Cult TV Blog

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It's a strange world of mirrors, the cult TV blogosphere. We all plant ideas in each other's heads and bounce ideas off each other. This blog post was inspired by two coincidences, for example. The first was that Mitchell Hadley commented how much he likes early Steed. Well, so do I. I love that early Steed is a much more mutable character than the later bowler-hatted agent employed by the ministry: we never really know who he is, he comes across as louche and could even be a criminal. Particularly he treats Venus Smith like dirt and she hates it but he carries on. In fact I think this is one of the reasons the Venus Smith episodes are unpopular. Then I came across something else which reminded me of this episode (more anon). I see that I last opined about this episode nearly a decade ago (you can see the post in a series I did about Venus Smith by clicking the relevant tag in the menu). It's a pretty good blog post, even if I do say so myself, and reflects when I was young...

The introduction to this series of posts about the depiction and criticism of the American dream in The X-Files can be found here: https://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-american-dream-in-x-files.html?m=1 4x07 Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (Monster of the Week) This is another complex, highly-layered episode, which apart from its brave attempt to place Cancer Man at every major historic event of post-war US history, is rather difficult to understand. According to the episode's wikipedia page the main problem its complexity causes in understanding is that viewers tend to miss that the events depicted in this episode are the fictional story written by Cancer Man. Even within the narrative of the show, what we see in the episode is not intended to be seen as real. I'm sure you will understand that it has provided me with this handy getout clause so that I don't have to go through the entire history and can just wave my hand suggestively at the entire plot. The questi...

The introduction to this series of posts on the depiction and criticism of the American dream in The X-Files can be found here: https://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-american-dream-in-x-files.html?m=1 4x05 The Field Where I Died (Monster of the Week) The Field Where I Died is reminding me of why I like to blog about things which interest me or I think I know about, because there is just so much in this one that I'm almost certain to make several howlers. In fact, watching the episode with more attention, it's apparent why it's usually had rather lukewarm reviews, because frankly it's a bit of a mess. It's also got plot holes you could drive a Cadillac Series 62 through, because obviously nobody in their right mind would have questioned Melissa in the mental state she was in and Scully clearly has a professional duty to go to Skinner and tell him Mulder has finally lost it. As always there is a foreground to the episode: the dissociative personality vs past liv...

I have been listening to the BBC/Big Finish audio version of The Prisoner, that series which is so idiosyncratic, completely dependent on the personality of its creator and of its time that it can't possibly be remade. Witness the 2009 AMC remake. Why on earth would mere mortals think that they can just remake such a legendary series? I have started watching this remake once and soon turned it off, and while it is referenced in The Prisonersphere, it isn't popular and everyone's gone back to arguing over the original. Which is why it gives me such pleasure to say that I have been enjoying watching the BBC/Big Finish version very much. In fact you'd better sit down because I'm about to alienate any remaining readers of this blog after offending everyone by being provocative about the American dream and utter the ultimate heresy in the world of The Prisoner, namely... The BBC/Big Finish remake is the best version of this show and in my opinion is actually better than ...

The introduction to this series of posts about the American dream as depicted and criticised in The X-Files can be found here: https://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-american-dream-in-x-files.html?m=1 I am delighted that we are now hitting a couple of episodes where their relationship to the American dream will pretty much write itself with no help from me: apart from anything else this is a bit of a relief because at times I've been wondering whether I was imagining that the show featured the dream. 4x02 Home (Monster of the Week) Luckily I'm not the only one who says this episode references the American dream: it is even gets on to the episode's Wikipedia page! I was going to say that you could say this episode is criticising the dream; that in a society where if you work hard everyone can get as far as their God-given ability will take them, there are bound to be casualties. Some of those casualties are bound to be found among people (who obviously exist internation...

I suspect that our culture has a thing about newness and novelty, which naturally the classic TV blogosphere contradicts directly by not feeling the need always to be watching something new or blogging about the latest thing. When periodically I worry whether I will ever run out of cult TV to watch and blog about here I remind myself that I can of course blog about everything all over again if necessary, since it isn't necessary to have new classic TV continually found in a TV station in Ghana. There is nothing wrong about writing about an established 'canon' of TV shows. There is also nothing wrong with noticing the shows that I don't tend to write about here, and Ripping Yarns is one of them. I'm not sure how it has somehow managed not to appear here, but this is an omission which needs to be corrected instanter. In the unlikely event that any readers of this blog haven't heard of the show, of course it was written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, and parodie...