Classic TV

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

Classic TV

Lost Gems: Touching Evil (US)

14 May 2010 Rob Buckley 23 Comments

PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW.

Is six years too soon for something to be a Lost Gem? Whatever the haggling on that one, it’s a moot point now, since a Lost Gem is about to be recovered (briefly).

PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW.

The world is occasionally filled with small miracles. Tonight, starting at 2.45am, ITV1 in the UK has decided to reshow the US version of Touching Evil, one of the TV shows regularly flagged up in Top Ten Lists of “shows that should never have been cancelled”. Now you can take a trip back in time to 2005 and my fifth ever blog entry for a very exciting brief essay on why you should all watch it (and an exhortation that you should all watch season two of The Wire on FX, proof if any be needed that I’m right before everyone else, including Charlie Brooker, and you should all listen to me) or you can stick with me here for a few seconds for some updated reasons.

PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW.

If you’re unfamiliar with both the UK version (which starred Robson Green, was created by Paul Abbott with occasional scripts from the likes of Russell T Davies) and the US version, the more literal plot is that it’s about a police detective who gets shot – in the head – and who comes back to work brain damaged, his life a mess and his personality altered. However, that brain damage also gives him certain insights and skills (nothing supernatural, unlike the UK version) that enable him to catch criminals better, even if it does make him obsessive and cross lines he genuinely shouldn’t cross.

The less literal theme of the show, as the title suggests, is the corrosive nature of evil – how it affects those who do it, those around them and above all the people who have to stop them. And it’s brilliant. It’s dark, it’s brilliant, and it isn’t afraid to go to places US TV almost never goes. And happy endings in it are very, very rare, which isn’t to say it isn’t also very funny at times.

Why’s it so good? Mainly, because of the writing. It has scripts from the likes of Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist), Ronald D Moore (Battlestar Galactica), Anna Fricke (Everwood, Men in Trees, the forthcoming US version of Being Human) and Michael Angeli (Battlestar Galactica).

But it’s also exec-produced and occasionally directed by the Hughes Brothers (Dead Presidents, From Hell), who give the show a distinct air of unreality. You’re never quite sure if the whole thing is some near-death experience of the lead character’s; whether it is or it isn’t, it’s certainly beautiful to look at.

As if all that weren’t reason enough, there’s the cast. It stars Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice and the Oscar/BAFTA-nominated Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), and co-stars Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, The A-Team) and Kevin Durand (Lost). They weren’t such big names back then so now you get to see them c2004, stretching their acting muscles.

It also features guest appearances by actors including Peter Wingfield (Highlander, Caprica), David Eigenberg (Sex and the City), Andrea Thompson (Babylon 5), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Deadwood) and the mighty Željko Ivanek (Damages, Heroes), who manages to out-do Ian McDiarmid, who played the same role in the UK original.

To whet your appetite and to show you what kind of series it is, here’s the first three minutes or so, followed the wonderfully dark title sequence and excellent theme tune (episode two onwards), and a clip of some of the series highlights, should you want to spoil it for yourself.

But whatever you do, do yourself a favour and watch it. It’s not out on DVD and it only gets repeated every five years (although you can scour YouTube for the eps if you miss one).

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Children of the Stones (1977)

7 May 2010 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Children of the Stones

Back in the 70s, kids TV was full of the weird and wonderful. Whether it was on ITV or BBC1/BBC2 (youngsters: we only had three channels back then), you could come home from school, turn on the TV and pretty much be guaranteed some mentalist of a commissioner had ordered up 25 minutes of LSD-fuelled lunacy that seven PhD students couldn’t decipher the plot of but which was sure-fire certain to scar you for the rest of your life.

We could go through the list without too much trouble for quite some time and still not be complete: The Tomorrow People, Ace of Wands, King of the Castle, Timeslip, Sky, Catweazle, The Feathered Serpent, Escape into Night, The Jensen Code, Raven, Into the Labyrinth, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, Pipkins, Robert’s Robots, The Owl Service.

See what I mean? And I haven’t even started, really.

One of the most complicated, clever, “scare the sh*t out the kids”, yet hard-to-fathom shows was the seven-part serial Children of the Stones. This followed the adventures of astrophysicist Adam Brake (Gareth Thomas of Blakes 7) and his son Matthew after they arrive in the small village of Milbury, which is built in the middle of a megalithic stone circle. There they meet village squire and noted astronomer Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson) and possibly the most well behaved bunch of kids in the world, almost all of whom are doing quite well in quantum mechanics at the village school.

As you do.

Yes, there is something rotten in the heart of this village Eden, and it’s not just the quantum mechanics. There are mysterious deaths, Matthew seems to have a psychic link with a mysterious painting, there’s the mysterious stone circle that somehow seems to prevent them leaving the village, there’s the mysterious housekeeper, there’s the mysterious personality changes of anyone who goes to dinner with Hendrick. You get the idea. It’s all very mysterious.

