Byte-Sized Overview
The Champions is a glossy British espionage-adventure series with a sci-fi twist, built around three agents who survive a plane crash in the Himalayas and come back changed. Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett are rescued by a secret Tibetan civilisation that boosts them beyond normal human limits, giving them heightened strength, intelligence, speed and instinct. Back in the world of Cold War skulduggery, they work for the shadowy Nemesis organisation, where Commander Tremayne keeps sending them into international trouble with a straight face and a sturdy tie.
What makes the series worth a look is the deliciously old-school mix of gadget-free espionage, comic-book premise and polished ITC style. It is part spy fantasy, part adventure yarn, and part excuse to watch three improbably glamorous people outwit smug villains in exotic locations, often with a little more style than plausibility. If you enjoy television that is earnest, stylish and faintly daft in a way that never apologises for itself, this has a lot going for it.
Transmission Details
- Show Title: The Champions
- Years: 1968-1969
- Created By: Dennis Spooner, Monty Berman
- Network: ITV
- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 30
- Starring: Stuart Damon, Alexandra Bastedo, William Gaunt
- Supporting Cast: Anthony Nicholls, David Bauer
- Genres: Adventure, espionage, science fiction
- Status: Ended
Signal Strength
The Champions works best when it leans into its own confident absurdity. The central idea is immediately elegant: three people with enhanced abilities who still need a bureaucratic boss, a cover organisation and a weekly crisis to solve. That tension between the extraordinary and the procedural gives the series a pleasant engine. It is never trying to be gritty. It is trying to be sleek, brisk and just dangerous enough to keep the tea cold.
The trio has strong chemistry, which matters because the scripts often depend on charm more than elaborate plotting. Stuart Damon gives Craig Stirling a clipped athleticism, William Gaunt makes Richard Barrett the most sceptical and dryly observant of the three, and Alexandra Bastedo brings poise and warmth to Sharron Macready without reducing her to decorative presence. That balance helps the series avoid becoming a male buddy show with a woman attached to the logo.
The show’s weaknesses are mostly the ones you would expect from a tightly budgeted, early colour adventure series made for an international market. Some plots are pure machine-made espionage, with villains, briefings and reversals arranged with admirable efficiency but little surprise. The action is serviceable rather than spectacular, and the “enhanced powers” premise is sometimes used more as a promise than a constant dramatic force. When an episode is running on wit and momentum, it flies. When it is running on upholstered intrigue and scenic stock footage, it can feel a bit like a very stylish meeting.
Vibe Check
This is smooth, lightly camp, and determinedly unembarrassed about being both. The pace is quicker than many modern prestige dramas, but slower and more methodical than a pure action show. Each episode usually builds from mission briefing to infiltration to climax, with enough invention to keep the formula from feeling stale, provided you are in the mood for classic television storytelling rather than breathless serialised complexity.
It should suit viewers who like retro spy fiction, old-school ITC glamour, and television that believes a sharp suit is practically a special effect. Fans of The Saint, Department S or The Avengers will recognise the flavour, though The Champions is a touch more earnest than the winking end of the genre. If you want hard realism, this is not your stop. If you want polished escapism with a faintly bonkers premise and enough style to sell it, you are in the right queue.
Spoiler Mode
The series begins with the crash that changes everything. Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready and Richard Barrett are on an aircraft that comes down in the Himalayas, and instead of perishing in a neat and sensible way, they are rescued by an advanced hidden civilisation in Tibet. That civilisation, through its healers and scientists, alters their minds and bodies so they can hear, see, think and react far beyond ordinary human limits. The gift is not presented as a comic-book accident but as a secret burden. They return to Western life as enhanced agents, and the show builds its whole identity around the fact that they are useful, isolated and permanently compromised by what has happened to them.
Their employer, Nemesis, gives the series its organisational spine. Commander Tremayne acts as the reassuringly civilised gatekeeper between the trio and the outside world, but the arrangement is always slightly uneasy. They are powerful, but also vulnerable because their abilities are tied to secrecy and surveillance. The central dramatic trick is that the heroes are not free superheroes. They are assets. That means every mission carries a second level of tension, because they are not only beating the enemy but preserving the secret that makes them valuable.
Across the run, the stories repeatedly test whether these powers are a blessing, a burden or simply a very convenient plot device. The characters use their heightened perception and physical ability to solve crimes, expose conspiracies and survive traps that would flatten ordinary spies. But the more the series leans on that premise, the more it also reminds you that they cannot return to normal life. The hidden Tibetan benefactors remain remote and mysterious, and the trio’s dependence on Nemesis means their independence is always provisional. That is the show’s strongest long-term idea: they are extraordinary, but they are not in control.
The late episodes and concluding stretch do not so much revolutionise the premise as consolidate it. The central team remain intact, the organisation continues to deploy them, and the series ends with its core tension unresolved in the most old-fashioned television way possible: mission accomplished, but the larger world unchanged. That is part of the charm. The Champions is not interested in a grand concluding thesis. It prefers the pleasing suggestion that somewhere out there, more plots need foiling and more smug men need to be corrected at speed.
