Off Topic TV, Entertainment and Arts thread

ok, you lot convinced me. i bought some tickets for OFAH the musical. £22 each.

 

Just thought of another absolute classic from the 70s and 80s.

Tales of the Unexpected



They don’t make programmes like this any longer ?

 

For some reason the one where Laurence Harvey, smoking jacket and all, had an earwig in his head sticks in my mind.

 

It always managed to be very creepy and all on a budget of £4.60 an episode.

 

Science Fiction is obsessed with effects these days. You can't beat the old Star Trek episodes with the cheapskate effects and fantastic storylines by different authors.

 

Yes, Dr Who in the Pertwee & Tom Baker eras had monsters made of empty toilet rolls & paper mache ...yet still the acting was good

 

There is a lot of acting talent out there which does not get a look in because the TV channels need a big name to get the ratings. Dick would make a brilliant Dr Who.

 

Of the US cop shows, Hill Street Blues was as in my opinion still is, unsurpassed.

It ran for 7 series from 1981, and scooped just about every award going.

An ensemble cast of stellar actors and interwoven plots that never had comfortable endings.

A great show.

 

You could be his thrifty Scottish Assistant in your red bobble hat.

 

Grandstand and ITV World of Sport were both terrific sports programmes on a Saturday afternoon a real variety of sports, brilliantly covered & a reminder of what terrestrial TV has lost.

I used to love the wrestling on ITV with Kent Walton - booing Giant Haystacks was my introduction to Reams.

 

Haystacks fighting a weight under Ivor.

 

I do realise wrestling did not have weight divisions, don't let the facts get in the way of a good joke.

 

Only it wasn’t a good joke ...

 

Hearing the theme tune still sends a shiver down my spine.

 

I used to like The Incredible Hulk, but I was always confused as to why the shirt was ripped off but the trousers were okay when he turned Green.

 

I still don't understand it now 40 years later......

 

That's because they couldn't show his cods on prime time television.

Those of us in the industry call it a writerly device.

 

Leela was not 'mixed race' as far as I know, though she was supposed to be tanned from living mostly outdoors in a primitive jungle environment.
Louise Jameson (the actress who played her) is actually a redhead with quite a pale complexion. They applied fake tan to make her look darker skinned and her hair was dyed darker.
Not quite 'blacking up' but something in that general direction.

She also had to wear brown contact lenses to make her blue eyes look darker. She found these very uncomfortable though, and after a few stories the producers added a plot device in one episode (a bright flash) which supposedly changed the colour of her character's eyes from brown to blue.

Until this series there have only been two non-white companions in Doctor Who;
Martha Jones (played by Freema Agyeman in 2006)
Bill Potts (played by Pearl Mackie in 2017)
Rose Tyler's boyfriend Mickey Smith (played by Noel Clarke) was black, but he did not appear in all the 2005 season episodes, and was not a 'companion' as such.
The same is true of Clara Oswald's boyfriend Danny Pink (played by Samuel Anderson in 2014).

The original Doctor Who was slow to recognise diversity compared to other shows of roughly the same genre at roughly the same time.

Star Trek led the way back in 1967 with Lieutenant Uhura - a black female senior officer aboard a US Navy style military vessel.
In the early 1970's the ITV sci-fi series The Tomorrow People also had one or two prominent non-white characters if memory serves.

 

When I was a student there was no daytime TV until around 3pm, when a cracking Aussie soap called Sons and Daughters used to come on.

Does anyone remember it?

I not saying it was cheap and nasty, but both the sets & the acting were made of cardboard.

 

The best sitcom ever made was Dad's Army. Nothing can touch it for its wonderful characters.
I do like a 'one-off' drama (or a short mini-series). Some of my favourites were

• Edge of Darkness (1985) - Bob Peck and Joe Don Baker ... excellent. Great soundtrack as well.

• Max Headroom (original UK pilot, 1985) - Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays, W Morgan Shepherd ... Dark and bleak, reminded me a bit of Blade Runner or Videodrome. The pilot was never picked up for a series in this country, it went to America instead where they made a silly sentimental hash of it. The pilot episode was only ever released on VHS and Laserdisc (never on DVD). I bought a laserdisc player just to watch it on LD.

• Quatermass (1979 ITV mini-series, also known as The Quatermass Conclusion) John Mills, Simon Maccorkindale, Brewster Mason ... Superior science fiction, a suitable end to the Quatermass saga. Nigel Kneale created the ultimate British Science Fiction hero in Bernard Quatermass. The original 1950's TV episodes now available on DVD are just a joy to watch.

• The Old Men at the Zoo (1983) script-written by Troy Kennedy Martin, who also wrote Edge of Darkness. His brother Ian Kennedy Martin created The Sweeney - one of my all-time favourite series.