Cue the mysterious, weird and soul-chilling title sequence, followed by the first ten minutes of the first episode.

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Classic TV

Lost Gems: A for Andromeda (1961)

23 April 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Julie Christie in A for Andromeda

Odd though it seems, the late 1950s and early 60s was the prime time in TV history for intelligent sci-fi. America had The Twilight Zone, we’d already had all the Quatermass serials and various plays. Sci-fi was smart.

In fact, so smart was sci-fi that the Beeb turned to noted cosmologist Fred Hoyle and said, “How would you like to write us a TV show?” which he did. Surprisingly, it turned out to be pretty good.

A for Andromeda is now the kind of show that other shows and movies steal from. Look at Species. Look at Contact: they’re basically A for Andromeda at heart. The Earth gets a message from outer space that contains instructions on how to build a machine. With some reluctance, humanity does as it’s told and then begins to wonder if it was a good idea after all.

A for Andromeda‘s machine is a computer which then goes on to create life in the form of Julie Christie, who, it turns out, humanity really does need to worry about. Not much of the show survives, but what does remain is available on DVD. That still makes it a Lost Gem. Cue the weird old title sequence and one of the only remaining episodes.

Continue reading “Lost Gems: A for Andromeda (1961)”

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Manimal (1983)

16 April 2010 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Manimal

There was a time when you couldn’t move on US TV for TV shows from the house of Glen A Larson. The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Magnum PI: all his. He did have a few failures, though: Automan, The Highwayman and Nightman were all his and they didn’t do too well.

His biggest failure was Manimal, which lasted all of eight episodes before being hacked to death. In the majority of Larson’s TV shows, there was an element of fantasy and Manimal probably had the biggest element of fantasy: the wealthy Jonathan Chase (Simon MacCorkindale, now on Holby City) is actually a shape-shifter who can turn himself into any animal of his choice, and uses this ability to help fight crime.

Usually very slowly. Cue the weird old title sequence.

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Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Bring ‘Em Back Alive (1982)

9 April 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Bring Em Back Alive

As weird old trends go, circa 1982, there was a big one on US TV: it was “We wish had a TV programme like Raiders of the Lost Ark“. So just before everything went techno with Street Hawk, Knight Rider, Airwolf et al, everything went 1930s. Odd, huh? As a result of this trend, as well as Tales of the Gold Monkey, US networks tried to cash in on Raiders with Bring ‘Em Back Alive.

Loosely based on the legendary wild animal collector Frank Buck, Bring ‘Em Back Alive saw big game hunter Frank Buck fighting dastardly Eastern spies in pre-war Malaya from out of the Raffles Hotel bar in Singapore, while dressed impeccably – or in a pith helmet and shorts – depending on the situation.

The show featured rising star Bruce Boxleitner, who went on to Scarecrow and Mrs King and Babylon 5 fame, and Cindy Morgan, who played Gloria, the US consul. Despite their almost romantic relationship, Gloria gets Buck to go on all his spying missions, where he typically comes across a damsel in distress who needs saving – in the first episode, that would be Gloria:

Hey trivia fans: Morgan and Boxleitner both appeared together in Tron the previous year:

And were reunited this year for the Tron: Legacy viral event:

As well as Boxleitner and Morgan, the show starred Clyde Kusatsu as Ali, Buck’s friend and No. 1 Boy (huh?); Ron O’Neal as HH, His Royal Highness, the Sultan of Johore, who was Buck’s competitor in the world of adventure; Sean McClory as Myles Delaney, manager of the Raffles Hotel; and John Zee as GB Von Turgo, smuggler and kingpin of the Singapore underworld. That’s all in the titles, so you know who’s who.

The plots were varied, but typically saw our Buck out and about in the East, moustache groomed nicely, braving wild animals and dastardly foreigners to preserve US interests overseas. I say “the East” but it was mostly shot on the back-lot of Columbia Picture Television’s Burbank Studios, with the Raffles Hotel built on the studio’s ‘New York Street’. Scenes that required an actual jungle as background were filmed in Hawaii and the Los Angeles Arboretum. Overall, it was as much like Singapore as Casablanca was like Casablanca, however.

With ‘Frank Buck’ based on a real person, the producers did go to some length to recreate certain aspects of Buck’s life. Buck’s compound was recreated from original photographs of his Katong headquarters and featured pictures of his parents hanging on the wall, as well as the flag of his home state, Texas.

It was diverting and fun stuff – not too taxing, but with a certain charm, although it didn’t quite manage to capture the charm of Raiders, so only lasted 18 episodes. But it lives on in memories if not DVD box sets unfortunately.

Here’s the weird old title sequence. You don’t get a whole load of salutes to camera and character descriptions in the titles, these days, do you?