That's the best way I can sum up The Corridor People. Everything about it had me saying "huh?" to myself. Elizabeth Shepherd plays a deliberately over the top (her name is Syrie Van Epp, how comic is that?) seductress/femme fatale, John Sharp is a M from James Bond type character named Kronk. He has two detectives working for him literally named Blood and Hound. His assassin is his secretary Miss Dunner played by June Watson. Inexplicably, there is also a Bogart obsessed American private eye named Scrotty who unlike the description implies, is willing to work for anyone for the money regardless of their motives, not just Kronk working against Syrie Van Epp. His motif is his goofy hat and setting up trash cans to fall over whenever someone enters the building where his office is located.
The stories involve birdwatchers, chain smoking assassins in babycribs, and some deeply, almost disturbing surrealist storylines about mind controlling perfumes and resurrecting the dead. Amazing what they accomplish atmosphere wise with an obviously small budget.
This show was too weird even for the era that produced the Avengers and the Prisoner. It is incredible that any of the 4 episodes made have survived, much less all of them and that they are now commercially released.
Having seen Shepherd in the role, I can understand why she was the first choice for Emma Peel. She has a kind of coarse beauty in this role which makes me think of a slightly more femine Cathy Gale. Diana Rigg spent much of the first season doing scripts which were originally intended for Honor Blackman's character to say so Emma Peel was going to start out semi tied to Gale anyway.
I didn't start watching this because I was an Avengers fan, I wanted to see just how far out there this gets and it didn't disappoint. Some liken it to Monty Python but I don't see the connection because I don't get the sense that any of the actors playing these characters are trying to be funny or are deliberately doing a comic turn for laughs. The characters seem genuinely weird. The recurring old guy on the park bench in the second or third episode did give me nightmares. In it, I was sitting on the bench and kept looking over my shoulder at bushes that kept moving with no wind and no one inside them while he continued to speak open ended gibberish at me while sitting next to me. I kept expecting something quick to happen and it did without me noticing before it was too late and I'd wake up when the flash hit and I was in shock for a few moments. So vivid.
