Cult TV Blog

Back in much more classic Saint territory here, for an episode set on a Greek island, although very obviously actually filmed in Elstree! As always I read around other people's opinions on the show before getting as far as writing a post, with the intention of writing something different to what's already out there and getting a sense of what people think. Most of the commentary on this episode is dominated by Oliver Reed and Imogen Hassall and interestingly they completely overpower any comment on the actual show. To me this episode is the perfect example of why using big names is not conducive to good TV. There are a few other things to say about it, firstly that this show reminded me of how much the TV of this era fed into British jingoism, largely because I suspect a lot of viewers would have watched this show and concluded that the behaviours and events it depicts were typical of Greeks, 'Continentals', as my aunt called them, or even foreigners full stop. The part...

I have so much planned in my head: series of posts on Hammer House of Horror and TV made in Birmingham, continuing my series of posts on Fury from the Deep, The Tomorrow People and The Avengers Series 1. So obviously that's why here is another post about The Saint. I can never actually guarantee what TV show will grab my attention. These later episodes of The Saint don't tend to be favourites of the fans, who are conditioned to expert endless globe trotting, international intrigue and Cold War conspiracies with dolly birds turning up at every airport. I do have some sympathy for them, but also can see that it's virtually impossible to keep that up for any length of time. After a time the fans then start complaining that you're doing the same thing, and really you can't win. Once you've portrayed Templar gadding about one sunny European resort it's a bit difficult to make the others different. I suppose Doctor Who would be the classic example of a show which ...

I started off watching this show thinking that it had been a long time since I had watched some ITC (I also have Randall and Hopkirk Deceased lined up to rewatch) before realising some time in that I have just finished a lengthy series of posts about probably the best known ITC series of all time. I wasn't sure about why I don't automatically think of The Prisoner as being an ITC series - although I think it doesn't have the things which I think are characteristic of ITC series. These would of course be the Avengersland setting, the cast of the exact same circle of actors who appear in all these shows, and a certain ITC colour palette. I'm not sure if it's Eastman, identical to the Eastman effect, or if I'm just being affected by rambling on about film. You can also usually rely on ITC to have some romance (I use that word to tone down what I actually mean) which was never on the agenda in The Prisoner. Anyway, I have only just noticed that I perceive a marked d...

I have now seen Grasshopper Island (1971) all the way through once and have had my initial impression confirmed, that it is a delight. True to form it has also raised many a question for me. It is a series of very short episodes about three brothers (referred to throughout by their nicknames of Toughy, Smarty, and Mouse) who get tired of authority figures so decide to run away for a year and a day, to a desert island. They pack up and go to the docks, where of course nobody will take them except for a man described as an elderly boy, because he isn't old and isn't young. He takes them away on his boat and leaves them on a desert island, shot on location in Corsica. He won't leave them and can't cope without them, but eventually gets the hint and leaves the brothers there. This leads to the longest, middle part of the show, where they are living this blissful life in the sun on their island with no authority figures. They have the odd squabble but this is not Lord of the...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Tip of the hat to  Joppy  for letting me know this show existed. There is one whole episode of this show  here  and I see a record was released which is available on Amazon. Honestly it's like being back in the sixties with the post-broadcast availability of these shows. I had forgotten what it was like, although I have so far resisted buying any of the available novelisations of shows I can't track down. That would be being a bit too faithful to period. Joppy rightly commented that you couldn't make this show now and as soon as I discovered that a real robbery took place at Television Centre and the staff just assumed it was yet another stunt by Michael Bentine for this show and so just waved the robbers in ( Source ), I knew I would love it. There are of course other ways in which you couldn't make this show now - some of the racial typing is right off - but in every other way it is an absolute joy....

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Comedy Playhouse was a comedy anthology series which ran from 1961 to 1975 and which showed many episodes which became pilots for later series (per Wikipedia)  including Steptoe and Son, Meet the Wife, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, Up Pompeii!, Not in Front of the Children, Me Mammy, That's Your Funeral, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine. Pretty televisually and comedically seminal, then. It also had a revival for three episodes in 2017. There are a number of episodes online but this one is a second series episode written by Galton and Simpson which already shows we are in quality light entertainment territory. The Handyman has a very simple plot. Basically an unemployed man gets a job as a handyman at a so-called health farm where the customers are on tiny diets, winds up feeding them against the rules and eventually comes to an understanding with the owner of how they...

