Cult TV Blog

Episode 5 You can read my original post about this episode  here . I am particularly struck by the status of Emma and Felicity in this assignment (my impressions have been particularly strong in both these episodes): neither of them is actually treated as an adult in her own right. At one point point Arthur tells Emma that she can't have an affair because there would be a scandal (in episode 6). This is of course far more in accordance with 1930s mores than 1980s mores, however she is an elderly woman who has presumably spent the last fifty plus years under the thumb of a man. Of course much of the point of this assignment is that the respectable facade is just that and in reality they're all at it like rabbits. However it is also very clear that the men look down on the women, who despite being shareholders in the business are seen as incompetent and incapable of understanding. I'm also going to return to the reaction I didn't talk about the first time I blogged about ...

Episode 3 You can read my previous post about this episode  here and it's damn good stuff, even if I do say it myself. I'm a bit miffed by the sheer amount of detail and analysis I managed to fit in in that post, but will say what I can. I can only assume that the tolls of age have shot my brain and I can't manage that sort of effort any more. I am most struck this time that this show is setting us up to expect an Agatha Christie locked room mystery, specifically And Then There Were None, and no episode does it better than this one, right from its recap of the discovery of the body. I would say that the episode then turns the detective fiction expectations on their head and makes it something quite different by the repeated hints that things are wrong, and, of course, that Time is out of sync. I would say that, but I think this whole Sapphire and Steel assignment could be seen as the series's characteristic twist on And Then There Were None. At various points this is m...

I am going to abandon my plan to blog about TV suitable for a time of strife, simply because when you actually look at every TV show they reflect human life, and so incorporate corruption, espionage, dangerous governments, and so on. Instead it seems to be Sapphire and Steel season in my head so of course that will be reflected here. Something I have been waiting for has finally happened - doing my usual reading round the blogosphere before considering a post about this show I came across a blog post which I thought was really good. Honestly it was one of the best blog posts I have ever read and was written by a chap who obviously paid real attention to it and was a clever chap into the bargain. Of course I don't need to tell you I was slightly surprised to find that I wrote it myself, and you can read it  here because it gives a perfect introduction to this assignment and shows what I was thinking about this show nine years ago. Having already written a lengthy and considered ser...

I still feel very bad that I have recently been so critical of Sapphire and Steel's third television assignment, and as you apparently do when you feel as if you've just murdered your grandmother, I need to make it up. The Passenger actually isn't TV (since when did I stay on topic?) but is the first audio Sapphire and Steel adventure that Big Finish released back in 2005. Since it isn't TV and since I'm also aware that it's now rather rare and people may not have easy access to it I'm going to confine myself to one post to blog about it. I would recommend  here as an excellent summary of the plot and another review. The reason I was so critical of Assignment 3 was that it was waaay too complicated and introduced far too many complicating elements while also spending far too much time in emphasising how confusing it was, before resolving the plot with a leg of pork. I'm not writing it off, because if it wasn't worth watching in my opinion it wouldn...

Episode 6: In which the mystery is resolved with a leg of pork Warning: This post contains spoilers for the resolution of this assignment. Not to beat about the bush here, I'm going to try to be as gentle as I can but I honestly think the assignment falls on its face with this episode, largely because the complexities that have been invoked already would be formidably difficult to resolve tidily for anyone. Two specific parts seem to me to fall particularly flat. The first is the scene where Eldred won't access the bedroom of the other study pod. He gives as the reason that it has taken humanity that long to evolve to the point of having enough privacy and decency not to go into someone else's bedroom. We have gained certain moral standards, he says. This falls completely flat because it's complete nonsense. Except in situations of complete poverty you don't randomly go into someone else's bedroom. I also suspect that at times and situations in the past, such as...

Episode 4: In which nobody knows what's going on My sense of dissatisfaction with this assignment has rather grown with this episode. Surely nobody was in any illusion that the three experimental pods and also the top flat of the block all having the same layout was as a cost-cutting exercise? It's also bizarre, because if you're doing an experiment in the past and take the layout of an actual flat as one experimental pod do you then repeat it for all the others? Are they really that cheap in the future, when they can power things with jolly old Time? It's used a device for Sapphire to guide Steel around the rural research project where she is, but probably wasn't really necessary for that because she would just have described it while we watched Steel looking soulful. Sapphire gets all smiley when she finds out that Silver has turned up, but of course that may simply be to make Steel jealous, and I'm going to have to say that this assignment is, I think, alone ...

