After Christianity became the dominant religion in the West, the Greek gods could have taken it easy and had a rest. Some suggest they did; others, however, tell a different story.

Modern US television suggests that right now, they're off running their own companies in Valentine, trying to matchmake mortals in Cupid, or both. Back in the 90s in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, they were either trying to make television shows while trying to rescue innocent mortals or sabotaging their relative's TV show so they could sit back and watch Millennium and Cop Rock in peace:

But if we go back to the late 70s, back when they were still in Greece (or Cyprus at least), they were busily helping to solve crimes - in their own inimitable way.

When David Collier arrives on Cyprus following the death of his brother, Barry, in what Collier believes was an accident, he meets the beautiful Helene and her mysterious companions, Basileos and Charalambous, who appear to know a great deal more about his brother's death than anyone is admitting. Slowly Collier is drawn deep into a complex conspiracy until neither he, nor the viewer, know who he can trust, particularly when it becomes apparent that someone is trying to kill him. The police, in the form of Inspector Dimas, don't believe a word Collier says, since every time he finds something, or someone, that could substantiate his story they inexplicably vanish.

When all is revealed and Barry's murder is solved, there's one last mystery: Collier discovers that rumours of the deaths of the gods Aphrodite (Alexandra Bastedo from The Champions), Pan (Stefan Gryff) and Dionysus (Brian Blessed in full Brian Blessed mode) have been greatly exaggerated.

It's not been repeated since UK Gold showed it a decade ago, it's never been released on DVD, although you can find it on YouTube (playlists later): it's The Aphrodite Inheritance and it's a Lost Gem. Here's the title sequence and for those who want to cut to the chase, the final ten minutes of the final episode in which the gods' game with the poor mortals is finally uncovered.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: The Aphrodite Inheritance (1979)"

Read other posts about: ITC Shows, The Sandbaggers

The story of Merlin and King Arthur has been around for centuries, so it's not surprising that every so often, someone wants to retell it*. Most recently, we've had the BBC series Merlin, but there have been numerous other retellings including the Sam Neill mini-series Merlin, the movie Excalibur, the Clive Owen historical, King Arthur, and mild American 70s sitcom Mr Merlin.

Back in the 80s though, there was a more subtle adaptation of the myth set in modern times. Starring Patrick Malahide (Minder et al) as the Merlin-esque 'Magnus' and Stephen Dillane (Hamlet, Spy Game, Welcome to Sarajevo) as Nick, the King Arthur of the piece, The One Game posited the question: "What would have happened if Arthur had been made King with Merlin's help - and then Arthur had kicked him out?"

This being the 80s, however, for the retelling Nick was the MD of a games company and Magnus was the creator of his best-selling game, thrown out and sent to a mental asylum after he couldn't handle Nick's rejection of his newest invention. Magnus escapes from the asylum and using his near-magical skills, steals all Nick's company's assets and plans his further revenge.

What made The One Game so interesting and worthy of being described as a Lost Gem was its then-unique concept: during the course of the four episodes, set over a Bank Holiday weekend, everyone Nick meets - including friends and loved-ones - and everything he does and comes across may be part of 'The One Game', a live-action and possibly deadly game invented by Magnus to teach Nick a lesson.

It was only ever shown once on ITV1, was released on DVD but is no longer available. It's The One Game and it's a Lost Gem. Here's the the opening titles to the second episode, Saturday, complete with theme tune sung in Patagonian Welsh and annoying 80s narrator recapping just enough of the plot for you to know what's going on.

Continue reading "Lost Gems: The One Game (1988)"

Let's face it, vampires are silly. Yes, they are. They so are. Unless you're stuck in some perpetual Twilight of gothdom/Emodom, the whole "vampiredom is cool/mysterious/sexy/dark/a great way to live" should have been replaced in your psyche by vampiredom is "sad/ridiculous/obvious metaphor for oral sex and venereal diseases" years ago.

To be fair, in part, that's because of the daftness of general TV depictions of vampires, which should have put you off them altogether. The vampires on Buffy very quickly became laughable and Angel very rapidly became self-parody. The Marc Warren Dracula adaptation was awful, and no matter how good the 1970s BBC adaptation with Louis Jourdan was, his flapping his way up a wall like an overladen man on a spacehopper was enough to cause hysterics - and not the frightened kind - in any viewer.

But it needn't be so. As Being Human in the UK and to a lesser extent True Blood in the US recently showed, you can do vampires convincingly in this day and age if you do them right.

Ten years ago, Channel 4 did the first - and possibly the best - of the modern vampire stories. Starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker and Idris Elba of The Wire, Ultraviolet managed to bring science, intelligence, moral ambiguity, decent characters and all the hallmarks of modern storytelling to the vampire story - all without saying the word 'vampire' once.

Although it's been repeated and issued on DVD, it's hard to get now (although you can watch every episode on YouTube) as it's been deleted, so it's officially a Lost Gem. Here's a shiny fan-produced trailer for you, albeit one with a very bad choice in soundtrack:

Continue reading "Lost Gems: Ultraviolet"

Read other posts about: Being Human, The Wire

If you grew up during the 80s (or even the 70s) in the UK, like me, you were probably subjected to some pretty rubbish teaching programmes during science classes - they were usually narrated by Chris Tarrant, if that helps jog your memory. Joe has just reminded me of the marvellous first series of Look Around You, in which Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz mercilessly and very surreally sent up "television for schools and colleges".

I won't say too much about it, since it really does speak for itself. Here's a scary clip of the 'Helvetica Scenario' from the pilot episode, Calcium, for those that just want a sample.

For those with more time and who liked that taster, here's the entire pilot episode. Be warned, you will feel a palpable sensation of nostalgia within about five seconds if you are over 30 and British.

And here's the Sulphur episode, which is one of my favourites:

If you're in the US, you can watch all the episodes (with a few adverts) on Adult Swim's web site,  since it's currently airing on Sunday nights. If you're in the UK, if you loved it, you can buy the whole series, including pilot episode, on DVD.

There was also a second series that sent up Tomorrow's World and Micro Live, but it wasn't as good IMHO - although it was still pretty hilarious at times. Here's a sample - you can get it on DVD, too.

PS: At no point should you rely on Look Around You for accurate scientific information.

I've been asked (really, I have) to upload another clip from Life Story, so here you go. It's when Francis Crick (Tim Piggott-Smith) and James Watson (Jeff Goldblum) get to show off to their fellow scientists the DNA model they've built – said scientists including John Kendrew and Max Perutz, who's moved to tears by the beauty of it.

Enjoy!

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"