Cult TV Blog

I'm hoping that this post (which will be less verbose than most of mine for reasons which will become apparent) will explain both of those things. For some time I have been troubled by exhaustion, as well as stiffness and swelling in my hands, both of which explain reduced posting here. I put it down to a heavy workload and probably a bit of RSI but I have now been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I am off sick from work at the moment and full of steroids, but fortunately I can now see the bones in my right wrist for the first time in ages. I have not ceased to watch cult TV although I have predominantly been watching a lot of old films. I have posted about Old Mother Riley here before, but I'm not sure if I have posted about the Thin Man films, about Will Hay or about Arthur Askey. I feel I was probably born too late. I have a boxed set of James Bond films I intend to watch through at some point. I also like a nice murder and have watched the Agatha Christie films I have -...

What's not to love? A ghost train where people disappear and an escaped convict bursting into Dr Keel's surgery - what could be more Avengers than this episode. The famous rediscovered first series Avengers episode arrived and I've leapt straight onto it. This post will therefore be some rather rushed first impressions and a more leisured analysis of the episode may follow at a later date. Completely first impression is that I am horrified that the ghost train in the show is almost *exactly* like one that I remember going on at Dudley Zoo as a child and which my mother probably rightly criticised as ropey. I suppose it must have been very run down if virtually idential ones were running fifteen years earlier! Second impression: Keel is who we expect him to be - the doctor whose life is continually being turned upside down by incursions from The Underworld. But then I suppose real doctors should be used to dealing with all sorts of strange things happening at all hours o...

I meant to have several posts up this week, about some shows I have never written about here, but I have been ill so it hasn't happened. This post isn't any of them, but it is a post about something which I have already managed to think about - the series posts about series 1 Avengers episodes I started some time ago. Lucky I use labels, isn't it - I so rarely complete an actual series of posts when I conceive them. I am of course at least partly thinking about the forthcoming release of Tunnel of Fear and am prompted to think about others in the series, including The Frighteners, which of course still exists. It was actually the only episode known still to exist until Girl on the Trapeze and the first part of Hot Snow (both of which I have written about here before) were discovered. The Frighteners was always seen a the quality piece of work it is. In fact I have read that the received wisdom was that while The Frighteners was obviously quality, it was the odd one o...

I honestly can only assume that I have missed this series because I didn't think I would like it. I have certainly seen the boxed set around, but because I somehow hadn't heard of it as a vintage TV series, I suppose I assumed it was a modern series and hence overlooked it. So let me be honest and admit that I am writing about this show with a HUGE bias. In fact I'm not so much biased as prejudiced. In its favour, that is, for the simple reason that it is not only set in my home city of Birmingham, but it is also filmed in the Birmingham of the 1970s and is wonderfully atmospheric of a certain time in the life of the Second City. To be frank, I think it quite likely that this series won't have done the city's reputation any favours, simply because it portrays it as as gang- and violence-ridden cesspit. It certainly wasn't that in the 1970s, and certainly isn't now, despite having a ridiculously high crime rate. Yes, if you look up Birmingham and gangs ...

This is of course one of the Avengers stories published as cartoons in Diana magazine in the 1960s and dramatised in recent times by Big Finish. I have written about at least one of them here before and commented on how hugely impressed I was. I remain hugely impressed: in fact these adventures give me hope that what I choose to call the 'authentic' Avengers formula can still be recreated. In fact this is an exciting time across the board for Avengers fans, what with a recently-discovered series 1 episode being released next month, and I have even heard a rumour that Big Finish are going to dramatise the novelisation Too Many Targets, which features all the Avengers girls at once and which I like enormously. You will note that I say the 'authentic' Avengers formula. You will also note that I set myself up as the arbiter of what is authentic and what is not. A lot of the Avengers fan fiction littering the internet is - in my humble opinion - marred by the fantasy th...

I am writing this post in reaction to somebody else who blogs prolifically about TV series of the era I write about here. It may seem like I'm being difficult but I'm not going to say who she is. My own opinion is that if I'm not going to put my opinion as a comment on her blog, I'm not really disputing with her but only publishing my own views, even if it does seem curmudgeonly not to say who I'm talking about. She has, anyway, commented at length that she will block those whose views she disagrees with, and I'm speaking as someone who left a fairly mild comment (not about gender) some time ago on her blog and received a withering put-down in reply. This is someone who is apparently an academic and I wonder how her students perceive her, despite her once commenting on her tumblr that she's sorry if anyone is offended by her response to their comments, and to let her know. Hmmmm. I suppose therefore I am debating the position because I have found the pers...

The tag I have put on this post may seem to be a mistake, but if you thought that this was another of my occasional posts about films which are obviously not TV shows but which I think will be of interest to my audience, you would be mistaken. In fact I have been meaning to write about this film here for ages, because one character is credited with being an (or possibly the) inspiration for the John Steed character in The Avengers, so this show is, as it were, one of the things which come under my heading of What Came Before the Avengers. Perhaps I should say that in the US it was released as Clouds Over Europe. A mere two and a half minutes in we get to see the Major Hammond character for the first time - and frankly, it's Steed. The hat isn't right, but the suit, umbrella and silly ass presence are all Steed there in person. And Major Hammond not only looks like Steed, he acts like Steed. It would be such a Steed thing after getting knocked out on a job and arrested by ...