Classic shows that have almost been forgotten, as well as shows that should probably have been forgotten
Look at this: it’s New Zealand getting in on the public information films with a warning about ladders. This is quite frightening and well done, actually.
Network has completed a new film about the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson that’s going to be released in Autumn 2014. They were the minds behind Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray, UFO, Space: 1999 et al, in case you don’t know.
Directed and produced by Stephen La Rivière (The Story Of Upstairs Downstairs, We Were ‘The Champions’), Filmed In Supermarionation is a screen adaptation of his book of the same name telling the story of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s TV productions using a wealth of previously unseen archive footage, new interviews with those involved, and clips from the shows themselves.
And here’s a trailer.
When you think of genre-defining Scottish spies, you usually think of James Bond. True, James Bond started off as the quintessential English hero in Ian Fleming’s books, but once Sean Connery assumed the mantle in the movies, he became so synonymous with Bond than even Fleming felt compelled to make Bond Scottish, something very evident in the latest Bond movie, Skyfall.
But long, long before Bond, back when even Ian Fleming was just a young boy, there was another Scottish spy who more or less defined the genre in the first place: Richard Hannay. Based in part on Edmund Ironside, an Edinburgh-born spy during the Second Boer War, Hannay appeared in no fewer than seven books by John Buchan, the best known of which is The Thirty-Nine Steps.
Set in 1914, it sees ex-soldier and engineer Hannay visited in his London flat by a man called Scudder, a freelance spy, who reveals that there’s a German plot to assassinate the Greek premier during a forthcoming visit to London. When Scudder is murdered, the finger points at Hannay who not only has to evade the authorities and the German spy ring that killed Scudder, he also to save the Greek premier and expose the ring.
Buchan’s ‘shocker’ was an instant, astonishing hit, and proved so enticing that Alfred Hitchcock adapted it in 1935 with Robert Donat as Hannay.
But that was far from the last time the book was adapted. As well as numerous radio adaptations, including one with Orson Welles, a 1959 film directed by Ralph Thomas saw Kenneth More become Hannay.
More recently, Rupert Penry-Jones became Hannay for a 2008 BBC TV adaptation.
And even now, a comedic version of the book is a West End staple.
However, the best known adaptation of the story is the 1978 movie directed by Don Sharp and starring Robert Powell…
…that’s famous for out-doing Hitchcock with this scene on Big Ben.
So well regarded was this version that over a decade later, ITV asked Robert Powell if he’d reprise the role for a TV series called, naturally enough, Hannay. Here are the rather engaging, patriotic, not-at-all symbolic titles.
Continue reading “Nostalgia Corner: Hannay (1988-1989)”Bad reviews and low audience turnouts can really shake a playwright’s nerves. Case in point: Rodney Ackland.
Ackland’s The Pink Room/The Escapists was the playwright’s first large-cast drama, following a series of musical collaborations during the 1940s. First performed in Brighton and then at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1952, the play was set in Soho right after World War 2 and had a cast of characters including gay men, lesbians, party girls, drunks and drag queens that pushed stage ‘morality’ at the time to its limits.
Unsurprisingly, it got a severe critical panning and the play’s financier – no lesser a person than Terence Rattigan – is alleged to have never wanted to see Ackland again.
As a result, for 40 years, apart from one further play and an adaptation, that was it from Ackland. However, in the 1980s, when permissiveness was greater and while suffering from leukaemia, Ackland decided to rewrite the play, retitling it Absolute Hell in the process. And in 1988, it was performed in Richmond at the Orange Tree to some success – a little too late for Ackland.
In 1991, just a few months before Ackland’s death, Anthony Page adapted it for the BBC. Starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Francesca Annis, Charles Gray, Nathaniel Parker, Ray Winstone and many others, Absolute Hell is thoroughly enjoyable, if only to see the great and the good gaying it up for all they’re worth.
Enjoy!
It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in April 2014. Opera dominates the schedule this time, with a season of opera productions, both filmed and specially performed for television, and a Q&A with Mr Jonathan Miller himself about the future of opera on TV. But there’s also a season starting in April celebrating BBC2’s 50th anniversary, an evening devoted to April Fool jokes and a Missing Believed Wiped Special devoted to Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ The Complete and Utter History of Britain that will be introduced by Palin himself.
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