ITC shows

Questions and realisations from television last week: Burn Notice

22 September 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s back, but it’s mutated. “Things I learned from watching television last week”/“Things I learned from television last week”/“Things I learnt from last week’s television” (style guide? What style guide?) has returned – but in a different guise (as promised). After a brief experiment last week, it has now emerged from the pupa of my brain into something hopefully more butterfly-like than the original caterpillars.

Here goes: this week’s question(s) – which I throw open to the floor to answer, whether you’ve seen the show or not – and realisation(s) – for which I also invite comment – come from having watched the rather good finale of Burn Notice on Friday.

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Cult TV: The Golden Age of ITC

8 June 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Cult TV: The Golden Age of ITC
by Robert Sellers

Anyone interested in the history of British television will be aware of Lew Grade’s company, ITC. Dominating the 50s, 60s and 70s with shows such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Danger Man, The Saint, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, The Prisoner, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Jesus of Nazareth, and Sapphire and Steel, ITC was a production powerhouse, the likes of which we’ll probably never see again.

Robert Sellers book, Cult TV: The Golden Age of ITC, attempts to chronicle at least some of that history. With a foreword by Sir Roger Moore and an afterword by Gerry Anderson, the book includes interviews with many of the shows’ surviving stars and production staff and provides some insight into their continuing success as cult television, even if it’s not the perfect .

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Saturday night ITC fun at the NFT

30 October 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Tickets may already have sold out, but if they haven’t and you’re not off to a fireworks display like me, there’s a couple of tele events at the NFT this Saturday that look interesting. Gerry Anderson, creator of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, et al is going to talk about his days at ITC. To get you up to speed with ITC, preceding that will be a Gallop Through the Archives, with clips from various ITC shows, as well as a full episode of The Buccaneers. Both sound fun, so book if you can.

The Persuaders! movie gets a writer

24 October 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

‘Classic’ ITC series The Persuaders! is being turned into a movie. So far, it looks like Ben Stiller and Steve Coogan are going to play Danny Wilder and Lord Brett Sinclair, played by Tony Curtis and Roger Moore in the original. Now they’ve found a writer, David Dorfman, to write the screenplay. He was responsible for Anger Management, so react to that news how you want.