Cult TV Blog

Last night (although it was probably more like the afternoon where he is) Grant Goggans kindly left a comment on one of the posts I wrote when I originally went through Spyder's Web episode by episode. To find that series of posts you can click on the Spyder's Web tag on the web version of this blog. Grant's comments set me off thinking again about Spyder's Web and of course today I have had to crack the set open and have a watch. I have particularly been asking myself the question I asked in my last post, about what I think differentiates quality television from mere television, which is still to ignore the duds completely. I would personally put Spyder's Web in the Quality Television bracket, and I have been thinking about what makes it that. Given that the category of Quality Television would include shows such as The Avengers, The Prisoner, Danger Man, among the better known ones, and among the ones less talked about, I would include Department S, The Champ...

Yes, I know. This still isn't noticeably a post about The Corridor People <sigh>. I'm obviously going to have to come back to them. Instead it's actually happened - this is a blog about TV, & I hadn't decided what I would do when I got to the point of re-watching something I'd blogged about before (http://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/spyders-web-spyder-secures-main-strand.html) & wanted to write about it again. I've settled on another post. This is actually the second time I've been watching Spyder's Web since my original post, & I've reacted differently each time, the first by being unimpressed, & this time by warming to it all over again & thinking how good it is. This time round this episode strikes me as the best of the series - I think I found the plot somewhat over-involved last time, but that comes across as being the point this time. However this invites the obvious criticism that if it is confusing...

This was obviously designated as the last of the series to end on a high note, as theatricals put it. It's just a pity it was the last of the only series! It suits its placement perfectly since it is a riot of wild eccentricity gone off the rails in a big way. The very premise - a terrorist group pressurising for the independence of the Isle of Wight - blasts us straight into Avengers territory. The opening scenes of the plotters make them look distinctly odd, but they fade into mere normality when we first see Hawksworth polishing his skis wearing a fur coat, yachting cap & monocle. Lottie intrudes on this in a rare use of the magical omniscience technique - normally in Spyder's Web the reason for & explanation of a case clearly come from above by means which are shown - but here she just appears with the story off pat. The technique is used also by Lottie & Hawksworth just turning up without explanation at a meeting of the respectable group campaigning for in...

I can now see one of the advantages of having a different writer for each episode: they are genuinely different. This episode is - not in a bad way - very much of its time indeed, which if all of the episodes were like this would make the whole series seem more dated than it does. The references to Suez & a dog called Hitler, though, make the events of these episodes seem a very long time ago, compared to series such as The Avengers & most of the ones I like which avoid direct cultural references. Nor are the cultural references missing in this one: once again references which time it down almost to the year. There is even an obviously homosexual character, although this is not made explicit, which gives the impression that this episode is trying a bit hard for gritty realism. Nothing wrong with that, as such, but I would identify the repeated cultural references as a weakness because they distract from the main line of the plot. On the other hand a somewhat straightforwar...

J. Smith uses his most unusual communication to date in this one: a child's colouring book. I particularly like the image of a flying coffin. This is another example of the light touch used in this programme to handle some fairly weighty subjects, in this case the recovery of the body of Hubert Anstruther, lost in the Alps since 1914, & lost in transit to London. As a relatively straightforward detective/spy story this works very well, & the division between Lottie's & Hawksworth's roles effectively provides the variety of two plot threads at once. The mentions of strawberries & the Gourmet Emporium as having an involvement in the case help to provide an Avengers feel to the episode. Other than that, visually the epsiode almost looks in many ways like a pastiche of 1960s spy shows - the repeated night scenes, even the setting of the airport. It is prevented from coming across as too gritty by the lightness of touch with which it is handled. Unusually fo...

Culture clash, of course, is the well-worn theme of this one. Of course it may be necessary to contextualise this in the milieu of the 1970s, the age when everything modern was wonderful, & yet the decade was marked by some incredibale conflcit, the oil crisis has a good go at putting the kibosh on the consumption of the modern era. It's actually rather difficult to know where to begin on the wealth of culture clashes featured in this episode, with characteristic differences of opinion between Lottie & Hawksworth woven in for good measure. President Baras, of course references Che Guevara, who had died by execution five years before this episode. He is played superlatively by Mike Pratt, of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) fame: a truly versatile actor. Baras is not merely the popular folk hero figure but is also - on the surface -  the representative of modernity in his nation, while it becomes apparent he is not averse to the old ways. As a side note Pratt is only in h...

My unofficial subtitle for this one is 'Spyder's Web does Agatha Christie'. Actually this is among my favourite episodes. It is the other one of the two that survive in colour, but oh what a difference from Red Admiral! The episode actually starts very much in an eccentric '60s Lord Kitchener's Valet sort of way. Despite his dangerous legacy the opening scenes make light of Woffington's destructive inventions, & I love that he wears both a leather apron & a bowler hat. To be absolutely frank, the film of this one is showing its age, although you don't notice scratches & the odd jump so much because of the quality of the story. I personally also don't object to the cut to stock footage of a state funeral for Woffington, even though the colour values are so completely different it makes you jump. This, kids, was what TV was like before CGI, & at the time I remember noticing those sort of changes without really noticing, because that ...

This is another of those episodes of Spyder's Web which, if I'm honest with myself, I have tended to watch for their visual effectiveness & not really followed what the plot was doing, so in fact it feels like I'm coming to it fresh. We are very much back in Cold War thriller territory, with an Eastern Bloc people smuggling ring using a puppet troupe as a cover. I love J. Smith's use of a talking myna bird - talking code - to communicate with Spyder, a device straight out of the Avengers Episode, The Bird Who Knew Too Much. I also like the touch of leaving the bird in the left luggage office afterwards, & also how the bird theme recurs later. You see, this Spyder episode *feels* like a Series four or five Avengers episode, even Hawksworth acts more Steed-like, to my mind, more knowing & less jack-the-lad. There are simply so many Avengers echoes to the knowledgeable ear. Hawksworth adopts the unusual name of Osgood - used in Fog (Series 6) - when he g...

