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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Be still my beating heart. Ali Larter could be on her way to London next year to film a $150 million remake of Gerry Anderson series UFO, in which she'd play the part of Virginia Lake (more on her in a minute). I obviously don't have pictures of that (yet), so here's a picture and a vid from the first annual Los Angeles Gala, which was raising money for Friends Without Borders.

Significantly, though, this means we can have the first Random Acts of Ali Larter/Weird Old Title Sequences tie-in here on the blog. Because UFO had some weird old titles.

UFO
UFO was Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson's first attempt at a fully live-action show. He'd had a sort of stab at it with Secret Service, in which Stanley Unwin voiced a puppet version of himself, but whenever they did a long shot, they'd just use live action footage of him instead. It was about as convincing as it sounds.

But UFO got Gerry Anderson into live-action proper. The plot to UFO was similar to that of other shows he'd done before, particularly Captain Scarlet: The Earth is under attack from an alien race. What for, we don't know at first, but it soon becomes apparent they need us for our body parts.

Yep, they're kidnapping us, stealing our organs, and transplanting them into their bodies. A later episode, The Cat With Ten Lives adds a little wrinkle to that, but all the same, it's pretty sick and a great concept.

Naturally, when we humans find out about this, it being Gerry Anderson world, we come up with a top secret defence strategy and matching organisation: SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organization). With submarines underwater that can launch planes, satellites called SID (Space Intruder Detector) in orbit for monitoring, a Moonbase that can monitor space for approaching UFOs and send out spaceships to intercept, and a whole load of ground-based attack vehicles, all it needs to be complete is a top-secret underground headquarters. Which it did - under Harlington-Straker Studios (really Pinewood) as a cover, of course, and not to save on production costs for the show.

Naturally, of course, because of all the powerful magnetic fields that the Moonbase equipment puts out, all the women running it up there have to wear purple wigs.

Still, everyone wore string vests down on the submarine.

A tussle
The show itself was an interesting tussle between Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. On the one hand, Gerry wanted to do business as usual, and everything was going to be much as in Thunderbirds et al - that is, missions of the week.

Sylvia, on the other hand, wanted to do characters. She wanted to do stories that could be considered as drama. So the episodes of UFO vary between the same old plots you'd see already (Gerry's stuff) and interesting ones, such as Confetti Check A-OK, which looked at SHADO boss Commander Straker's guilt over the married he'd ruined (Sylvia's stuff).

He's a haunted man is Straker, channelling all his energies into his job, because he's screwed up his personal life. In A Question of Priorities, he even sacrifices his own son so that the aliens can be stopped.

There's also a slight disconnect because the show was shot in two filming blocks due to a change of studios. During the second block, which also saw a change in the writing department, George Sewell, who had played Straker's second in command Alec Freeman during the first block, was unavailable. In his place came Wanda Ventham as the more memorable Virginia Lake. Because initially she essentially had a man's lines - just like Cathy Gale before her on The Avengers - Lake was strong, tough and took no nonsense from Straker or anyone else. Because she's a character who was co-opted at the last moment, she's also notable for having been a research scientist in the pilot episode, a computer specialist and headed up Moonbase at one point.

From UFO to Space: 1999
The show didn't do too badly, but it didn't do as well as everyone hoped. By the time the second season was ready to go, it became clear it wasn't going to pan out, even though the show's creators had hoped a shift of focus to life on the Moonbase might have helped out.

So instead, Gerry and Sylvia decided to come up with an entirely new show set on the moon: Space: 1999, which I believe I've already covered.

On the whole, it wasn't a great show, it has to be admitted. It definitely had its moments and in terms of plot, although not in terms of charm, it's head and shoulders above Anderson's previous shows as well as Space: 1999, although the latter trounces it significantly for production values. There are a few classic episodes, but no more than a handful, so I wouldn't be buying too many from Amazon, if I were you.

Anyway, brace yourself for the weird old title sequence of UFO. In case I forgot to mention it, UFO was set in the then far off future of 1980, where all the fashions were strange and futuristic and the cars were just mental, too. But all of that gets explained in…

If they are going to remake an episode for the movies - for there are three planned - I'd recommend Mindbender, which involved everyone hallucinating because of a strange moon rock. Standout moments, apart from the fact Stuart Damon of The Champions is in it, is when Commander Straker gets affected and begins to hallucinate that his entire life is fictional and is being filmed as part of a TV series, masterminded by a woman called Sylvia. The clue, as they say, was in the episode title. You can watch the whole thing below. Aren't I nice?

