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)"

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"

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"

Christmas is a time traditionally associated with ghost stories. I don't know why that is - maybe it's a pagan hangover, since “let's celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ by scaring each other silly” doesn't strike me as a particularly coherent Christian concept.

Probably the most famous teller of Christmas ghost stories is MR James, the Cambridge don who used to gather friends and students round at Christmas and scare them silly with tales such as Whistle and I'll Come To You, A Warning to the Curious, The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral and Lost Hearts. These were eventually collected into various omnibuses and back in the 60s and 70s, the BBC started adapting the stories, airing a new tale at Christmas.

Initially, just one-offs, the strand eventually was formalised as A Ghost Story for Christmas, with Rosemary Hill as producer and Lawrence Gordon Clark as director. Sticking with James for the first few years, Hill strayed in 1975, getting Andrew Davies to adapt Charles Dickens' The Signalman for the strand. She then chose to forego literary sources altogether and began commissioning original stories instead.

The first of these was Clive Exton's Stigma (which I might deal with at a later time, if you're lucky), but for reasons known only to the Beeb, the strand concluded with John Bowen's The Ice House in 1978. Although BBC2 and BBC4 have repeated many of the episodes and the BFI have released some on DVD, The Ice House has never been repeated. It's a Lost Gem.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: The Ice House"

Last time, we looked at classic kiddies game show The Adventure Game, in which various celebrities would try to solve computer adventure game/Dungeons and Dragons style puzzles so they could escape from the planet Arg.

But running almost simultaneously was a version for adults. Now Get Out Of That, narrated by sardonic journalist Bernard Falk, was part Adventure Game, part outwards bounds course, with two teams (usually involving at least one American) racing against the clock and each other across the Scottish or Welsh countryside, solving puzzles and problems along the way.

It's only once been repeated - on UK Horizons - never released on DVD: it's a Lost Gem.

Here's the start of one of the fourth series' episodes to help you recall it.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: Now Get Out of That"

Any article on The Adventure Game would be incomplete without mentioning the Vortex. But video footage is rare – otherwise The Adventure Game wouldn't be a 'Lost Gem' – so there wasn't a clip available at the time I wrote the article. But I did promise Marie I'd try to find one for her.

Anyway, I managed it. Yey me.

Here's David Yip and Madeleine Smith braving the Vortex, while the 'mole', Lesley Judd, shows her true colours and tries to evaporate them. It's from the second series so there's no green cheese roll to help them – and David Yip has unwisely given back the ham sandwich he was offered before entering the Vortex room…

Way back at the end of the 70s and the early 80s, there were two interesting trends. One was the arrival of the micro-computer. And with the arrival of the micro-computer came games. Screw work, hey?

Most important of all the new computer games, given the graphics of the time, were adventure games. These were commonly text-based: you got a load of text chucked at you – "You are in a small room. In the room is a chest of drawers" – to which you typed in a load of two word commands – "OPEN CHEST" – in order to solve all sorts of puzzles that had been set for you.

At the same time, role-playing games were taking off. In these, you had someone read out the words – "You are in a small room. In the room is a chest of drawers" – to which you responded as some kind of made up medieval character/spaceman/whatever "Doest the chest containeth anything usefuleth?" 

Some people got a bit tired by that and decided they'd do it for real – imagine Michael Douglas in The Game or Steven Dillane in The One Game, except with someone rolling dice as you wandered round a deserted lunatic asylum dressed as a wood elf.

And then someone had a cracking idea. "Why," asked TV producer Patrick Dowling, "don't we do something like that on tele for kids?" And thus, The Crystal Maze was born.

Hang on. That's not right. 

No, wind back a decade or so and switch channel. Because back on the BBC, someone had the idea of something more cerebral and a touch more sci-fi, in which celebrities and brainy members of the public would travel to a far off planet (the BBC studios), interact with shape-changing dragons, and try to solve puzzles that would allow them to go home.

It was The Adventure Game, it lasted for four series. It's never been repeated or released on DVD. It's a Lost Gem. Which is ironic because the pesky dragons kept nicking the gems every week.

Here are the titles to get you in the mood.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: The Adventure Game"