Cult TV Blog

This is one where you really do have to watch the video to get the feel. ☝️ I wasn't going to but I went through Sparkhill on the bus this afternoon and simply had to do a post on Citizen Khan. Actually starting with a video of Mr Khan was a mistake because I'm already hysterical and will have great difficulty concentrating. Citizen Khan is a sitcom about a ridiculous British Pakistani Moslem man who lives in Sparkhill (each episode is dedicated to the people of Sparkhill) and fancies himself as a community leader. This flat statement is completely to understate the impact of this show: When the first series of the pioneering sitcom Citizen Khan aired last year, it sparked around 200 complaints and was accused of making fun of Islam, stereotyping Asians and being disrespectful to the Qur'an. A Facebook post said: "Cancel the show OR we will have repeat of riot we had a few months ago." Well, a second series and a Christmas special have been filmed and there have b...

The Flower of Gloster has to appear in this series of posts because it's a children's programme about three siblings and another girl they meet on the way, taking a boat along the canals from north Wales to London, so naturally they end up in the Venice of the Midlands, in one of the episodes. I always forget in between viewings of it, that Flower of Gloster is a delight, an utter delight, it is so sweet, so nice, it is so redolent of a different age. Well, actually an age of incredible change. This was the absolute tail end of the commercial transport that the canals were designed for, and before they had a period of stagnation before being revivified as a leisure resource. You can read more about the show on the Canal World forum  here. The other thing I always forget about it is that it's a mixture of drama with actors (although the boy keeps letting his face show what he's thinking rather than what he's supposed to be thinking, which in itself is so sweet) and s...

I'm putting Gangsters (1976 - 1978) as the first blog post in this series of posts about TV related in some way to Birmingham to get the post which I anticipate will be most difficult out of the way first.  Recently I seem to be writing  a lot here that I find various shows difficult or don't understand things, and I suspect that this is because I'm in a place where I can think about a few things I've been trying not to think about. So of course I'm going to have to come clean and admit that I love this show dearly but also find it incredibly difficult. I honestly find it confusing, am never very sure what is happening or who is who and keep getting distracted by the spectre of some since-demolished Brutalist masterpiece. In preparation for this post I have watched through the whole show again (over a few weeks, not in one go), read what I could find about it online and watched the Open University show about it which forms an extra on the final disc of the DVD box s...

This is the introduction to a series of posts about TV programmes related in some way to my home city of Birmingham. Truthfully it's a bit of an easy ride because we have had several TV studios here as well as several shows using the city for scenery or set here, so I'm going to pick my favourites and share my idiosyncratic impression on them as always. The name Birmingham comes from the Old English Beorma-Ingas-Ham, the home of the tribe of Beorma. Well, Beorma is the current academic favourite for the name of the notional founder, but beyond an Anglo-Saxon tribe settling here around the sixth century, it isn't known whether Beorma came here, or even existed. That said there has been human settlement since about 8000 BCE and there was a first century Roman fort here. In the Domesday book it had nine households. Peter de Bermingham obtained a charter to hold a market in 1166, but the market town remained a small Warwickshire town. And then came the Industrial Revolution. Th...

Next for Loch Ness (Monster) week comes this episode of Leap in the Dark about strange phenomena in an old lodge on the banks of Loch Ness. This is the show responsible for the brackets around the word 'monster' because the titular monster doesn't feature in it although you could say that other sorts of monsters do! I wrote an introduction to this series when I was going through orphaned shows (which you can find here ) so without further ado can go straight into the episode, which has rather been biting at me to do here. It's about a couple who take up pig farming in an old lodge at Fort Augustus near Loch Ness. They hire help and soon after their arrival strange things start happening. This episode is introduced by no less than the great Colin Wilson, doyen of all sorts of weird stuff at the time. He was something of a polymath and may be best known for his role in the angry young men school of literature, with his work The Outsider. He wrote extensively on occult and...

Next on Loch Ness (Monster) Week we have this Simpsons show. I think it would be true to say that the reviews are mixed and as far as I can see the consensus is that where it's good it's really good but it is only good in parts and the other bits are problematic. I have read that this was inspired by the Simpsons writing team who wanted a whole episode about Mr Burns. The problem immediately arises that a fairly peripheral character has been moved to a position of importance which screws up the whole internal consistency of the show. It also screws up the character of Monty Burns, although I'm a bit ambivalent about that. The whole point of Mr Burns is that he isn't popular, doesn't want to be popular, is a monster, and is a representation of Corporate America. I suppose it is true that when current billionaires aren't flying to space, not buying Twitter and not riding fairground rides on their own, they may have the insight to reflect on where their wealth has ...

It's Loch Ness (Monster) Week! The monster is in brackets because I have a show in mind which doesn't mention the monster but is just set near the loch. Look, I don't make the rules. Alright, perhaps I do. I have been watching The Goodies quite a lot but not blogging about it. I think it is one of those shows which are difficult to write about, and certainly I think this is reflected in what the internet has to say about this show. Most of the reviews tend to gravitate very quickly to describing the show, and as you know that's not really what I'm aiming for here. The other thing the internet tends to focus on with The Goodies is the way much of the humour hasn't aged very well, and there's a limit to how often you can say that a show wouldn't be made today, without beginning to wonder why you're writing about, or even watching, it. It's really difficult to write a blog post about a show which stands on its own, doesn't really have too much o...

