Cult TV Blog

I have been looking around for what to do next since as you know I find that themed posts seem to suit me quite well and so the current theme is Television for a Time of Strife. Heaven knows we're in a time of strife and television was always intended to be entertaining so for a while from now I am solely going to focus on shows that we can watch as re-creation in a world which is crashing and burning. In case the title of this post seems unusually detailed, indeed accurate, that's because I've copied it straight from the handy booklet that comes from the BFI box set of what remains on this show, and that's what the episode is actually called. In fact you really ought to get the box set this instant and also really don't need me to explain it to you. In case you haven't heard of this show, despite its restoration and publication being trumpeted all over the classic TV internet, I'll list some names and you'll see why it needs no justification: Tim Brooke...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I see I began these posts on January 16th, and had no idea they would occupy me for the next four months. 42 blog posts about 58 TV shows later we have come to the end for now. Now that I have reached the end of this unexpectedly long series of posts I am in a position to document some of the reflections these posts have occasioned in me. These reflections were intended to be attached to the last post but have become rather unwieldy. I have tried to make them as snappy as possible. The first is about wiping shows , which is the main reason is that these shows were split up.  I find it absolutely bizarre that early TV (in fact up to the seventies) was influenced by the culture of the theatre so that each show was a one-off and never to be repeated. There are complete runs of fifties radio shows extant and while most film before the forties has been lost, that was because of the instability of the medium, not del...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I seem to have come to the end of the orphaned episodes I have for now, and this post is to gather together some shows that I think people might like but I don't think I can squeeze a whole post out of each one. I still have one separate post to publish with my reflections on this journey down the junked TV rabbit hole. Mornin' Sarge  (1989) is a single season comedy set in an incompetent police station and made by the team behind  They Came from Somewhere Else . You can read the story behind this team  here . Not to beat about the bush I think this show may be a bit Marmite, and online opinion seems to be divided between raving about it and a few people saying it wasn't much cop (geddit?). The  pilot episod e has got loose on the internet. Mr Majeika is an almost legendary children's TV series about a wizard who has failed his exams seventeen times so is sent to earth to teach in a primary school. He...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I think I have reached the end of these posts for now, so this will be the last post in the orphaned episodes series, just except for a post dealing with some odd shows that I won't do full posts about, and some reflections. This is the second episode of this show i have posted about, and the whole series must have been fascinating if these two odd episodes are anything to go by. As is so often the case with these shows there is another with the same name, but this post is about  this one  not  this one , which really does sound odd. This is about an ordinary man who quite suddenly finds himself with supernatural powers, and the full implications of this for his life. After he feels an accident his colleague has, in the manner of the time the hospital his colleague goes to sends round a parapsychologist, wonderfully played by Geoffrey Bayldon. Boysie, the guy with the gifts, ultimately sends him away and s...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Another episode from  Tales of Unease . This one is in a few places online. I'm afraid I can't remember which so can't link the right one, but in one copy the sound drops out for much of the show, but if you start watching that one don't despair - try one of the others because they're not all the same and the whole show with complete audio is out there. The above link is quite critical of this show because of the absence of explanation in the plot and unsatisfying conclusion. My own reading would be that I think the unease it leaves you with is largely the point. I also would think it's deliberately not explained fully and leave space for the viewer to think about it. In retrospect one of the reasons to watch this show is for its utterly sixties atmosphere (it was shown in 1970). Art students are perhaps one of the more countercultural avocations of the time and quite a bit of the show is devoted to t...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Play for Today was another long-running anthology series which broadcast from 1970 to 1984. Although some of its plays have been released in various formats, it has not been released in its entirety and since I don't think this one has been released commercially it meets the criteria for an orphaned episode I cunningly set originally. I have just discovered to my shock that I have been blogging here for eight and a half years and don't think I have so much as mentioned that nuclear disasters are one of my little obsessions. How have I managed not to mention this? I'm particularly obsessed with the disastrous 'cleanup' at Enewatak Atoll and there was a time when I was younger when I could give you a blow by blow account of the events of 26th April 1986 in the number 4 reactor at Chernobyl and had to be prevented from calling our cat Windscale. I have no idea why this has always fascinated me, I'm not e...