The Dawson Watch

This was very nearly a post about Carry on Christmas, but I don't think anyone would read it at this stage. I may post it in August and see what happens. Actually I have been taking notes of some of the searches which bring people to this site, and some are hilarious. Let's just say that entitling the last post Designing Women has caused a significant spike in page views!
Instead a general post about this show which arrived the day before yesterday and is so good I have watched almost all of it already. It is somewhat late for me, having been originally broadcast in 1979-80, but surely I don't need to tell any readers of this blog that anything Les Dawson did is wonderful. The whole series is on region 2 dvd by Simply Media but if you need any persuasion to buy (or even get a multi region dvd player if you don't have one) you can see episode 1 gratis here.
What makes this show particularly suitable for the readers of this blog is that you shouldn't be deceived by the reviews online which describe this show as stand up comedy. There is a strong streak of the style of comedy for which Dawson is so famous, but in addition it parodies many of the TV shows of the time, including documentary, nature and so on. Hence the title, Dawson watching what is going on, in the style of many a TV programme of the time.
The only caution I would give is that much of the humour is as dated as Dawson's synthetic suits and some viewers may find some of his jokes offensive. This box set contains the whole two series of this show to a restored standard, without extras but with subtitles. Unusually for me, I am raving about the famous faces who constitute the guest list - normally of course I don't like familiar faces but in this setting it is wonderful to see great actors in unusual roles. There are a number of the wonderful Cissie and Ada sketches with Roy Barraclough.
I particularly love the bit where he introduces Ceefax as the latest thing.

Designing Women (1948) Starring Joyce Grenfell

Last Christmas I made a post about Fanny Cradock and fortuitously this weekend I have bought the Central Office of Information volume 2: Design for Today and thus discovered this gem which provides an excuse for a post featuring Joyce Grenfell. I realise that I am being inconsistent but some people, like Fanny and Joyce  are so much themselves that I make an exception to my usual rule about familiar faces for them.

In my opinion it is worth buying the set for this sweet film alone, but you can also watch it on YouTube above or at the Internet Archive here. It is about a young couple moving into their first home without much idea of how to go about it, and the film is about the contrasting demands of design and art. Grenfell plays Miss Arty and Audrey Fildes plays Miss Design - the booklet describes them as ethereal beings - who just appear in the couple's house. Grenfell plays her artistic part wonderfully, and the arrangements she makes in the house are hilariously impractical. Of course the most incredible thing is that virtually nobody gets to select all things they want for their first or any other home, every kitchen I have ever seen has been marred by at least a few design blunders, and nobody gets to change things once decided. But then perhaps this short film embodies the post-War optimism that I am always banging on about here. Also ironic is that it is amongst the oldest things I have pontificated about and looks so old fashioned. Nonetheless it is a joy (ha).
Joyce must be familiar to regular readers here by her appearances in such films as the St Trinian's series and her monologues - the one featuring George is below. She had difficulty with theatrical people because of an uneasiness around 'queers', despite being friendly with Noel Coward. What drove Joy was her Christian Science faith, which does tend to seem strange to those who don't belong to it, and she didn't publicise this aspect of her life. Reggie her husband did not share this faith and prompted her to see a doctor about the cancer which killed her, although Wikipedia says she was never told she had cancer.

Armchair Cinema: Regan

I have been watching some episodes of Armchair Theatre. I am finding it terribly worthy, rather stodgy, and frankly rather prefer the superficial soufflé TV shows I normally watch  and don't want to have to feel like I should be in evening dress to watch TV. It appears I am not the only one and this page (which I really do recommend for good background to this show and also Special Branch) indicates that Euston Films were recruited to shake it up. Regan was the second episode of the revised show.
To be frank my first impression of this was not at all favourable, for a single reason. At this length of time, when the population and language of London have changed beyond recognition, it would be difficult or impossible to find someone who would think it natural to refer to the Flying Squad as the Sweeney Todd, but you could have done in the early seventies. But I myself went in pubs in the seventies and I find it difficult to believe that a pub would have been full of people singing 'My Old Man Said Follow the Band' to a piano accompaniment. It feels anachronistic in the forward-looking seventies, with everyone wearing synthetic fibre and going back to homes which should really have led to a prosecution for crimes against taste. Did you spot the orange wallpaper in the scene in which Regan first says the famous line, 'Get your trousers, you're nicked'?
Fortunately there are no further anachronisms and the episode goes on to lay the groundwork for the Sweeney, and do it in style. It is like being transported back to the seventies, and having all the more dodgy aspects of that decade laid out at once. The music is gorgeous. And the cars... What can I say about the cars? Apart from the fact that they are probably all now scrapped and was there ever a time when Fords were any good?
The post I reference above rightly places Regan in the contexts of police corruption and soaring crime of the time. In the face of these two things Regan presents a more philosophical answer, because it answers the problems with Regan, who is a total maverick. I feel no modern organisation could contain him, but it is his approach which enables him to deal with the situation.
A valid criticism is the patchy pacing, and of course a lot of people just wouldn't like this. Additionally there are a lot of familiar faces.
So if you don't like it... Shut it.

