while exhibiting a coolness that evokes Grace Kelly.

Most enjoyable is seeing the way she throws herself into a fight.  No typical standing-in-the-corner-and-looking-on-fearfully-when-things-get-violent for her, no, sir.  She dives right into it.  And not with any martial-arts aplomb like Emma Peel; outside of an occasional judo toss, Sharron is a toe-to-toe fighter.  She throws a punch with the best of them and is not afraid of being hit.  In a perverse fashion, it underscores her toughness when she takes a sock on the chin (and that sort of thing happened a lot) and we see her flying over a desk or crashing to the floor in a definitely unladylike sprawl.  Mainly because she always gets up, swinging.

Most interesting, though, is probably Richard Barrett (portrayed by William Gaunt).  Physically, he is not as eye-catching as either Stirling or Sharron -- in fact, he looks as non-descript as a banker or an accountant -- but there is something arresting about his performance.  A Britisher like Sharron, his background is in intelligence work, particularly in code-breaking, and that carries over into his work as a field agent.  Barrett is usually the one with a calculated plan.  He is more subtly devious than his two partners, something hinted at by his dry wit and sarcasm.

He is a sophisticate, with a taste for classical music, fine wines, and contemporary art.  Despite his button-down appearance, though, he is as athletic and capable of action as Craig, even before the priests in Tibet get their hands on him.

The writers handled the interaction of the three leads masterfully.  They talk as seasoned partners and friends would talk, with easy confidence and plenty of private jokes and light-hearted barbs.  There is a natural use of overlapping dialogue and aside expressions that practically force more than one viewing of an episode to catch it all.  Their teamwork is one of the most entertaining aspects of the series.

Another snare the writers wisely avoided was building a romantic relationship between Sharron and either of her male partners.  There is an occasional suggestive remark, but it never comes across as anything meant or taken as more than just a flippant line.  Her relationship with Craig and Richard is never anything more than true friendship, or at most, they see her as one would a sister.

The only other regular character in the show was the head of Nemesis, W. L. Tremayne (played by Anthony Nicholls).  Addressed simply as “Tremayne” by everybody, he is gruff and dedicated and professional (so professional, in fact, that he lives at Nemesis headquarters, in an apartment next to his office).  He’s well aware that Nemesis is his sandbox and doesn’t tolerate any attempt to step on his authority, even by those governments asking for help.

Tremayne also serves as the viewer’s most visible reminder that Stirling and Barrett and Macready mean to keep their paranormal abilities a secret.  Almost every closing scene involves Tremayne pointing out something that his three top agents have glossed over in their report (an event when their powers come into play).  Their response is usually something vague, along the lines of the lame excuses George Reeves’s Clark Kent would hand to Lois “Gee, I Wonder If Clark is Superman” Lane.  At the start of the series, Tremayne is genuinely curious, but over the course of the show, there develops a subtle feeling that it has become a cat-and-mouse game between him and his top agents.  One isn’t sure if the head of Nemesis has figured out the truth or not, but later, it becomes clear that he knows there’s something his top agents are holding back.

Speaking of Nemesis, it is never explained just what status the organisation has.  The headquarters is based in Geneva, Switzerland, implying that it is attached to the United Nations, but that is never stated with certainty.  What we do know is that Nemesis deals with problems brought to it by the member nations of NATO.  In dealing with representatives of those countries, Tremayne frequently refers to Nemesis’ freedom to act independently, suggesting it might be a private concern.  This possibility is reїnforced in the episode “The Experiment”, when it is pointed out that the international intelligence community doesn’t approve of Nemesis.  From time to time, we see members of various countries’ military on staff there, but that really doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.

You may have noticed that I haven’t devoted much space to talking about the Champions’ super-powers.  That’s pretty much the same approach that Spooner and Berman took with the show.  Every episode, except the first, includes a vignette, unrelated to the main plot, immediately following the opening credits.  These brief scenes are intended to highlight the agents’ remarkable abilities; they can sometimes be routine or even dramatic, but usually are humorous, depicting one of the Champions screwing with somebody.  A man throws down the London Times crossword in frustration; Barrett picks it up and finishes it in five minutes.  Two men are unable to push a blocked car out of its parking space; they watch amazed as Sharron pulls it free with one hand.  That sort of thing.  These are accompanied by a brief voice-over bringing the audience up to speed.

This is the most emphasis the Champions’ super-powers get in most episodes.  Part of Spooner’s fantastic-is-mundane approach.  Their main abilities are exceptional strength and endurance, split-second reflexes, enhanced vision and hearing, and some sort of vague telepathic link between them.  They cannot read each others’ (or anyone else’s) minds, but they get sort of a psychic “alert” when one of them suddenly comes under stress.  This ability in particular took time to evolve over the run.  These flashes of intuition didn’t happen in every instance, nor did they necessarily understand them when they occurred.

Unlike how other shows with super-powered heroes were handled, Spooner and Berman chose to deliberately underemphasise how Stirling and the others displayed them.  Whenever one of the heroes employed an enhanced ability, there were no close-ups or reaction shots to draw attention to it.  No slow-motion tricks or signature sound effects.  Their remarkable feats were presented as matter-of-factly as the cops on Law & Order drawing their guns.  The only special sound effect, a sort of melodic rush of air, was used to indicate those psychic alerts, since there was no visible way to convey that to the viewer.

