[via @AlexRomeo @mpphillips @gideondefoe @richmurkin]

You can, if that's whet your appetite, watch the first episode as well:

There are few better known, more successful sitcom writers than Roy Clarke. The creator of Last of the Summer Wine, Open All Hours, Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt! and Keeping Up Appearances, genteel, Northern, comedies of manners and silliness are his forte.

Which makes The Wanderer, a short-lived 1994 series about reincarnated medieval knights in modern times on an eternal quest for one of their graves, somewhat of a surprise. The show starred Bryan Brown (FX: Murder By Illusion, Cocktail) as two twin brothers, the good Adam and the evil Zachary. Originally born in the 10th century, the two are fated to fight each other at the turn of each millennium, the winner influencing whether the next millennium will be 'good' or 'evil'.

Reincarnated in the 20th century, Zachary wants revenge on Adam for killing him a millennium previously, but he also wants to take advantage of the growing superstition arising from the turn of the current millennium, planning to have Adam die in front of witnesses so that he can pose as his dead brother. But for his plan to work, he needs a magic item from his 10th century grave, and only Adam knows the location of that. Or at least the original Adam did – modern day Adam? Not so much, although he's prone to the occasional flashback to his original self, which helps him on his quest to retrieve the artefact first so he can stop Zachary.

Both have helpers in the modern day: Beatrice (Kim Thomson), Zachary's lover in the 10th century, has been reincarnated as well and accompanies him on his journey, helping him with her witchy magic; while Adam's helper, Godbold (Tony Haygarth), was a monk in the 10th century but is now a wrestler and plumber. And then there's Clare (Deborah Moore), Adam's lover in both centuries.

A co-production between YTV and Sky in the UK, ZDF in Germany, and Antena 3 in Spain, the show ran for 13 episodes, with Adam wandering the world each episode looking for Zachary's grave, Zachary occasionally cropping up to be extrovert and annoying in comparison to the introverted and dull Adam. Indeed, the whole show was intensely annoying: as well as Brown's acting and the light entertainment vibe that Clarke apparently couldn't escape adding to the show, The Wanderer had 'Into The Labyrinth syndrome', with the first season concluding with Zachary's grave being found, the two brothers ready for their clash to begin… only for it to be revealed that another artefact needed recovering and a new quest had to begin. Cue the second series that never materialised.

The show hasn't been repeated or released on DVD since it originally aired, but you can at least have its title sequence and some clips, unfortunately mostly dubbed into various foreign languages. The last collection is in English, though, so you can judge the quality of the acting for yourselves.

Anyway, following various people's suggestions that my memory is full of holes…

…I've added a few new shows to the various pages.

• Judaism and Christianity: Afterlife, Quantum Leap, Being Human, Joan of Arcadia, Eternal Law and Apparitions
• Buddhism: Monkey
• Hellenism and Religio Romana: Spartacus and Cupid

We're going to have a little departure from our normal Nostalgia Corner this week as part of my somewhat unplanned 'Pagan Week' on the blog. Today, we're going to look at all the scripted shows (or as many as I can remember) on Western, English-language TV that have not just featured religions but have actually shown them to be true in some way or other.

Now, it might be tempting to instantly think that Christianity would dominate here - and certainly it shows up a lot, particularly on US TV. When it does it appear, it's also taken more seriously and is dealt with largely more accurately than other religions.

But TV is largely secular, either because the writers are atheists or agnostics or because they're afraid of offending or marginalising other religious groups, particularly when it comes to overseas sales. As a result, religion often lies unexamined in drama or when it does, it deals with 'safe' religions, doesn't make claims for the 'truth' of a particular religion or is 'fantasy' so doesn't pretend to say what it depicts is true.

Nevertheless, a few shows have done just that and I'm going to be running through them today. A few I've already covered in much greater detail elsewhere, so I'll link to those posts if necessary, but I'll still be looking at them from the point of view of religion, rather than as dramas, so there probably won't be much overlap with what I've already written.