The Goodies: Playgirl Club

There is a youngness and freshness about the humour of the sixties and seventies , before the cynicism of Thatcher's Britain put paid to it. You have to be young to produce certain sorts of humour - age has its own humour - and perhaps in releases of the last few years we see this best in The Goodies and in Do Not Adjust Your Set and Not the 1948 Show, both of which have been released this year by BFI. I recently fell for the complete Goodies and am enjoying the episodes I haven't seen before.
I had forgotten that the celebs queued up to guest on this show and the wonderful Molly Sugden features in this one. The best thing is that the character she plays is so close to Mrs Slocombe that it just misses her talking about her pussy. Incidentally I also love that she is a minister being blackmailed for going to the Playgirl Club - a topical reference in the age of the Playboy Club. This episode of course reverses the Playboy Club theme by having topless male staff, and the episode reverses it again by having Tim go to the club in drag because it is women only.
Three weeks later he is still there surrounded by the young women! And that is what I like best about this episode, the sexiness of it. The Goodies poke fun at the culture of the time in many ways, such as by their parodies of advertising, and elsewhere poke fun at the culture's approach to sex by reference to Mary Whitehouse. Here the norms of the time prevail, because we see nude girls at the club, and there is a lot made of the Goodies' attraction to the girls. I particularly love the inflatable dolly secretary.
However this episode doesn't get good reviews on the Internet - possibly because it hasn't been seen much. A fair criticism is that it is a vehicle for ogling nude girls and thus rather lacks depth in other areas! Another one is that it only survives in monochrome  and the illustration of Tim first entering the club gives a good idea of its quality after restoration.

Armchair Cinema or possibly ITV Playhouse: Suspect

Perhaps I had better start by explaining my title. If you want to see this on YouTube the thing to search for is Armchair Cinema. I think it may be on one of the Network box sets of that name but I'm not certain. If you want to read about this show on IMDB, it is under the title of ITV Playhouse here.
Wonderful TV this, proper quality. And you all know how difficult it is to get unalloyed praise from me. Settings, visuals, plot, characterisation, acting, all superb.
It may, however, be rather wrongly named, because this is much more of a psychological thriller than a Whodunnit. It gradually and effectively builds up the tension, mostly revolving around Mrs Segal, some of whose actions are rather bizarre and she backs herself effectively into a corner. There is also a feeling of claustrophobia about this because so much of it revolves around a single house and a single village.
The house is absolutely gorgeous, but don't please run away with the idea that we are talking about one of our ancient landed families: being in trade, the Segals are distinctly nouveau.
What strikes me is how old fashioned it is, but then it is fifty years old. I doubt any village functions that insularly now, but then since the country terrifies me I would always have hated it. I love the way everyone lights a fag at the end of a meal. And Mrs Segal's car is a mark 3 Ford Cortina, and my dad had one of those!
Superb television. And superb acting by some Big Names who show their quality by not overpowering their roles.

Gideon's Way: The Nightlifers

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 with middle-aged and -class shock, although I love the shock when the mother discovers a 'marijuana cigarette' - nowadays parents are quite glad if that's all their offspring are smoking, although clued-up parents would be more worried that it may be laced with g*d knows what. Nor is this show merely a depiction of bored rich kids who have gone off the rails. Rather the tone is set when one of the rozzers says that the joy taken in the attacks is 'sadistic' - or rather it could be called psychopathic. There is a kinky undertone here, of pleasure being taken in pain. Even down to Sloane always addressing Cole as 'little man', there's definitely a kinky power thing going on here, which to my mind makes this show incredibly adventurous for the time.
The cast list is like a list of the great and the good of the theatre - Annette Andre for example will be familiar to readers of this blog - but that doesn't bother me in the way it sometimes does, because they are all greats and don't let their off screen personas dominate.
Chief among these is Anton Rodgers in the uncharacteristic role of the sadistic party thrower, in which he gives a convincing portrayal of enjoying other people's suffering. Actually perhaps it may not have been that unusual for him in his wide-ranging theatrical career:

He had been on the London stage for five years before he landed his first "legitimate" role - or rather, two roles - in a sexually sensational double bill by John Osborne, Plays for England (Royal Court).

In the first piece, a frivolous flop called The Blood of the Bambergs, he made little mark. But in the second, Under Plain Cover, which depicted a couple of devoted sado-masochists inventing new sex games with corsets and commodes, Rodgers was more prominent as a knicker-fetishist who turned out to be his female partner's brother. Source

The only thing I don't really take to about this episode is the rather moralistic way in which the son-gone-off-the-rails gets beaten up by Sloane who then ends up on a murder charge when he dies. It's all a bit too convenient for the baddies to get such immediate retribution. I'm also (I'm not a lawyer so stand to be corrected) am not convinced that Sloane would have been charged with murder - at no point is he apparently intending to kill so may have been charged with manslaughter.
And if you want to know the reason for the burning Modigliani, that is my way of wetting appetites to make you watch it!

Gideon's Way: The Firebug

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 wife and child in a fire has driven him to this state. The character is all the more chilling because he discusses his arson with his deceased daughter's only surviving doll and almost thinks it is divinely ordained.
I didn't realise that the whole of this series is based on novels written by John Creasey - he is said to have written over 600 novels using a number of different pseudonyms. He often addressed the ongoing effects of the second world war in these novels, and was also very politically active. The concentration camp background of the previous episode is self explanatory but the issue addressed here is the terrible living conditions of people, which often continued up to the 1970s. The background to many of these shows is the drive to improve this situation. The story has been slightly simplified from the novel, and you can find a summary and appreciation here.
This is another show which benefits from repeated viewing: I usually watch an episode at least twice when I write a post, and can testify that this is even more horrifying on the second viewing!
What I don't like about this episode, and which I haven't felt in the others I have seen, is that at points it feels a bit overly moral. I can't think of an example off the top of my head but it feels like the show is making conscious moral points at times. Surely we all know that arson ruins lives? My main criticism is a plot point though, that he gets hold of four sticks of dynamite because they are stored in an unlocked building. I haven't been able to find the legal situation of the time as regards storage, because a lot of legislation was tidied up into the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), and had he lived our arsonist would have been charged under the Explosive Substances Act (1883), but surely in the 1960s it was illegal to leave dynamite just lying about? I would expect the police at least to comment that it's not been locked up.
I love the shots of the London of the time in this show - it is definitely Avengerland, but it is the one of the earlier series. Of course you can't go wrong visually with a conflagration can you.
So apart from the dynamite left around to be taken, this is a superb show 

