Tightrope: First Impressions
Once again I veer off from posting about The Avengers series 1 to write about a series which is completely new to me, and which I bought from Amazon on the offchance. Mitchell Hadley of itsabouttv.com will be very pleased to hear that this definitely comes into the category of ‘Our Sort of Television’, despite not having the right pedigree at all on the surface. For a start it is a 1970s show, but seems to have escaped the slough of hopelessness I found myself wading through when I did a series of posts on 1970s television a few years ago. This is 1970s television, but of a quite different quality from what we expect. I would go so far as to say that I am formulating a theory that on the whole the better-preserved 1970s TV shows are the lesser-quality. Tightrope, like Spyder’s Web, is one which survives only in black and white recordings despite having originally been broadcast in colour, and the junking of the masters seems to be a sign of quality. Watching the show in black and w...