Cult TV Blog

This is the episode of Virtual Murder broadcast as the first, although it wasn't intended to be. In my humble opinion this was the right thing to do rather than broadcast the intended first episode, Dreams Imagic, first. The reason I think this is the plot of this one is a beauty, of the paint of famous works of art suddenly melting and running. As a plot this is exactly the right note to kick off on, and it is well worthy of the sixties TV gauntlet that the show runs with. As is the cast of complete eccentrics, once again played by a guest cast of Big Names: Helen Lederer, Bernard Bresslaw, Julia Foster,  When we see the murder victim the presentation is sufficiently eccentric to be right up there was reenacting any campaign you like in the potting shed. This show is absolutely barking and I know regular readers will love it. I think it is more apparent in this one than in the other episodes that Dr Cornelius's sidekick, played by Kim Thomson, was at least partly inspired by E...

In a change to my usual practice I am going to start with a list of the guest stars of this episode of Virtual Murder: Ronald Fraser, Jill Gascoine, Alfred Marks, Peggy Mount, and Julian Clary as a most unusual undertaker dressed all in pink. How in hell is this show not well known if not on its own merits but because it managed to obtain a list of guest stars like that in one episode? What is wrong with the TV viewing public? The show is also an absolute delight. It's insane and I love it. Unusually this one is much more focussed on the university in the unnamed city, its daily life and rivalries. Specifically we're in the run up to a play and there has been a sudden spate of attacks by an apparent real world vampire. In this way we are set up to expect a particular ending to the show, because when you've got a university production of Dracula going on and people start reporting a real life vampire, you tend to assume the two are related. Of course we all know that the unn...

This episode of Virtual Murder is one which really makes me wonder why this show isn't more known because it stars Jon Pertwee, who is surely known to everyone in the cult blogosphere, as an Italian chef (who is Spanish) and the villain of the piece. He does a brilliant job of portraying a man who is utterly barmy, and this comes across in everything he says because of his odd manner of speech, but nonetheless nobody has stopped to think he's insane. You may think that I'm naughty giving out that he's the baddie right at the start, but so does Virtual Murder, and I think that just underscores that this show is about the atmosphere and the whole story, not just about solving the crime. You've got it, exactly like so many great 1960s TV shows. The details of the investigation are of course entirely psychological and the profile drawn up of Silverado is fascinating. We don't only see this excellent portrayal of human life in the excellent depiction of the barmy Sil...

In my first post about Virtual Murder I said that it had picked up the gauntlet laid down by The Avengers. This episode is about a man, Roger Smith, who turns up to a police station on a bicycle and empties a bag of human bones over the desk. If I say that this man is dressed as Father Christmas (and played by Tony Robinson as guest star) you may be inclined to say that the show has blown up the gauntlet and turned it into a whoppie cushion and I'll tell you right now, it's glorious. I particularly like when Smith uses his one phone call to ring Cornelius and dramatically play out that the police have attached electrodes to his tongue. This is the truly bat shit crazy world of English eccentricity (which is of course completely untrue, in no way are we eccentric) and it displays a procession of eccentrics for us. We're beyond eccentricity though because Smith has been a research project because he has pseudologica fantastica, and just lies continually. Psychologically very ...

After writing some posts about documentaries I was absolutely gagging to scurry away to unreality, and so here we have an episode of the 1992 series, Virtual Murder. Honestly, I'll be surprised if even the readers of this blog have ever heard of this show because nobody ever has. Virtual Murder was intended to be in the mould of earlier eccentric series (The Avengers, Adam Adamant and Department S are often mentioned  - are you interested yet?) and was about two amateur detectives who investigated odd cases in tandem with the constabulary. It's got some names in it: Nicholas Clay plays John Cornelius, Kim Thomas plays Samantha Valentine, and Stephen Yardley plays Inspector Cadogan. It incorporates elements of the occult and virtual reality, and so brought the eccentric sixties TV show up to date for the nineties. All of the episdoes are available on youtube. You may not have heard of it because it's had a critical pummeling and there is vanishingly little about it even in t...