Doctor Who: The Face of Evil

I am feeling a little trepidation at the thought of reviewing a Who which is a definite favourite of the fans - I realise that my usual tendency is to pick a show or episode which routinely gets savaged on the Internet, and have a go at rehabilitating it. My thoughts about this one are relatively few.
The names of Doctor Who adventures are rather confusing. We have The Mind of Evil, The Faceless Ones, The Face of Evil, and so on. Personally I tend to think of them as 'the one where...'. In the case of this adventure I am not sure that actually helps because I think of it as 'the one where everyone would be better leaving well alone,' and that is also my title for several others!
In fact I think it would be better called by one of the titles mooted before the final was settled on, and which unfortunately was rejected on the grounds it was pretentious: The Day God Went Mad.
A major thread of the story is commentary on humans' religious instincts and behaviour, specifically what it is which could be described as God, different understandings by people at different levels of development and the role we ourselves have in creating a divine cosmology. The fact that the Doctor appears in the cosmology here because of a previous mistake he made repairing the computer, is an interesting parallel to the religious imperative to know yourself, and specifically to an awareness of your own frailty.
That said, the religious instinct is here limited to the level of a disturbed subconscious or a tribe of 'primitives'. The depiction of the primitives is one thing which repeats the theme of colonialism about which I blogged in my last post. I note that the primitives are depicted with a relatively dark skin tone, and of course I don't know whether this was perceived as a result of tanning or to increase the colonial overtones by making a racial point, of course I don't know. It is clear that the male savages always go bare chested, and obviously a man who would be seen without a shirt can only be a rude primitive!
That said the male costume doesn't come across as sexual, but it is very apparent that Leela's costume is very sexy indeed, and includes such kinkiness as getting tied up at one point. I rather inconsequently found myself wondering how, when she is supposed to be a primitive, she can manage to shave her armpits! The men also have trimmed hair and beards and I have decided to take this as one of those details which show a TV show isn't really real.
There are several very sweet details in this adventure. Chief is the one where the Doctor threatens someone with a jelly baby rather than the knife he was supposed to use. The Mount Rushmore-like carved face of the Doctor may or may not be a comment, I will leave it to my US readers to decide. I also love the way that in the publicity photos included Leela is holding Who's Who!
I started off by saying that people should leave well alone, and in this case the savages come out on top.

Doctor Who: Kinda

To Gloucester and Cheltenham today, where I bought the BBC boxed set featuring A for Andromeda, which I have never seen. The supply must dry up at some time, but until now, whenevr I have thought that the supply of cult TV has dried up,I have always discovered another new series. Gloucester is also famous to TV aficionados for one of the settings of Petunia Winegum's fall from fame - the other one was here in Birmingham.
I was reading an article on the train coming back about how the phrase 'white heat of technology' or something similar was first used in A for Andromeda, before the then Prime Minister used it in a speech in 1963, both of which events brought the preoccupation with science of so much 1960s TV to the fore. I have commented that it is usually an ambivalent preoccupation, because science is the hope for the future but also dangerous. Science fiction , as in Doctor Who, has an opportunity to nbuild on this ambivalence by introducing fictional elements into the fear or the hope. Kinda is perhaps best described as being influenced (at some years distant) by many of the buzz issues of the 1960s onwards, including the conflict between 'science' and 'nature'. Kinda makes this so much more fearful by putting it in the context of a colonisation by Earth of another planet (which is only made possible by technology) and contrasting this with the 'natural' lives of 'savages' and the great fear of the organic form of the Mara.
Kinda also uses other themes important on late-twentieth century Earth - colonialism, psychology, power, spirituality, development, sharing, authority - and I have to say that I think one of the reasons this adventure's reviews weren't very good when it was broadcast is that it has bitten off far more than it can chew. Looking online, I see that it has risen in popularity with the fans since originally broadcast and I have read several views, with which I agree, that that is probably because this adventure benefits from repeat viewing to get the multiple layers of understanding. As a single broadcast it is either a nightmare of complexity or else you would only focus on one layer of meaning.
A layer which particularly interests me is the one about communication. When you think about it the only effect of the male Kinda not being able to speak is that this keeps their thoughts within the Kinda who can read them. To races which would have to hear them speaking, they appear silent. Interesting that this is reserved to the men! In another sense their culture must have been a nightmare - imagine a world where anyone could read your thoughts!
The second layer I am particularly interested in is the effect of being on another planet on the colonists. Predictably they go off their head one way or another and either 'go native' or develop plans to destroy everything around them!
There are several mythological references which interest me, Garden of Eden, snakes and apples, all very biblical, but there is of course also the reference to Pandora's box. Knowledge, naivety, innocence and cunning. Placed next to this is the role of Adric, which I would initially have said was one of the few sensible people in this one, however he also does some very silly things in this adventure, so perhaps his role is more that of the Fool, as we see him in the tarot card, stepping off a precipice. I know I am apparently ignoring the fact that the Kinda have a Fool of their own, but I see the two as parallels. As a general rulewhen anyone is particularly insistent that you should open a box or eat an apple, you shouldn't.
Visually this adventure is superb. I will grant you that the forest is very obviously a set in a studio, but in the unreal world of Doctor Who that's OK by me. I love the perspex chimes, which I expect would have looked very futuristic in the 1980s. I also particularly like the inside of the Dome, particularly the gadgetry which is so much of its time it's wonderful. The colours of the dials, the giant spools of tape which at the time indicated computers, I love it. The other very good thing about this adventure is that it is the right length - I know I am contradicting myself by saying it is stuffed too full of layers and it is the right length, but what I mean is that it keeps the attention.
So, a multi-faceted gem of Peter Davies Who which does however require much attention and perhaps repeat viewing. Oh and I love Mary Morris in it.