Episode 2: In which everyone gets thoroughly confused If you read up on what people think of this episode you tend to get lots of comments about how seeing Steel sabotaging a lift isn't the most exciting television ever. And of course that would be right. But I think this episode's main function is to underline with the subtlety of a sledgehammer how everything is wrong with time here, how everyone is out of kilter, and nobody is thinking straight. The wife tells the husband that she's worried about her thoughts. Let me tell you, when your spouse says that to you the only possible response is, are you taking your medication. Steel thinks he's been attacked by the swan/pillow, but finds he hasn't. It's never good when you start perceiving things that may well not be happening. Meanwhile the baby goes through puberty about four times during the episode, so to be fair he's probably the most confused of them all. I think this is the point of the lift sequence. I...

Next for Television (to destress) for a Time of Strife of course we have to have some complete unreality in the shape of Sapphire and Steel. I am shocked, nay disgusterated at myself to find that it has been a full eight years since these two so much as made an appearance here, and I went through Assignment 2 in 2014, and Assignment 5 in 2013. I'm actually shocked that I haven't touched it. I'm also shocked that I've managed to choose (and am otherwise very pleased with) a template for the blog which doesn't show the dates of posts. What kind of blog doesn't put dates on the posts? So I have been forced to change templates again because there was no way of putting dates on the posts. This is a Sapphire and Steel which I have been thinking of writing about before but wasn't really sure of how to go about it. I feel that individual posts for each episode of a Sapphire and Steel tends to result in a too slight a blog entry but a single post for the whole show d...

I have posted about this Sapphire and Steel assignment here before, episode -by-episode, and I have made a conscious decision not to re-read those posts before writing this one. There is a sense in which all the locations of Sapphire and Steel adventures play at least one role which railway stations or trains often play, that of a contained environment in which the action can take place. This pertains for the house, the block of flats, the garage, and so on. But this function is extended in Sapphire and Steel to become a plot device where this contained environment can be attacked by forces outside it, usually time. This is a very imaginative way to capitalise on a relatively cheap setting to produce, and its low cost is documented as being one of the things which made Sapphire and Steel attractive to start off with. It is also what makes this show so different from a straightforward detective -type use of the train to create a closed environment. Unbeknown to me, there is a term f...

This is the famous episode where the thing happens with Sapphire's eyes. I don't do eyes myself & can hardly bear to look. Steel remains in his priest/magician/intermediary role, & here the process is genuinely ancient. It wasn't their intention but 'it' enters into Sapphire's body & speaks to Steel through her, reminiscent of how a god or spirit would be called into a boy in the Greek Magical Papyri (I did say I had a thing for weird shit). In the great tradition Steel then makes a deal with 'it'. Steel shows his full cunning here, as he has a plan to trick the darkness. He also makes plain to Pearce that the darkness has deceived him, making him swap sides. I want to side-step discussions of ethics but there is a sacrifice of Tully's life to 'it', to prevent the problem at the station. This is somewhat contradictory given that the point of this assignment is to prevent 'it' keeping on using the resentful dead who ...

I've commented before about how it's important not to expect television of thirty or forty years ago to work in the same way as television now. I like to think that my personal expectations of television are formed by what I like to consider great shows of the sixties & seventies, & in fact rarely see much modern television. Given this view, I'm in a dilemma about this episode. I wanted to say that if there was an episode of this assignment that could be abandoned it would be this one, returning to my original opinion that eight episodes is too long for this assignment's story. On the other hand I'm trying to visualise what a less prolix Sapphire & Steel would be like, & it just wouldn't work. Plot-wise, all that really happens in this episode is: Sapphire & Steel wake up, realise the darkness is up to its old tricks, & attempt to contact the darkness. Perhaps it comes down to your taste in how the narrative unfolds, although obviously...