Have you seen Ali Larter acting randomly? If so, let us know and we'll tell everyone about it in "Random Acts of Ali Larter"

Not especially weird, but today's weird old title sequence is an example of just how good US title sequences used to be, but rarely are these days (notable exceptions: Dexter, Chuck and a few others). It's Hart to Hart's.

Hart to Hart was one of the numerous private investigator shows that used to clutter the airwaves, but that have long since been replaced by police shows. Jonathan Hart (Robert Wagner) was – as Max his butler explains during the title sequence – a self-made millionaire; Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers) was his wife, a freelance journalist who now gets to enjoy the benefits of the multi-millionaire lifestyle (oh, if only).

When they met, it was murder, and pretty much every episode after that, there was a murder, too, which they solved in typically flamboyant style. Originally, it was a script by Sidney Sheldon about married spies, but Bond movie scriptwriter Tom Mankiewicz was offered the rewrite duties, with the instructions that he was to update it to make it more contemporary.

In retrospect, it was a slightly weird show. It aired in 1979 and Wagner and Powers hadn't been true stars for some time: they were famous for shows of the 60s – It Takes A Thief and The Girl From UNCLE respectively.

But as you can probably tell from the fact that Cary Grant was first choice to play Jonathan Hart, taking advantage of a nostalgia amongst an older generation was the name of the game, something that also drove Murder She Wrote and Dynasty to ridiculous popularity. Also key to its success was the glamour of incredible wealth (cf Dynasty) and the fact it was a romantic programme that didn't have a husband and wife at each other's throats. Having said that, I remember watching it and loving it when I was about nine, so clearly it had a charm that appealed to all ages.

In combination with that charm, the chemistry between the leads and its knowing humour, Hart to Hart went on to 110 episodes, as well as reunion movies during the 1990s. Notably, the first episode didn't show how Jonathan and Jennifer met – the show relied on this title sequence to introduce viewers to them until all was revealed in a later flashback episode set and filmed in London: Two Harts Are Better Than One – yes, there were a whole load of punning episode titles.

You can get the series on DVD, you can watch the pilot episode on YouTube but for know, enjoy its weird old title sequence.

Ray Bradbury was one of those science-fiction authors who didn't like science. He didn't like getting bogged down in all those nasty facts and things that made his ideas impossible, so he ignored most of science altogether.

Which for his Martian Chronicles was a good thing, I think. Okay, so it did mean that Mars mysteriously became a world with an oxygen atmosphere that human beings could just walk around on without difficulty. But Bradbury was able to let his flights of fancy soar without being tethered or bogged down by pedantic little details.

The Martian Chronicles is an impressive name for what is essentially a set of short stories, linked mainly by their setting, rather than any particular theme, world view or overall story arc. It details humanity's various attempts during the 20th and 21st century to settle on the planet of Mars, where they encounter a society of telepathic and extremely alien Martians.

The Martians initially try to repel the new arrivals, but eventually they're all but wiped out by diseases brought by humans to Mars. Eventually, the humans themselves are wiped out on Earth by nuclear war, and find themselves becoming the new Martians and adopting the Martian ways.

The Chronicles themselves only really achieved coherence when they were collected together out of the various magazines they'd been published into a single volume – with some slight amendments such as the inclusion of 'interstitial vignettes' to make them fit together. It was this volume that was adapted by NBC and the BBC in the late 70s and turned into the mini-series The Martian Chronicles.

Although the stories themselves had no central hero, since they take place over a number of decades, for the mini-series, rocket pilot Rock Hudson becomes the hero, replacing the heroes of the various short stories that had them.

Like the stories, The Martian Chronicles is a meandering affair, aimless, taking absurd detours because it's really an umbrella for all of Bradbury's short stories. So we have the central plot of the colonisation of Mars and how it's taking on all the worst characteristics of Earth, including gambling.

Then there'll be a brief interlude where Hudson finds out his old friend Barry Morse has replaced his entire family with identical robots – Barry then dies, leaving his robotic family to carry on without him, unaware they're robots. Which makes sense as a short story about what it means to be human, the nature of family, etc, but is utterly incongruous when placed with all the others.

It's no surprise that The Martian Chronicles failed both critically and in the ratings, particularly since Bradbury himself described it as 'boring' in a press conference to launch the mini-series. But it still was a poetical piece, in which the ultimate action adventurer, a space rocket pilot, learns that true happiness doesn't come from technology and action – that's the kind of thinking that ends up with the whole human race and planet Earth destroyed in a war – it comes from being happy with oneself and in what one does. It also had stunning designs that really conjured the idea of an alien race with its own aesthetic and view of the world.

