Tintin and Biggles Meet 'The Champions'

If Tara King met Tintin and Biggles in James Hilton's "Lost Horizons," you'd get something like "The Champions" (1968). Weirdly specific maybe, but to me it's the makings of a perfect series. Sadly discontinued after only 30 episodes, the show by Monty Berman and Dennis Spooner features three young heroes of the fictional, neutral agency called Nemesis. It is so much like "The Avengers" and other spy-themed works, but with a more explicitly neutral narrative - Nemesis is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland (headed by the charming Anthony Nicholls) and its messaging/political allegiance seems quietly, firmly free of Cold War polarity, but a few episodes make a terrifying impression to the contrary, undoubtedly products of contemporary paranoia. But on the whole the show seems to focus more on simple good and bad, and that's what gives it its delightful Boy's (and Girl's) Own feeling different to other more 'grown-up' films or series.

The other thing that makes the show especially unique is this Shangri-La aspect, a magical, mystical element to the three main characters, all revealed in the first episode, aptly called 'The Beginning.' Craig Sterling (Stuart Damon), Sharon Macready (Alexandra Bastedo), and Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) are on a usual Nemesis mission together near the China-India border when they narrowly escape on their plane, but not before enemy guards fire their machine-guns and damage the machine, which eventually plummets into a wild blizzard in the mountains. All appears lost, except a monk (Felix Aylmer, on holiday from being Father Prior) from a lost civilisation hidden in the Tibetan peaks rescues them and helps them recover, leaving them better than before as he endows them with new super physical and mental powers. Not only do our three greatly endearing, very likeable heroes save the day after all, but they've now got 'a secret that enables them to use their fantastic powers to their best advantage - as the champions of law, order, and justice.' Perfectly entertaining, exciting television Xo