Cult TV Blog

This may seem like I'm going completely off-topic but one of my other interests is architecture and I have been watching a film called Utopia London  about the idealistic planning involved in reconstructing London before and after the Second World War. In Utopia London's vision, egalitarianism featured highly and everyone was to have the same opportunities. In my humble opinion, the egalitarian bright future dreamed of in the 1940s was a red herring. On the whole people don't want to share and even if you were to share out the world's resources completely equally, some people would still manage to be penniless after the first week. As a result of these elements of human nature we find the kind of alternative economies we see in Steptoe and Son (you see, I was going somewhere with that introduction). This is also not something which is different anywhere in the world: where I used to live in Bearwood, if you wanted rid of something you just had to put it out in the st...

I'm gratified that this series of posts on 1970s TV is generating interest in the blogosphere, since this kind of TV is slightly out of my own choice of shows, which can be described as '1960s weird'. I am having IT problems (aren't I always?) So for the foreseeable future I expect to have problems with tidying up posts on here & replying to comments, but thank you to the people who have commented recently. I didn't actually realise this one had carried on into the 1970s, but I'm watching episodes on the DVD which illustrates this post, all of which were broadcast in the 1970s. Having said that these 1970s shows are slightly off my radar, Steptoe & Son thrives on one of the staple elements of 1960s TV, something which was very much in the zeitgeist of the time - the confrontation between tradition (embodied by the Steptoes), & modernity (represented by the world outside). Harold's periodic talk of revolution & predictions of the end of the...