WTF! Not just one but four Horatio Caines in a crime lab doing girly science stuff! What can be going on? He hasn't stepped foot in a lab full of chemicals in seven seasons - and CSI: Miami has only been on for six. How can this be? Well, it was continuity week this week and as well as bringing back a whole load of old plot threads and guest characters, they've clearly decided to remind us all that David Caruso can face other inanimate objects square on - and that Horatio's supposed to have a degree in chemistry or something normally only fit for liberal nerds, not real conservative American heroes.

Actually quite an interesting episode this week I thought, not just for that cartload of continuity, but for having the most obviously deconstructable feminist/anti-feminist sub-text featuring ex-Showgirls star Elizabeth Berkley.

Continue reading "CSI: Miami - Horatio meets his match"

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At first sight, this looks like a meme. And it is. Sort of. But it's also about something that's been concerning me of late: the youth of today. Ah, I must be getting old if I'm getting concerned about the youth of today – and using the phrase "the youth of today". It's a short step to the Daily Telegraph from here.

What's your favourite TV decade? In other words, which decade produced the television you love the most? Maybe it was the 60s with its escapism and gritty social realism, all rolled into one. Maybe it was the bleak 70s, or the action-packed 80s? It might even be the 90s, when US television really got into quality products for the first time.

But the second part of the question is slightly different: how did you get to see that TV?

I'm gambling that, to a certain extent, most people's favourite TV decade – if they have a favourite decade – will be the time in which they were growing up. If they were young in the 80s, they probably fondly remember 80s TV. And so on.

But there will be a few who will cite an earlier time, and probably a few who will say that the current programmes on TV are the best we've ever had. I'm very fond of 1960s and 1970s, even though I was either too young to have seen very much of it or I hadn't even been born yet – and there's a whole load of 1950s TV that's very good, too.

I grew up in the 80s when there were just four TV channels available to most people. Back then, network programmers had no problem with sticking old programmes and movies on at primetime. Channel 4 stuck The Addams Family, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Munsters, and The Abbott and Costello Show on at 5pm on weekdays, and The Avengers on at night. BBC2 was quite happy to repeat The Invaders, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Falcon and the Saint movies, and more at 6pm of an evening. ITV littered its daytime schedules with The Sandbaggers and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and stuck The Baron, The Champions and Thunderbirds on at the weekends. And BBC1 would trawl out Bonanza on a Sunday afternoon. That's how I got introduced to the TV classics of the past – as well as a few old bits of rubbish.

Nowadays, you can get all of this on DVD, of course, and with multi-channel TV, there are networks more or less dedicated to old faves: ITV4 is a haven for all those ITC shows (R&H (Deceased), Space: 1999, The Champions and The Prisoner are all on right now); there's the Bonanza Channel (or used to be at least) for anyone wanting to catch Lorne Greene before he boarded the original Battlestar Galactica; and BBC4 will occasionally dredge something up from the archives for a brief season (Steptoe and Son, recently, or Doctor Who, starting on the 5th April).

But not the terrestrial channels. More to the point, you have to go looking for this stuff: it's not right there in front of you when you turn on the TV. Which is all well and good, but how – and this is my big point – are the youth of today going to ever see any of their TV heritage and become interested in it? How will they ever experience the thrills of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone or The Night Gallery? How will they know the joy of Mrs Peel and Steed's interplay, Carter and Regan's bad driving, or the simple happiness of life in Camberwick Green and Trumpton?

Obviously, learning French, reading classics of literature, and getting a fair understanding of physics, chemistry and biology so they can laugh at homeopaths, particularly French homeopaths, are far more important than tele. But whole lot of effort, expertise, creativity and passion went into creating these old shows, some of which are infinitely superior to their modern successors. Who wouldn't want the original Invaders over its remake, for example? Or, indeed, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - shame on you Vic and Bob. Some of the shows are historical documents in their own rights and are referenced in books and films of the time; some even changed society altogether. And I think it would be a shame to forget that heritage, just as it would be a shame to forget the literature of the 1960s, say.

Is it going to take parents forcing DVDs on their kids or locking every channel except the nostalgia channels to teach them TV history – not that that's a particularly good way to enthuse kids about anything? Now that MOMI's gone we no longer have the equivalent of New York's Paley Center so that's not an option. Worse still, are the youth of today just never going to be able to relate to old TV, any more than most people can relate to classics of Victorian literature? Should we just let ephemeral old TV disappear into the ether and live in the now?

What do you think?

Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica, ITC shows, The Prisoner, The Sandbaggers

I started "Movies You Should Buy" (now called "Movies You Should Own" because I belatedly realise it rhymes with Alex Cox's old BBC2 film strand, Moviedrome) with The Satan Bug. Lovely "killer virus" movie that – probably the first. 

But there was a bigger and better "killer virus" film to come, one that marked the end of many of the trends The Satan Bug seemed to start – or at least coincide with.

The title of this movie, which you should definitely own, is now used by virus researchers whenever they want to put a name to their worst nightmare: a virus that they can't cure but is utterly contagious and can kill anything in a frighteningly short space of time. 

