Time for our regular round-up of tele events at the BFI. January has a bumper collection to pick from - prepare to bankrupt yourself:

• 11th/15th: Peckinpah on TV: episodes of Route 66 and Noon Wine directed by Sam Peckinpah
  
• 16th: Being Human episode one preview + Q&A with Russell Tovey, Toby Whitehouse and Matt Bouch. Woo hoo!
  
• 21st: The League of Gentlemen: Ten Years After - features three episodes of the series and the League themselves in conversation
• 25th: A CITV workshop, followed by screenings of episodes, including a new episode of Horrid Henry

There's also a David Hare season dedicated to the playwright:

• 1st/23rd: Play for Today: Brassneck. The first surviving Hare TV play. Also includes a Late Show Face to Face with Hare
• 6th/25th: Knuckle. Adaptation for British TV of his stage play
• 11th/29th: The Absence of War: the third of Hare's theatre trilogy looking at British institutions
• 13th: The Guardian interview with David Hare. Preceded by two Play for Today episodes: Licking Hitler and Dreams of Living
• 17th/21st: Heading Home
• 25th/27th: The Designated Mourner. A Wallace Shawn play directed by Hare for the BBC Films

Members' priority postal booking opens 24 November
Members' online and phone booking opens 1 December
Public booking opens 5 December

Although I don't normally mention the film side of things, it's worth noting there's also a David Fincher season showing Alien³, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room and Zodiac. And February is going to feature a Live TV drama season - although it won't be live now, of course.

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

The 70s was a great time for TV. Whether it was drama, comedy, documentary or stupid escapist tatt, the 70s turned up some of the best television ever made - although sometimes ambition exceeded either the budget or the technology.

Even kids TV was great, particularly if it was science-fiction or fantasy. Not only was it well made, it was intelligent. Whether you watched the Beeb and caught Doctor Who, The Changes or The Moon Stallion, for example, or watched ITV and tuned in for Timeslip, Ace of Wands or Children of the Stones*, you could pretty much be guaranteed something interesting that made you think.

The reasons for the high quality of kids' sci-fi TV are clear. Not only were there people with an ethos of creating decent programming for kids at both networks, a competitive duopoly that encouraged innovation and a captive audience with little else to do but watch tele, thus avoiding lowest common denominator worries, there was access to really good, high grade hallucinogenic drugs.

Whether it was magic mushrooms, LSD or even peyote, TV writers were knocking back quite extravagant amounts of not quite illegal substances, giving them a new view on reality, writing and the creative process.

Sky is perhaps the most obvious example of a kids' show written by people on drugs**. Created by Bob Baker and Dave Martin in 1975, it was a curious seven-part serial about an alien that comes to Earth.

So far, so simple, no?

What differentiates it from other similar fare is that it's clearly off its face. Sky is a time traveller with incredible powers from another dimension. Or maybe another universe. Except he might be a god. Just like Jesus and any other religious figure in fact, since they were all time-travellers too.

He's arrived here before the correct time - we're still "before the chaos" - and needs to get to the future where he can show the surviving people of the Earth the right way to live in harmony with the Earth. Trouble is, the Earth of today senses that's he's alien and tries to repel him, just like an immune system repelling a bacterium. While he searches for 'the Juganet' - the way to the future - Sky is attacked by trees and plantlife, before eventually the Earth creates something in human form - 'Ambrose Goodchild' - to destroy Sky.

It's never been repeated, it's never been released on VHS or DVD, but you can watch it some of it on YouTube. It's a Lost Gem. Here's the title sequence followed by a clip to get you in the mood. You might need to be taking something though.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: Sky (1975)"

Remember Ghostwatch? It was a BBC1 drama that went out on Halloween, 1992, and purported to be a live show, hosted by Michael Parkison, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles, investigating 'Britain's most haunted house'.

It was originally intended to scare the nation crapless by not revealing it was a drama until the end, but the Beeb didn't have quite enough guts for that and ended up adding warnings in the Radio Times, the standard drama idents, etc, so that it wouldn't get shot down by Parliament, the Daily Mail, etc. Of course, there'd be no chance of it ever even thinking of making Ghostwatch now.

Ghostwatch was pretty terrifying to be honest, despite some duff acting and a slightly unconvincing ending, although Michael Parkinson proved to be surprisingly good as an actor (he talks about the experience in his biog). It was so terrifying, in fact, that

• numerous people complained to the BBC [video] thinking it was real
• 20,000 viewers rang the show's fake phoneline while it was on
• one paranoid schizophrenic viewer committed suicide and
• at least two children ended up with PTSD, the first reported cases of a television programme giving anyone PTSD.
• The Beeb ending up banning repeats of the show for a whole decade.

I heartily recommend it.

I won't spoil it for you, particularly since you can buy it on DVD (or watch in on YouTube) to see for yourself, but one of the highlights of the show was the ghost, 'Pipes'. He was more terrifying than your normal ghost because you never really saw him full on - you only spot him in reflections for fractions of a second and you never know when he's going to appear - so much so, there are at least three appearances I didn't spot despite repeated viewings.

Thankfully, there are helpful people in the world. You can see a guide to Pipes' eight appearances here, and in the embedded YouTube vid below.

Or is there a ninth?

If you end up loving Ghostwatch, BTW, check out 'Ghostwatch: Behind The Curtains' - both the blog and the YouTube channel. They're busy putting a documentary together with the support of Ghostwatch's writer Stephen Volk, who was also responsible for Afterlife. See if you can help.

