646f9e108c Witnesses and agents investigating upper class blackmailer Lord Edgefield can&#39;t seem to tell the truth. Dying agent Penman instructs Miss King to tell Steed that their colleague Melville is a traitor, leading to the avengers boss mother replacing Melville with Steed into the investigation of suspected blackmailer Lord Edgefield. However none of Edgefield&#39;s victims are prepared to give evidence and when Steed arrives at the Dreemykreem dairy he discovers the reason. Penman ( Peter Jesson ), a Department agent, breaks into the car of a suspected double agent to search for evidence, only to be surprised by the owner, who shoots him. His sidekick, Melville ( Barry Warren ), had failed to warn him that the man was coming back. A wounded Penman takes his microfilm to Steed&#39;s flat and places it in a dustbin.<br/><br/>Steed also takes Melville along when he breaks into the suspect&#39;s flat. Again he fails to warn him of danger. Steed is furious and gives Melville a good thumping.<br/><br/>Something is causing Department agents to give false information. Tara traces the source to a dairy called &#39;DreemyKreem&#39; where specially drugged milk is being manufactured. Sykes ( John Bennett ) captures Tara and places her in a butter making machine…<br/><br/>The climax of this episode is memorable for the sight of poor Tara being thrown about inside the machine, while Steed endeavours to rescue her. When he switches it off and opens the door, out she comes encased in a slab of butter.<br/><br/>It is difficult to get excited about a plot where milk is the villain&#39;s main weapon, but the cast commendably throw themselves into the spirit of the thing. Tony Steedman, who plays &#39;Sir Joseph&#39;, replaced Peter Vaughan&#39;Charles Johnson&#39; in the B.B.C&#39;s classic sitcom &#39;Citizen Smith&#39;. John Bennett later played villains in two memorable &#39;Dr.Who&#39; stories: &#39;Invasion Of The Dinosaurs&#39; ( 1974 ) and &#39;The Talons Of Weng-Chiang&#39; ( 1977 ). He was also a regular in the &#39;60&#39;s soap opera &#39;Market In Honey Lane&#39;.<br/><br/>Mother&#39;s office this time is the upper deck of a red double decker bus, an idea reused in the 1998 movie.<br/><br/>Steed getting mad with Melville in a forest clearing is a great moment, reminding us that even a super-secret agent can occasionally let his veneer slip. &quot;False Witness&quot; is pure Avengers camp in the best sense. Basically, a corrupt Lord is getting away with all sorts of crimes because he has hired a firm that has created a serum that makes people lie despite their best efforts at telling the truth. The &quot;camp&quot; part is that the serum is mixed in with ordinary milk and delivered to the witnesses and even the lawyer trying to prosecute the Lord.<br/><br/>This leads to a number of really funny lines from Tara (Linda Thorson) who is also being affected. There are a number of clever items from Mother&#39;s HQ on a double-decker bus to the butter machine that traps Tara King.<br/><br/>However, the major flaw in the plot concerns Melville, an agent who is being affected. While the serum makes people lie, it doesn&#39;t affect their actionswe see in the finale. Yet Melville&#39;s actions at the beginning of the episode make no sense at all once the effects of the serum have been explained.<br/><br/>One interesting aside is Rhonda, Mother&#39;s towering, yet silent helpmate who never speaks in the entire series does get to whistle (and Tara does an identical whistle not one minute later). Plus, Steed keeps eying her and even makes a point to sit next to her. Yet in future episodes Steed never shows any interest in her again apart from the throwaway tag in &quot;Homicide &amp; Old Lace&quot;.<br/><br/>Overall, an interesting episode that needed a bit of script-tightening to make it a classic.
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