Nigel Kneale's Beasts: Baby

I am probably going to sound fairly critical of this episode, which isn't my intention at all - regular readers will be aware that my policy is only to post about what I consider to be good television.
And it may be intentional, part of the depiction of a pregnant wife's breakdown, but there are a few things which chime wrong notes.
The absolutely first thing is that the vet's wife brings the family cat to their new home in a basket, opens the basket in a room which isn't sealed tight  and is then surprised that the cat runs away. This is of course a rookie error, and would be excusable if she'd never seen a cat before, but it is her cat and she claims to have grown up in the country. She is also a vet's wife and I doubt that he would never have brought a sick cat home to keep an eye on it overnight.
I see from the excellent Celluloid Wickerman post that this story lends itself to a Freudian interpretation, which is of course completely valid but I hadn't thought of it because I was thinking of a different reading:

During a final breakdown, Jo goes downstairs in the house to find some horrific monster suckling the dead creature from the jar.  It works as a stunningly effective metaphor over the fears of pregnancy, especially in Jo’s world where her husband seems to care very little of anything but his work.  But the moment is more than symbolic or metaphorical ; it is the final stage that Freud described in what has been a gradual build-up of a case of hysteria.  It isn’t a simple case by any means and the theory as a general train of thought is rightly open to interpretations of sexism.  Kneale does not, however, simply adhere to Freud’s admitted bias and concerns the psychic phenomenon to the relations with all of the people that surround Jo’s character; the hysteria isn’t inherent in just her but built up through everyone else’s relation to the building and, eventually, the jar.

It is hinted earlier in the play that Jo has already lost one baby during childbirth.  The potential for increase in paranoia is clearly there for the character as stories are related of how farmers simply couldn’t use the adjacent fields any longer for grazing as it meant the cattle went infertile.  The hysterical state of Jo builds from when this story is related, not because of the simple connection made between the story and the reality of danger but because it clearly awakens these memories of the loss of her first child.  Freud said that “The attack then comes spontaneously just as memories are wont to come, but just like memories it can also be provoked by the laws of association.  The provocation of an attack results either through stimulating a hysterogenic zone or through a new experience which by similarity recalls the pathogenic experience.” (1895).  From this description, the application of the idea to Kneale’s narrative is relatively simple, albeit that both potential forms of trigger happen in Baby‘s story. Source

This Freudian reading is valid, and the cat incident could be interpreted that way. In fact much of Jo's behaviour could best be explained by her 'condition'. But I was thinking of this episode more in terms of folklore and relationships.
The relationships are wrong in every way. In fact I am firmly of the opinion that Jo would be best getting rid of her husband pronto. He talks to her like dirt, clearly puts his own wishes before the welfare of his wife and unborn child, is completely unsympathetic to her distress. He and his boss both speak in derogatory terms of what pregnant women are like. At one point his boss sets up Peter for a hard time at work. My reading of this situation is that in a series themed around bestial horror, here we are being given a message that humans can be far more beastly than animals.
Ironically the vets' science is placed against the 'superstition' of the builders. In removing the 'thing' from the wall, ironically they remove a common folkloric way of making a building safe. This is very common in British folklore, although it is turned round here to be the source of the horror in the house. Therefore in a strange way the beasts remove the beast which protects the house from beastliness. The unkind treatment she gets from her husband is contrasted with the kindness the superstitious builders show her.
All that said, the story can also be read as a straightforward horror. In this reading the wife would be seen to be right - the horror is situated clearly in the house and in some probably ancient magic.
Do I even need to say that one of the hallmarks of quality TV is that it can be read in several different ways?

