Cult TV Blog

This was very nearly a post about Carry on Christmas, but I don't think anyone would read it at this stage. I may post it in August and see what happens. Actually I have been taking notes of some of the searches which bring people to this site, and some are hilarious. Let's just say that entitling the last post Designing Women has caused a significant spike in page views! Instead a general post about this show which arrived the day before yesterday and is so good I have watched almost all of it already. It is somewhat late for me, having been originally broadcast in 1979-80, but surely I don't need to tell any readers of this blog that anything Les Dawson did is wonderful. The whole series is on region 2 dvd by Simply Media but if you need any persuasion to buy (or even get a multi region dvd player if you don't have one) you can see episode 1 gratis  here . What makes this show particularly suitable for the readers of this blog is that you shouldn't be deceived...

Last Christmas I made a post about Fanny Cradock and fortuitously this weekend I have bought the Central Office of Information volume 2: Design for Today and thus discovered this gem which provides an excuse for a post featuring Joyce Grenfell. I realise that I am being inconsistent but some people, like Fanny and Joyce  are so much themselves that I make an exception to my usual rule about familiar faces for them. In my opinion it is worth buying the set for this sweet film alone, but you can also watch it at the Internet Archive  here . It is about a young couple moving into their first home without much idea of how to go about it, and the film is about the contrasting demands of design and art. Grenfell plays Miss Arty and Audrey Fildes plays Miss Design - the booklet describes them as ethereal beings - who just appear in the couple's house. Grenfell plays her artistic part wonderfully, and the arrangements she makes in the house are hilariously impractical. Of course the...

I have been watching some episodes of Armchair Theatre. I am finding it terribly worthy, rather stodgy, and frankly rather prefer the superficial soufflé TV shows I normally watch  and don't want to have to feel like I should be in evening dress to watch TV. It appears I am not the only one and  this page  (which I really do recommend for good background to this show and also Special Branch) indicates that Euston Films were recruited to shake it up. Regan was the second episode of the revised show. To be frank my first impression of this was not at all favourable, for a single reason. At this length of time, when the population and language of London have changed beyond recognition, it would be difficult or impossible to find someone who would think it natural to refer to the Flying Squad as the Sweeney Todd, but you could have done in the early seventies. But I myself went in pubs in the seventies and I find it difficult to believe that a pub would have been full of peo...

There is a youngness and freshness about the humour of the sixties and seventies , before the cynicism of Thatcher's Britain put paid to it. You have to be young to produce certain sorts of humour - age has its own humour - and perhaps in releases of the last few years we see this best in The Goodies and in Do Not Adjust Your Set and Not the 1948 Show, both of which have been released this year by BFI. I recently fell for the complete Goodies and am enjoying the episodes I haven't seen before. I had forgotten that the celebs queued up to guest on this show and the wonderful Molly Sugden features in this one. The best thing is that the character she plays is so close to Mrs Slocombe that it just misses her talking about her pussy. Incidentally I also love that she is a minister being blackmailed for going to the Playgirl Club - a topical reference in the age of the Playboy Club. This episode of course reverses the Playboy Club theme by having topless male staff, and the episo...

Perhaps I had better start by explaining my title. If you want to see this on YouTube the thing to search for is Armchair Cinema. I think it may be on one of the Network box sets of that name but I'm not certain. If you want to read about this show on IMDB, it is under the title of ITV Playhouse  here . Wonderful TV this, proper quality. And you all know how difficult it is to get unalloyed praise from me. Settings, visuals, plot, characterisation, acting, all superb. It may, however, be rather wrongly named, because this is much more of a psychological thriller than a Whodunnit. It gradually and effectively builds up the tension, mostly revolving around Mrs Segal, some of whose actions are rather bizarre and she backs herself effectively into a corner. There is also a feeling of claustrophobia about this because so much of it revolves around a single house and a single village. The house is absolutely gorgeous, but don't please run away with the idea that we are talking abo...

In my last post about this show I neglected to mention the soundtrack of this show, and this episode personifies perfection. It depicts demimondaine - I'm not sure of the word to use to describe them, possibly respectable people at the time would have called them beatniks - denizens of Soho and the sound track is thus jazzy and cool for cats. I have recently also been watching some episodes of Peter Gunn, which has a similarly groovy soundtrack. In point of fact The Nightlifers places us squarely in the most sophisticated worlds of post-War Britain, just before the Beatles met the Maharishi and everyone started meditating. It has all the hallmarks - for a start being set in Soho, Gideon's wife tries to get him to get some Chinese delicacies from a shop in Soho, and there are parties and drugs galore. This episode exactly depicts the world in which The Avengers is set, including depicting a world of privilege. This show is not the simplistic contrast of youthful exuberance w...

Image credit I have somehow managed to get to this stage without watching more than the odd episode of Gideon's Way, so when I saw it for sale I had to try it. I have spent the past couple of evenings beginning to watch the episodes in order that they come on the DVDs and was thinking of them as standard ITC offerings, until this one really hit me between the eyes. I have no idea whether the episodes are in original broadcast order, but there is the slight drawback that this one about a deranged fire setter follows straight on from one about a man traumatised by being in a concentration camp who also has a plan, just for an explosion, with the same motivation of drawing attention to his issue. You all know how I don't like the same actors appearing in different shows? In this one George Cole is cast as the fire starter. It is an unusual role for him, and he plays it superbly - he really does come across as absolutely deranged and it is even worse that the death of his wif...