Avengers '65: Vol. 3 - Region 1 DVD

"A Surfeit of H20" has been ranked by one Avengers-appreciation Web site as among the top five of the Mrs. Peel era. This intoxicating episode really pours it on, with vintage witty dialogue, assorted crackpot characters, and, of course, a diabolical madman--a vintner who is flooding the countryside with his own manmade rain.

Also on this volume is one of the must-own episodes from the fourth, and arguably best, season of The Avengers. The unsettling first half of "The Hour That Never Was" plays like something out of The Twilight Zone. Royal Air Forces Camp 472 in Hamelin is splitting up, and John Steed may be cracking up. He and Mrs. Peel emerge from an auto wreck to find the air base deserted, all the clocks stopped at 11, an unconscious rabbit, and a dead milkman. When Steed returns to the air base, a reunion party with all the previously missing men is in full swing. Nitrous oxide gives the climactic fight with a diabolical dentist a goofy spin. --Donald Liebenson