Classic TV

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

Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: Head of the Class (1986-91)

24 January 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Head of the Class

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.

Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: Shelley (1979-84, 1988-92)

17 January 2013 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Once in a while, a show comes along that epitomises an era. Whether it’s The Rag Trade, Citizen Smith, Only Fools and Horses or The Young Ones, these shows depict something truthful about a certain part of the population and become almost instant hits as a result.

In the UK in the late 70s, unemployment was a serious political issue. Under Labour it had reached the unheard of figure of 1 million and under the Conservatives, it was soon to reach 3 million. ‘The Dole’ – aka unemployment benefit – was both a godsend for those who were poor and out of work and a bugbear for those who saw it as a way for skivers to get paid to not work.

And onto this scene came Shelley. It starred Hywel Bennett as the eponymous James Shelley, a professional layabout, an over-educated, underemployed loafer with a PhD, living in a grotty bedsit in North London, dedicating his life to not working and escaping from people who think he should be, such as the Inland Revenue. And Fran (Belinda Sinclair), his girlfriend with whom he lives and who thinks he should settle down and start working. Then there’s his bank manager, his landlady, the Labour Exchange… The list goes on.

But the anti-establishment, cynical Shelley – a sort of cross between Wolfie Smith and Tony Hancock – would rather dedicate himself to not working and pondering the philosophical implications of existence than to earning money the traditional way.

Created and then written by Peter Tilbury for three series before Drop The Dead Donkey creators Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin took over for another three, the show was massively successful, mainly thanks to the performance of Bennett, but also because Tilbury knew exactly what it was like to be on the dole in a grotty North London flat. And then there was the theme tune by Doctor Who theme tune composer Ron Grainer.

Eventually, all good things had to end and Shelley waved goodbye in 1984. But that wasn’t the last we were to see of him. In 1988, Shelley returned in The Return Of Shelley, after having moved to Saudi Arabia to teach English. Here, in scripts written once again by Hamilton and Jenkin, he has to get to grips with his now-yuppified old neighbourhood and all the other changes that have occurred in his absence. Fran has had enough, so the single Shelley ends up by himself, although the show did have a regular female presence in the shape of Caroline Langrishe (Pulaski).

For the show’s final two series, which reverted to being just Shelley, he moves in with David Ryall’s Ted for an unexpected spot of philanthropy – Ted’s house, in which he has lived his whole life, is the only one left in his street, the others having been demolished to make way for a leisure centre, so Shelley moves in to help Ted with his fight against the developers who want to demolish it.

Unfortunately, after 10 series, Shelley’s stay had grown unwelcome. It was a different age, and Shelley was a relic. It was time to call it a day. But never has one layabout put in so much effort into not making an effort.

Here are some clips and if you like it, at least some series are available on DVD.

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play – The Night America Trembled (1957)

16 January 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

One of the most infamous and amazing events in US radio history was the reaction to Orson Welles’ 1938 dramatisation of HG Well’s War of the Worlds. Unaware that it was fiction, many listeners believed they were hearing a live radio broadcast of a Martian invasion of New Jersey, and panicked accordingly.

Since then, the events of that night have been dramatised on several occasions, including the 1975 TV movie The Night That Panicked America. It even featured in an episode of the TV show War of the Worlds, which argued that the Welles broadcast was a cover-up for an actual Martian invasion.

But the first and perhaps most interesting dramatisation is today’ Wednesday Play: an episode of Studio One called The Night America Trembled. It looks at the effect the broadcast had on various elements of society, including a group of card-playing frat boys, some policemen and, most poignantly, a young girl babysitting some children. As well as the hallowed and smileless newscaster Edward R Murrow popping up to narrate and put the play in its historical context, it also features numerous actors who would later go on to become famous: as well as Ed Asner and Warren Oates, James Coburn makes his television debut, John Astin appears uncredited as a reporter and in one of his earliest acting roles, Warren Beatty plays one of those card-playing frat boys.

Perhaps its most remarkable feature, though, is that not once does Orson Welles get name-checked. Apparently, people were still a little sore about the whole thing…

Classic TV

Nostalgia Corner: The Amazing Spider-Man (1977-79)

10 January 2013 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

The Amazing Spider-man

These days, superheroes are all the rage in movies. TV series? Not so much, beyond Arrow and a few series stillin the works. But back in the 70s, TV was the natural home of the superhero, it seemed, with Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel/Shazam all getting simultaneous adaptations, and made-for-TV superheroes and heroines like Electra Woman, Dyna Girl, Isis, The Man From Atlantis and the Bionic Woman also getting a look-in.

One of the biggest comic book adaptations was The Amazing Spider-Man, which ran on CBS between 1977 and 1979. Starring Nicholas Hammond (a former von Trapp child from The Sound of Music), it sees mild mannered university student Peter Parker get bitten by a radioactive spider and as a result, become incredibly strong and gymnastic, as well as acquire the ability to stick to walls and ceilings and anticipate danger. With a little bit of scientific and engineering ingenuity, he even manages to create “web shooters” that enable him to shoot sticky and extremely strong webbing from cartridges on his wrists, so that he can swing from building to building, tie up criminals and so on.

