Weird old title sequences

Old TV programmes that had really weird title sequences

Weird old title sequences: Vision On

5 February 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

If you’re old enough and British, you probably remember Morph and Take Hart. If you’re very slightly older you’ll just about remember their precursor, Vision On, a show designed to educate, inform, entertain and hopefully even get children fired up about art – particularly if they were deaf.

Vision On was the brainchild of producer Patrick Dowling, who went on to produce The Adventure Game. It was designed to replace For The Deaf but quickly picked up a wider audience. The aim of the programme was to entertain but also to encourage imagination, with a fast-paced flow of contrasting ideas, both sane and silly.

The presenters were Pat Keysell, an actress who also taught deaf children, and Tony Hart who made pictures in a variety of sizes and media, and encouraging children to submit their own paintings to “The Gallery”, which they did in their thousands. ‘Actor’ Sylvester “Sylveste” McCoy also mucked around in true silent comedy/mime style.

The show aired on BBC1 for 12 years, from 1964 to 1976, and even afterwards, its legacy lived on through other programmes, including Take Hart starring the now-vocal Tony Hart, and Jigsaw, which was developed by one of Vision On‘s later producers, Clive Doig, and featured Sylvester McCoy as well as the silent “Nosey Bonk”; Eureka, another Doig show, also saw Vision On/Jigsaw contributor and mad inventor Wilf Lunn doing his shtick for another generation.

In its mission to fire up kids about art, it worked. It’s a hazard of the job knowing graphic designers and I know a number who were inspired to become designers purely thanks to Vision On and Take Hart. I doubt any of them were inspired by its very weird old title sequence though.

Weird old title sequences: The Phoenix

29 January 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

I never watched this show. I don’t think it even aired in the UK. If it had, it shouldn’t have because it looks awful. But it stars that bloke who played Khan’s son in Star Trek II and the title sequence is both old and weird – as well as ridiculously funny – so here you go. No explanations needed – the voiceover man will tell you everything you need to know in hysterical detail – but the hero was Bennu and got his powers from the sun, and his opponent was Yago and got his powers from the moon (and ‘The Black Moonball’ and ‘The Bells of Thon’).

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Invaders (1967)

22 January 2010 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

The Invaders

Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a kind of show that we don’t really see any more: “the fixing-up wanderer” show. Whether it was The Immortal, Branded, Coronet Blue, The Fugitive, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu or any of the others, the format was essentially the same and designed to allow shows to be broadcast in any order during syndication, re-runs, etc, without anyone getting lost: a man (it was always a man) would travel from town to town, doing his best to evade some horrible authority or person chasing after them; he’d try to stay low profile, but sooner or later, he’d discover some drama in the town that needed fixing. The situation would get fixed and the hero would move on to another town for the next episode, typically without anything happening that would change the overall show format (unless it was the first or last episode of a season).

Many of these shows were from Quinn Martin Productions, and after the popular The Fugitive started to draw to close in 1967, producers started looking for a replacement show of the same ilk. Larry Cohen, the creator of both Branded and Coronet Blue, came up with something that hooked into the flying saucer craze that had gripped the nation since the late 50s. It was The Invaders and it had a weird old title sequence.

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Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Avengers

15 January 2010 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

The Avengers

Today’s weird old title sequences are for The Avengers. You remember The Avengers don’t you? Steed, this dapper bloke in a bowler hat, and his lovely sidekick Mrs Peel fight weird sci-fi crimes together?

Kind of.

You see The Avengers changed a lot over its six series. Originally envisioned as a vehicle for rising star Ian Hendry from Police Surgeon, it began with Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry) investigating the murder of Peggy, his office receptionist and wife-to-be, by a drug ring. A mysterious trenchcoat-wearing stranger named John Steed (Patrick Macnee), who was investigating the ring, appeared on the scene and together they set out to avenge her death in the show’s first two episodes – hence the show’s title ‘The Avengers’. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to continue partnering him when needed to solve crimes.

In this first series, Steed was the secondary character – he doesn’t even appear in some episodes. He also isn’t the dapper man about town we all grew to know and love, either. He was a hard-edged, ruthless character, willing to do what it took to get the job done, with Hendry’s Keel providing the moral centre for their work. In keeping with this blunt, down-at-heel approach, the show got some equally down-at-heel titles, with Hendry and Macnee lurking around on street corners in their trenchcoats, and – oh f*ck no – a jazz theme tune.

But slowly, the show began to change – and get a whole load more weird title sequences.

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Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Professionals

7 January 2010 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

The Professionals

Britain is in crisis. Criminals are literally getting away with murder. Crime is common in Britain’s cities, and the ordinary decent citizen is scared for his or her life. What can be done?

Well the obvious solution, surely, is to create an autonomous criminal investigation organisation with minimal oversight, recruit agents to it from the police and armed forces, train them in commando tactics, arm them, then let them do anything they like, provided it catches criminals.

That solution’s sound as a pound, isn’t it?

Anyway, that’s the background to The Professionals, a late 70s/early 80s drama created by The Avengers supremo Brain Clemens and starring Lewis Collins, Martin Shaw and Gordon Jackson as Bodie, Doyle and their boss Cowley. Each week, these agents of CI5 would stomp around, either undercover or badges-flashing, and do whatever it took to stop those crims. Maybe get some heroin and threaten to addict a dealer if he doesn’t give them information.

Or how about release a hostage-taker’s brother from prison then threaten to shoot him in front of the hostage-taker if he doesn’t surrender?

The Professionals

Whatever it took.

Liberal nightmare though this was, it was an insanely popular show, the 24 of its day and far grittier, and in many ways better. Sure Bodie and Doyle could get away with murder if they wanted and the show’s attitude to women was beyond misogynistic, but their buddy-buddy relationship was well drawn and humorous, the show was incredibly well cast, it had a wonderfully catchy theme tune and it was written by people who knew how to plot to a tee.

So popular did it become that the army would frequently lend it weaponry in a pre Top Gun bit of boys’ toys-placement designed to inspire the nation’s young men to join up. And there are men today who would gladly drive a Ford Capri, purely thanks to its constant usage in four of the five seasons of the show.

To show you just how ridiculously action-packed it was, here’s a clip of one protracted stunt scene followed by… the weird old titles of The Professionals. Note the crashing car – there’s no reason for that; and Martin Shaw never once did Kendo (or whatever he’s pretending to do with that stick) in the whole series as far as I know.