Cult TV Blog

I have been watching Jason King again. He is probably an acquired taste, but how I love that show. I have been reflecting on what makes it appeal to me, and I think it is its setting, which I will refer to as ‘seventies opulent’. He is actually in a great tradition of people, frequently writers, who have a day job and yet seem to spend all their time either reclining in the most luxurious settings of the time or else doing the real purpose of the show, frequently investigating crimes. To me there is little point criticising the seventies opulent school for rubbing people’s noses in it when the world was going through a bad time, since nobody can live on gritty realism all the time. It’s my own silly fault, since it is always a mistake to judge different ‘takes’ on a story in the same light (for example I like to approach The New Avengers as if I am watching The Professionals rather than as if I am approaching The Avengers), and I realise that I did Paul Temple’s TV incarnation a di...

I see that Patrick Macnee died in the week, at the age of 93. I commented on the It’s About TV blog that I couldn’t write a better tribute to him than Mitchell Hadley did, so I would refer you to his his post . There is something about the extremes of old age which be very bitter sweet: I knew an old lady who was very proud at having outlived all of her contemporaries, and survived the various ailments she had suffered from all her life, yet there must be a great loneliness when there is literally nobody left to whom you can say, ‘Do you remember…?’. Macnee wore his age gracefully, from what I have seen of him speaking in the past few years. For his life I would refer people to his frankly extraordinary autobiography. I have been surprised by some echoes of Macnee and The Avengers in the films I have been watching this weekend. I have resisted starting a tag on this blog of ‘Not TV’, but I think I have some films which will genuinely be of interest to the readers of this blog, and a...

An attentive reader of this blog recently called it 'my go-to blog for Brit shows' (you know who you are, thank you) & so when I noticed I'd left the discs for this post sitting on my laptop next to a cup of tea in a Harrods mug, I had to snap it as the illustration for this ultra-British post. Here's the secret to perfect tea: everyone has their own pet method. After a lifetime of being a tea-first fanatic I have recently converted to milk-first.  Incidentally I made the tea with a bag in the mug, don't take sugar, & superstition would have it that the almost complete absence of bubbles on top indicates that buying a lottery ticket this week would be a waste of money. As it happens the largest audience for this blog is in the Ukraine (hello there) followed by the US, but I like to think we English people are as much of a mystery to non-English speakers as we are to Anglophones. Anyway back to the matter in hand... Surely there can be nobody interested in...