After initially ignoring the responsibility of his new powers, Peter eventually decides to fight crime and gets a job as photographer on the Daily Bugle so that he can pay for his night-time endeavours – usually by taking exclusive pictures of himself as ‘Spider-Man’.

The show started as a back door pilot TV movie back in 1977…

…and was picked up for five episodes as a mid-season replacement in 1978. These initially did well, earning 16.6m viewers which made it CBS’s highest rated show. However, CBS, wary of being known as the ‘superhero network’ (since it already carried four other superhero shows), cancelled it. It then changed its mind and picked up the series for another eight episodes which aired sporadically: six in the autumn and winter of 1978 and a final two-hour episode in the summer. After that, the show was officially cancelled.

It’s fair to say no one was particularly happy with this Amazing Spider-Man. Fans objected to the changes made to the Parker storyline and the lack of any of Spider-Man’s super-villains from the comics. Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, despite being a consultant on the show, thought it was too juvenile. Production values weren’t great either, with the show being filmed in Los Angeles despite being set in New York, and Spider-Man noticeably always played by a stunt double rather than Hammond. With such sporadic air dates and lack of commitment from CBS, it’s no surprise that not only did J Jonah Jameson, the editor of the Daily Bugle, get played by a different actor in the series than in the pilot, Peter’s Aunt May was never played by the same actress twice.

Nevertheless, both the TV movie and the final two-part episode were released in cinemas around the world, the second movie benefitting greatly from having extensive footage shot in Hong Kong.

Since then, though, The Amazing Spider-Man has faded in many people’s memories. Unlike The Incredible Hulk, which has seen frequent repeats, DVD releases and a series of comeback movies in the 80s and 90s, The Amazing Spider-Man has instead languished in edited forms on VHS and laser-disc, the planned comeback TV series and movies never happened, and repeats have been few and far between.

But good old YouTube to the rescue. Here’s the title sequence and a playlist of all the episodes, you lucky people!

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: The Incredible Robert Baldick – Never Come Night (1972)

9 January 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

As we learnt last year in ‘The Wednesday Play’, the various play and anthology series that the BBC and other broadcasters used to make sometimes led to TV series being commissioned, based on individual plays. Usually, this wasn’t the intention behind making the play in the first place but something that emerged from the play’s popularity. But sometimes broadcasters have gone out of their way to create plays with the potential to become series.

Drama Playhouse was a BBC series launched in 1969 explicitly designed to showcase plays that had the potential to become series: indeed, each play uniquely had both a series title and an episode title when broadcast, despite ostensibly being one-offs. Between 1969 and 1972, over its three seasons each of three episodes, the series did quite well in achieving its aims: season one resulted in the 13-episode spy show Codename, starring The Champions‘ Alexandra Bastedo and Callan‘s Anthony Valentine; season two did even better giving us not only The Regiment and The Befrienders but also the mighty The Onedin Line; and had it not been for a little problem with the Munich Olympics, the final third season might have gone three for three as well. Unfortunately, although the first two plays, Sutherland’s Law and The Venturers, got picked up to series, the final installment, The Incredible Robert Baldick, never made it to a full run.

Given its pedigree, this was a little surprising. The play was written by Terry Nation, the creator of Doctor Who‘s Daleks and frequent contributor to ITC shows including The Avengers and The Persuaders!. When The Persuaders!, for which he was also script editor, didn’t get a second series, Nation returned after a six-year gap to the BBC and pitched his idea for a series: The Incredible Robert Baldick.

Despite being Nation’s work, The Incredible Robert Baldick – Never Come Night is for all intents and purposes a Nigel Kneale play, with its period setting that will turn out to contain future shocks (cf Kneale’s The Road), a brilliant scientist investigating a mysterious buried object that’s causing a haunting (Quatermass and the Pit) and the idea of a house retaining ‘memories’ of incidents and emotions that can be replayed (The Stone Tape, which amazingly wasn’t set to air for another few months). There are also elements of Doctor Who, with Robert Hardy’s polymath know-it-all zooming around the country in his specially built train, The Tsar, solving mysteries with the help of his entourage, including gamekeeper John Rhys Davies. He’s even called ‘Doctor’ by his friends. And the ending? Fascinating, but straight out of Doctor Who.

Indeed, as well as the Munich incident, it’s this ending that may have stopped a series being commissioned. Despite being an obvious attempt to lay down a series arc, its science fiction qualities were so out of keeping with the rest of the play’s more down-to-earth and supernatural tones that many of the audience felt cheated.

All the same, it’s an interesting and sometimes scary piece, and Robert Hardy is mesmerising as the eponymous Baldick – you can imagine what Doctor Who would have been like with him as the Doctor using just this as a template. Enjoy!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xstp9n