At the beginning of this episode Steel remains to all intents & purposes alone - something has happened to Sapphire, & Tully is obviously never going to be on a par with Steel. That said, the important human element in this assignment is maintained by Steel asking questions of Tully about the human consciousness. Tully is dramatically a necessary counterpoint to Steel here, & his humanity is a necessary counterpoint to Steel's, well, steeliness, such as when he tells Steel he realises how he feels about Sapphire. I do love the scene where he is chattering away to Sapphire's inanimate body about brass-rubbing! The darkness is really on the offensive in this episode, taking Sapphire on board & using all the tricks it can against Steel, including an, as it were, hologram of Sapphire, whom Steel knows full well is sitting in the next room. She is so obviously working for the darkness when she tries to persuade Steel that the after-images are harmless & shou...

This episode begins with the continuation of the sitting from episode 4, & despite Steel's saying it's gone wrong, it let's us into the soldier's world. And rightly, this is done without special effects, purely Joanna Lumley's acting ability, making it to my mind very effective because simple. I have a feeling that the technique used, trance mediumship, would make this seance very disreputable in the world of psychic investigation today, since it really is so vulnerable to cheating caused by the medium's acting ability. Nonetheless as far as Sapphire & Steel's investigation goes, it does get them into touch with the soldier. What comes across for me is how young he is: the actor (Tom Kelly) manages to look about twelve years old with tears running down his face. The contrast of his happy country upbringing with his unjustifiable death highlights that what he has experienced is so traumatic, & he was so young when it happened. Once again this...

Some of the questions raised in episode 3 are (sort of) answered in this episode, at least in terms of what the hell is going on. Once again the episode is a superb vehicle for Steel - although I feel Sapphire gets more of a look in than she did in episode 3. The function of his rational hard-nosed personality in Sapphire & Steel's work is revealed: he is there to have the wit to reject dodgy appeals from dead people! I've actually just realised that Sapphire & Steel are both wearing evening dress - perhaps the powers that be in their world don't get the wardrobe quite right, in the way Steel is usually out of synch with mores & customs. Sapphire is almost accusing when she says to him, 'You're enjoying this, aren't you,' & of course he responds that he is. What I like most about this episode is that it reaches an almost farcical level, parodying humans' attempts at contacting the dead. The seance is the point at which this reaches...

I've managed to get distracted from Sapphire & Steel, but you'd noticed that, hadn't you? - & I didn't want to blog about the television-related things that have distracted me in case I ended up leaving this Sapphire & Steel adventure hanging in the air. First The Avengers Lost Episodes from Big Finish distracted me: I've now listened to them further & see no reason to change my initial reaction, that not enough was done to change television scripts for audio. Then I got distracted by two new (to me) series: I've watched a few episodes of Callan (not sure about that one yet, I'll have to come back to it), & then got distracted by Public Eye. I never thought I would like that series, but I saw the box set in Cex (I agree with the reviews, the box set looks so flimsy you might as well buy the separate sets), bought some & have gone out of my mind for more Public Eye, to the extent that that show will definitely get picked apart withi...

You thought I hadn't noticed what happened right at the end of episode 1, didn't you? I mean, that the soldier - the main soldier that is, amongst the mass of resentful deceased humanity - did make an appearance on the platform, to us while Sapphire was aware of something happening. I do feel the resentment almost passed through her, since despite the change in her clothing & the reappearance of the phantom flowers on the platform, she looks in pain, & describes the hatred. Tully can hear the band, & Steel instructs her to leave the platform. This forms the recap in episode two (it is at this point the titles start), & I deliberately didn't mention it in my last post, in which I focussed more on Tully, wanting to bring the soldier up as a new subject in this post. The sequence in which Sapphire describes the day she is experiencing is incredibly effective, more so given that the effect is largely created by Sapphire's narration & sound effects, ...

I like to say that the repeats of The Avengers on Channel 4 in the eighties started my interest for sixties TV, & it's true. But this is the Sapphire & Steel assignment that started my interest in cult TV, & quite probably my interest in all sorts of weird things. As a child I was both terrified & fascinated by this assignment. I'd already got an interest in ghosts from somewhere & the 'scientific' methods Tully used in this fascinated me. How atmospheric can you make the beginning of a TV programme? There's simply everything here, the railway station itself, the wind-swept platform, the fact that it's twilight if not dark. The fact that Tully approaches from the platform implies that he's there without the owner's permission. In fact I've just realised that this assignment begins with classic magical omniscience: there is no attempt made to delineate why Tully is at the station or what its reputation is among the ghost hunti...