Every month, TMINE lets you know what TV the BFI will be presenting at the South Bank in London
December is usually when the BFI starts dolling out its TV presents to one and all, like Scrooge after the third ghost has visited, and this year is no different. As well as the traditional League of Gentlemen chat and the usual Missing Believed Wiped revelation of what previously lost TV has been recovered this year (as well as a new animated Doctor Who episode anyone?), there’s a whole bunch of TV previews with starry Q&As afterwards:
Sound of Movie Musicals, with Neil Brand
The ABC Murders with Rupert Grint and Tara Fitzgerald
The Midnight Gang, with David Walliams and Alan Davies
Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas Special with Brendan O’Carroll, Jennifer Gibney, Paddy Houlihan and Danny O’Carroll
There’s a short season devoted to the rise of alternative comedy, while Nish Kumar and special guests will be discussing the new wave of TV satire. There’s even a sitcom workshop for young people. All that before Christmas, too!
Ten rebrands as 10, green lights: dark drama The Secrets She Keeps, Lucy Lawless investigator My Life is Murder and comedy Mr Black with Stephen Curry and Nadine Garner
It’s Halloween today. It’s also Wednesday. As it’s an occasional TMINE tradition to feature not only a spooky play at Halloween but also a play on Wednesdays, how can I resist featuring one today, in this year of all years?
But what to choose? Well, since I’ve been talking about The Haunting of Hill House quite a bit of late and since I happened to mention Lost Hearts in passing thanks to certain bad make-up decisions, there’s an obvious choice, isn’t there?
It’s Lost Hearts. Wasn’t that obvious? It was certainly as obvious as just about everything in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
A Ghost Story For Christmas
For those of you who don’t know, Lost Hearts was one of the much revered scary plays the BBC put out every Christmas during the 1970s, usually as part of the A Ghost Story For Christmas strand. As with most of the plays, Lost Hearts was an adaptation of a classic MR James ghost story. This one sees a young orphan sent to stay with his much older cousin at a remote country mansion. His cousin is a reclusive alchemist obsessed with making himself immortal and Stephen is repeatedly troubled by visions of a young gypsy girl and a travelling Italian boy…
Adapted by Robin Chapman and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, it’s notable as both the shortest of the Ghost Story For Christmas series as well as the only one to use hurdy-gurdy music to scare the crap out of the viewer.
Incidentally, this wasn’t the first British TV adaptation of Lost Hearts, since it was featured in ITV’s Mystery and Imagination series in 1966. However, just like The Road (recently remade by Radio 4) no copy of that first version exists, unfortunately.
Sleep well, everyone.
As always, if you liked the play, support its creators by buying it on DVD
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
Not many new shows this week, so I was able to make it through the entire first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina yesterday. I also passed verdict on Titans(US: DC Universe; UK: Netflix). I’m not sure if Netflix or Amazon have anything shiny and new for me this coming weekend, so who knows what might happen on Monday. I might even review all the films I’ve watched in the past six months in the exceptionally infrequent ‘Movie Monday’…
After the jump, we can talk about all the usual regulars: Black Lightning, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Doctor Who, Happy Together, The Last Ship, Magnum P.I., Pine Gap, and You. We can also talk about the final episode of Mr InBetween and the final two episodes of The Haunting of Hill House…
