UK TV

All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

Ironically, it was only a matter of time until I got round to Sapphire and Steel. Now I have the time, so let’s delve into one of the coolest, scariest TV shows there’s ever been on UK TV.

I say ironically, because Sapphire and Steel is a show about time – specifically, Time going wrong, usually as the result of things that live in the ‘corridor of Time’ but sometimes of its own volition. In the world of Sapphire and Steel – which is also our modern world or at least the modern world of the 1970s and 80s – Time is everywhere and it is the enemy. It wants to break in. It wants to trap you. It wants to steal your parents. It wants to eat your soul. And then it wants to do the same to everything and everyone you know.

And to stop the world as we know it being destroyed when this happens, mysterious entities, apparently named after the elements*, perhaps even the incarnations of the elements themselves, intercede using all kinds of weird, unexplainable powers.

However, if you think they’re here to help us, you’re sorely mistaken, because Sapphire and Steel, played by Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, are not like you and me. Even when they pretend to be on our side, to empathise with the predicaments of the mortal and human, they’re not. And they’re ever-so-willing to sacrifice every single one of us if necessary if they have to stop time. They have their own morality, their own rules and they don’t care about us. But they’re the only thing stopping history making us history, so do what they say.

Allow Sapphire to explain to the nature of Time to these annoying children and then follow me after the ever so scary title sequence to explain a little more about this most engrossing of shows:

Alternatively, there’s this rather lovely documentary about the show.

Continue reading “Nostalgia corner: Sapphire and Steel (1979-82)”