This will probably be the final post for Fake Psychics Week and of course we have a real fan favourite of The X-Files. In fact it might even be *the* most popular episode ever. I will admit to stretching 'mediums' to include other psychics here. The reason for this popularity isn't too hard to find, it's that it has philosophical depth, talking about free will and predestination, has great humour, a shed load of lovable characters and you'll love it if you love anything weird. At the time of original broadcast it was a bit of a departure from the classic X-Files up until then and rather cemented the fact that not every X-Files had to be about the show's internal mythology. I am taking The Stupendous Yappi as the fake psychic here, because he uses all the classic showmanship of the fake psychic and mutliple Barnum statements. In fact the profile of the killer he comes up with is genuinely so vague it could be loads of people. I love the bit where the entire team ...

Next for Fake Mediums Week we have Seance, a special made by Derren Brown in 2004. While I'm on the subject of fake mediums I have remembered a random fact which is of relevance. I'm not sure whether any other states had these kind of laws but from 1951 until the act was repealed the possibility of real mediumship was kind of indicated un UK by the Fraudulent Mediums' Act of 1951, which repealed the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Despite loads and loads of mediumism going on there were only four convictions under the Act. On the other hand Derren Brown is someone who very clearly doesn't believed in mediumistic abilities, so he isn't actually a fake medium, but this show is showing how fake mediums do it. To be perfectly frank I find him a bit freaky, because if I were in his presence I would start wondering whether I had decided I wanted that cup of tea or whether he'd implanted the idea in my head. This show is all about fake mediums (that is all mediums, in Brown...

Warning: This post mentions a problematic depiction of a naked child in a TV show from the 1970s. It also contains spoilers because nobody is ever going to see this show. Since I originally blogged about two random episodes of the part of the BBC2 Playhouse show called The Mind Beyond, I am delighted to say that I have found a source for all six episodes. I have made a decision to blog about this show without describing the scene beyond what is necessary to say it's just wrong . I will not be disclosing where I got the show so don't ask. First, though, for the standard discussion of this show. When I originally blogged about this show, I read that one of the episodes I have already blogged about was the best, Having now seen the whole series I think that Meriol is actually the best (or would be) - it really grabs you in an incredibly inventive way and let me tell you, it's an absolutely wild and incredibly inventive ride. You can find a sensible summary of it here , so as a...

It's Fake Mediums Week on the blog! Lucky you none of you come here for sensible blogging, isn't it. Actually it's remarkable how things come to your attention in common themes. When I posted earlier this year about television plays it was remarkable how psychopathy came up and I wasn't even looking for it. Now in my viewing fake mediums have come up. There is of course a certain irony in there being a Randall and Hopkirk episode featuring a fake medium. I like the ones where people who aren't knowingly psychic or professional mediums can see Marty either all the time or under certain circumstances. On the other hand I suppose having a real ghost with you is a fairly certain way to weed out the fake mediums! We're still in classic ITC territory and I'm going to say it right now - for my money you can keep all the CGI in the world, there's nothing to compare to a good set and some back projection interspersed with some stock footage. I like my TV to be un...

The great advantage of the gentleman adventurer televisual persona of Simon Templar is that the show could basically go anywhere or adopt any plot device, as long as there was a lounge for him to lounge around in. Here the show turns into a combination of Cornish-village-mystery and treasure-hunt-mystery. I suspect that this departure from the exotic scenes may not be so popular with the fans, but am not sure because I have strangely been able to find relatively little about this on online. In fact apart from a couple of websites specifically about the show (which as far as I can see are both in a process of building and haven't covered every episode) I do also wonder why there's relatively little about The Saint online. Don't get me wrong - there's not nothing, but when you google most episodes of most cult TV shows of this era you find a number of familiar websites blogging about them and you don't get that for The Saint. I can't think why - honestly these epi...

Back in much more classic Saint territory here, for an episode set on a Greek island, although very obviously actually filmed in Elstree! As always I read around other people's opinions on the show before getting as far as writing a post, with the intention of writing something different to what's already out there and getting a sense of what people think. Most of the commentary on this episode is dominated by Oliver Reed and Imogen Hassall and interestingly they completely overpower any comment on the actual show. To me this episode is the perfect example of why using big names is not conducive to good TV. There are a few other things to say about it, firstly that this show reminded me of how much the TV of this era fed into British jingoism, largely because I suspect a lot of viewers would have watched this show and concluded that the behaviours and events it depicts were typical of Greeks, 'Continentals', as my aunt called them, or even foreigners full stop. The part...

I have so much planned in my head: series of posts on Hammer House of Horror and TV made in Birmingham, continuing my series of posts on Fury from the Deep, The Tomorrow People and The Avengers Series 1. So obviously that's why here is another post about The Saint. I can never actually guarantee what TV show will grab my attention. These later episodes of The Saint don't tend to be favourites of the fans, who are conditioned to expert endless globe trotting, international intrigue and Cold War conspiracies with dolly birds turning up at every airport. I do have some sympathy for them, but also can see that it's virtually impossible to keep that up for any length of time. After a time the fans then start complaining that you're doing the same thing, and really you can't win. Once you've portrayed Templar gadding about one sunny European resort it's a bit difficult to make the others different. I suppose Doctor Who would be the classic example of a show which ...

I started off watching this show thinking that it had been a long time since I had watched some ITC (I also have Randall and Hopkirk Deceased lined up to rewatch) before realising some time in that I have just finished a lengthy series of posts about probably the best known ITC series of all time. I wasn't sure about why I don't automatically think of The Prisoner as being an ITC series - although I think it doesn't have the things which I think are characteristic of ITC series. These would of course be the Avengersland setting, the cast of the exact same circle of actors who appear in all these shows, and a certain ITC colour palette. I'm not sure if it's Eastman, identical to the Eastman effect, or if I'm just being affected by rambling on about film. You can also usually rely on ITC to have some romance (I use that word to tone down what I actually mean) which was never on the agenda in The Prisoner. Anyway, I have only just noticed that I perceive a marked d...