There’s nothing like grainy TV and film footage and an authoritative-sounding narrator to really scare the crap out of people, particularly kids, with the mysterious and unexplained. This truism was very much proved with Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, a 13-part TV series narrated by newsreader Gordon Honeycombe that looked at every bit of weirdness the world seemed to offer in those days: the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, Bigfoot, giant figures in the landscape, UFOs, the Tunguska explosion, giant squids, stone circles and more.
Bookended by science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, opining from Sri Lanka on how likely any of these things were, each episode went around the world to interview witnesses, take pictures and generally scare the crap out of you with the help of scary music and Honeycombe’s commentary. Not all of it was of the scary variety, however, with episodes looking at the ‘Antikythera mechanism’ (last seen in BBC4’s The 2,000 Year Old Computer a couple of weeks ago) and vitrified hill forts in Scotland, for example. Yet somehow, through the sheer power of suggestion, the creepy crystal skull logo, the equally scary theme tune and Gordon Honeycombe, it all still seemed terrifying, even when Clarke popped up at the end to invariably say he didn’t believe a word of it.
You can watch all of it on YouTube, so take your pick of how you want to frighten yourself with this playlist:
The show hit something of a vein in the public consciousness, with huge numbers of people watching it. It even got satirised by The Goodies in their LWT show.
So popular was Mysterious World that it launched a 13-part sequel show Arthur C Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, which followed in Mysterious World‘s footsteps by examining psychics, stigmata, clairvoyants and others, putting forward the best cases possible for their existence without any real scepticism whatsoever. It’s actually this series that most people remember, thanks to its focus on things that could really terrify, such as ghosts and poltergeists. However, whether it was because Anna Ford was now doing the narration or I was five years older, it all seemed less scary somehow.
Again, it’s all over YouTube, so choose which one you want to scare yourself stupid with from this playlist .
Nearly 10 years later, ITV returned to Clarke for yet more un-mined mysteries of the world, with Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, this time narrated by Carol Vorderman. Following the same template as the earlier shows, this looked at everything from the mysteries of the pyramids and zombies through to appearances of the Virgin Mary and crop circles. Whether it was just because the footage was less grainy now, Carol Vorderman is no Gordon Honeycombe or I was 10 years older, it wasn’t scary at all, although you can decide for yourself with this playlist.
The shows didn’t have a huge cultural legacy, although the Divine Comedy did release a song called ‘Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World’.
It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I watched last week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual recommendations from the first-run shows are: The Almighty Johnsons, The Apprentice, Awake, The Bridge, Community, Cougar Town, The Daily Show,House, Mad Men, Modern Family, Prisoners of War and 30 Rock. Hunt them down.
Being promoted to the recommendations list this week are Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt 23 – which while not the best show ever made, is sufficiently, consistently amusing, evil and full of James Van Der Beek that I’m ready to add to the list – and Prisoners of War, which I’ve just reviewed,
It was a weekend of catch-ups and random viewings last week, so I actually managed to watch a few movies and try a few random new shows.
Common Law:USA Network’s trailer for this buddy-buddy cop show made it look awful. Guess what? It was awful. I couldn’t watch more than 10 minutes of this derivative, unfunny cobblers before I had to switch off. Not even Sonya Walger could save it.
Playhouse Presents: Sky Arts’ series of one-off plays, this one starring Olivia Williams, Martin Shaw, Lucy Punch and Rhashan Stone from Strike Back: Project Dawn (he also wrote it). A nice idea – woman who stands up to rioters beats a Boris Johnson-alike to become Mayor of London – but there was apparently nothing new to say here, judging by the inconclusive script, Williams’ Northern accent was rubbish, Shaw and Punch hammed it up, and Stone gave himself all the best lines. But you’ve got to love that Sky Arts (or someone) is doing plays.
Still playing catch-up with Sunday’s viewing though, with Veep and Mad Men still to watch.
It’s also finally time to dump Touch, which looks like it might be going somewhere but is being so boring about it, has the terrible Mohinder-esque voiceovers at the beginning and end, and is just so incredibly insulting about how it thinks special needs children are treated that blood boils whenever it broaches the subject. They’ve also introduced Kabbalah to the equation, which means they need beating.
Now here’s a few thoughts on the regulars:
Missing – thankfully, they’ve written out the rubbish Italian guy in favour of a better English character (although, naturally, they had to make her a Lady). Sean Bean also got to do a decent fight scene. Otherwise, it’s just plodding along really, with supposedly shock moments arriving with inevitability rather than, erm, shock.
Cougar Town – so they didn’t bite the bullet on Lori/Travis, but a decent episode nevertheless and funny, too.
Awake – A shame it’s been cancelled because that was an absolutely fabulous episode and Jason Isaacs should be nominated for an Emmy at least for his performance. Loving the suggestion now that he is genuinely off his rocker.
Community – Is there a word for a meta episode that’s meta about its metaness? Still not exactly funny, but had some superb twists and turns of plot.
The Bridge – now this is how to be a surprising show. Can’t wait for the last two episodes!
House – was that Peter Robocop Weller as the surgeon? Notable only as a way to move Chase’s storyline along, really.
And in movies:
Avatar: Yes, I know I slightly missed the boat on that one, but I thought I’d give it a try. Probably looks incredible on the big screen and might even be good in 3D, but that’s really its only saving grace. The plot is such a mish-mash of Dances With Wolves,The Word For World is Forest and Dragonriders of Pern that any originality got lost somewhere on the way to Pandora; the characters are either almost non-existent or cliches, despite all of Cameron’s attempts to inject them with personalities; the acting’s terrible, particularly Sam “Could I be any more Australian?” Worthington’s; and the whole thing goes on forever, never-ending, never stopping, never willing to give the audience release from its terrible tedium.
Firefox: The Clint Eastwood movie, not the browser. A really dull first half that does at least show how terrible life in the Soviet Union was, but a really cracking second-half ruined only by not having the technology to do proper aircraft effects in those days, it still is flawed, partly because of Eastwood’s direction choices: if you’re going to have thought-controlled weaponry, make it look very fast, not like you have to press two buttons and then say everything in very slow Russian to make it work. But the strange thing is that in retrospect, it just looks like a bigger budget first pilot that got recast and turned into Airwolf. Basically the same plots. The music sounds the same in places. I’m surprised there weren’t lawsuits. I mean look at the names, for heaven’s sake! It’s even got blueprints in the trailer!
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: The Justice League travel to an alternate universe where Lex Luthor is the only superhero left alive to fight the terrible tyranny of Ultraman, Superwoman and Owlman, as well as cohorts like Johnny Quick. It’s something of a curiosity since it doesn’t involve the usual voiceover artists, instead favouring mostly famous actors like William Baldwin, James Woods and Chris Noth (Vanessa Martin does Wonder Woman’s voice for a change – she also does Black Widow’s voice in the Marvel Avengers series). It also tries to do a bit of aetiology (such as “This is how Wonder Woman got her invisible plane”), since it was also intended to link the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited TV series. Although the obvious thing would be for DC to show how the parallel Earth’s superheroes illustrate something about the normal Earth’s, only Owlman really works as both a parallel and a character in his own right; Ultraman is really a thug and Superwoman isn’t even Wonder Woman’s mirror, there being another Wonder Woman-esque character for her to beat. So not one of the best efforts, although there are some surprisingly well drawn fight sequences, with Wonder Woman getting a very nifty martial arts fight at one point, and we don’t have to endure much Green Lantern for a change, thankfully.
“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?
“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?
