It had to happen. You don't think I could continue this epic nostalgia-fest without mentioning cult kids' TV show Monkey, do you?

For the uninitiated, Monkey (aka Monkey Magic) was a Japanese kids show that aired on BBC2 in the 80s, dubbed (with a couple of exceptions) by English actors such as Miriam Margolyes doing dodgy Japanese/Chinese accents.

It was based on a Chinese story about the Monkey king and his travels with a priest to recover some Buddhist scrolls, aided only by his natural cunning, a water monster and a pig-man and being a Japanese show it was completely mental: a combination of humour, surrealism, fight scenes and Buddhist philosophy.

For your delectation, the explanatory weird title sequence is below, but I've included a "best bits of" video as well. See if any of it makes sense to you.

Donald P Bellisario has had quite an influence on television over the years. Cutting his teeth on shows like the original Battlestar Galactica, he went on to create Magnum PI, Airwolf, Quantum Leap, JAG and NCIS.

But today, we're going to be looking at another of his shows, Tales of the Gold Monkey, a slightly fondly remembered programme from the early 1980s that was a homage to stupid adventure films of the 1930s.

Guess what – it had a slightly prosaic but very weird old title sequence.

Continue reading "Weird old title sequences: Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982)"

So, I've been catching up with Spartacus: Blood and Sand again after temporarily abandoning it after episode three. It's not changed a huge amount, although surprisingly, not only have they finally introduced a couple of gay characters who get up to things in as much explicit detail as the m-f and f-f pairings, they've actually started moving away from female nudity in favour of mostly male nudity. Would you Adam and Eve it? It's also got a little bit more interesting, and a little bit more intelligent, even if the swearing is still as pervasive as ever.

But while watching it, I finally realised what the shooting style reminded me of: Peter Brook's adaptation of 'The Mahabharata'. Shown on Channel 4 in 1989, this was a six-hour mini-series version of his nine-hour stage play and focused on the epic battle between the Pandavas (representing the good side) and the Kauravas (representing the bad side) depicted in the Hindu epic poem.

See if you agree: here's a trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand – ignore the fight scenes, since they belong to a completely different aesthetic

…and here's a few clips from The Mahabharata. You can get it on DVD from Amazon, by the way.

Why do all those boats and planes keep disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle? Is it storms and poor weather conditions? A simple coincidence? Urban myth, and actually the Bermuda Triangle is no worse than any other arbitrary piece of near-coastal tropical water?

No, you great silly, it's because of a time rift. If you'd bothered to watch 70s TV show The Fantastic Journey, you'd have known that.

The basic plot was this: a group of people, most of them related, one of them Ike Eisenmann from Race to Witch Mountain, go out into the Caribbean on a boat. Spooky green mist comes down and before you know it they've disappeared and wound up on an island, which has gone all weird thanks to bits of it being in different time zones. So there's futuristic cities, bits stuck in the past and so on, and you have to find invisible gateways to cross from one zone to another – something that usually happened at the end of each episode for easy syndication purposes.

As the group explores the island, it crosses into different zones and meets different people from different times and even different worlds, most notably Jared Martin of War of the Worlds, who plays a sort of futuristic hippie-musician-pacifist (aka 'loser') from the 23rd century. He, with his suspiciously phallic magic pan pipe instrument (which, as with Kung Fu, isn't to be used for violence but somehow ends up being used as a weapon each episode), soon takes charge and tries to help them and himself get off the island.

This turned out to be a bit dull, so after the pilot, three characters got dropped and a new "Doctor Smith from Lost in Space"-type character called Willaway – played by Roddie McDowall – turned up to try to spice things up. If that wasn't spicy enough, they got a girl from outer space in a mini-skirt with super-strength to help out, too.

Unfortunately, even with the power of the mini-skirted, outer space, super girl and one of the monkeys from Planet of the Apes, The Fantastic Journey was up against the even greater power of The Waltons, so got cancelled after 10 episodes, so that poor little family never did get off the island.

Enjoy its weird old title sequence and groovy theme tune.

It's been nearly four years since I wrote the original version of this for Off The Telly, but seeing as Off The Telly is busily playing the National Anthem and getting ready to turn the lights off, I thought I'd move it to its natural place - here, on Lost Gems. Besides, I can add video and pictures to it here.

For most of its history, children’s television has been childish. Shows with simplistic plots and large casts of children have long dominated the afternoon schedules, with dreary adaptations of classic novels the only real exceptions.

Yet during the 1970s, commissioners slowly began to experiment with more mature programming, bringing in adult themes in disguise through science-fiction and fantasy shows such as Ace of Wands, The Tomorrow People and Timeslip. Sapphire and Steel even went from being a show for children to a show for adults, through the simple exclusion of juvenile leads and child-friendly characters.

By the late ’70s and early ’80s, this pushing of boundaries meant it was possible to have a programme on children’s television that was firmly embedded in an adult genre, with mainly adult leads and adult dialogue, and for it still to be accepted as a children’s show.

Codename: Icarus, which aired on BBC1 in 1981, was the purest examples of this new breed of programme. It's only available on DVD in America not in the UK, although you can watch it on YouTube (or below) if you want - it's a Lost Gem. But I'm also going to be covering a few other shows along the way, including Knights of God, Dark Season, Chocky's Children, the 90s remake of The Tomorrow People and Press Gang, complete with videos, so stick around.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: Codename Icarus (1981)"

If you're old enough and British, you probably remember Morph and Take Hart. If you're very slightly older you'll just about remember their precursor, Vision On, a show designed to educate, inform, entertain and hopefully even get children fired up about art – particularly if they were deaf.