This is one of two episodes of Spyder's Web that survive in colour, & in my opinion that fact does this episode no good at all. It also illustrates why I was so glad that Emergency Exit only survives in black & white. This is illustrated by a point (at 01:50 where a section of the film has been black & white & the colour springs back in. In black & white the picture is crisp, light & dark are clearly differentiated, but all this just becomes fuzzy when the colour comes back. This may have been partly because of the '70s palette of greys & browns that dominate many of the scenes, but I suspect it it because of a lack of restoration work on the part of Network. The colours in this episode look like a 1980s pirated video of the Avengers, & don't compare well to Studio Canal's remastering for the recent box sets. These two colour episodes really show their age. This is not helped by the opening computer scene which dates it tremendously, a...

Ever since I first watched through the only series of Spyder's Web, this has remained one of my favourite episodes, even though it has also remained strangely hazy in my memory. I have watched it at least three times, but bizarrely what remains in my memory the most is the street scene which forms the opening scene. That said, I would have had difficulty telling you exactly what was going on; I think this may be partly a penalty of such effective visuals - Lottie is totally convincing as a traffic warden, but Hawksworth looks like a man pretending to be a plumber - that they tend to be remembered over the plot. I find it interesting the way the Network DVD liner notes phrase the premise of this episode: 'Spyder knows that the Viscount Employment Agency is a cover for the deployment of agents from the Other Side...'. Both the phrase & the capitalisation create exactly the right atmosphere of Cold War intrigue. In fact it way simplifies the case compared to the effec...

This episode of Spyder's Web is in great contrast to the last one I blogged about, the Hafiz Affair, at least on the surface. To me it manages to feel much more claustrophobic, & uses that well-worn cliche of television drama, the private clinic run by a dodgy doctor. Perhaps that is why, to me at least, it feels much more like a relatively stodgy television play than the eccentric TV & sparkling dialogue that Spyder otherwise provides. The plot is similarly imperialist to Hafiz, though, Lottie describes the point as defending the last remaining ten acres of the British Empire. This is one of the things that makes it clear to me that Lottie & Hawksworth are definitely servants of their masters - despite apparently independent personalities & doubts, they are definitely in the status of employees, & I can't think of an occasion in the series where they can turn down a job or criticise it. This is also similar to the ambivalence underlying The Avengers: u...

Since I'm taking it upon myself to give these programmes Avengers-style subtitles, this one can be: in which the Spyder does Danger Man with a few nods to Bulldog Drummond. Actually only the Danger Man comment is mine (& really only the premise of this episode screams Danger Man, otherwise the treatment is quite different), the Bulldog Drummond one is Lottie's comment to Hawksworth. You see, what this episode chiefly stands out for in my eyes is the character development & the development of Spyder's Web as a body. Hawksworth was introduced to the series as very much the individualist, yet in this episode it is plain that he needs a fairly rigid organisation to form a background. He finds Spyder's Web very difficult & is continually trying to find his bearings. If only one thing is clear it is this: he is not the whizzkid he seemed in the first episode, & Lottie is a better spy than he will ever be. Her intelligence is astounding: I love the instr...

My top exchange in this episode: Lottie: 'You're Henry Wormley.' Hawksworth: 'God.' Lottie: 'No, he's a small farmer of moderate means. *I'm* God.' I love that Hawksworth decides it's to be pronounced Wumley, 'to rhyme with bum'. Visually this episode starts off by feeling like the first episode by featuring men, presumably from a ministry, arriving at an abandoned quarry in the middle of nowhere. The repeated theme of betrayal however, feels genuinely surprising again, by the shock of throwing the man who has found two bodies, to his death in the quarry. Nowadays the idea of mail-order brides is perhaps not as alien as it would have been in 1972, although I love Romance on Wheels's explicit advertising that they average two marriages per tour, such a good idea to make it clear what's going to happen. The country to which the tour goes with its 'ambiance of romantic opportunity' is not made clear, but it...

Spyder's Web doesn't go in for titles in the same format as the later series of The Avengers, but if it did this one would be called 'in which Mary Whitehouse goes seriously off the rails'! In this episode a serious contemporary issue comes under the microscope: the question of indecency & censorship was very hot stuff through the 1960s & into the 1970s. Once again this realism distinguishes Spyder's Web from the world of The Avengers, which was self-consciously unreal, although this episode otherwise feels very Avengers. It is about an organisation called The Executioners, who supposedly kill those it considers immoral. The organisation consists solely of very Establishment figures indeed, who appear to take the law into their own hand. Here the Establishment is investigating the Establishment. Once again sticking to its own time serves this programme well in making it respectably of its age & without pretence. it is unlikely nowadays that anybody ...

Adam Adamant Lives! (Which I've also been watching & will be posting on) is often thought as a major imitator & competitor to The Avengers, wrongly in my opinion. I feel a more convincing historical descendant of The Avengers is Spyder's Web, which is not to say I think it (or even Adam Adamant) was consciously imitative. I think it more likely they & other series picked up things from the zeitgeist of the time. That said, for me Spyder's Web in many ways feels like a Cathy Gale-era Avengers. The opening scenes of this episode - the chase across the field & the double-cross - are pure Avengers, because of the way they introduce the enemy & the element of insecurity, & place them within a pastoral idyll. This sense of English security containing rottenness is continued in the next scene, of a car drawing up to a solid middle-class home & the domestic conversation which follows. However the man is supposed to be head of Exportease, which is ...