Cult TV Blog

Yes, I know this is supposed to be about TV, but I happen to have the Dick Emery film, which includes his trademark characters & humour, & not the TV version, which I've tried to watch in the past & found hard-going. The DVD has recently come back into my possession when a friend had a clearout of her flat & pointed out that it was full of my stuff, as she cleared out her handbag of some random weird stuff, which I was delighted to see again. The show actually ran from the 1960s to the 1980s, therefore including my target decade here. Emery came from a theatrical family, & the fact that this show can be described as vaudeville places it in a different era of entertainment: 'The show, which ran irregularly from 1963 to 1981, involved Emery dressing up as various characters, "a flamboyant cast of comic grotesques". These included the buck-toothed Church of England vicar, sex-starved, menopausal, man-eating spinster Hetty, and Clarence, an outrag...

(Pub Bombings memorial picture credit: http://www.robertcjones.co.uk/Birmingham%20Cathedral%20Churchyard,%20UK.html ) I went to the Dental Hospital yesterday. I didn't need any work done - just my dentist fussing unnecessarily - & as it turns out I can relate that fact to the subject matter of this blog quite easily. For a start the present soon-to-be replaced building is a gem of 1960s architecture if you like that sort of thing, very much out of the same stable as the building in the opening scenes of Danger Man: 'The late Professor Alexander MacGregor, the then Director of Dental Studies and Mr H. Locksley Hare, the architect, visited many of the newer and outstanding schools in Europe. The design of the building incorporates many ideas acquired during these visits. The new building was opened in 1965 at a site next to the General Hospital (now Children's Hospital). This building was the sixth home of the Hospital and School.' ( http://www.dentistry.bham.ac.u...

It is a feature of this blog that the majority of the shows I write about were broadcast before I was born. I have recently come across DVDs of some later TV shows, some of which I remember watching with my parents, so I'm going to have a series of posts on Seventies TV. I'm proposing that it will take the form of a single post on each of the series: It Ain't Half Hot Mum, The Sweeney, Rising Damp, & Yes, Minister. The last one is cheating a bit because I see the first series was actually broadcast in 1980, but it feels very seventies to me. I may also do a post on The Professionals, even though I've already written about a couple of episodes here. In characteristic mode for this blog I leap straight in with the most controversial. You will not see this show broadcast on the BBC nowadays (there are episodes on youtube); they have decided it will never be broadcast again, for its offensive racial stereotyping. This revolves around the use of Cauca...

I have commented before that I don't have a favourite Avengers girl, nor a favourite series of the show. My interest in all things comes in fads & I'll concentrate on series 6 for a bit, for example. At the moment my interest is being caught by series 2 & 3. This post is not the one I wanted to write, which was a themed post on the subject of launderettes. This was sparked by the simple fact that the flat I'm renting doesn't have room for a washing machine. I've never objected to launderettes myself - the only previous time of my life I used to go to one regularly was when I lived in Leeds. That one was on the edge of a large council estate, where there was obviously a tradition of going to do your washing, & whole families would go. I was therefore surprised to walk into the one down the road to find it full of men, all of whom were obviously on their own & hopeless at anything domestic. I'm afraid I just dumped the lot for a service wash, si...

Picture credit: dissolute.com.au I've moved house today - in great haste because my agent made a monumental balls up to the extent that I went round & took the keys off them until my belongings were removed! Anyway I'm set up in a nice flat in a nice part of the city where I can hear traffic (I can't sleep without traffic noise). Now if I could just suss out cooking electric life would be perfect & I'd only have to worry about selling my house rather than the truly present danger of starving to death! The thought of cities & flats has led my thoughts to The Avengers, specifically the earlier series. The Mauritius Penny is actually one of my all-time favourite episodes, but I've been thinking of it in terms of its city setting. On reflection I think one of the errors the Avengers film made was to make the setting too rural & thereby downplay the citified interplay of people & interests that is actually essential to The Avengers. The reality in...

It's been a while since I've posted on The Avengers & since I've got a man in taking apart my sideboard with a crowbar & taking away all the rubbish I don't want, I might as well post on this vintage episode. And vintage it really is. My introduction to The Avengers was the Tara King series & the colour Mrs Peel episodes, so I have a weakness for them, but whenever I return to series 4 I have to admit I can see why it's often thought the best. I think probably the Avengers 'recipe' is at its best in these episodes. The episode is populated with a cast of characters who are overdrawn to exactly the right degree: they wouldn't seem real in the real world but aren't overdone. Steed is at his best playing his upper class buffoon role at the golf club. The scene immediately after the opening scenes, of the stocking-clad figure searching an agent's apartment, place this in the category of corruption in the Establishment. The visual langu...

I knew this would happen. I have a strange knack of falling on my feet. Within a week the house is on the market, all the necessary surveys have been done, I've appointed a solicitor, I've found a halfway-decent-looking flat (& even if it turns out not to be it's not forever) at a rent I'm prepared to pay in a halfway-decent area of the city, I've paid a retainer, the lettings agency are checking me out. When I get the bit between my teeth I'm like a little terrier. So I can afford to put my feet up in front of the fire (British Gas think I'm going to pay them £1000 to heat this house this winter, but I've got news for them) & watch some cult TV. I see I have only posted on The Professionals once. This is a state of affairs which clearly needs to be addressed. I *just* remember watching on episode - the one with the creepy dummies - with my dad. In fact I'm not convinced it would necessarily qualify as 'cult' TV in most people'...