To be included on the list (and these aren't 100% firm rules), the show has to fit into one of the following categories:

1. It has to say a tenet of or an entire religion is true in some way, be it through the appearance of a figure from that religion or by the manifestation of their powers
2. It features a follower of a religion actually performing important acts of that religion or explaining aspects of it, which are not later disproven or shown to be naive and which might even be proven right.

I won't be including shows that

1. Include figures from a given religion but reveal they're aliens, spacemen, con men, etc (cf Star Trek)
2. Made-up religions, except synthetic/reconstructionist religions that employ figures from other religions (so yes to Wicca but not to any alien's religion, for example)
3. Feature ghosts, the supernatural, magic, etc, unless those things are caused by/stem from a particular religion.
4. Merely include worshippers or the iconography of a particular religion, but don't claim that it's true or demonstrate any aspects of it (so no Father Brown or Lost).
5. Are cartoons (e.g. Family Guy, South Park, Lost Cities of Gold)

Before we leap straight into the list, though, I'd like to give a big thanks to Jim Smith, Stuart Douglas, Dave Hoskin, Simon Bucher-Jones, Naomi Jacobs, Philip Purser-Hallard, Ian Mond, SK and Jon Arnold for their invaluable help in its compilation. Cheers, everyone!

The list
I'm going to break this down by religion. There are a number of 'mixed faith' shows out there, that have shown more than one religion to be true, but these generally show one religion to predominate and so will be listed according to that primary religion.

• Judaism and Christianity
• Islam
• Hinduism and Buddhism
• Hellenism and Religio Romana
• Celtic, Western and Northern Germanic religions + Wicca
• Other religions

If I've left out any shows or religions, leave a comment below or on the relevant entry and I'll update the list accordingly.

This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.

Judaism and Christianity
Christianity has been the dominate religion in most of the West, especially Europe, for hundreds of years. There are, of course, many denominations of Christianity, each with their own beliefs, and much of Western literature either includes Christian figures or embodies Christian values in some ways. It stemmed from Judaism and the two religions still share certain core beliefs and figures: God, angels and so on. However, Jesus is particular to Christianity, of course, while Mary and the saints are really only prominent in Catholicism and Orthodox religions. 

Mormonism, a (debatably) Christian denomination, almost gets its own show - Battlestar Galactica, which is based in part on the Book of Mormon - but that show doesn't prove Mormonism's truth or show Mormon teachings.

In terms of TV, God actually shows up surprisingly infrequently - or unsurprisingly, given he doesn't have a physical form in the Bible - although he appears in metaphor in shows such as Home Improvement. Jesus shows up occasionally, but far more common are the Devil and demons. 

As for shows that show the truth of Judaism and Jewish religious stories but that couldn't also be Christian stories, there aren't any that I can think of, beyond an episode of The X-Files featuring a golem that despite trying very hard, gets a whole bunch of stuff wrong.

Islam
Nope. No one's touching this one with a bargepole. Although having much in common with Judaism and Christianity, Islam has particular beliefs about the depiction of its prophet, Mohammed, making it hard to make series featuring him, at least. In fact, the only vaguely Islamic show I could think of is Born of Fire, which includes djinn and other figures from Islamic mythology.

This entry is one of a list of articles covering TV shows depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.

Hinduism
The world's number three religion after Christianity and Islam, this has had perilously few TV shows based on its tenets. However, Channel 4's The Mahabharata did manage to condense down its central work to a mere 10 hours or so - although that did mean the Bhagavad Gita was squished down to just six minutes:

Buddhism
Obviously, one of the more popular Eastern religions in the West, it's also one that's hard to demonstrate as 'true' because many branches of Buddhism don't include a belief in supernatural figures such as gods and demons. However, there are a number of shows that depict the truth of Buddhism.

This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.