Vision On was the brainchild of producer Patrick Dowling, who went on to produce The Adventure Game. It was designed to replace For The Deaf but quickly picked up a wider audience. The aim of the programme was to entertain but also to encourage imagination, with a fast-paced flow of contrasting ideas, both sane and silly.

The presenters were Pat Keysell, an actress who also taught deaf children, and Tony Hart who made pictures in a variety of sizes and media, and encouraging children to submit their own paintings to "The Gallery", which they did in their thousands. 'Actor' Sylvester "Sylveste" McCoy also mucked around in true silent comedy/mime style.

The show aired on BBC1 for 12 years, from 1964 to 1976, and even afterwards, its legacy lived on through other programmes, including Take Hart starring the now-vocal Tony Hart, and Jigsaw, which was developed by one of Vision On's later producers, Clive Doig, and featured Sylvester McCoy as well as the silent "Nosey Bonk"; Eureka, another Doig show, also saw Vision On/Jigsaw contributor and mad inventor Wilf Lunn doing his shtick for another generation.

In its mission to fire up kids about art, it worked. It's a hazard of the job knowing graphic designers and I know a number who were inspired to become designers purely thanks to Vision On and Take Hart. I doubt any of them were inspired by its very weird old title sequence though.

I never watched this show. I don't think it even aired in the UK. If it had, it shouldn't have because it looks awful. But it stars that bloke who played Khan's son in Star Trek II and the title sequence is both old and weird – as well as ridiculously funny – so here you go. No explanations needed – the voiceover man will tell you everything you need to know in hysterical detail – but the hero was Bennu and got his powers from the sun, and his opponent was Yago and got his powers from the moon (and 'The Black Moonball' and 'The Bells of Thon').

Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a kind of show that we don't really see any more: "the fixing-up wanderer" show. Whether it was The Immortal, Branded, Coronet Blue, The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu or any of the others, the format was essentially the same and designed to allow shows to be broadcast in any order during syndication, re-runs, etc, without anyone getting lost: a man (it was always a man) would travel from town to town, doing his best to evade some horrible authority or person chasing after them; he'd try to stay low profile, but sooner or later, he'd discover some drama in the town that needed fixing. The situation would get fixed and the hero would move on to another town for the next episode, typically without anything happening that would change the overall show format (unless it was the first or last episode of a season).

Many of these shows were from Quinn Martin Productions, and after the popular The Fugitive started to draw to close in 1967, producers started looking for a replacement show of the same ilk. Larry Cohen, the creator of both Branded and Coronet Blue, came up with something that hooked into the flying saucer craze that had gripped the nation since the late 50s. It was The Invaders and it had a weird old title sequence.

Continue reading "Weird old title sequences: The Invaders (1967)"

Today's weird old title sequences are for The Avengers. You remember The Avengers don't you? Steed, this dapper bloke in a bowler hat, and his lovely sidekick Mrs Peel fight weird sci-fi crimes together?

Kind of.

You see The Avengers changed a lot over its six series. Originally envisioned as a vehicle for rising star Ian Hendry from Police Surgeon, it began with Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry) investigating the murder of Peggy, his office receptionist and wife-to-be, by a drug ring. A mysterious trenchcoat-wearing stranger named John Steed (Patrick Macnee), who was investigating the ring, appeared on the scene and together they set out to avenge her death in the show's first two episodes – hence the show's title 'The Avengers'. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to continue partnering him when needed to solve crimes.

In this first series, Steed was the secondary character - he doesn't even appear in some episodes. He also isn't the dapper man about town we all grew to know and love, either. He was a hard-edged, ruthless character, willing to do what it took to get the job done, with Hendry's Keel providing the moral centre for their work. In keeping with this blunt, down-at-heel approach, the show got some equally down-at-heel titles, with Hendry and Macnee lurking around on street corners in their trenchcoats, and - oh f*ck no - a jazz theme tune.

But slowly, the show began to change - and get a whole load more weird title sequences.

Continue reading "Weird old title sequences: The Avengers"

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Britain is in crisis. Criminals are literally getting away with murder. Crime is common in Britain's cities, and the ordinary decent citizen is scared for his or her life. What can be done?

Well the obvious solution, surely, is to create an autonomous criminal investigation organisation with minimal oversight, recruit agents to it from the police and armed forces, train them in commando tactics, arm them, then let them do anything they like, provided it catches criminals.

That solution's sound as a pound, isn't it?

Anyway, that's the background to The Professionals, a late 70s/early 80s drama created by The Avengers supremo Brain Clemens and starring Lewis Collins, Martin Shaw and Gordon Jackson as Bodie, Doyle and their boss Cowley. Each week, these agents of CI5 would stomp around, either undercover or badges-flashing, and do whatever it took to stop those crims. Maybe get some heroin and threaten to addict a dealer if he doesn't give them information.

Or how about release a hostage-taker's brother from prison then threaten to shoot him in front of the hostage-taker if he doesn't surrender?

Whatever it took.

Liberal nightmare though this was, it was an insanely popular show, the 24 of its day and far grittier, and in many ways better. Sure Bodie and Doyle could get away with murder if they wanted and the show's attitude to women was beyond misogynistic, but their buddy-buddy relationship was well drawn and humorous, the show was incredibly well cast, it had a wonderfully catchy theme tune and it was written by people who knew how to plot to a tee.

So popular did it become that the army would frequently lend it weaponry in a pre Top Gun bit of boys' toys-placement designed to inspire the nation's young men to join up. And there are men today who would gladly drive a Ford Capri, purely thanks to its constant usage in four of the five seasons of the show.

To show you just how ridiculously action-packed it was, here's a clip of one protracted stunt scene followed by… the weird old titles of The Professionals. Note the crashing car – there's no reason for that; and Martin Shaw never once did Kendo (or whatever he's pretending to do with that stick) in the whole series as far as I know.