Cult TV Blog

I have now seen Grasshopper Island (1971) all the way through once and have had my initial impression confirmed, that it is a delight. True to form it has also raised many a question for me. It is a series of very short episodes about three brothers (referred to throughout by their nicknames of Toughy, Smarty, and Mouse) who get tired of authority figures so decide to run away for a year and a day, to a desert island. They pack up and go to the docks, where of course nobody will take them except for a man described as an elderly boy, because he isn't old and isn't young. He takes them away on his boat and leaves them on a desert island, shot on location in Corsica. He won't leave them and can't cope without them, but eventually gets the hint and leaves the brothers there. This leads to the longest, middle part of the show, where they are living this blissful life in the sun on their island with no authority figures. They have the odd squabble but this is not Lord of the...

The advantage of themed series of posts is they keep my grasshopper mind on the subject and the disadvantage is they don't necessarily represent what I'm watching and detract from the principle that I blog about what I'm actually watching. Hence a sort of round up post of some things I have been watching and some things I've just discovered. Some of these might get a post of their own as well. When I was doing the posts about orphaned episodes it brought home to me that it is important not to give a show or a film the same name as another one. Obviously we know all about this problem with The Avengers, but it turns out there was a TV comedy show between 1983 and 1988 called  Who Dares Wins . Even at the time that name was a mistake because since it is the motto of the SAS it had already been used by  this  film, and has since been used by  this  TV show and then  this  one. What is wrong with you people? You might think you're giving your show a punchy...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I will not be posting about much children's TV in this series of posts. Not for lack of material - there is a shedload of 1980s children's TV which has survived because of VHS and much of it isn't of the quality that I like to grace this blog. There is also a lot of TV for schools, and while I favour quality, I have always gone for entertainment on this blog rather than too much history or commentary, or anything too didactic. Interference was made by the ITV schools TV series. There are a number of reasons Interference is appearing here, predominantly that it is a great story, which while obviously intended for kids can also be appreciated by different audiences in different ways. This is of course always the sign of quality, complex plotted, drama. You could for example watch it for its countrified setting without mains electricity. Personally I'm a city person and the idea horrifies me (I used to stay in a...

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...

Goodness, our world has become a strange place very quickly. You will be pleased to know that you can read this post without fear of infection, because it turns out I have coronavirus antibodies. I wasn't aware I had had it, but I've got the antibodies. This programme is rather topical in another way, because it is set in Wales, another place the English took over and forced everyone to learn English. It was just as topical in 1976, because it features a nuclear power plant, and of course people imminently expected a nuclear winter: my own mother actually had an evacuation plan that began (I was tiny) 'put John in a wheelbarrow'! My own view is that nuclear power is completely safe, if you can sit with the potential if it goes wrong and you can face the need to contain the waste for thousands of years. The trouble was that the reactors of the time were not safe, because they allowed people to do stupid things like see what happens if you remove the power rods, which is ...

I recently took a leap in the dark and bought the box set of Timeslip, a show I've never really fancied on the basis of its reviews on the internet. Part of the reason for that is that I like my vintage TV to reflect the contemporary world and I have a preference for series beginning in the sixties up to the end of the seventies. Naturally I make arbitrary exceptions to this rule when it suits me. One of the things about mainly sticking with one period of television is that I become familiar with the conventions of the time, and thus it becomes comfort TV. The world view I find myself banging on about here is the contemporary 'modern 'reverse one of hope in the scientific future, frequently combined with warnings of what could happen in the event that the burgeoning technology gets into the hands of a diabolical mastermind. I am currently in the midst of several shoes which treat time in different ways, so this post will be about several at once. The first is The Cha...

Another Christmas has been and gone and I have once more resisted writing about Too Many Christmas Trees. I am sure I will write about it at some point, I'm just rather wary of not doing it justice - although I suppose I can always return to it in the future. Instead I'm going to write about Noah's Castle, although I'm not sure I can do that justice either. Noah's Castle features an actor who appears in many of the TV series of the era I write about - Simon Gipps-Kent. There are a couple of reasons he hasn't appeared here yet: the first is that he was type-cast in the role of upper class youth in the sort of time-travelling period drama which has never really appealed to me. The other is that up until recently I had only come across him in The Tomorrow People. I haven't yet managed to sum up what I would want to say about that show in a blog post, because I'm rather ambivalent about it, both about the show itself and I'm not really sure what I think...

As I write this I am watching a programme called The Feathered Serpent, which is a show I bought completely on spec. Although I was alive when it was broadcast I have no recollection of it and will presume to quote from the blurb on the box: 'Starring Diane Keen and Patrick Troughton, The Feathered Serpent is a story of murder, intrigue and political manoeuvring set amid the splendour and turmoil of ancient Mexico. This release comprises every episode of the children's drama series from Thames Television, memorable for its spectacular sets and lavish costumes, originally transmitted between 1976 and 1978.' Watching this show has caused me to reflect rather waspishly on vintage children's TV, and particularly the few children's shows that I have written about here. These shows are so few because I have found that TV shows I remember from my actual childhood rarely stand up to the rosy memories I have of them: mym memories of shows from my adolescence onwards are much...

I am indebted to Grant Goggans's ecxellent and thoughtful TV blog, firebreathingdimetrodon.wordpress.com, for bringing this show to my attention. I like Grant's style of writing about shows, one episode at a time, and of course his son also gets to comment on the shows. While the world of cult TV on the blogosphere may be a largely self-referential one, it pays off when we bring new shows to each other's attention. Now I know I have been thinking about accent quite a lot recently on here, largely through watching Murder She Wrote for the first time in many years. The question of accent isn't really one I comment on here a great deal, believing that viewers will understand the intended impression given by the chosen accent of a character. Come to think of it, if viewers of the TV series I write about here see the subtle nuances of class as exhibited in the various British accents differently from my own view, I don't think it really matters. A good TV show is unde...

Regular readers will remember how I walked out of my last job in September and walked straight into a better one. I am delighted to announce that only three months later an even better opportunity for promotion has come along and my notice is in. As my congratulatory present to myself I bought several of the things in my Amazon basket, Spike Milligan's Q, which I don't doubt I will be writing about here soonish, and Flower of Gloster, about which I just have to rush into print at once. On reflection I find that I have written about several children's programmes here, or rather programmes intended for children, which may or may not have a grown up following as well, but relatively few of these stay in my permanent collection. Tintin is there in French - he used to irritate me in English, and then I actually went to France and saw kids sitting on the floor in the hypermarkets reading the books, and got hooked. I also keep the 1970s version of the Famous Five, just because....

Reflections on some 1970s children's TV programmes today, which I'm putting in a single post because I don't think my jaundiced meanderings on each are substantial enough for one post. It's a funny thing, because even though I am a 70s baby, I almost never remember the children's programmes of the 70s which are eulogised in the reviews on Amazon. I periodically watch one of them and have posted here about the ones which take my fancy. The first of the two I have in mind today is The Owl Service, adapted for screen from his own novel by Alan Garner. If there is one thing that can truthfully be said about The Owl Service, it is that it is guaranteed to leave its viewer uncomfortable. For a start, the book it is based on wasn't intended for children originally. And of course on adaptation the book doesn't really make a convincing children's programme, since to adult eyes it is quite incredibly sexy. I mean real, proper, all but showing it, young sexy stu...