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Showing posts from 2017

Noah's Castle

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Another Christmas has been and gone and I have once more resisted writing about Too Many Christmas Trees. I am sure I will write about it at some point, I'm just rather wary of not doing it justice - although I suppose I can always return to it in the future. Instead I'm going to write about Noah's Castle, although I'm not sure I can do that justice either. Noah's Castle features an actor who appears in many of the TV series of the era I write about - Simon Gipps-Kent. There are a couple of reasons he hasn't appeared here yet: the first is that he was type-cast in the role of upper class youth in the sort of time-travelling period drama which has never really appealed to me. The other is that up until recently I had only come across him in The Tomorrow People. I haven't yet managed to sum up what I would want to say about that show in a blog post, because I'm rather ambivalent about it, both about the show itself and I'm not really sure what I think

The Professionals: The Rack

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I ventured over the sea to the US in my last post (and thank you to Mitchell Hadley for commenting on this and bringing it to the attention of the TV blogosphere) so of course I've come scurrying back to Blighty this time. The Professionals is a show which I have tended not to write about here, despite it being one of my favourites. For a start I remember watching it with my dad, which is enough reason for it to be favourite, and it is also redolent of the clothes, cars and life of my childhood. It seems like it does have a cult following on the internet - the following just doesn't seem to have passed over into the cult TV blogosphere. I have a theory about its (relative) lack of popularity. Much 1970s TV suffers from being made in the 1970s. The times were awful. The fashions were laughable. The social mores of the time were ridiculous (many a time Bodie and Doyle begin a conversation with a woman with the words 'Look, love...'). As just one example, the four CI5 cars

Get Smart: Casablanca

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weeks ago I posted here about a first-series episode of Get Smart, and the post seemed very popular, at least to judge by the comments. The way I discovered that the series was available was this: I saw the whole boxed set in the HMV shop round the corner from me and it stirred a memory of the show. I simply had to have seen it because it seemed so familiar, but I had little recollection of it, so I only bought the series 1 set online as a taster to see if I woud like it again. I did and as my Christmas present to myself have duly bought the whole series as a boxed set (in region 2 format, obviously). I also managed to get it on ebay for £20 less than the normal retail price which is around the £50 mark. The set includes all 138 episodes on 25 discs, with 8 hours of bonus footage and features. I see from the box that the run time is 3964 minutes, which is 66 hours of Get Smart. I've started early but I don't think I will have exhausted it by Christmas day! Some of the online re

The Avengers: The Positive-Negative Man

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How have I managed to get this far without writing about this Avengers episode? Perhaps I had better start by disclosing that I have a ridiculous bias and this Avengers is one of my favourites. In fact I think it may even encapsulate best the Avengers thing for me. The whole episode is set firmly in Avengerland for a start. This of course was necessary because some of the more pantomimic elements of the plot would be incredible if seen against the real world of the 1960s. I say pantomimic because while there are times when the subject matter of this programme is treated very seriously, and would even be very distressing if the events of this episode happened in reality, they are treated in a way which can hardly be taken seriously. For example the opening shots of the man who hits the wall so hard it leaves his imprint in the plaster. The scene is as if a comic strip has come to life: the man dies and yet we see it. It is like the scenes in a Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom gets hit

Ghost Squad: The Green Shoes

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Before The Avengers. The Avengers. After The Avengers. That is largely my own description of the landscape of 1960s British TV. Regular readers will of course know that I see The Avengers as a high point, and everything else is rather an anticlimax, or under the show's influence, or imitating it. It is for this reason that I tend not to venture into the world before The Avengers very often (except in film terms - most of the films I watch are pre-Avengers). Ghost Squad is thus a rare departure for me - although still bang up my street because it is still an ITC show, which studio produced the majority of the rest of my favourite viewing. Ghost Squad was never really going to appear here, until I came across the box set in a charity shop in Stratford upon Avon this week and took that as the universe's message to me. I'd read about it, of course and it tends to come up in my recommendations on Amazon, but I'd never really taken a fancy to it. I'm trying to put my fing

The Avengers: Quick-Quick Slow Death

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Let me get two things out of the way before I start on this actual show. The first is that I have been watching Honor Blackman play a probation officer in the show of the same name. The only reason the show won't get a post here is that it isn't really my sort of thing - but if you like shows with legal-type settings which are note police procedurals or court room dramas as such, you may very well like it. The second thing is that I prepared for this blog post by *listening* to the episode rather than watching it, and what I listened to was the version produced by Springbok Radio in South Africa in the 1970s. I have all the remaining episodes of that show which I downloaded from the website about it and they are jealously backed up on two laptops, my google drive and a CD-Rom: they're not getting away from me anytime soon. I have previously commented here that the website devoted to the South African radio Avengers series no longer seems to allow the shows to be download

