Classic TV

Classic shows that have almost been forgotten, as well as shows that should probably have been forgotten

Dallas’s theme tune had lyrics… but only in France

29 March 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

So I was listening to the World in Words podcast this morning and discovered a fascinating fact. When Dallas aired on French TV back in the 80s, French broadcasters wanted to explain the show to its audience. So along with a new theme tune, they wrote some lyrics to explain it to them. Listen to them for yourselves:

And here are the lyrics in French in all their glory [via]:

Dallas
Ton univers impitoyable
Dallas
Glorifie la loi du plus fort
Dallas
Et sous ton soleil implacable
Dallas
Tu ne redoutes que la mort

Dallas
Patrie du dollar du pétrole
Dallas
Tu ne connais pas la pitié
Dallas
Le revolver est ton idole
Dallas
Tu te raccroches à ton passé

Dallas
Malheur à celui qui n’a pas compris
Dallas
Un jour il y perdra la vie
Dallas
Ton univers impitoyable
Dallas
Glorifie la loi du plus fort

Dallas
Malheur à celui qui n’a pas compris
Dallas
Un jour il y perdra la vie
Dallas
Ton univers impitoyable
Dallas
Glorifie la loi du plus fort

Dallas
Malheur à celui qui n’a pas compris
Dallas
Un jour il y perdra la vie
Dallas
Ton univers impitoyable

Which more or less means [via, since I can’t be arsed to translate it myself]:

Dallas, your ruthless world,
Dallas, where might is right,
Dallas, and under your relentless sun,
Dallas, only death is feared.

Dallas, home of the oil dollar,
Dallas, you do not know pity;
Dallas, the revolver is your idol,
Dallas, you cling to the past.

Dallas, woe to him who does not understand,
Dallas, one day he will lose his life.
Dallas, your ruthless world,
Dallas, where might is right.

Wowzers, hey? But accurate.

Incidentally, it was not alone in this. I mentioned this discovery of mine to French TV journalist Thierry Attard, hoping to find out more, as he is not only a noted expert and consultant on European dubbing, he’s literally written the book on it. He reveals that this is just the tip of the iceberg:

I hate when they put a French song on a foreign series. In the 80s they were legion: Hart to Hart, Vegas, Mr Merlin… Santa Barbara, The Bold and the Beautiful, Buck Rogers, The A Team, Days of our Lives (this one didn’t last long). If my memory serves and without chronology, we can add Starsky & Hutch, Knots Landing. Later, Prison Break or… Heroes.

So much fun to be had! I leave the full quest to you, gentle reader, but brace yourself – here’s your starter for 10. It’s Prison Break‘s French lyrics:

The Wednesday Play (on Tuesday): Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse – The Time Element (1958)

15 March 2016 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

As we’ve seen in previous Wednesday Plays, anthology and play strands have often resulted in spin-off series: The Play For Today gave us shows including Gangsters; Armchair Theatre gave us Callan, The Sweeney et al; Dramarama gave us Dodger, Bonzo and The Rest; and so on. But oddly enough, anthology series could spin-off from other anthology series, too – sometimes even the most famous ones.

In 1958, the mouthful-tastic Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse was just starting out. Between 1951 and 1957, husband and wife team Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had been the stars of TV in I Love Lucy, but they were looking to expand their Desilu production company’s output with an anthology series of drama, comedy and music. They convinced CBS to buy their show and managed to get Westinghouse to switch its sponsorship away from Westinghouse Studio One in the process, resulting in CBS cancelling that show.

Looking for some prestigious material with which to christen the new show, producer Bert Granet started trawling through CBS’s vaults, where he found a buried script called The Time Element, written by one Rod Serling. Serling had become a popular and critically respected TV playwright in the 1950s, but CBS had been unwilling to produce the script so had shelved it. However, Granet thought the script would boost his show and put it into production.

The play, set years after the end of World War II, features a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) who visits a psychoanalyst, Dr Gillespie (Martin Balsam). Jenson tells him about a recurring dream in which he tries to warn people about the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor before it happens, but the warnings are disregarded. Jenson believes the events of the dream are real and each night he travels back to 1941.

Suffice it to say, there’s a twist ending.

The Time Element, which was introduced by Desi Arnaz, debuted on November 24 1958 to an ‘overwhelmingly delighted’ audience of television viewers and critics alike. “The humor and sincerity of Mr Serling’s dialogue made The Time Element consistently entertaining,” offered Jack Gould of The New York Times. Over 6,000 letters of praise flooded Granet’s offices.