Nigel Kneale's Beasts: Buddyboy

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 starring Martin Shaw as the owner of an adult cinema, the most extreme emotion is that of fear, exhibited by the man trying to sell a disused dolphinarium to him. Most of the stories use conventional horror themes, and obviously the difference with this one is the use of a deceased dolphin to provide the horror. Depending on your point of view this may prove to be a terminal fault in this episode, since we don't think of dolphins as being horrifying. This is reflected in the generally poor reviews this episode gets on the Internet. My own opinion is that it is deliberate that a usually benign animal is turned round as an object of horror, and it's a brave go. It is very clear that Buddyboy was and is a bastard, and this impressive is well developed, but it may just go too much against our cultural perception of dolphins.
I wonder whether this is intended as a morality tale, depicting the depravity of humans impacting on an innocent dolphin. I find Martin Shaw's character interesting. It may be my own level of depravity but I laughed out loud at the titles of the films being shown at his cinema: Penelope Pulls it Off, Soft Wet Warm, and Rampant Virgins! It is very clear that while he is a business man films are not the only commodity. A girl in the cinema flashes her tits at him, saying that she wants to get into films. His reaction is one of weariness, and he says he wants class. After he sleeps with the girl who breaks into the dolphinarium, he offers her sex work, which I really wasn't expecting. She then dies in the bath. Personally, I think she had trouble written all over her - even assuming she is of age she seems a bit simple, but then perhaps that's why he tried her out and tried to get her into sex work. She may form a representation of whatever bad things have been done by humans to Buddyboy.
Production values are of the time, almost completely based on sets. The pace is also of the time, and the appearance and speed would not be appreciated by those used to today's TV. The themes of this episode, of nature, kindness, cruelty, sex and progress, are of course also much of the time. Probably it would have come across more clearly as a cautionary or morality tale, viewed at the end of the 1970s. The innocence of the dolphin is what we are in danger of losing, type thing.
I just have two criticisms. One is that Shaw talks with the generic Northern accent I have commented on before: I have no idea where he is from but at this time he was also talking without it in The Professionals, and nobody else is quite so northern so he'd have been better without it. The other is that the noises made by the deceased Buddyboy don't sound like a dolphin!
My final thought is that while I don't care about porn and even prostitution, and I am even shop soiled enough not to be shocked at smoking, even in the days when I smoked myself, I never smoked in bed, because in addition to being shocking, it's both daft and dangerous.

Most Haunted

One of the newest shows I've written about here, although I can't believe it's taken this long. Not that there's that much to say about it.
The recipe was simple: take a TV presenter and a footballer-turned-medium, put them in somewhere ghostly, turn off the lights and see what happens. Oh, did I say that the presenter should be much given to screaming and the entire crew must be the most suggestible people you can find?
I personally approach Most Haunted as entertainment: I do have a dog in this fight, since I claim some psychic gifts myself and have made a few uncanny hits in my time. One thing I am certain of is that whatever entities might surround us do not respond well to the Most Haunted approach and certainly not to the confrontational way Acorah speaks to them!
Perhaps what Most Haunted was best known for was the volume of backbiting and bitching it achieved among the cast.

The TV show that has spooked millions with its footage of hauntings and poltergeists has been exposed as a fake - by one its own stars.

Resident parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O'Keeffe has sensationally lifted the lid on the ghosthunting series, Most Haunted ... and claims that the public are being deceived by "showmanship and dramatics."

He accuses the show's medium Derek Acorah of hoodwinking viewers by pretending to communicate with spirits and obtaining information about locations prior to filming.

The Mirror has also obtained unedited footage which appears to show presenter Yvette Fielding and her husband faking 'paranormal' occurrences such as ghostly bumps and knocks.

Most Haunted has quickly achieved cult status since it was launched in 2002 and is LivingTV's most successful programme.

Millions of viewers tune in regularly to watch Ex-Blue Peter girl Yvette and her team of ghost hunters spend the night in some of Britain's most haunted locations. Source

While Yvette Fielding consistently claimed that the show was not staged, it had a forced change of medium and Acorah hit back as well.

TELLY medium Derek Acorah has branded former Most Haunted co-star Yvette Fielding “egotistical” and “big-headed” after she tried to expose him as a fake. The controversial psychic has been involved in a bitter war of words with the ex-Blue Peter presenter who had fronted the smash-hit Living TV show with him.

Yvette previously branded Derek a “fake” after the programme’s resident skeptic, Ciaran O’Keefe, planted a note before a broadcast to test his credibility.

She said: “Ciaran left a piece of paper around with the name ‘Kreed Kafer’ on it and said, within earshot of Derek, that he was a nasty South African jailor.

“When we started filming, Derek decided to get possessed by this fake person. The name is actually an anagram of Derek Faker.

“We tell people everything is real, then it turns out he was a fake, so he had to go.”

But Derek told the Sunday Mercury he IS the genuine article and insisted he left the show because of a personality clash with the former Blue Peter girl.ion

Telly medium Derek Acorah hits out at Yvette Fielding

TELLY medium Derek Acorah has branded former Most Haunted co-star Yvette Fielding “egotistical” and “big-headed” after she tried to expose him as a fake.

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TELLY medium Derek Acorah has branded former Most Haunted co-star Yvette Fielding “egotistical” and “big-headed” after she tried to expose him as a fake.

The controversial psychic has been involved in a bitter war of words with the ex-Blue Peter presenter who had fronted the smash-hit Living TV show with him.

Yvette previously branded Derek a “fake” after the programme’s resident skeptic, Ciaran O’Keefe, planted a note before a broadcast to test his credibility.

She said: “Ciaran left a piece of paper around with the name ‘Kreed Kafer’ on it and said, within earshot of Derek, that he was a nasty South African jailor.

“When we started filming, Derek decided to get possessed by this fake person. The name is actually an anagram of Derek Faker.

“We tell people everything is real, then it turns out he was a fake, so he had to go.”

But Derek told the Sunday Mercury he IS the genuine article and insisted he left the show because of a personality clash with the former Blue Peter girl.

“Yvette decided to become very egoistical, over the top and big-headed and our friendship and everything soured,” he said.

“She decided when I left the show that she didn’t want to talk to me any more. There was no need for it and it was very sad.” Source

Acorah himself managed to get parodied by a comedian playing a character called Shirley Ghostman, who even invaded one of Acorah's live shows:

Shirley Ghostman creator Marc Wootton has released video of the moment he stormed the stage of a Derek Acorah show.

The comedian was interviewed by police after disrupting the show this time last year and challenging him to a 'psychic showdown'.

Wootton was tackled tackled by security after interrupting Acorah's performance at the King's Theatre in Portsmouth.