The titles are anything but dynamic, but they are one of the few examples of a poetic title sequence you're liable to find, attempting to demonstrate the beauty, peace and calm of these imaginary Martians who died, leaving only ideas behind.

Look up into the sky. Is there a round, silvery shape there? No, of course not. As we all know, the Moon left the Earth's orbit back in 1999 following a cataclysmic nuclear explosion caused by waste from Moonbase Alpha going into chain reaction.

That, at least, was the scenario painted in Space: 1999, even if it - obviously - never came to pass. Made by Gerry Anderson, originally to be the second season of his earlier live action show UFO, Space: 1999 was a mix of many elements, some good, some bad. On the one hand, it did have some fantastic model work, cinematography and sets, the likes of which probably haven't been bettered.

On the other hand, the acting was dreadful, and the plots… oh, the plots. They were concept sci-fi: great big ideas about philosophy, the universe, etc, but handled so badly, and usually with a plastic-looking monster, that it was impossible to regard them with any seriousness, particularly since the science part of the science-fiction was so ineptly handled.

The show was also hampered by having husband and wife team Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as the two leads. Okay, they'd been fine on Mission: Impossible but their marriage was now breaking down and they could barely stand the sight of each other. Therefore, zero chemistry between the leads.

After a first, not terribly successful series, a new producer was brought on board to help boost the ratings. Unfortunately, they brought on board Fred Freiberger, the US TV producer responsible for the changes made to season 3 of Star Trek that got it cancelled, and who went on to make the changes to The Six Million Dollar Man that got it cancelled. So despite the introduction of hot, shape-changing alien Maya, and an Italian lothario, guess what happened to the proposed season three.

During this time, Space: 1999 went through a couple of title sequences. For the first season, we got the funky disco theme coupled with the "This episode" (did you miss that? We said "This episode", loser!) montage of highlights that Ronald D Moore copied for Battlestar Galactica. It also (weirdly enough) had Barbara Bain on a turntable.

Season two grabbed itself a whole new set of titles and a new theme. It wasn't as cool, didn't have Barbara Bain on a turntable, and it had a stupid "Red alert" on it. But it was more action packed and it did explain the plot.

These, however, were not the weirdest title sequences for Space: 1999. In overseas markets, there were completely different sets of titles that pioneered whole new areas of weird. The Japanese set was perhaps the least weird, since all they did was add a really odd new electronic/lounge theme to the first season titles.

No, for absolute weirdness, you had to go to Italy and watch Spazio: 1999's second season titles.

UFOs. What the hell are they? Well, as Chris Moyles recently pointed out to Robbie Williams, they're Unidentified Flying Objects. That's right, by definition, if we knew what they were, they wouldn't be UFOs, so stop pretending you, like, know anything about them, right.

Back in the distant past (the 50s, 60s, and 70s), when everyone who looked up into the sky and saw something they didn't recognise (eg a planet, a star, a plane, another plane, yet another plane) and seemed to think

1. They'd seen a flying saucer
2. We'd want to know they'd seen a flying saucer

the US air force decided to investigate the reports everyone filed - at great cost to the US taxpayer. The investigation was called Project Bluebook and after years of work, found absolutely nothing to prove that UFOs=flying saucers from beyond the seventh galaxy.

Presumably to reassure the US taxpayer that all the effort and money spent on looking for aliens during those heady days of gas crises and stagflation wasn't wasted, the USAF agreed to help produce a TV series dramatising some of these investigations. It was called Project UFO.

The basic format was as follows:

1. Some dweeb out in the backwoods somewhere sees something that looks like a spaceship
2. He or she reports it to USAF
3. Two USAF officers (different depending on the show's season) turn up at the scene of the sighting
4. They find strange stuff
5. They ask around town to find out what kind of dweeb they're dealing with
6. An entirely plausible rational explanation for the sighting presents itself
7. They go back to their base and report their inconclusive results
8. In a major sop by the producers to wacko UFO believers, the USAF officers suddenly realise they'd overlooked something and it was probably a flying saucer from beyond the seventh galaxy after all

And that's basically every episode for two seasons. Nevertheless, to impressionable people like seven-year old MediumRob, it was absolutely terrifying and convincing since it was "based on real events". Now? Not so much.

Anyway, the show, to give itself an air of verisimilitude, had a lengthy, wordy intro title sequence explaining its 'truthful' origins. But the titles were creepy arsed construction diagrams of UFOs that people HAD DEFINITELY SEEN. DEFINITELY. OH YES. YES, THE ALIENS DID HAVE THE FACES OF HORSES. IT'S TRUE.

Behold then, the weird old title sequence for Project UFO. Don't have nightmares.