Character Shout-Outs
Craig Stirling, played by Stuart Damon: Stirling is the most physically assertive of the trio, the one most likely to get the show out of a corner by running, climbing, fighting or improvising before anyone else has finished objecting. Damon plays him with clean-cut confidence and just enough self-awareness to keep him from becoming a robot in a blazer. He gives the character a springy energy that suits the series’ action-first instincts, and he makes the “enhanced agent” idea feel immediate rather than abstract.
Sharron Macready, played by Alexandra Bastedo: Sharron is the series’ secret weapon because Bastedo refuses to treat her as a token or a mascot. She is cool, intelligent and capable, but also alert to the emotional cost of the premise. Her presence adds poise to scenes that might otherwise become all briefing-room efficiency, and she gives the series an elegant centre of gravity. Bastedo’s performance matters because it keeps the show from turning into a boys’ own spy romp with a decorative sidebar.
Richard Barrett, played by William Gaunt: Barrett is the driest member of the team, and Gaunt plays him with the sort of sceptical polish that makes the surrounding absurdity more enjoyable. He often feels like the character most aware of how ridiculous the situation is, which gives the audience a useful in-road. His sharpness prevents the trio from becoming interchangeable, and his scepticism gives the scripts a built-in corrective whenever the premise starts to float off into pure fantasy.
Commander Tremayne, played by Anthony Nicholls: Tremayne anchors the Nemesis side of the operation with authority and understatement. Nicholls makes him sound like a man who has spent a career collecting alarming secrets and somehow keeping his hat on. He is not a flashy supporting player, but he is crucial to the show’s tone because he sells the notion that this whole bizarre arrangement is being managed by competent adults in expensive offices. In a series this unabashedly pitched, that kind of straight-faced delivery is invaluable.
Deep Dive Highlights
The Champions sits squarely inside the ITC tradition of filmic British television designed to travel well internationally. It was shot on film, which gives it a slicker look than many contemporaneous studio-bound series, and the production values aim for a cosmopolitan sheen. The result is a show that often feels larger than its budget, especially when it is moving through European-style locations, scenic exteriors and carefully staged action inserts. Even when you can sense a production shortcut, the series usually has enough style to make the shortcut look intentional.
The Tibetan element is the most distinctive creative gamble. Rather than offering a standard spy gadget or laboratory accident, the show roots its hook in a secret East-meets-West mythology that was very of its era. It gives the series a quasi-mystical flavour without abandoning the spy framework. That blend is part of what makes The Champions memorable: it is not simply about espionage, and not quite science fiction in the hard sense either. It lives in the pleasing borderland where occult adventure, speculative science and international intrigue all share a cocktail table.
Production-wise, the series also benefits from the clean, economical storytelling of Dennis Spooner and Monty Berman’s ITV-era television making. Scripts tend to establish a premise quickly, move briskly through complications and finish with the minimum of dead air. That can make the show feel formulaic, but it also means it rarely wastes your time. The best episodes understand exactly what the series is selling: competence, glamour and a whisper of impossibility.
One especially notable feature is how the show uses its trio as a unit rather than sending them off into separate genres of competence. Their powers and personalities complement each other, so the format becomes less about individual heroics and more about team balance. That was not unusual for the era, but The Champions handles it with particular neatness. It knows that the appeal lies not only in what they can do, but in how differently they do it.
Legacy & Impact
The Champions did not become a towering, endlessly revived franchise, but it has endured as one of the more distinctive entries in British ITC adventure television. Its reputation rests on style, premise and the enduring appeal of its central trio. The series has remained available and discussed enough to secure a place in the memory of fans of 1960s genre television, where it sits alongside the better-known spy and fantasy shows of the period.
Its broader legacy is less about awards and more about influence through example. It helped define the hybrid spy-fantasy format that British television occasionally returned to, showing that an action show could carry a speculative hook without losing its breezy mainstream appeal. It also remains a useful reminder that there was a time when network television was perfectly happy to hand viewers a secret Tibetan upgrade and expect them to keep up.
Skull Face’s Take
The Champions is well worth your time if you like vintage British adventure with a clever premise, handsome production and a trio with real screen chemistry. It is not especially subtle, and some episodes are more efficient than exciting, but the series has enough wit, charm and oddball confidence to justify a full watch. If you prefer modern hard-edged realism or highly serialised plotting, the formula may feel too neat. If you enjoy stylish escapism with a dry grin, it still has a proper pulse.
Skull Face's Score
Skull Face's independent editorial rating
A stylish, offbeat adventure with strong leads and a deliciously daft premise.
What works
- Distinctive concept that blends spy drama and speculative fantasy
- Strong chemistry across the central trio
- Glossy ITC production style with real period charm
What may not
- Plots can feel formulaic and neatly mechanical
- The powers premise is sometimes underused
- Action and effects are modest by modern standards