Cult TV Blog

Episode 6: In which the mystery is resolved with a leg of pork Warning: This post contains spoilers for the resolution of this assignment. Not to beat about the bush here, I'm going to try to be as gentle as I can but I honestly think the assignment falls on its face with this episode, largely because the complexities that have been invoked already would be formidably difficult to resolve tidily for anyone. Two specific parts seem to me to fall particularly flat. The first is the scene where Eldred won't access the bedroom of the other study pod. He gives as the reason that it has taken humanity that long to evolve to the point of having enough privacy and decency not to go into someone else's bedroom. We have gained certain moral standards, he says. This falls completely flat because it's complete nonsense. Except in situations of complete poverty you don't randomly go into someone else's bedroom. I also suspect that at times and situations in the past, such as...

Episode 4: In which nobody knows what's going on My sense of dissatisfaction with this assignment has rather grown with this episode. Surely nobody was in any illusion that the three experimental pods and also the top flat of the block all having the same layout was as a cost-cutting exercise? It's also bizarre, because if you're doing an experiment in the past and take the layout of an actual flat as one experimental pod do you then repeat it for all the others? Are they really that cheap in the future, when they can power things with jolly old Time? It's used a device for Sapphire to guide Steel around the rural research project where she is, but probably wasn't really necessary for that because she would just have described it while we watched Steel looking soulful. Sapphire gets all smiley when she finds out that Silver has turned up, but of course that may simply be to make Steel jealous, and I'm going to have to say that this assignment is, I think, alone ...

Episode 2: In which everyone gets thoroughly confused If you read up on what people think of this episode you tend to get lots of comments about how seeing Steel sabotaging a lift isn't the most exciting television ever. And of course that would be right. But I think this episode's main function is to underline with the subtlety of a sledgehammer how everything is wrong with time here, how everyone is out of kilter, and nobody is thinking straight. The wife tells the husband that she's worried about her thoughts. Let me tell you, when your spouse says that to you the only possible response is, are you taking your medication. Steel thinks he's been attacked by the swan/pillow, but finds he hasn't. It's never good when you start perceiving things that may well not be happening. Meanwhile the baby goes through puberty about four times during the episode, so to be fair he's probably the most confused of them all. I think this is the point of the lift sequence. I...

Next for Television (to destress) for a Time of Strife of course we have to have some complete unreality in the shape of Sapphire and Steel. I am shocked, nay disgusterated at myself to find that it has been a full eight years since these two so much as made an appearance here, and I went through Assignment 2 in 2014, and Assignment 5 in 2013. I'm actually shocked that I haven't touched it. I'm also shocked that I've managed to choose (and am otherwise very pleased with) a template for the blog which doesn't show the dates of posts. What kind of blog doesn't put dates on the posts? So I have been forced to change templates again because there was no way of putting dates on the posts. This is a Sapphire and Steel which I have been thinking of writing about before but wasn't really sure of how to go about it. I feel that individual posts for each episode of a Sapphire and Steel tends to result in a too slight a blog entry but a single post for the whole show d...

You wouldn't believe the difficulty I am having finding programmes to blog about which would be suitable as Television for a Time of Strife. So many programmes, when you come to look at them, include references to plagues, government corruption, espionage, poverty, injustice, that they really aren't suitable. For that reason here I am blogging about this wonderful mockumentary about a Cotswolds village with a character heavily based on serial killer Fred West . All I can say is that strange things will start to be entertaining as the level of strife increases, and writing this post is how I found on tvtropes.org that there is a thing called Comedic Sociopathy. Perhaps I should mention that this show has a Uk rating of 15 for Strong Language and Sex References. The show is made by  real life siblings (Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper as Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe), playing members of their fictional family the Mucklowes, and based on real events in Cirencester, although filmed...

I have been looking around for what to do next since as you know I find that themed posts seem to suit me quite well and so the current theme is Television for a Time of Strife. Heaven knows we're in a time of strife and television was always intended to be entertaining so for a while from now I am solely going to focus on shows that we can watch as re-creation in a world which is crashing and burning. In case the title of this post seems unusually detailed, indeed accurate, that's because I've copied it straight from the handy booklet that comes from the BFI box set of what remains on this show, and that's what the episode is actually called. In fact you really ought to get the box set this instant and also really don't need me to explain it to you. In case you haven't heard of this show, despite its restoration and publication being trumpeted all over the classic TV internet, I'll list some names and you'll see why it needs no justification: Tim Brooke...

Since my last post I've been sounding like a sweary version of Robin (holy nuclear codes, Batman!) and was going to do a Batman post but have added Batman to my list of shows which are well nigh impossible to blog about, for reasons which I'm not entirely sure about. So anyway, instead a post about The Specials, a show which started off as an internet streaming thing and moved to TV. You can see the whole thing for free on their youtube channel  here. It's about five adults with learning disabilities, who all went to the same school, became friends, and decided that they wanted to live together independently in a house. The logistics of doing this with their care needs turned out to be incredibly difficult and ultimately the parents of one of them had to set up a company to run the house. And this is of course the point, because if you don't have care needs or a learning disability, and you want to share a house, you just find a place and work out the finances and so on...