The new footage shows him being pinned to the floor as the largely grey-haired crowd chant: ‘Out, out!’ One voice is heard to say: ‘Get out, you’re not clever.’

It then shows Wootton being taken to a police van outside when he says to one officer: ‘I feel your pain, I feel your shame, but you’re not to blame. You deserved that holiday. How were you supposed to know dogs can’t feed themselves?’

At the time, the comedian’s publicist said the police 'interviewed Shirley and then drove a few miles away from the venue before dropping him off.’

And Acorah posted on Facebook: 'Such a pity that there are idiots out there who try to spoil things for others. The police dealt with the matter perfectly and we were able to continue on as though nothing had happened.’

After the incident, Wootton told Chortle, maintaining the character of Ghostman: 'Derek has been psychically taunting me for years. Ever since he threatened to sue over something I said about him in my show High Spirits. He waits until I'm relaxing and getting a bit tipsy and then telepathically projects challenges into my head. It was about time I did something about it. But he wasn't so brave when I showed up. He claimed he knew nothing about it.’Source

Doctor Who: The Macra Terror

I'm not normally one for animated reconstructions of erased TV  but I saw that this had come out and I simply had to have it. I have seen this missing Doctor Who before - apparently there are several animated versions but the reconstruction I have already seen is the Loose Cannon one. While the Loose Cannon website has vanished, rumour has it that copies of their shows are still knocking about on the Internet.
Having said I don't go for animated reconstructions, this one is superb, and there were points at which I could forget I wasn't watching the original series. The only thing which looks slightly wrong is the lettering used for the episode titles.
The plot is interesting, because it is set in Earth's colonial future. I can't find a reference to how this future happened  but is an interesting device at the end of the sixties when Britain's colonial past was winding up, to envisage a colonial future. Given that the colonists speak English, perhaps Britain decided it wanted another colony, just further away than abroad? It is also interesting that the colonists have a typical colonial view of the place they colonise, that it is dangerous and backwards. The festival atmosphere is only the way colonials have always lived, everything is set up to their advantage and they don't actually have to do any work, so they spend their time drinking gin and playing bridge.
Is it just me or is The Colony strikingly reminiscent of The Village in The Prisoner? - I'm thinking of enforced jubilation to order, underlain by virtually constant threat of violence. I would not like to go so far as to theorise any influence because the situation is different, their isn't a reason for resignation to extract. The colonists' motivation is far less straightforward, they explicitly believe in forcing health and happiness! The other similarity of course is that the colonists' conditioning stops them seeing the reality - of course it doesn't take much in the way of conditioning to make humans follow the party line and join in group-think. A further similarity is the unseen Controller, who echoes Number One in The Village. Pity he gets snatched by the biggest dressed crab in history. In fact the themes of conformity, nonconformity and rebellion continue throughout the adventure.
Another thing I love is the macra themselves - the reviews on the Internet all say this animation has improved them over the original, but in the original they're so sweet. They're right up there with the monster in the film The Beach Girls and the Monster!
I suppose you will want some criticism but I don't have any. Sorry.
You will love this if you like the TV I like or just the TV of the era.

The Protectors: Burning Bush

There are a confusing number of TV shows called The Protectors, so for clarity this post is about this one, which is also in my holiday viewing. This episode was written by Trevor Preston, and while the ITC stable may not seem the obvious place for his writing, Preston's characteristic rich characterisation and psychological complexity are perfectly suited to this episode of what can otherwise be a rather formulaic show. Normally The Protectors features the standard settings (sophisticated for the time) of the ITC shows, but this one enters what the contemporary media wouldn't have hesitated to call a cult.
The subject is therefore one of interest at the time. The only thing wrong with the cult is that it has a Christian basis, combined with esoteric beliefs, and thus feels much more like the more respectable organisations dating from an earlier period. One of the regrets of my life is that we used to have a Liberal Catholic pro-cathedral in Birmingham and I never went. The new religious movements of the time tended to have more Eastern origins, not least as a result of the hippie trail, and were notorious for being heavy-handed with their followers.
Which is the point of this episode. Anne has joined the organisation willingly and decided off her own bat not to see her father, which of course he doesn't believe. There is also the issue that she stands to come into a large fortune.
There is also the problem, that the community has attracted someone who isn't, shall we say, the full shilling, who thinks that killing in the name of God is OK. Ironic really, that the community itself comes out smelling of roses, and Anne's father comes out as a grabbing greedy control freak. It's just that the community took in a murderous lunatic who thinks he is chosen.
As I said, complex psychology. I don't really have a criticism of this show, except that would anyone seriously wear the flowing costume of the cult on a daily basis?

Not TV: Horror Hospital (1973)