Hellenism
The Greek pagan religion featuring Zeus and the other Olympians isn't quite a dead religion, but it's close. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most influential, dominating Western literature, film and TV to a far greater extent than those in a far healthier state, such as Hinduism. As well as adaptations of Greek tragedies on TV, there have been many adaptations of many Greek myths and the gods have shown up in shows set in the modern day as well as the past. Atlantis, which is currently being made by BBC1, would appear to feature elements of Hellenic religion as well as the Minoan religion of Crete.

Religio Romana
Again, another religion that's not quite dead and still gets featured occasionally in TV shows. A syncretism of native Italian religion and Hellenism, Religio Romana and its literature dominated Western understanding of Hellenism and myths until the 14th century, when an understanding of Greek and Greek literature became to permeate through after the fall of Constantinople. It wasn't until the late 19th and 20th centuries, in fact, that academics realised the two were separate, yet in the last century or so, despite the occasional blurring (e.g. Hercules/Heracles, Wonder Woman's Ares/Mars, etc), Hellenistic literature and Hellenism have now almost totally replaced Religio Romana in the public consciousness.

There are no Roman gods in modern-day TV shows, as far as I'm aware; no adaptation of The Aeneid or the Metamorphoses of Ovid. However, people are far more interested in period dramas set in Roman times than in classical Athens (Athens' misogyny might be responsible for that) or Sparta (everyone exercising naked in olive oil outdoors?), perhaps also because of the Roman empire's continuing influence on everything from architecture to politics to this very day.

However, one of the differences between Roman and Greek religions is that the Roman emperors became gods on their death, so technically any show that depicts a Roman emperor technically is showing a possible future Roman god. How many shows have followed through on that?

This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.

Celtic, Western and Northern Germanic religions + Wicca
The belief in the deities worshipped in Scandinavia, Germany and Britain until Christianity took over has seen some uptake on TV. The most famous of these gods were the Norse gods Odin, Thor, et al, but Anglo-Saxon gods include Wayland the Smithy and folk gods such as Herne the Hunter have all managed to show up. While often these have been part of fantasy shows, so not taken entirely seriously by the authors, some shows have raised them in works contemplating national identity, regarding pagan beliefs as important parts of 'Welshness' or 'Englishness', for example. 

However, writers have usually played fast and loose, and with most of the pagan religions in these areas being reconstructionist, the question of authenticity to the original religions is difficult, relying instead of pagan-like activity created by the authors. Frequently, where the shows have invoked paganism and shown it to be true, it's been shown to be based on some kind of science (cf Children of the Stones, Sky, Quatermass and Doctor Who). 

However, there are some exceptions.

This entry is one of a series of articles covering religions depicted on TV as being true. For full details and a list of the other religions covered, go to the introduction.

Other religions
Religions outside of the previous categories are much rarer on TV. Although very occasionally Native American religions have featured on US TV, for example, AFAIK they've never been shown to be true except in shows like Star Trek: Voyager that later reveal that science is behind any truth they might have. Nevertheless, there have been one or two shows that depict religions other than the ones mentioned above.

"Try this for a deep, dark secret. The great detective Remington Steele, he doesn't exist... I invented him. Follow: I always loved excitement so I studied and apprenticed and put my name on an office but absolutely nobody knocked down my door. A female private investigator seemed so… feminine, so I invented a superior, a decidedly masculine superior. Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm until the day he walked in with his blue eyes and mysterious past and before I knew it he assumed Remington Steele's identity. Now I do the work and he takes the bows. It's a dangerous way to live but as long as people buy it I can get the job done. We never mix business with pleasure, well, almost never. I don't even know his real name."

It's hard for women to get to the top in business. Don't believe me? Just check how many women are CEOs or members of the boards of directors for Fortune 500 companies.

The reasons for this are long and complicated, involving history, discrimination and a whole lot more. In particular, there's perception. Some people, both men and women, don't think women are going to be as good as men are at certain jobs.

Particularly private detectives. Or at least people didn't in 1982, before VI Warshawski, Anna Lee and co. Certainly, Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalst) found it hard to get any work when she started out. She may have come top of her class at pretty much everything, but with her name on the door, for some strange reason, no one was interested in hiring her.