Earlier this year, I was bemoaning the fact that not only is there very little mainstream science programming, the stuff that is around is dumbed down almost to the extent that it's completely worthless. Okay, so BBC4 is trying to fill in the gaps with things like The Story of Maths, but everywhere else, there's nothing but rubbish.

Which is a shame, because the BBC used to produce some truly excellent science programmes, usually as part of its Horizon strand. Possibly the biggest jewel in its crown was Life Story, which was billed as a "Horizon special". This was a feature-length dramatisation of the race by Francis Crick and James Watson against Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins in the 1950s to discover the secrets of the structure of DNA. It depicts how the quick-moving Crick and Watson were able to beat the more methodical Franklin and Wilkins to the discovery using Franklin and Wilkins' own work - while still finding time to flesh out the characters of the scientists involved and give an unpleasantly accurate picture of the misogyny of 1950s Britain.

This was how to do science dramatisation. Step aside rubbish like Egypt, Life Story had Tim Pigott-Smith and Jeff Goldblum as Crick and Watson, and Juliet Stevenson and Alan Howard as Franklin and Wilkins. It had a script by William Nicholson (Shadowlands), based on Watson's book The Double Helix, and direction by Mick Jackson (The Bodyguard). It ended up winning three awards, including a BAFTA for best single drama.

However, it was such a good dramatisation and the science was so accurate that it quickly became popular at universities and schools as a teaching aid. As a result, although it was made available as a VHS video, it was priced at the $160 institutional mark. It hasn't been made available on DVD, it's only been repeated a couple of times. It's a Lost Gem.

Here's the opening few minutes which sets the scene for the rest of the film.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: Life Story"

Every so often, people ask me what TV shows I'd recommend watching. I mean not just watching, but hunting out then watching, because obviously this blog gives you some big clues as to what to watch as it is - it's the rarer stuff that's not on tele at the moment that are the bigger concerns.

The US remake of Touching Evil, starring Burn Notice's Jeffrey Donovan (he's also in Clint Eastwood's The Changeling soon), has been coming up a lot of late and people are finding out (or should be, if they follow my advice) that

1. It was brilliant, although as the title suggests, it's not going to take you to a happy place
2. It was a whole lot better than the UK version
3. Even if you don't like the series itself, the music was brilliant
4. The USA Network was nuts to cancel it

I won't go into long drawn out discussions about its merits here - I've already done that on several occasions - so instead, I merely offer you, thanks to the joys of YouTube, the full first episode of the series. You can watch the whole 13 on there as well, but I draw the line at setting up playlists for those, too. It's not out on DVD yet and has only once been shown in the UK so let's start a petition, hey?

Read other posts about: Burn Notice, Touching Evil

It seems these days that everyone in Hollywood wants you to vote for Barack Obama in the Presidential elections*. Now director Ron Howard has joined the campaign with this video, in which he returns to his acting roots and recreates some of his most famous characters – as do his even more famous acting friends.

Howard and Andy Griffith play Opie and Andy Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show in the first half of the vid then he and Henry Winkler recreate Richie Cunningham and the Fonz from Happy Days in the second half. Enjoy!

* But only if you're eligible to vote, otherwise it's fraud

Given that Steven Spielberg decided yesterday to pick up the film rights to John Wyndham's novel, Chocky, I've decided to postpone the original next entry in our 'Lost Gems' series, Chance in a Million, in favour of the 1980s Thames adaptation of Chocky. Okay, you can get it on DVD and watch it on YouTube, but what the hell, let's go with it: here's the title sequence.

Continue reading "Lost gems: Chocky"

Time for our regular round-up of tele events at the BFI. No TV season in November but there are isolated pockets of TV-ness to be enjoyed

• 3rd: Sir David Attenborough in conversation. Preceded by episodes of Life on Earth and Life in the Undergrowth
• 30th: The Naked Civil Servant. Next month will feature a preview of An Englishman in New York

Members' priority postal booking opens 29 September
Members' online and phone booking opens 6 October
Public booking opens 10 October

There's also a bit of a Play for Today theme this month. Every Saturday and Sunday, the Studio will be holding free, 47 minute performances of some of the best bits from plays such as Mike Leigh's Nuts in May and Jack Rosenthal's Bar Mitzvah Boy. And the Mediatheque has a few additions to its existing library of plays, including David Hare's Dreams of Leaving, starring a young Bill Nighy.

As always, visit the BFI web site for more details

Not all of you listen to the Big Finish audio plays. That's fair. Although there are plenty of good reasons for this, including not liking Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel, etc, one big reason is they cost money.

But Big Finish is currently giving away a free play from their UNIT range of stories that stars Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier from the adventures of the second, third, fourth, fifth and seventh Doctor TV stories), Siri O'Neal (Moondial anyone?), Scott Andrews, Matthew Brehner, Sara Carver, Michael Hobbs, Joseph Lidster and Mark Wright. So if you fancy a taster and have half an hour to spare, why not give this one a go?

Written by Simon Guerrier, The Coup is set in London in the near future. The UK division of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce is prepares to cede its authority to a new organisation. But who is attempting to sabotage the hand-over?

You can buy the full first series for only £20 and it's worth noting that episode four also stars David Tennant. Yes, that David Tennant.

Read other posts about: Big Finish