Convinced that a series based on such stories could succeed, CBS again began talks with Serling about the possibilities of producing a similar anthology series, one bookended by a narrator, full of fantasy and science-fiction stories, often with twists in their tails, and to be called… The Twilight Zone. Where Is Everybody? was accepted as the pilot episode and the project was officially announced to the public in early 1959. The rest is history.

The Time Element was not aired on television again until it was shown as part of a 1996 all-night sneak preview of the then-new cable channel TVLand. Thankfully, it’s this week’s Wednesday Play (on Tuesday) and you can watch it below.

What TV’s on at the BFI in February? Including Nuts In May, Penda’s Fen, Artemis 81 and Leap In The Dark

6 January 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Time to look at what the BFI is showing in February. Yes, February. I never got my January guide, and since it’s now January and the February guide turned up yesterday, let’s just do February. I’ll be ahead of schedule for a change then.

February’s actually not got a huge amount of TV, but what there is is largely TV plays – and good ‘uns, too. As well as Dexter Press Gang Fletcher introducing Nuts In May, we also have a season of David Rudkin’s TV plays. Who’s Rudkin? Well, he wrote about 90% of the pagan dramas in TMINE’s guide to religion, including Penda’s Fen and Artemis 81, both of which get an airing in the season (although since the BFI describes the latter as ‘one of the medium’s greatest productions’, I’m not entirely sure they’ve actually watched it yet). 

But as well as those, Rudkin’s The Living Grave is also being shown. This was part of a somewhat odd, supernatural anthology series that aired on BBC Two called Leap In The Dark. This ran for 20 episodes in four series, over a period of eight years from 1973 to 1980, and featured work from Rudkin, as well as Fay Weldon and Alan Garner among others. Each episode featured a different incident of the paranormal, some in the modern day, but most set in other time periods.

So far, so ordinary, you might think. What’s odd about Leap In the Dark is that all these incidents were real events – indeed, the first series consisted only of documentaries, while the later series are technically docudramas, rather than dramas. Rushkin’s The Living Grave is about a young woman who regresses under hypnosis to the 1700s, with Rushkin’s play recreating both the hypnosis sessions and the 1700s. And it’s this week’s Wednesday’s Play.

Continue reading “What TV’s on at the BFI in February? Including Nuts In May, Penda’s Fen, Artemis 81 and Leap In The Dark”

What TV’s on at the BFI in October/November? Including Diana Rigg and The Avengers

6 October 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Around August, things get a bit weird with the BFI’s scheduling and it starts putting out brochures for a month and a half at a time. As I was away on holiday in August, I missed out on September/October, but now we have October/November, which gives us a fair few events from the tail end of October together with a copious number from November.

The highlight of the list is an afternoon with Dame Diana Rigg to celebrate 50 years of Emma Peel and air a couple of episodes of The Avengers, including the superb The House That Jack Built. However, there’s also a preview of ITV’s Jekyll and Hyde, talks on romance and race and disability on TV, Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard’s reunion in Staying On, showings of all seven episodes of Bouquet of Barbed Wire, and a season on the evolution of the TV documentary. 

All that and more after the jump. But first, do yourself a favour and if you haven’t watched it already, watch The House That Jack Built. It’s aces.



Continue reading “What TV’s on at the BFI in October/November? Including Diana Rigg and The Avengers”

60s-style Thunderbirds is back thanks to Thunderbirds 1965

1 October 2015 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Thunderbirds, as most of you will know, was a 1960s Gerry Anderson series that used ‘Supermarionation’ puppets to enact stories in which a family of brothers go to the rescue of people around the world in a series of advanced rocket-ships called Thunderbirds. Just in case this doesn’t ring a bell (you do own a TV, right?), here’s the lovingly restored, HD-quality title sequence to give you a rough idea of what it was like:

The show made a resurgence in the 80s and it was remade this year by ITV but using CGI. I thought it good for what it was, but it lacked a certain charm compared to the puppet version. 

Apparently, other people agree. A recent Kickstarter project has taken three audio-only Thunderbirds adventure recorded in the 1960s by the original cast, and is using Supermarionation to create what are effectively three new episodes of the 1960s series. And here’s the title sequence and a clip from the first one, The Abominable Snowman:

Pretty authentic, huh?

[via]