It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in the month of June 2013. This month, as well as the continuing celebration of Doctor Who, which reaches the Colin Baker years with The Two Doctors…
…there’s the second half of a season of Tony Garnett’s work, and previews of Top of the Lake and Quirke.
In the annals of British TV police series, few shows have been as influential or as important as The Sweeney. Starring John Thaw – the future Inspector Morse – as DI Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman – the future Minder – as DS George Carter of the Metropolitan Police’s ‘Flying Squad’, the show spawned imitators (Special Branch), homages (Life on Mars) and movies (The Sweeney), and even influenced the then-new Flying Squad themselves, showing them how to be the Flying Squad.
What’s not as well known is that The Sweeney actually started as one of Thames TV’s Armchair Cinema season, the continuation of ITV’s Armchair Theatre play series. It was written by Ian Kennedy Martin – the brother of Z-Cars (and The Italian Job and Edge of Darkness) writer Troy Kennedy Martin – with John Thaw in mind, Kennedy Martin having been script editor on 60s show Redcap, of which Thaw was the star.
Most of the essential elements of The Sweeney are here, so see below how the show started, in today’s Wednesday Play.
Doctor Who
Film casting
Trailers
UK TV
US TV
US TV casting
New US TV shows
New US TV show casting
In the UK: Saturday, 6.15pm, 27th April 2013, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 27th April 2013, BBC America
Ever since the TARDIS showed up and proved itself to be bigger on the inside than on the outside, there have been several burning questions in the minds of viewers: how much bigger? What’s in there? And will the BBC budget ever stretch to allowing us to find out?
Over the years, we’ve had references to the many rooms within the TARDIS, as well as stories that have given us brief glimpses of the infinite interior, including Edge of Destruction…
…Castrovalva…
…the TV movie…
…The Doctor’s Wife and, of course, The Invasion of Time:
But these glimpses have been very few and far between, usually quite brief, and either subordinate to the rest of the plot or mind-numbingly dull (Castrovalva). What we’ve been waiting for is a proper adventure set in the TARDIS that combines everything we’ve learnt about it but goes on to show off as much as possible of the interior, while giving us new and exciting additions, all while avoiding the Castrovalva “Maths is Fun!” syndrome.
Did Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS give us that? Well, let’s discuss it all after this lovely trailer and the jump.
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 7×10 – Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS”
Inspired by Scarfolk, the English town that still lives in the 1970s, we’re continuing with this ‘ere blog’s latest feature: Charley says.
The 1970s was a terrible time, of course, where the risks to people from everything from electricity cables to water to other people could not be overstated. It was horrifying. Particularly the rabies.
To save the public from these threats – and themselves – the British government authorised a series of public information films designed to scare the living daylights out of anyone who watched them. And each week, I intend to scare the living daylights out of you with a public information film or two – watch them, as they might just save your life.
You may, by now, if you weren’t alive in the UK in the 70s, wondering why the hell this is called “Charley says”. Well, Charley the cat was the star of an entire series of warning films for children, in which he passed on his sagely feline advice to the child he was with, who otherwise would have been tortured, dead or something even worse.
This week: strangers. Charley says: “Don’t talk to strangers.” He’s right, of course, children. Is there something worrying about the fact the stranger in this film walks like Mr Benn?
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