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...