It's The Andromeda Strain and it's probably the best, clever-stupid "killer virus" movie ever made.

Here's the title sequence, complete with scary arse theme tune.

Continue reading "Movies You Should Own: The Andromeda Strain"

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Feast your eyes on that. Hey? Hey?

Sorry about the poor picture quality - I had to scan it off the back of a DVD given away free with The Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago. It's a publicity shot for The Big Experiment, a reality documentary on the Discovery Channel:

A flagship six-part series that takes a class of teenagers from East London and explodes their misconceptions about science. With the help of three of the country’s most passionate experts, the group of 13 year-olds will be fast-tracked through their GCSE science. No ordinary Science lesson, the series sees them undertake anything from leaping off a 40-foot scaffold, suspended only by helium balloons, to climbing into a phone box to be struck by lightening.

The Big Experiment speaks to them in their own language, challenges them to take risks with science and brings the curriculum off the textbook and into the real world.

But will these kids make it though their GCSE and find science has the power to inspire lives?

Yes, apparently, if you stick cameras on kids an under-resourced East London school (always East London, isn't it? Never bloody Glasgow or Manchester, is it?), take them on trips and expose them to explosions and more, all financed with roughly the budget for the entire school year, they'll be more interested in science than they were before. Wow. What an experiment.

Anyway, my interest here is the three hosts. Now, much as I hate to make personal comments, particularly about people's appearances, I can't help but note that, to put it leniently, the woman (Dr Laura Grant) is a good deal more attractive than the two men.

There are two ways to look at this, initially, with typical knee-jerky liberalness:

1. This is a disgrace. Science is above looks, it's only about truth. More importantly, now that the chains of patriarchy are being sloughed off, we shouldn't go back to the old double standards of a woman having to look good to be paid attention to, while men can look how they like and they'll still be respected.
2. This is a good thing. More women are needed in science. By demonstrating that women can do science and still be attractive, more girls are likely to take up science.

Nevertheless, there is something that kneejerk liberalism will not automatically pick up on.

Continue reading "The Big Experiment: What's the message?"

Some enterprising soul has uploaded the whole of Callan: The Movie (aka This is Callan) onto YouTube. God bless 'em.

For the unenlightened, Callan, starring future Equalizer Edward Woodward, was one of the best spy shows of the 60s, eschewing the flash and escapism of James Bond, The Man From UNCLE, The Avengers et al in favour of a far more downbeat, Ipcress File approach to spies.

David Callan, a regular ex-army working class man who lives in a grotty flat and does menial clerical jobs to make ends meet, is really one of the guys who does the dirty work for the British government: assassinations, blackmail, kidnappings and more. Although the plots are cracking Cold War fun, as much of the show is about Callan's feelings of guilt over his work, as well as his fear that if he can't do the job any more, he'll end up in a 'red file' just like his victims. There's also the interplay with his rather smelly informant (Russell Hunter), understandably nicknamed 'Lonely', his far posher partners Meres (played first by Peter Bowles then by Anthony Valentine) and Cross (Patrick Mower), and his revolving series of bosses, all of whom are called 'Hunter'.

It's quite dark and nasty, so I love it. I've droned on about it elsewhere so you can read there for more info. It's worth checking out - particularly the black and white episodes if you can find them, but the colour ones are available from various bargain stores, I'm sure (they're a bit over-priced on Amazon at the moment), and the movie is available from Amazon at a more reasonable rate.

The movie is really just another adaptation of the original Armchair Theatre play that launched the series in the 60s, A Magnum For Schneider. It has few of the original cast, only Woodward and Hunter, with Peter Egan stepping into Valentine's shoes and Eric Porter becoming the last in a long line of Hunters (until the 80s 'reunion episode' Wet Job). It also has an awful theme tune, which is sad, because the Callan title sequence is one of the most iconic in TV history – and I've put it below for your enjoyment. Nevertheless, the movie does give you a flavour of the show's downbeat style and is better than nothing. It should be easily digestible in nine minute chunks and the first part, which I've put at the top of the post, gets to the point very quickly.

Read other posts about: Callan

One of my favourite genres is the “killer virus” milieu. Let's face it, there's nothing quite as scary as a disease that kills lots and lots of people, even if it can be stopped by Dustin Hoffman (Outbreak), immunity among the upper middle classes (Survivors) or talking to it (The Burning Zone).

Just have a think about their close cousin, the zombie movie, even the funny ones (Shaun of the Dead, Zombi Holocaust), and it won't be long before the idea of some tiny little thing inside you that you can't do anything to stop from killing you really does start to get upsetting.

So, for this and because it's going to take me a while to scribble up lots and lots about Manhunter, I'm starting the long-promised “movies you should own” (aka “I've got it on DVD and you should to”) feature of this 'ere blog with a shortish chat about The Satan Bug, probably the first proper entry in the killer virus canon.

Here are the creepy opening titles:

Continue reading "Movies you should own: The Satan Bug"