The resulting effect was that The Champions wasn’t a show about super-powered agents; it was a show about agents who happened to have super-powers.  They tackled their missions using standard espionage and investigation techniques, with their super-powers figuring in only as a bonus.  In fact, watch enough episodes and you come away feeling that they could have accomplished their assignments even if they hadn’t possessed their enhanced abilities.

In saying that, don’t get the idea that there was a “Godzilla versus Bambi” aspect to the show.  Our heroes got into plenty of trouble.  All it took was a bad guy exceptionally clever enough.  And not infrequently, the agents, especially Stirling, were a mite too overconfident and found the boom lowered on them by a resourceful opponent.

But even at their best, Barrett and Macready and Stirling occasionally ran up against something in which having super-powers didn’t give them the edge.  In “The Experiment”, a power-mad scientist has discovered the secret of the Champions’ paranormal abilities (probably from all those consecutive holes-in-one and other showing off they do in the opening vignettes; that’ll teach ‘em) and has found a way to genetically re-engineer his underlings with the same abilities.  In the inevitable confrontation, the Nemesis operatives have to rely on their wits, since they can’t overpower their foes.

In “Autokill”, an enemy has captured Barrett and brainwashed him to kill Craig, a common plot in these type of shows.  The climactic battle between Barrett and Stirling is worth sitting through the seen-it-all-before build-up.  It is remarkable in its violence and brutality.  (For you James Bond fans, think of the fight between Bond and Red Grant in From Russia with Love, and you’ve got the idea.)  Stirling survives only because Sharron throws herself into the fray, holding Richard long enough for Craig to punch him senseless.  (Craig’s expression registers the horror of what he has to do with each blow to the face of his now-defenceless friend.)  When Barrett recovers in the hospital, his mind has returned to normal, but with no memory of what happened.  He sees Stirling’s face, which looks like a slab of spoilt meat.

“What have you done to yourself?” Richard asks.

“I had a lesson in equality,” says Craig.

Not that The Champions was without flaws.  While the scripted interplay between the leads was always top-notch, the plots themselves often relied upon the usual Cold War tropes.  Midway through the series, the scripts definitely hit the doldrums, with half-formed ideas or repeats of previous situations.

The special effects were nothing to brag about, either.  Styrofoam boulders would bounce across the set and the rear-projection shots were obviously done on the cheap.  In the opening credits, the three leads are “blue-screened” against a backdrop of Geneva’s striking Jet d’Eau -- the footage of the fountain was actually taken by Monty Berman’s home movie camera while on vacation there.  Fortunately, the performances of Damon, Gaunt, and Bastedo are so good, you don’t notice the shabbier SFX, unless you’re specifically looking for it; then it’s obvious.

One episode explores what the true ramifications of having super-powers would be.  “The Interrogation” takes place after Stirling has returned from a successful mission in Hong Kong and has filed his report.  Through a means left unexplained, he is rendered unconscious.  He wakes in a sealed room, subjected to questioning by a stranger.  The stranger wants information about Craig’s last mission in Hong Kong.  Craig is confused; he doesn’t know why he is there, or who the man is.

The questioning grows more and more probing.  The man not only wants to know about the events in Hong Kong, but about incidents on Stirling’s previous missions (the ones of the previous episodes) that his reports were less than clear about.  These, it dawns on Craig, were the things he had been deliberately vague about, since it involved the Champions’ use of their powers.

The relentless cross-examination turns brutal -- blinding strobe lights, incessant noise, extreme temperature changes -- as Stirling resists divulging their secret.  Almost at his breaking point, he manages to escape the room.  Then, Tremayne appears and halts the interrogation.  Craig learns that he has been in Nemesis headquarters all along.  The interrogator is a member of Nemesis internal security, which had reviewed the Champions’ mission reports with concern.  An angry Stirling asks what what was wrong with his Hong Kong report.

“There was nothing wrong with it,” replies the interrogator.  “In fact, it was too good to be believed.  Perhaps Nemesis wasn’t your only employer, but even a double agent doesn’t get the results you get.”

Here, in an episode which, except for the first and last five minute and some footage from earlier episodes, was Stuart Damon’s all the way, The script, written by Spooner, examined the consequences of what would happen if, because of their hidden abilities, dedicated agents were too good at their jobs.  It was a fresh and realistic approach then.

The paradigm has shifted, as well.  Stirling is outraged at Tremayne, who personally regretted the interrogation, but professionally, was forced to approve it.  And Craig resents the fact that Barrett and Sharron, not willing to risk exposing their secret, did nothing to intervene.  The characters are left with mutual distrust, and Richard, Sharron, and Stirling, in particular, are forced to question the ethics of their own organisation.

“The Interrogation” was the last episode in the syndication package and was intended to be the series finale.  After twenty-nine episodes ending with smiles all around, the last finished on a downbeat.  If it wasn’t enough to coax another season of the series, at least it would be a memorable send-off.  Unfortunately, in 1968,  the show’s biggest audience, its U.S. viewers, never saw it.  Here, there were only enough weeks in NBC’s schedule to air ten episodes of The Champions before Laugh-In reclaimed its time-slot, and it never got to “The Interrogation”.

There are a few reasons why The Champions was regulated to the dustbin of television -- NBC didn’t promote its British import shows very much; Spooner’s understated approach didn’t advertise the show’s premise enough – but, at least here in America, the biggest reason was the series didn’t have enough time to gain a following.