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . You are probably as surprised as I am that an episode of this show should appear among these orphaned episodes, since much of the surviving show has been released by Network. But I'm very much afraid I don't think this one will probably be released. It is in a couple of places on YouTube and has been streamed by Talking Pictures TV (don't tell me if it has been released, it's given me real trouble).  I formed this opinion in the first minutes because the use of the n-word, and not in a derogatory sense, suggests this show may have some difficulty transitioning to today. You all know how subtle I am and don't speak my mind but I think the other reason this one might not see the light of commercial day is that it's not very good. God I feel terrible saying that but we're not talking quality here, it feels like this play was a good idea but went horribly wrong along the way. I'm not breaking my o...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I was pleased to come across a religious documentary because most of the remaining orphaned episodes I have are plays and I felt like a change. I know for a fact that Credo was a series because this show actually says at the beginning that it is one of a series on cults (although Credo sounds more like a general religious TV programme) but it has left remarkably little trace of itself: I have been unable to find any reference to it on the internet apart from this one show on the actual Hare Krishna YouTube channel, not even on IMDb. This is probably the most orphaned episode I will cover. It's also recent enough (1980s) to have benefited from preservation via VHS. I came across this because I was reading a book about what happened in the Hare Krishna movement after the guru died (TL:DR the difficulties of predominantly young adherents and adaptations made to the tradition by Prabhupada created huge conflicts and some peo...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . This post contains spoilers of the play's plot. I was expecting to say that this series of posts was drawing to a close but I fell down an internet rabbit hole and as a result have another ten possible orphaned episodes on my hard drive! Like most featured here, they are episodes from a series of plays, as is today's. I don't think for an instant the episodes I'm finding are at all representative of contemporary television. I suspect the orphans which have found their way online are disproportionately middle class.  BBC2 Playhouse  ran for a whole decade from 1973 to 1983 and while I have failed to find out how much of it is wiped, some is certain to be. Conversely, while it meets my definition of orphaned episodes because the whole thing isn't available, I think some of its episodes have had commercial releases. This may not even be the first episode of this series I've included here, because  The M...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . This is the first episode of the late sixties and early seventies sitcom Mr Digby Darling, about an executive in a rat control business and his secretary. I am honestly mystified that I had never heard of it until I came across it while researching these shows; it was hugely popular at the time and was I believe the fourth most viewed TV show at one point. The show's almost complete absence in the cult TV world (after all, there are endless old TV shows and yet ones which aren't as good as this get talked about ad nauseam) is absolutely bizarre. It has two wildly popular actors starring (Sheila Hancock and Peter Jones), who had previously been in the successful The Rag Trade, which has had a commercial release. Really odd. Anyway, that means I don't have anyone else's opinions to disagree with so you get my own untested views. I can see why this show was so successful. It is essentially a sitcom about a rathe...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . It is April and the weather is just warming up for the Easter weekend as I write this, so of course that's the perfect occasion to blog about the Dick Emery Show Christmas special broadcast in 1980. This may seem an odd choice, but then in common with Dame Hilda Bracket, I have always been very happy being me. Unfortunately that is not something which can be said for many comedians. Their interior world can often be described as tortured, which is caused by and causes external instability. Spike Milligan is the example that springs to mind, but Dick Emery is no exception (his life really was extraordinary): Dick Emery seemed destined to become an entertainer from the moment in 1915 when his mother went into labour after staggering off the stage of the London Palladium. His parents Laurie Emery and Bertha Callen performed together in a music hall double act and Bertha’s advanced pregnancy had not been considered a suffici...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Another post about an orphaned episode and another emotional flip for me - this time to the feeling you get half way through a three year degree. You've started it for perfectly good reasons are in danger of getting tired of it and would jack it in if you had a career to go to. I won't comment more at this point because I have a longer post planned for when these are over, including about how it's been such a wild ride emotionally. A trip back to the fifties today, when Britain was a bastion of moral uprightness and integrity. We were a beacon of hope to the entire world. If you ignore our empire, slavery, rape, pillage and frequent genocide that is. Honestly, you look at Boris and I don't know why anyone's surprised. I might be feeling rather negative. Anyway, I did have a point which was to say that 1950s TV really does take us into an alien world, with alien conventions. There is the imaginary Famous F...