So crafty Laura Holt decided to invented a boss with a very masculine name: Remington Steele (Remington as in gun, rather than Fuzzaway). Suddenly, for some equally strange reason, people were queuing up to hire her - well, they wanted Remington Steele, but he was always out of town on business but somehow he always managed to solve his cases with the help of his 'assistant'.

All was going well with this set-up until a movie-loving, very handsome con man (Pierce Brosnan) turned up and assumed Steele's identity. Together, he and Holt end up working together, solving crimes. But would their relationship ever become more, when it was all founded in lies - hell, she didn't even know his real name? Well… that would be saying.

Here's the intro from the very first episode - the observant will notice the wording is different. After that, the full, rather catchy, Henry Mancini-scored theme tune, and then every episode title from the show, all of which were puns.

Greek tragedy was the very first formal theatrical genre to be invented. Created in the 5th century BC to honour the Greek god Dionysos during his annual festival in Athens, it developed over the next century or so thanks to numerous playwrights, including Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, to give us some of the greatest ever works of Western theatre and literature.

But since those times, as a genre, it's pretty much fallen by the wayside. For all that David Simon and his fellow writers on The Wire may claim to have written to the rules of Greek tragedy rather than the more common Shakespearean model, they rarely touched on the classic formula devised by Aristotle for tragedy: the hubris, catharsis then nemesis of the protagonist, an ordinary man, who through some tragic flaw or mistake is eventually undone by the gods.

Greek tragedy itself didn't always stick to the formula (e.g. Euripides' Helene, Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound), so you have to hand it to former Daily Mirror journalist turned TV writer Michael J Bird to not only create one of the very few modern pieces of drama to stick to that formula, but to also set it and film it in Greece with a largely Greek cast.

1977's BBC2 serial Who Pays The Ferryman? sees former soldier turned boat builder Alan Haldane (Jack Hedley from Colditz) return to Crete after more than 30 years' absence. A legendary fighter with the Crete resistance during the War, he'd been a hero to the people and had fallen in love with Melina, one of the women he'd met there. Hoping to meet with her again after all this time, he tragically discovers that she has died. Compounding his misery, he is now getting a cold shoulder from the people who'd formerly seen him as a hero and been his friends.

Why? Well, unbeknownst to him, she'd fallen pregnant with his child. She wrote to him and, given the Cretan attitudes of the time and receiving no reply, she ended up marrying another man who would raise the daughter as his own. Haldane, who never received the letters and who now discovers his own letters to her were never received, decides to meet the now grown-up daughter he never knew he had and become her benefactor. And along the way, he meets a woman Annika (played by the very famous Greek actress Betty Arvaniti), who seems very familiar …

Why no one received the letters from their respective lovers and the lengths some people will go to to destroy Haldane are some of the central dilemmas of a very Greek story about vendetta, family and even the gods themselves that does not, of course, have a very happy ending. Here's the title sequence, followed by the opening of the second episode. It features the incredibly popular and catchy theme song by Cretan composer Yannis Markopoulos.

Oh, and here's Marina Sirtis - Deanna Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation - in her second ever TV appearance. This is all she gets to do, mind.

Being severely ill usually isn't a laughing matter so you've got to hand it to Eric Chappell, creator of Rising Damp, for somehow managing to get 29 episodes of laughter out of a bunch of patients on an NHS ward. Admittedly it helped that the working class Roy Figgis (James Bolam from The Likely Lads and New Tricks), the middle class Norman Binns (Christopher Strauli from Raffles) and the upper class Archie Glover (Peter Bowles from To The Manor Born) are hypochondriacs, and spent more of their time misbehaving and fighting a cold class war than they did actually being ill, but it's still a pretty impressive feat.