You didn't think I would be able to concentrate on the viewing list I set out in my last post, did you? Naturally I've got distracted. Do you like the genre of films where somebody sets off by train (usually) to see a relative who lives in an Old Dark House? I do, and funnily it's a genre which lends itself to humour. I'm thinking of Morecambe and Wise's Night Train to Murder and What a Carve Up! Those films loud pedal the mystery leanings of the train journey into the country genre, but this one of course loud pedals the genre's horror leanings... While also being funny.
I suppose this film won't be to everyone's taste by any manner of means. The opening scene shows two runaways from the hospital being beheaded by knives which come out of the side of the doctor's car. No matter how often I see that scene it makes me roar with laughter. I think this is because the scene is so obviously a parody. Nonetheless if that sort of thing doesn't strike you as funny, you won't like this film.
It stars Robin Askwith who also starred in a series of 1970s sex comedies, and I like a good sex comedy me. He was also in Pasolini's Canterbury Tales which is one of my all time favourite films. Here he provides a romantic interest by falling for the female lead, who is going to the hospital to see her disreputable aunt Harris. I looove aunt Harris, the way she ran a brothel in Germany until the war started.
Another thing I love about this film is the wildly improbable plot - personally I wouldn't go on a 'Hairy Holiday', since I like my holidays restful.
It turns out the hospital is running a mind control programme including lobotomies, which gives lots of scope for bandages and blood. It sticks faithfully to the conventional plot, so the film is spent progressively discovering the horror in the hospital and then getting out of it. On the way it has many a good scene - I particularly like the one where aunt Harris finds decapitated heads in the water tank.
If you are determined to criticise this film, I suppose you could talk about the obviously cheap special effects and production values, but personally I think that's the point.
I'm glad aunt Harris escaped to go back to running her whore house in Hamburg, I had a soft spot for her.

My Holiday Viewing

The observant will notice I haven't been posting here much. The reason is that my OK-job took a nose dive and became a horrendous job, which has been taking up a lot of energy. I actually have a conditional offer of another job but it will take up to eight weeks to get the checks done. Meanwhile HR graced us with a visit today and because the woman could see I wasn't OK asked for a chat. The upshot is we mutually agreed I could leave immediately and so I have some weeks off and can watch the huge heap of DVDs I have. Don't get too jealous, will you?

What I have in store (and which I may well blog about) is-

I have already started watching The Day of the Triffids, which I have somehow managed not to see until now. I haven't even seen the film from the sixties. I suspect the reason is that having eye trouble myself it has always been too close to the bone, but since my bones are currently far more likely to fall apart, that is less of a worry. It seems to follow the well-established trope of social collapse following an Event, and since my own interest is far more in the rot which supports so-called civilisation, perhaps that's another reason it never appealed. You will rightly see it compared to Survivors - it has the same feel and look. On first watching it strikes me as one of the Greats.  It raises many a reflection on our world - the example I have just seen is that relationships will move towards polygamy in the new world. I think I will be keeping this. The original Triffid which decorates this post comes from here.

I have two series of Kojak to watch, I have seen Kojak before and do rate it as a show, I just haven't been inspired to blog about it here. Telly Savalas was, of course, a very handsome man, in fact he looked just like me (and shared my attitude to clothes). The only thing is I have seen a picture of him having his head shaved with an electric shaver. Weakling. On the other hand he did a hilarious promotion video for sunny Birmingham.

Next up is Mr Palfrey of Westminster. I have no idea whether I will like it, because I bought it on the chance that it comes from the right time, albeit rather late, 1984. The synopsis on the box gives it an Avengers feel, since it is about an intelligence agent whose work is allocated by his boss, The Co-ordinator. I hope it lives up to my high expectations!

I am afraid I sold my disk of The Owl Service, but have kept wondering whether I gave it enough of a chance, so it's back in the pile.

On my mental list of things to watch has been the 1979 series Quatermass. Now there is a name to conjure with, and frankly I have always thought it would be a good name for a cat. I adore the original series, can go crazy over the Hammer film version, but didn't like the newest version. But then you knew that, didn't you. I see that Nigel Kneale thought this was the weakest version to date. There is something about the milieu of the 1950s, which makes the original ones sparkle, but I will see what the apocalyptic 1970s made of Quatermass.

The oldest series I have in the heap is The Four Just Men. It is ITC so I hope it, er, seems familiar and safe! I suspect that it won't feel quite the same, being older than the series I am familiar with, and also it was scripted by Edgar Wallace. I have seen some of his films and have found them rather uneven, but when they are good they are really good.

Have a great holiday!

Oh go on then, since you insist -

The Avengers: Take Me to Your Leader

I was convinced I had already blogged about this Avengers episode, since it is one of my favourites, but am unable to find it if I have. The episode came to my mind recently, because once again I am having a spot of bother at work. I solemnly swear I don't go looking for it! But when I explained to my manager the reason that it is a phenomenally bad idea to stop anyone except management reporting incidents, I found myself using the words of Mother in this episode, when he comments that his interlocutor would be foolish not to suspect him . Nobody should be above suspicion, and the best-intentioned of people can, and do, go off the rails. Since then one of my colleagues has quite rightly blown the whistle on their failureto treat a particular event as an incident, and management have wound up looking very silly indeed. Anyway the upshot is that all three of their seniors are looking for other jobs.
Incidentally, in this one Mother dictates a memo to Grandma, whom we never see, and in it he comments that it is essential that all agents get their priorities right. He is of course quite correct, and it is only slightly alarming that something like 35 years since I first saw The Avengers I seem to be turning into Mother, or at least being the unheard voice of his wisdom! Who would think that a throwaway series like The Avengers could provide life lessons... The idea of suspecting everything possible is embodied in the fact that one of the couriers shows up on the radar but is 'invisible' to the agents, and turns out to be a dog. The courier was there but nobody noticed him. The dog then attacks the similarly-unseen scarecrow who turns out to be an agent.

