Too Many Christmas Trees

This is one among the most unforgettable stories in this terrific TV show. I won't add much to what have already said the other Imdb users. Except that the dream, or may I sy nightmare, sequences remind me an Alfred Hitchcock's feature: SPELLBOUND, when Gregory Peck has also dreams. The way to present them looks like this episode, at least the first scene. But the settings are just not the same.

Steed has been having recurring nightmares. When he and Mrs Peel attend a Christmas party at a country estate, Steed finds his dreams echoed in the events of the party.

Too Many Christmas Trees is a huge improvement on Two's a Crowd. The script is great, and Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg are wonderful together. The script is absolute nonsense, but it's a very fun episode. Diana Rigg looks very pretty in her Oliver Twist outfit as well, which is a bonus.

ITC's perennial villain Alex Scott appears as a henchman, while recognizable faces like Edwin Richfield appear. Mervyn Johns is the main guest star; his presence in the episode is a nice touch, as the plot was obviously inspired by Dead of Night, which he starred in.

'Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.'

Stead is having bad dreams, and when he accompanies Mrs Peel to a Christmas party hosted by Publisher Brandon Storey, his dreams come to life.

What an absolute joy this episode is, you can only imagine what viewers back in 1965 made of this, talk about hitting the jackpot, fast forward almost sixty years, and today's Christmas offerings are nowhere near this good.

It's creepy, it's full of sinister ideas and concepts, it's one of the best I've seen. It doesn't just feel like an episode with seasonal bits bolted on, it's actually a well constructed Christmas plot.

Some cracking scenes throughout, I loved the humour of the Christmas card scene, I also loved the visuals of a gun wielding Father Christmas.

A Christmas class act, 9/10.

John Steed begins to be the victim of frightening nightmares that are constantly repeated, everything turns out to be the product of an organization that uses the telepathic powers of its members to enter his psyche and manipulate his behavior. The nightmares that incorporate a sinister Santa Claus, divergent mirrors and guillotines, the old castle with a costume party themed on the characters of Charles Dickens and the table of spiritualism make this episode one of the darkest and scariest of the entire series serie.

I've been working my way through all the series 4 episodes of "The Avengers" and purely by coincidence, came across this Christmas -themed episode the week before Christmas and also see that it was first aired around the same time in 1965. And what a great episode it is. Whilst it's loaded with wry, sometimes risque humour between Peel and Steed, there's time for Christmas nostalgia too. I loved in particular the clever reference to absent friend Cathy Gale and its then topical nod to Gale's Honor Blackman's role in "Goldfinger". The story itself is terrific. Steed is suffering recurring nightmares involving a big box of Christmas gifts, a big old house and a demonized version of Santa and after a fellow agent sharing the same state secret with Steed dies in mysterious circumstances, he accepts an invitation from Mrs Peel to attend a Christmas Dickens-themed party to take his mind off things. However, once there he keeps bumping into people he's sure he's met before but who claim never to have ever seen him. Feeling constantly in need of sleep, the dreams keep recurring only now they seem to be leading to a Sydney Carton-type fate for him at the hands of Madame Guillotine. Can Mrs Peel help him snap out of his torpor and foil the fiendish plot in time for Christmas Day? Marvellously atmospheric, particularly the surreal dream sequences, this episode brilliantly balances the show's trademark suspense, thrills and humour to make this a quintessential entry in the Avengers vaunted history.