Cult TV Blog

I have had several run throughs of both series of Special Branch before, but have tended to miss something in this episode. I feel like the stakeout is a standard dramatic set up for the crime shows of the seventies - dramatically it allows character development, allows for an exciting denouement and must be relatively cheap. The only difficulty is preventing boredom settling in and that is usually done by the interplay between the (invariably two) officers doing the stake out. Unfortunately they didn't have the ultimate resort of a totally weird event used by Scully and Mulder while they were being punished by the FBI in later series. In this episode the development used to distract from the ennui is the friction between Haggerty and Craven, which in fact dominates the whole episode. This is an entirely personal view because as regular readers know I prefer my TV unreal, but the ongoing friction doesn't really do it for me. This is purely because situations where you can't...

Mitchell Hadley  has kindly paid me the accolade that there's a good chance of reading about shows he's never heard of here. This is of course setting the bar very high and I hope I can live up to it. Mitchell, I hope you've never heard of Timeslip or at least are prepared to pretend you haven't! It's a show I have fought shy of writing about here for several reasons. The first is that I find it confusing. This is mainly because despite being an apparently straightforward series of four adventures in total, it seems to come in a bewildering array of different box sets. The one I have is the blue box with the girl in a yellow and red picture holding her arms up, and appears to be complete. The second reason is that I personally tend to find time travel stories confusing so please bear that in mind as you read this post. I must confess something else, which is that I have a real weakness for this show. In fact for several children's TV shows of the early 1970s bec...

How have I only just found out about this show? Obviously I've been spending too much time in graveyards and crypts! Like all anthology series the episodes are a mixed bag but this one is pure gold.  We all know someone who is so pig-headed that they always know best and won't listen to anyone else. And before you say it ImI not one of them! Rarely though, does this extend to not believing that you're dead and just carrying on. The reason this is such a success is that the premise is so wrong it's brilliant, and it draws on images of headless chickens. It is so wrong to say that someone is so stubborn (with undertones of intelligence on a par with a chicken) that they don't know they're dead. The premise leads to wonderful scenarios that are also rather uncomfortable. It is so inappropriate humour to say that someone is dead but doesn't know it, but.... that is exactly what the daughter says. Hearing the words, you're dead but won't lie down, actuall...

This post is based on the episode reconstruction on the Avengers Special Features disc. We go straight into the underworld with this one, but goodness how old fashioned it seems. On the one hand Im sure many a retail worker supplements their income with an Only Fans these days, so the sex work has probably become more widespread but the mechanics of 1960s prostitution seem so old fashioned. When I lived in London in the nineties I knew someone whose job was putting the advertising cards in phone boxes for sex workers. There were a bunch of them who worked for different pimps and they spent every day cycling round taking down other people's cards and putting up their own. Even that seems old fashioned now but - yikes - it was 30 years ago. Do city workers still live in hostels? I doubt it, but it indicates the girls aren't being paid enough to live independently. I wonder whether it would have been acceptable for a young girl to house share in the early 1960s - I suspect it woul...

 High time we had some more Dr Who - it's been several years since I posted about him.  Unfortunately The Monster of Peladon is not a favourite and I am unlikely to be able to rehabilitate it in any marked way. The usual criticisms are that it is too like the preceding The Curse of Peladon, problems ewit slow pacing and that the doctor and Sarah Jane just don't seem to gel. I personally would add an extra one that the galactic ambassador is very irritating. Once you get over her appearance of a single eyeball, which makes her look like a speaking penis, she is very wearing. I find the social structure within the planet quite interesting. The miners are, as you would expect, working class. I have posted about TV doing this before but you would be able to tell that they are working class because they have bare chests (with or without hairy shoulders). The guards are also working class because of the resilient nature of their uniforms. Otherwise I feel any sexy significance to th...

 I have so far fought shy of writing about this series, purely because it is so huge, involves so many story arcs and is so variable. In various places it is definitely stonking good television, but in others represents the worst of 1970s TV. I intend, now that I have broken into it, to do a master post to try to get the show into some order in my head, but this post is about the Secret Weapon story, broadcast in February to March 1975 as the first four episodes of series 3. The series was well underway by now and the essential elements are in place: the next stage of human evolution 'breaking out' as Homo Superior, jaunting using the jaunting belts, etc. In many ways I would see this as the natural progression of the scientific interests frequently mentioned in the TV of the preceding decade, just with the added idea that humanity would progress enough to evolve to the next stage. In the seventies this probably wouldn't have been seen as wildly unrealistic. I do think ther...

I love this episode, however have fought shy of writing about it because it manages to pack so much in, viz. 1. The Hammer style beginning. I actually think it is one of the nicest Avengers imitations of other genres. 2. Actually perhaps it's more in the style of Amicus because it is set in the present day and includes dialogue about the reality or otherwise of ghosts. I love the Avengeresque acronyms of the two ghost investigating groups, FOG and SMOG! 3. The episode is set against the noblesse oblige background of the Benedict estate. Very classic Avengers setting of the great and the good gone wrong. 4. The caricatured British setting is influenced by a very stereotypical foreigner. 5. It isn't explicitly mentioned but the noblesse oblige setting is not totally beneficent to the workers. The Benedict family not only formerly operated a mine, never a very safe or pleasant place to work, but the operation was brought to a close by an accident. However the dukes of Benedict are...