The Champions return: secret agents, superpowers and a Himalayan detour (documentary: video in full).

If your idea of a civilised evening involves superhuman secret agents, Himalayan weirdness, 1960s ITC glamour and villains who probably keep their world domination plans in a walnut-panelled filing cabinet, then We Were The Champions should sit very nicely in your viewing schedule.

This 2006 making-of documentary reunites Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastedo and William Gaunt to look back at The Champions, the classic British spy-fi adventure series made by ITC and broadcast across the ITV network in 1968 and 1969. Only thirty episodes were produced, because television in those days liked to create cult objects and then flee the scene before anyone could ask for a second helping.

The Champions followed three agents of the international law enforcement organisation Nemesis: Craig Stirling, played by Stuart Damon; Sharon Macready, played by Alexandra Bastedo; and Richard Barrett, played by William Gaunt. After a plane crash in the Himalayas, the trio were rescued by a mysterious hidden civilisation and returned to the world with heightened senses, enhanced strength, telepathic abilities and the sort of reaction times that would have made most other fictional spies quietly resign and open a tobacconist.

The clever wrinkle was that the Champions had to keep their abilities secret, even from their own boss. So, week after week, they battled dastardly international villains, enemy agents, criminal conspiracies, rogue scientists and various Cold War nasties while pretending not to be quite so good at everything. It was James Bond by way of Tibet, with a dash of The Avengers, a hint of Doctor Who strangeness and the brisk, polished confidence of ITC at its most exportable.

The series was created by Dennis Spooner, one of the great busy wizards of British genre television, whose credits include Doctor Who, The Avengers, Thunderbirds, The New Avengers and Man in a Suitcase. It was produced by Monty Berman, whose own television empire included The Saint, Gideon’s Way, Department S, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Baron. Between them, Spooner and Berman understood a crucial law of 1960s adventure television: if in doubt, add a secret organisation, a foreign location and a man in a suit looking worried beside a filing cabinet.

What makes We Were The Champions such a treat is the chance to hear the three stars reflecting on the series decades later. Damon, Bastedo and Gaunt recall the filming, the atmosphere around the production and the strange durability of a show that ran for just one season but somehow lodged itself in the collective memory like a psychic signal from a lost Himalayan city.

Alexandra Bastedo’s Sharon Macready remains one of the programme’s great strengths. At a time when many adventure series were still deciding whether women were allowed to do anything more strenuous than answer the telephone elegantly, Sharon was a full member of the team. She was intelligent, capable and calm under pressure, with the additional advantage of being able to make superhuman ability look like good manners.

Stuart Damon brought leading-man polish to Craig Stirling, while William Gaunt gave Richard Barrett a dry, thoughtful edge. Together, the trio had the balanced chemistry that helped the show survive its more outlandish moments. That mattered, because The Champions cheerfully asked viewers to accept telepathy, super-strength, secret civilisations and international espionage before the first commercial break had finished straightening its tie.

Seen now, the series is a splendid relic from an era when British television was enormously ambitious, faintly eccentric and occasionally convinced that the Home Counties could double for almost anywhere on Earth if filmed from the correct angle. Its mixture of spy thriller, science fiction and fantasy still feels distinctive. The special effects may belong to their time, but the central idea remains strong: three people changed by something beyond ordinary human understanding, using those gifts in secret to defend a world that must never know what they have become.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we have always had a soft spot for television that refuses to stay in its appointed kennel. The Champions was not simply a spy series, nor quite a superhero series, nor entirely science fiction. It was all three wearing the same impeccable 1960s suit.

So settle in for We Were The Champions, a warm and revealing look back at one of British television’s most memorable cult adventures. Plane crash. Hidden civilisation. Superhuman agents. International villains. Thirty episodes. One very peculiar legacy.

Frankly, modern television could use more of that sort of behaviour.