Bottom: Gas

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A few posts ago I said that I would try to concentrate more on blogging about single episodes of quality shows. And thus we come to Bottom, which I don't think I've written about here before, although it is one of my favourite shows ever. Coming out of the alternative comedy scene of the 1980s, it isn't really comparable to the Goodies, and yet I do think there is a slight comparison in the theme of down-at-heel 'friends' who end up stuck together for better or worse. The difference is in the tone of course - the friends in Bottom are really mortal enemies who have a bizarre codependency going on, while the friends in the Goodies are really friends who club together to do anything in a time of need. I feel it is significant that one is pre- and the other is post-Thatcher's Britain. My favourite scene in this Bottom episode is the card game with which it opens. It is obvious that this kind of card game has frequently been replayed in this house, and also that

The Goodies and the Beanstalk

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Forward in time for today's post, to Cricklewood, 1973, and the Goodies are broke. This leads to them falling into a pantomime world of beanstalks, giants, and geese which lay golden eggs. I think this has to be one of my favourite Goodies episodes, simply because it is so visually effective, and literally everything is turned into a visual pun, even before it gets to the more pantomimic aspects in the latter half. For example the policeman feeding coins into a parking meter, which then works as a fruit machine and he gets a payout. The old ladies at the bus stop who get their own instruments out and start playing in repsonse to Bill busking. The policeman's sneeze literally blows off Tim's gypsy disguise, to the delight of a man in a suit at the bus stop. A lady presents Graeme with a false leg when he stands on one leg with a sign saying 'give generously', and when he throws the gifted leg away she produces a false arm and punches him with it. The policeman m

Danger Man: Dangerous Secret

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Back to one of the classic themes for TV in the 1960s for this episode of Danger Man - namely the danger inherent in our modern technology if it is not handled correctly. In fact I love the way this show starts: the sequence showing the children trespassing in the virus research establishment is very effective and suggests right at the start that the doubtless deadly viri being researched in the establishment are not being looked after properly. Of course in this case there are potentially deadly consequences. It is strange but I have repeatedly watched all of the episodes of Danger Man (although not recently) and had no recollection of the amount of what we might call spy technology used in the show. Once again the ambivalent 1960s attitude to technology where it can both be our saviour and destroyer if it gets into the wrong hands. In this episode the spy technology used by Drake is a bug which he fires from an umbrella and which attaches itself to the lintel of a room opposite. This

Danger Man: Judgement Day

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There are two subjects I keep returning to in my witterings here. One is the way in which these 1960s TV shows encapsulate the interests and concerns of their time. The other is the way in which their production is dictated by the technology of the time. Both are points which have great impact on this episode of Danger Man. Let's face it, if Judgement Day were to be remade nowadays it would look radically different, and the fact it is as convincing as it is, is a great testimony to the TV makers of the time. The opening scenes of the making of the bomb are completely studio-bound, and then stock footage is used for the externals of the airport, before returning to the studio for Drake's encounter with an 'official' who changes his travel plans abruptly. At the time this was the ordinary technology used in so many of these shows and in the restored boxed set I have, the seam between studio and stock footage is seamless. Similarly the subject is very much of the time. I h

The Avengers: The Secrets Broker

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The way I have blogged here has changed slightly over the past couple of years. I have moved towards general posts about series or what I am watching, and away from the more analytical posts I used to write about specific episodes of series. I would like to return to a more episode-specific form of blogging, although it will probably mean I am unable to post as frequently as I have been, because I will need to put more effort into each post. I also want to concentrate more on what I would consider 'good' television, since my mission here has always been to appreciate quality television better and luckily it seems as if others in the blogosphere like this too. I selected this episode by picking an Avengers series at random and jabbing my finger on the box to select an episode, and am delighted to see that I have selected this episode since it is one of my favourites. The first thing I have to say about The Secrets Broker is that despute being black and white it is *so* visually

