Cult TV Blog

The tag I have put on this post may seem to be a mistake, but if you thought that this was another of my occasional posts about films which are obviously not TV shows but which I think will be of interest to my audience, you would be mistaken. In fact I have been meaning to write about this film here for ages, because one character is credited with being an (or possibly the) inspiration for the John Steed character in The Avengers, so this show is, as it were, one of the things which come under my heading of What Came Before the Avengers. Perhaps I should say that in the US it was released as Clouds Over Europe. A mere two and a half minutes in we get to see the Major Hammond character for the first time - and frankly, it's Steed. The hat isn't right, but the suit, umbrella and silly ass presence are all Steed there in person. And Major Hammond not only looks like Steed, he acts like Steed. It would be such a Steed thing after getting knocked out on a job and arrested by ...

My last post about Doctor Who was perhaps an indication of how I have been thinking about Atlantis and other mythologies as treated in the cult TV world. Of course Doctor Who has been able to make remarkably free with any mythology of earth or created for another planet, but here w have a show also drawing on the mythology of Atlantis, just about the supposed last man from Atlantis. In fact Atlantis as far as I can see doesn't really occur in it at all, except as a pretext for a man being remarkably aquatically able. I had somehow managed to get to this great age without actually seeing an episode of The Man From Atlantis, a lack which has been remedied by the purchase of a boxed set from amazon.de. The title translates as Der Mann aus dem Meer in German, btw, and if you have region 2 equipment and are in Europe, the German edition is much the cheapest way to buy this series. The boxed set - with alternative language tracks in German and English - comes in at under £17 when paid...

I actually wasn't going to post about this Doctor Who adventure at all. I got out the Myths and Legends box set because I had only watched one out of the three adventures and felt like some Who. It's a funny thing about this set - it reminds me of how Dr Who started off life as an improving educational show in the more worthy BBC mould than the more entertaining ITV mould of much of the TV I write about here. All three of the adventures in the bexed set draw on ancient mythologies - The Horns of Nimon draws on the mythology of Theseus and the Minotaur, Underworld references Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Time Monster is all about Atlantis. I knew that there was a great fad for all things Atlantean around this time, but didn't know until I looked it up for the purposes of this post how ancient the myth of Atlantis is. It is found in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, where it is the antithesis of Athens, Platos' perfect state, and ultimately sinks into the sea ...

Do I even need to say I'm frantically excited? All my doom-laden prophecies that it would never happen paid off last year when the universe contradicted my predictions and another series 1 episode of The Avengers was discovered. I'm very gratified that it's Tunnel of Fear,which I have always thought looked interesting. I'm even more gratified that it's available for pre-order on Amazon UK and simply cannot wait to watch it! Also in Avengersy news, Steed's Jaguar from the New Avengers is undergoing restoration and you can read about it  here.

I'm watching Man About the House and it's making me feel rather bad about all the dreadful things I've said about 1970s TV. I have rather tended to characterise it as gritty, dreadful, a product of the very difficult time which gave it birth. Even the shows which aren't consciously 'gritty', I have portrayed as superficial, silly, racist, you name it. And it isn't even that I haven't seen much seventies TV - I've watched loads of these shows. And my unfortunate tendency repeats itself - that I tend to think of it as the age of the sit com. And I don't like sit coms. I particularly don't like George and Mildred. I've tried, but it just doesn't do it for me. I don't really have a sensible reason for it, I just don't like it. And as we all know, George and Mildred is a spin-off of Man About the House. I don't like spin-offs. At this point you could begin to think that I'm an old curmudgeon who doesn't like anything...