Cult TV Blog

This show begins with the murder of 'The Gourmet Chef' (a parody of TV chef Keith Floyd, and no the amount of wine he drinks is not an exaggeration). Dave Spanker (a parody of Spender) is doing a lot of standing around being nostalgic for the North but isn't getting anywhere with solving the murder and the police commander realises he will have to assign somebody else to the case. Fortunately for us he assigns Jason Bentley (who wears crushed velvet and drinks while driving), Bonehead and Doyle, and Shouting George from The Weeney. And that is how we discovered what would happen if parodies of four TV detectives of the seventies were brought together to solve a crime. And it's glorious. To be frank you could probably finish reading this blog post here because this show is so good and so funny I literally have nothing but unconditional praise. Your life would genuinely be better spent watching this show than reading my wittering. So if you close the page now and go and f...

A few posts ago I said that I would try to concentrate more on blogging about single episodes of quality shows. And thus we come to Bottom, which I don't think I've written about here before, although it is one of my favourite shows ever. Coming out of the alternative comedy scene of the 1980s, it isn't really comparable to the Goodies, and yet I do think there is a slight comparison in the theme of down-at-heel 'friends' who end up stuck together for better or worse. The difference is in the tone of course - the friends in Bottom are really mortal enemies who have a bizarre codependency going on, while the friends in the Goodies are really friends who club together to do anything in a time of need. I feel it is significant that one is pre- and the other is post-Thatcher's Britain. My favourite scene in this Bottom episode is the card game with which it opens. It is obvious that this kind of card game has frequently been replayed in this house, and also that ...

I have written about a number of funny programmes here, following my usual policy that since this is a blog it will be about what I am watching and also will not include programmes which I do not like. Obviously Acorn Antiques makes it onto here because it is a programme I like very much, although I am finding it very difficult to write about it because of the complex nature of the programme and also my reaction to it. For a start, Acorn Antiques was never intended to be a show in its own right, although you can now get it in its entirety on a DVD. It was intended to be a segment in the show Victoria Wood as Seen on TV. I see that this ran from 1985 to 1987 and I remember it with great fondness. The wonderful Wood also unfortunately died of cancer earlier this year, which gives an extra sadness to the fact that I have found Victoria Wood as Seen on TV very difficult to watch at this length of time. I found that it had not worn well over the years. This is not however truse of Acorn ...

I’ve been watching one of the Children’s Film Foundation’s series of a Famous Five adventure, Five on a Treasure Island, which is the first one of the two films they did. I have posted before here about the 1970s redaction of the Famous Five, but hadn’t seen the 1950s CFF version before. It is played completely straight, and so to modern ears is absolutely hilarious. The bit where Uncle Quentin told George that she was quite as good as any boy had me rolling around laughing. Anyway, it has turned my mind to these two parodies by The Comic Strip Presents, which because of the embargo on Enid Blyton in my school actually formed my introduction to the Famous Five. I must have been a revolting child, because I was almost certainly too young to see Five Go Mad in Dorset or Five Go Mad on Mescalin, and can’t for the life of me think how I persuaded my mother to let me, but I remember them as hugely enjoyable and very formative. As a child I think I would probably have identified most wit...

The subject of time has come up in the classic TV blogosphere this week, so of course I have to leap in and give my two penn'orth. My impression of time in the world of TV is that it depends on the programme and the viewer's first experience of it. The later Avengers were made before I was born, for example, but seem very recent to me because of my early experience of them on the young Channel Four. Many of the 1970s shows I have talked about here seem very old because they were broadcast when I was a very small child, while the shows from the 80s and 90s when I was at some very difficult ages, are etched on my memory as if yesterday. I would also suggest that older production values and social concerns can make shows seem older than newer ones. Recently I have been rediscovering a whole movement of 1980s comedy. I have posted several times here on the subject of comedy recently, and what surprises me most is how little I have posted on it. Of course this is because much o...