Another show I have rather avoided writing about here. I am going to be completely upfront with the reason, which is the rather superficial one that the actor Gene Barry plays the lead character, Gene Bradley. I have even had to check that three times while writing it, and I just find the similarity of those names very confusing. Barry was of course American, in true ITC fashion and Bradley is of course the archetypal ITC hero, millionaire, sophisticated, and all over the continent like a rash. And this episode has a very classic plot around inheritance and control related to marriage, which is very solid and a real contrast with the exotic Jason King. The Jaguar footage is used in a quite low key way to show the demise of an associate of Bradley's, who has already gone to the castle housing the titular icon. If you have the Network DVD box set there is a featurette on disc 4 called Icons Aren't Forever, which of course I had to watch in preparation for this post, in which Barr...

Very classic ITC territory here, Nazi war criminals intent on world domination, unexploded bombs and only The Champions standing between them and their ambition. At this point I realise that I really could do with watching all the way through the ITC series again, because I am completely certain that these themes are recurring ones, but couldn't particularly tell you which shows. From memory, I am certain there is another Champions where they deal with a Nazi who has been hiding out for twenty years and (somewhat incredibly) thinks the war is still going on, and there is a Department S with a Nazi theme. In true Department S style it is treated much more as a backdrop of Nazi memorabilia, and to be fair you have to be a bit theatrical in that show because otherwise Jason King might appear unreal. And we can't have that, can we. Actually I have also literally just realised the sheer number of shows at this time with Second World War themes. I was hoping to have a short, pithy re...

Caution: there is a possible plot spoiler in this post. It is below the line. Our second show where the white Jag gets it and our second episode of The Baron. This one may even have some tenuous connection to the antiques trade, because as you all know, a cameo brooch is heavily involved. I'm liking this Baron very much because it is very firmly out of the ITC stable and yet is a solid mystery. It is set in Spain, which gives it its ITC sophistication. For the main part it is also visually very ITC, however I think many props are used to set up the mystery in a way very characteristic of The Avengers. What I mean by this is the amount of 'antique' (reproduction in reality) furniture and other props. I would suggest that ITC usually would be more likely to go for a modern look. If you put this clobber in an episode of The Avengers, it would spell out that a great old English family has gorn to the dogs.  Here the old family set up is contrasted with the modem set up of the l...

In some ways we are very lucky to be living in the times we are. The current intense polarisation of society allows a quick identification of how you will get on with people. In the US you have it relatively easy, because you just have to ask people who won the election and their response is likely to give you a good idea of the rest of their opinions. Here we tend to do that by their reaction to the word brexit, although now we have the handy indicator of whether they've had the vaccine and the reasons for their decision either way. I have been spending time sitting in the sun recently (pictured below) and yesterday a man started chatting with me who told me quite seriously that Bill Gates was spying on me through the coronavirus vaccine I have had and that this is part of a new world order. I remembered an urgent appointment elsewhere. Apart from anything else, if this was actually happening, a member of our government would have left it on a memory stick on a train by now. In th...

Sometimes you just have to prioritise yourself. With food prices soaring after Brexit, a global pandemic in which my employer was apparently unable to understand what 'stay at home' means and my joints playing up again, I have come to my senses and handed my notice in. I intend to rest for several months at least to let my joints settle down again. I have quite a few things either buzzing round in my head or shows I haven't written about yet, to write about here. Villains doesn't seem to be featured much in the blogosphere, however does have many online reviews which are decidedly mixed and which I broadly agree with. If you see write ups you will see that this is described as a show 'with a difference', which is usually the kiss of death because it usually means someone is being too clever. I don't think that is the case here. The premise is simple: the series follows a gang of bank robbers individually after they escape prison. Spoiler: they get recaptured...

 I love this episode, it is like an encapsulation of everything Avengers in one hour! Eccentrics, romance, dastardly plots, and parody of our glorious nation. Actually I was reminded of it when watching Clue (one of my favourite films, along with Murder by Death), when Tim Curry told one of the guests that a butler 'butles'. There is an irony - Steed understands 'service' so well because of having been brought up on the other side of the counter. He fits in by actually being an obvious fraud and therefore a shifty character - I love that the nobles in his forged references are the names of pubs! Normally I don't take to familiar faces but like that John le Mesurier turns out to be the baddie here. I love his quote to the effect that his roles were usually of a decent man at sea in a chaos of his own making - which presumably means this isn't a usual role for him. He did actually see himself as a jobbing actor of the sort I'm usually irritated by and has a hu...

In my last post about this show I neglected to mention the soundtrack of this show, and this episode personifies perfection. It depicts demimondaine - I'm not sure of the word to use to describe them, possibly respectable people at the time would have called them beatniks - denizens of Soho and the sound track is thus jazzy and cool for cats. I have recently also been watching some episodes of Peter Gunn, which has a similarly groovy soundtrack. In point of fact The Nightlifers places us squarely in the most sophisticated worlds of post-War Britain, just before the Beatles met the Maharishi and everyone started meditating. It has all the hallmarks - for a start being set in Soho, Gideon's wife tries to get him to get some Chinese delicacies from a shop in Soho, and there are parties and drugs galore. This episode exactly depicts the world in which The Avengers is set, including depicting a world of privilege. This show is not the simplistic contrast of youthful exuberance w...

