Cult TV Blog

Continuing a series of posts about 1980s TV shows which haven't appeared here before. It's actually giving me some difficulty because I'm finding so many shows are well nigh impossible to write about (what can you say about Alas Smith and Jones, for example?) or not from the eighties at all. Which brings me nicely to the show that was on my original list of possibles but that I didn't think I would actually write about because nobody would believe it. It's Sticky Moments with Julian Clary. Unusually for this blog I'm going to be more descriptive than usual because frankly you don't criticise this show for fear of getting a razor sharp put down, you just have to experience it and be glas you're only in the audience and weren't chosen as a contestant while you were waiting to go in. You can see this show in its entirety on YouTube because, let's face it, nobody is going to give this show a commercial release. However if you have familiy who vote To...

Continuing a series of posts introducing 1980s TV shows which haven't appeared here before. Obviously I think they're worth watching, although I don't think I'm likely to blog again about many of them for various reasons. The Fear might be the exception to that, though, because I like it hugely. You all know the arduous research I put in on a post before losing interest and posting something completely chaotic with whacking speeling mistooks, and of course while reading up this show I immediately hit my current bugbear of giving a show a short, catchy name which will confuse bloggers in 2023. I should stress that this post is about the 1988 show The Fear made by Euston Films for Thames TV, not the 2012 TV show of literally the same name. I am also not talking about the films of the identical name made in 1995 nor 2023. Nor any of the other films and TV shows involving subtle variations on the word fear which come up when you try to find this one. There is vanishingly li...

This is the first in a projected series of posts about 1980s TV shows. I will try to pick ones which haven't appeared here before and at least introduce them, even if I don't think they merit repeated posts. I have been seeing the DVDs of this show in shops and market stalls for literally years and avoiding it because it looks like a show about football. However I have given it a go and as soon as I started the first episode I knew it would have to appear here because it's an absolute joy. Honestly I odon't know what is wrong with advertisers because the impression given that this is a show about football, or even heavily featuring football, is absolutely wrong. The show's Wikipedia page has a better go at representing what it is about by describing it as a television drama with some comedy elements. One thing is certain: if you're football-mad and think this is the usual aspirational tale of a young lad who makes it in football you will be disappointed. I suppo...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here. This is the conclusion of my series of posts about the paired episodes of The Prisoner released edited together as films by Precision Video in the 1980s, and David Fakrikian's ideas about them (article and video linked below). The fact that these pairs of episodes were released in the way they were (rather than being released as pairs of episodes on one video cassette) raises the curiosity of Prisoner fans because of Andrew Pixley's statement that The Prisoner was intended to be a series of full length TV movies rather than the series of individual episodes it was actually broadcast as. To the best of ny knowledge there is no evidence of which episodes Patrick McGoohan would have paired together and the only statement we have about this from him was that the show could have been done in seven single episodes.  My personal conclusion about this is that while this is a fascinating possibility, having now watched the ep...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here. This post is about the two Prisoner episodes The Chimes of Big Ben and The General as they were released as one single film called The General in October 1983 by Precision Video. David Fakrikian, whose work I am hugely indebted to for these posts, makes the point that naturally there is an obvious connection between these two episodes because they both reference the general, in Chimes as a character in the Village and in The General as a computer. There is a further connection because bothe episodes make reference to the arts or education. He makes the fascinating point that when you go from the end of Chimes to the beginning of The General (without the 'Where am I' dialogue) it looks as if Number 2 is watching Nadia leave the Village by helicopter, which indeed it does. Although this is only apparent because it soon becomes clear in The General that the helicopter is looking for the runaway professor. A Chess game wi...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here. This post is a continuation of the discussion I started in my last post about the episodes Checkmate and Free for All, as they were released joined together to make a film. In my last post I talked about the theme of these episodes and the whole film, and this post is about the structure of the two episodes put together. A Chess game B Talk about black/white and escaping C Psychiatric assessment D1 Given Number 8 as his monitor, who is also tricked E Rejects her, takes her pendant and gets ready an escape attempt with others Attempts escape F Brought back to the village A Introduces the theme of the election which is just as Alice in Wonderland as the chess game B Number 2 says he wants to distinguish the guards from the prisoners D2 Given Number 58 for the election period, but she is in on the deception Dissolution of outgoing council Spins round and goes down through the floor into a corridor C Tested in the labour exch...