However the theme of suspecting everyone but everyone being mystified, does mean that there are more authority figures seen in this episode than usual. We all know that Steed and Miss King work for some shadowy organisation, but it more apparent here how the organisation is responsibleto the upper echelons of society, and in fact how much even Mother is answerable to other people. Of course the Avengers manage to identify who is the rot at the heart of the institution and save the day.
One of the main things I like about this episode is the way it takes relatively normal situations and... I suppose the word would be 'Avengersifies' them. Take the ballet school Steed goes to. I love the archetypally posh Penelope Keith as the harassed teacher of the school, with her Godfather-inclined niece. I love that she has a fight with Miss King, who wins. I also love that Miss King tries to be pink and fluffy with the little girl, but Steed knows that a bribe will work much better. It is very much our world, but given a twist. And this Avengersification is carried out partly by tine details, including the little girl's fairy wand being one of the keys to the case and one of the recipients of the case taking his key out from under his toupee.
Even apart from the little details, visually this one is superb. The sets alone would make this one worth seeing. Even apart from the psychedelic nightmare which is Tara King's flat, the other sets are wonderful, particularly the musical instrument collector who for some reason has a muslin curtain right the way across his flat. And the episode is so tightly scripted that the visual elements become parts of the plot. The visual language used by The Avengers would indicate that these traditional symbols mean that they are not amongst the criminal underclasses, but in the apparetly stable background of upper society. The red case actuallyechoes the famous red dispatch box which is used in our parliament, so there are obviously Big Things at stake. The vehicle in which the baddie meets his fate by poisoned gas is that symbol of the singing sixties, a Mini, and so it symbolises his abandonment of old values for some new world intended to disrupt the safety of Blighty.
I find it interesting how this episode manages to get in some sexiness and yet be sexist at the same time. One of the recipients of the case is very flirtatious indeed with Miss King before the case orders him to kill her. It is however flirtatious in a rather condescendsing way. Then when under the name of Tara Cavell she takes the case to the judo school, the man who is supposed to receive the case is very disappointed that she is a woman - always a mistake around Avengers girls, although of course in this case it is actually a blow from Steed's trusty bowler which finishes him off.
Obviously I am far from unbiased about this episode but I have wracked my brains to try to criticise this, and I suppose if you were determined to criticise it you would see that the plot is just plain incredible. But then this is The Avengers and so that is what you would expect.
All in all a superb Avengers episode, tightly plotted and since I have been watching it for years I can testify to the fact that it takes repetition. Oh - it is a bank holiday here, and the forecasters' prediction of a scorcher has come to pass as you can see.

The Avengers: Did The Avengers Influence The Ipcress File and Then Parody It?

When I wrote my recent piece speculating whether Bond was an influence on The Avengers, I didn't envision that post becoming a series, but this is probably the second in an unintentional series of posts on The Avengers in its context of Cold War spy literature. Perhaps I should also say that probably none of what I am going to say is academically proveable, so if you're a media student please don't quote me, I am not respectable in any way.
Oh, one last disclaimer, Michael Caine normally irritates me witless. In fact Ipcress is the only one of his films I have managed to see all the way through, and I notice a few other people say that they like the film despite its cast. You may also say that his Palmer character is almost diametrically opposed to Steed - definitely working class and not with the grand origins Steed refers to now and again.
My theory would be that The Ipcress File may have been initially influenced by The Avengers , since it came out halfway through the show's original run. Ipcress was phenomenally successful, and so I would theorise that later series of The Avengers then parodied the Ipcress File. It's all getting a bit postmodern and reflexive here, especially as Ipcress was conceived as being a sort of anti-Bond, and deliberately made to be downbeat.
An example would be that the earlier series of The Avengers actually make quite a lot of the characters' sophisticated taste in food. Take the episode where Steed is going away and gives all sorts of exquisite things he won't be eating, to Cathy. In the manner of the time, both Steed and Cathy are depicted as quite sophisticated in their tastes, which even into the sixties was a major symbol of modernity and luxury. In The Ipcress File this focuses into Palmer's gourmand taste, shown by the opening shots around his flat which focuses in on his kitchen. In the book Palmer has other luxurious tastes apparently (I haven't read it) but in the film this becomes his taste in food alone, for which he is renowned. Then The Avengers parody this even further in the later series by the introduction of endless champagne, far more than an ordinary spy would drink in the course of a day's work. Palmer is quite similar to Steed in his attitude to authority, and I would suggest that the last series of The Avengers sends up the subject of authority by making Mother the authority figure.
The pretend servant agency which serves as a cover in The Ipcress File is so Avengers I'm surprised they didn't think of it. Steed had to make do with a pretend butchers of course. There are other symbols of the gentleman of the time in The Iprcress File, for example the magnificent building used as a set for the ministry, and the way Palmer's boss looks like Steed by his outfit of suit, bowler hat and umbrella, the uniform of the gentleman civil servant or whatever at the time. Another visual similarity is the scene where Palmer is being interrogated, which is very reminiscent of a similar scene with Steed (its in one of the extant expisodes, but I can't remember which one, perhaps someone will comment).
Perhaps the likeness that I'm getting at is the atmosphere of The Avengers. Not least I think is the similarity of personality between Palmer and Steed, at least in terms of humour. The scene where Palmer is taken into a cover fireworks factory and pushes down the plunger on one of those things used to set off dynamite, is exactly the way Steed would have behaved in the setting and the sombre circumstances. I also have a feeling that The Ipcress File isprobably what The Avengers would have looked like if it hadn't been confined to studios mainly (in the early days): the London of the 1960s. Of course as we all know it came to rest in an England which was about as unreal as it could be, but that was after Ipcress. One of the reasons therefore that they feel like each other, is that Ipcress is set in the real London which was the setting of the Avengers, and which it came to parody.
Does my little theory here stand up to much scrutiny? Probably not, and of course the similarities may just be the result of the craze for all things espionage at the time. But it would be nice to think it happened like this.