Image credit I have somehow managed to get to this stage without watching more than the odd episode of Gideon's Way, so when I saw it for sale I had to try it. I have spent the past couple of evenings beginning to watch the episodes in order that they come on the DVDs and was thinking of them as standard ITC offerings, until this one really hit me between the eyes. I have no idea whether the episodes are in original broadcast order, but there is the slight drawback that this one about a deranged fire setter follows straight on from one about a man traumatised by being in a concentration camp who also has a plan, just for an explosion, with the same motivation of drawing attention to his issue. You all know how I don't like the same actors appearing in different shows? In this one George Cole is cast as the fire starter. It is an unusual role for him, and he plays it superbly - he really does come across as absolutely deranged and it is even worse that the death of his wif...

Once again we find ourselves in the presence of quality television. I have recently dropped the name of Kneale when talking about Quatermass, which I haven't got round to blogging about yet, but I didn't then own this series. For some reason I never fancied it, which may be for the very individual reason that there are a lot of famous names in this series, not only in the production, but in the cast, and as you know that normally doesn't go well with me. This eminence is reflected in the fact the Network boxed set comes with a leaflet about Kneale and the series; the only thing more eminent is to get released by the BFI. The theme of this series is given as bestial horror, which I had some difficulty understanding, but seems to mean the individual episodes are about horror, involving animals, entities we don't understand or which don't exist. I would also note that the episodes involve the extremes of human emotions. Buddyboy is no exception, and despite starrin...

Yesterday I went to Leamington Spa, which is not far from here but is always an expensive journey because there is someone there with the same taste in TV as me, who keeps selling his or her DVDs to the entertainment exchange, and I keep buying them. Yesterday I bought series 1 of a series I have never heard of before, Rogue's Rock, but which I find I like because it is definitely out of the same stable as Freewheelers, even down to some of the same music. In non-TV I bought the horror film spoof Young Frankenstein, and bought the boxed set of Thriller. I have seen the show before but not for some time and have somehow never blogged about it here. Thriller is one of those series which is described as legendary by some, and since it is an anthology series, you can often find it described as mixed. Lady Killer is the first episode, and it's excellent, despite embodying virtually everything I dislike in television of this era! For a start the three main characters are played by...

I'm on holiday this week and hence a post about one of my favourite Avengers episodes, which is a jolly romp about a hotel. Except it isn't, since this Avengers draws on the classic fear found in many a dream, where the protagonist finds himself in a situation where nobody believes him. In this case the prison is a luxury hotel and nobody can believe it is a prison. Out here in the real world this situation is of course what underlies many a situation of abuse, and it is no coincidence that I am writing this post shortly after the Abbot of Ealing Abbey has belatedly resigned from his position in the wake of the inquiry into child sexual abuse showing the paucity of his response to complaints. One of his predecessors is in prison after being on the run from the police, and another monk and several lay teachers are also in prison. But who would have believed that those holy men would be abusers? Just as who would believe a hotel would be so difficult to escape from? That is t...

I have previously commented that the rock on which Target floundered was the amount of violence it depicted, and I suspect this was one of the episodes which most shocked people. There are two occasions in the episode. One is where a jewel robber gets burned in the face by an oxyacetylene torch. One of his companions comments that they might as well finish the job, but they kindly dump what's left of him outside a hospital. The other occasion is where the escaped convict throws boiling water over his wife who has been cheating on him while he has been in prison, and whom he has caught in flagrante delicto. Personally I feel the violence in this episode isn't out of what can be expected for a show designed to depict the criminal underworld, but of course that is only a personal opinion. And this episode shows the working of a gang of jewel thieves rather well. What I do think is shocking is the way Hackett reveals his wife's whereabouts to the criminal they enlist to he...

I posted  recently  about my fear that there will come a time when there is no 'new' vintage TV to be discovered, a post which certainly seems to have made a hit with the blogosphere, judging by the number of page hits. Of course this may be partly explained by the recommendation by  Mitchell Hadley  (thank you), who has made me realise the reason that the hit counter for posts about The Man from UNCLE has suddenly gone up, even though I too don't think I'll bother watching the film.   Having seen it as a recommendation on Amazon and hummed and ha'ed over it, I saw the discs for the 1973 series of Special Branch for sale yesterday and bought them on spec. I am delighted to say that while I didn't initially warm to this show, having watched a few episodes I think I have found another quality 1970s series. Except this isn't a 1970s series. It's a 1960s – 1970s series, which went through a major transformation of approach, cast, and production v...