Once upon a time, there was a tiny little company called Mattel who made toys. You may have heard of them. Back in the 80s, they wanted to launch a new line of toys based around a barbarian character they’d created called He-Man. Since obviously no one had ever heard of He-Man, to advertise it, they took the radical move of getting US animation house Filmation to develop a cartoon series based on the toys.
Filmation, having been around for a while doing things like Space Sentinels, took their job seriously and really went to town. Although there was already a range of mini-comics that accompanied the toys, Filmation got in proper writers who developed series bibles, rewrote the comics, picked which characters to include in the show and more. Before you knew it, an entire background had been developed for all the characters and the planet on which they lived.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was born. Here’s its title sequence:
Which is stranger, do you think? The idea that once upon a time it was every American housewife’s dream to be whisked off her feet by a super-spy played by Bruce Boxleitner? Or that the US’s attempt to mirror the formula of The Avengers – male super-spy paired with talented female amateur – was Scarecrow and Mrs King, in which former Charlie’s Angel Kate Jackson, instead of playing an anthropologist or a millionaire industralist’s daughter, was a soccer mom?
Whichever was stranger, there was no denying the barn-storming appeal of the show, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK, starting in 1983. The plot saw the eponymous Amanda King, a divorced housewife who lives with her mother, Dotty, and her two young sons meeting Agency operative Lee Stetson, codenamed ‘Scarecrow’ one afternoon. He hands her a packet while he is being pursued, then later has to track her down to recover it, inadvertently getting her involved with his case.
Amanda tries to learn more about the Agency and ends up working for it, first in an office role and later training to become a full agent, while keeping her new job a secret from her family. Amanda and Lee work together frequently, though he is initially reluctant to work with the ‘rookie’, but they become a good team. As the series progresses, they develop a friendship that turns into a romantic relationship. Eventually they decide to marry, but they have to keep the marriage secret from their employer and their families.
Like The Avengers, Scarecrow and Mrs King was an escapist show with the same “will they, won’t they?” relationship between the two leads. Except of course, they did in the end. Unlike The Avengers, S&MK was relatively prosaic, more like Chuck, with few excursions into the weird and wacky, the focus being the contrast being the normal life of Mrs King and her exciting adventures with ‘Scarecrow’. Of course, no one ever died, was viciously tortured or captured by extremists, but that wasn’t the point. The point was for the viewer to imagine her life was like Mrs King’s and that she really could by a spy, too, if she wanted to, in between making the meals and picking the kids up from school.
The show lasted for four seasons and probably would have gone on for longer. Sadly, during the fourth season, Kate Jackson was diagnosed with breast cancer, reducing her role in that season and preventing a fifth season from getting the go-ahead.
Bruce Boxleitner, of course, had already been the star of Bring ‘Em Back Alive, went on to star in Babylon 5 and has had guest roles in Heroes and Chuck, to name but a couple of shows. He’ll also be reprising his role as Alan Bradley in Tron in the sequel Tron Legacy this year (no idea if he’ll play be playing the eponymous Tron as well); Kate Jackson now recurs on Criminal Minds.
I know the titles aren’t especially weird, but I think we’ve long passed that particular entry qualification, haven’t we? Here’s they anyway.
(As per usual when I’m in a rush, bits nicked from Wikipedia)
It had to happen. You don’t think I could continue this epic nostalgia-fest without mentioning cult kids’ TV show Monkey, do you?
For the uninitiated, Monkey (aka Monkey Magic) was a Japanese kids show that aired on BBC2 in the 80s, dubbed (with a couple of exceptions) by English actors such as Miriam Margolyes doing dodgy Japanese/Chinese accents.
It was based on a Chinese story about the Monkey king and his travels with a priest to recover some Buddhist scrolls, aided only by his natural cunning, a water monster and a pig-man and being a Japanese show it was completely mental: a combination of humour, surrealism, fight scenes and Buddhist philosophy.
For your delectation, the explanatory weird title sequence is below, but I’ve included a “best bits of” video as well. See if any of it makes sense to you.
Donald P Bellisario has had quite an influence on television over the years. Cutting his teeth on shows like the original Battlestar Galactica, he went on to create Magnum PI, Airwolf, Quantum Leap, JAG and NCIS.
But today, we’re going to be looking at another of his shows, Tales of the Gold Monkey, a slightly fondly remembered programme from the early 1980s that was a homage to stupid adventure films of the 1930s.
Guess what – it had a slightly prosaic but very weird old title sequence.
So, I’ve been catching up with Spartacus: Blood and Sand again after temporarily abandoning it after episode three. It’s not changed a huge amount, although surprisingly, not only have they finally introduced a couple of gay characters who get up to things in as much explicit detail as the m-f and f-f pairings, they’ve actually started moving away from female nudity in favour of mostly male nudity. Would you Adam and Eve it? It’s also got a little bit more interesting, and a little bit more intelligent, even if the swearing is still as pervasive as ever.
But while watching it, I finally realised what the shooting style reminded me of: Peter Brook’s adaptation of ‘The Mahabharata’. Shown on Channel 4 in 1989, this was a six-hour mini-series version of his nine-hour stage play and focused on the epic battle between the Pandavas (representing the good side) and the Kauravas (representing the bad side) depicted in the Hindu epic poem.
See if you agree: here’s a trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand – ignore the fight scenes, since they belong to a completely different aesthetic
…and here’s a few clips from The Mahabharata. You can get it on DVD from Amazon, by the way.