Running for four series on ITV, Only When I Laugh sees Figgis check into the same ward as Archie and Norman, where they almost instantly start a love-hate bickering relationship with one another, initially over who gets the bed by the window but usually about more or less anything, ranging from attractive nurses to jealous Greeks. The only thing uniting them over the show's four series? Their mutual nemeses, the ward doctor (Richard Wilson of One Foot In The Grave) and the somewhat stereotypical Gupte the orderly (Derrick Branche from just about any show that needed an Indian-, Asian- or Middle Eastern-looking character).

While occasionally depressing, particularly thanks to the baleful theme tune ('I'm H.A.P.P.Y.'), the show managed to find laughs in the three's hypochondria and just about every aspect of hospital life, including hospital radio, and life itself. The final episode sees the three patients dismissed from hospital, and forced to discover whether not only are they friends but can they be friends when they no longer have their situation in common.

Here are both the first episode and the last episode for you to enjoy, but it's pretty much all on YouTube. If you like it, don't forget to buy it!

News of the day is that Gerry Anderson puppet show Thunderbirds is going to be remade. For those not in the know (who are you?), this saw a team of brothers go into action as part of International Rescue to save people from usually very explosive danger, sometimes with the assistance of their London agent Lady Penelope.

Here's the first episode for you to enjoy - as always, buy it if you like it:

This isn't the first time the show will have been remade, of course, since there was a live-action movie version a few years ago (with none other than Sophia Myles playing Lady Penelope)...

...and there was an animated series, Thunderbirds 2086, more than a few years before that.

This time, not only does it have the blessing of Gerry Anderson, it's going to combine models with CGI thanks to those nice people who did the effects work for Lord of the Rings.

So today's quick question is:

Are you (or perhaps your children or even your children's children) going to watch the new series when it comes out?

As always, leave your answers below or on your own blog.

Nerds and the gifted are usually the butts of jokes in US sitcoms. Happier with the ordinary, the sporting and those who don't try too hard, even when there is a smarter character (such as in Modern Family), the majority of US sitcoms see that nerdiness or intellect as a weakness, something to be mocked because it separates out the gifted from the rest of us - when, at High School, the last thing you want is to be different. And they're never ever going to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, either. Well, not a normal one, anyway.

The 80s did, however, give us a show that dared to be different. Head of the Class starred WKRP in Cincinnati's Howard Hesseman as an actor who becomes a substitute teacher at a New York high school. His assignment was a class of children on the Individualized Honors Program (IHP): everyone in the class was a genius at one school subject or another. While to a certain extent the class was composed of stereotypes - the science guy is a skinny, pocket protector-wearing, bespectacled wimp; the computer genius is fat and cynical; the political science guy is preppy; the arts girl is airy fairy; and so on - it still had some variety with Eric (Brian Robbins), the motorcycle-riding, leather-jacket wearing cool kid who was a superb writer, a black rich kid (a young Robin Givens) and an Indian exchange student (Jory Husain).

Each week, Hesseman would give the kids life lessons and help to teach them the ways of the world, but with no 'normal' kids around, the IHP students were able to be themselves, to work hard, to be friends and to excel. They could know answers to questions, answer intelligently and debate issues. There were even potential romances, with airy fairy arts girl Simone and cool kid Eric having an on-again, off-again relationship. In a pre-Glee move, thanks to Hesseman's acting background, the IHP kids would even put on a yearly musical.

The show lasted four five seasons, during which time it changed considerably. As well as being the first US sitcom to film in the Soviet Union (for its third season opener), by the fourth season, some students had graduated, bringing in new students to the programme, including a blonde hippie and an aspiring filmmaker (De'voreaux White from the first Die Hard).

The fifth season saw Hesseman's character leave, his acting career finally taking off, to be replaced with Billy Connolly in his first US TV role. More stand-up than teacher, Billy also had to deal with America and its customs, and he was popular enough that he got his own spin-off show, Billy.

Sadly, the show ended that season with everyone in the IHP finally graduating and the school itself being demolished. While you're mourning, here's the rather catchy theme tune and iconic titles, as well as a full 11 minutes of an episode that featured Brad Pitt that shows why Head of the Class was so different from most sitcoms of the time.