Reflections on Children's TV Inspired by The Feathered Serpent

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As I write this I am watching a programme called The Feathered Serpent, which is a show I bought completely on spec. Although I was alive when it was broadcast I have no recollection of it and will presume to quote from the blurb on the box: 'Starring Diane Keen and Patrick Troughton, The Feathered Serpent is a story of murder, intrigue and political manoeuvring set amid the splendour and turmoil of ancient Mexico. This release comprises every episode of the children's drama series from Thames Television, memorable for its spectacular sets and lavish costumes, originally transmitted between 1976 and 1978.' Watching this show has caused me to reflect rather waspishly on vintage children's TV, and particularly the few children's shows that I have written about here. These shows are so few because I have found that TV shows I remember from my actual childhood rarely stand up to the rosy memories I have of them: mym memories of shows from my adolescence onwards are much

Steptoe and Son: Porn Yesterday

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This may seem like I'm going completely off-topic but one of my other interests is architecture and I have been watching a film called Utopia London  about the idealistic planning involved in reconstructing London before and after the Second World War. In Utopia London's vision, egalitarianism featured highly and everyone was to have the same opportunities. In my humble opinion, the egalitarian bright future dreamed of in the 1940s was a red herring. On the whole people don't want to share and even if you were to share out the world's resources completely equally, some people would still manage to be penniless after the first week. As a result of these elements of human nature we find the kind of alternative economies we see in Steptoe and Son (you see, I was going somewhere with that introduction). This is also not something which is different anywhere in the world: where I used to live in Bearwood, if you wanted rid of something you just had to put it out in the st

The Avengers: Propellant 23

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A blog about TV suggests the blogger is blogging about what he is watching. I have always aimed to make this blog more about what I think is good TV, and since I last wrote I have been watching some more Archer and a few other things. The other things won't be named because they won't be blogged about here and I have thus made a point of returning to quality TV, and hence this post. This is a series 2 Avengers episode which I've never really got on with, and so this blog post is my way of making myself think more about it, and hopefully come to understand it. In the visual language of 1960s television, the episode begins by telling us that the action will take place among the privileged, or possibly powerful. This is done by the simple device of setting the opening scene on a passenger plane. I feel that in the early 1960s flight would have been less available to most people than it was with tha later advent of cheap package holidays, and thus already sets the expectations.

Archer: First Impressions

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All things espionage. That has recently been the subject of this blog, because that was the fashion in the 1960s, when so much of the TV I like was made. The spy thing, of course, is paradied in so many of these TV shows: I might mention Man from UNCLE in addition to Get Smart, which I have recently rediscovered. But none of those parodies parodies the world of espionage as effectively as Archer, which I have only just discovered. My only regret at having discovered it so late is a rage at a cruel world that I have somehow managed not to hear about the show up until now. How could that have happened? I can only conclude that the universe produces another TV show for me to watch when I conclude there isn't enything left. Archer parodies the inner world of the spy. The real world of the spy. The world of the spy where you actually work in an organisation with HR and all the other paraphernalia of the modern workplace. Add the twist that his boss is his own mother and you have the mak

Department S: The Soup of the Day

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My recent watching of Get Smart and the comments on the contemporary craze for all things to do with spies has caused my mind to turn towards Department S. This is an over-generalisation, of course, but it may be significant that as the sixties wore on and in the US the spy-craze turned more towards parody, in the UK it just turned bizarre. I'm thinking of all the ITC shows, distantly related to spycraft and espionage, whose characters became more and more flamboyant, peaking in Jason King. In the midst of the Cold War the actual espionage remained a serious matter and those who did it became the subject of the TV shows. I'm quite prepared for this little thought of mine to be blown out of the water, of course. This Department S episode is one which is a very good example of why I dislike familiar actors reappearing in all sorts of shows. Right at the beginning we see Patrick Mower appearing as a baddy. A few years later he was appearing as a goodie in Special Branch. Of course

Hancock's Half Hour: The Cold

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I was very chuffed at the way my last-but-one post kicked off a conversation mainly about British comedians and the difficulty we have exporting them elsewhere. Dominic Bird made the pertinent comment that the only humour anything like ours is Russia's and that it must rain a lot there. Which brings me nicely to the subject of this blog post - Hancock has a cold. In addition to the weather, colds are a British preoccupation. The rumours are true that there used to be a place which researched treatments for the cold, and people would go there on holiday to be given a cold and experimented on. It is only a nation which could support that kind of official centre which could also produce the sort of humour we have in this episode. When you say it, it sounds strange: the object of humour here is a man's illness. Oh dear, how can I live with myself? The joke is, of course, in Hancock's approach to his cold. The rest of us may go to bed for a couple of days if it's bad enough,