Cult TV Blog

Strangely, one of the things which gives me most pleasure on this blog is blogging about episodes of shows which no longer exist, such as the posts I've done on series 1 episodes of The Avengers. There is something spectacularly contrary about the cult TV world. The TV stations wipe all their shows (for Reasons) thinking that we won't ever want to watch them again and we spend decades on the internet locating reel to reel off-air recordings and wipe-shaming the BBC into remaking the shows that they made in the first place. We damn well WILL see those shows again even if it's on an odd reel that somehow made its way to Cape Town - it's almost as if the cult TV world *prefers* TV which has been wiped. So we have reconstructed Who, and we have original scripts of The Avengers recorded by Big Finish. Hancock's Half Hour is another show which suffered from junking and has been reconsctructed. If you like the radio shows I cannot recommend The Missing Hancocks highly enou...

Warning : this post includes mention of psychiatric treatments which some people might find distressing or controversial. In a recent post on  The Prisoner  I referred to this show and have since dug deeper about it and it's absolutely fascinating. The Hurt Mind was a whole BBC series intended to educate the public about mental health. There is vanishingly little about it on the internet, it doesn't even seem to be on IMDb, and I have no idea of its preservation status. You can see the only episode available online  here . It's about the then-current physical psychiatric treatments. I was in two minds about blogging about it both because I'm bound to get on my high horse and because in that state I'm bound to start saying things people don't like. But then I thought fuck it. Besides this show strangely offers some helpful background to my current posts on The Prisoner so I will tag it in with them. There's very little about this but there is this good summar...

The introduction and master post to this series of posts about The Prisoner can be found  here . Warning : this post includes mention of psychiatric treatments which some people might find distressing or controversial. One of the remarkable things about watching this show while assuming that Smith/Number 6 is a patient in a psychiatric hospital is that it literally turns the whole show on its head. Rather than being a tale of evil governmental control and manipulation, the authorities are (generally speaking that is, the special nature of The Village can't be overstated) on the side of kindliness and want Smith to get better. Smith thereby becomes the villain of the story - he rejects this kindly help at every turn, creates havoc in the hospital and all this is in addition to something he has already done to Seltzman! You may think that turning it round like this would be impossible with A, B and C because it is absolutely always seen as being about the authorities getting the reas...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I seem to have come to the end of the orphaned episodes I have for now, and this post is to gather together some shows that I think people might like but I don't think I can squeeze a whole post out of each one. I still have one separate post to publish with my reflections on this journey down the junked TV rabbit hole. Mornin' Sarge  (1989) is a single season comedy set in an incompetent police station and made by the team behind  They Came from Somewhere Else . You can read the story behind this team  here . Not to beat about the bush I think this show may be a bit Marmite, and online opinion seems to be divided between raving about it and a few people saying it wasn't much cop (geddit?). The  pilot episod e has got loose on the internet. Mr Majeika is an almost legendary children's TV series about a wizard who has failed his exams seventeen times so is sent to earth to teach in a primary school. He...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . Another post about an orphaned episode and another emotional flip for me - this time to the feeling you get half way through a three year degree. You've started it for perfectly good reasons are in danger of getting tired of it and would jack it in if you had a career to go to. I won't comment more at this point because I have a longer post planned for when these are over, including about how it's been such a wild ride emotionally. A trip back to the fifties today, when Britain was a bastion of moral uprightness and integrity. We were a beacon of hope to the entire world. If you ignore our empire, slavery, rape, pillage and frequent genocide that is. Honestly, you look at Boris and I don't know why anyone's surprised. I might be feeling rather negative. Anyway, I did have a point which was to say that 1950s TV really does take us into an alien world, with alien conventions. There is the imaginary Famous F...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I think everyone reading this must be aware of the legendary 1950s radio show  The Goon Show ? It is literally famous and well known for its great creativity and innovation in its humour, often seen as a precursor of the humour of the Pythons and others. And I'm afraid to say I don't like it. Talk about antisocial. It actually took me a long time to work out why and it is the totally idiosyncratic reason that Harry Secombe's voice goes through me. God it looks even more ridiculous written down than it does in the privacy of my own head, where my funny little ways are given free rein. Anyway, I would love the humour, but just can't listen to The Goon Show. For that reason I am delighted that the other members of the Goons went on to do this TV show, because it is basically the same humour. I am equally gutted that as far as I can tell this is the only episode extant. It is another show largely reflective of TV...

The introduction to this series of posts can be found  here . I didn't know this show existed until yesterday but am delighted to have found it. It is Hancock's first venture into television after his previous successful radio series. After achieving massive success with his BBC radio show, Tony Hancock's first television series was not for the BBC, but for Associated-Rediffusion's Jack Hylton Presents strand. Hancock seemed a little lost without his radio writers, Galton and Simpson, in what was a rather variable series, but with the help of scriptwriter Eric Sykes, he managed to get into his stride, aided by the excellent June Whitfield (Hattie Jacques in one episode), and other regulars Clive Dunn and John Vere. Hancock's visual and verbal ability to be himself, everyman, while partly in character, helped offset some weaker material, and the auction sketch in episode 6, with its spontaneous Mr Punch routine, is close to his best. We are constantly reminded that t...

I have rarely had the opportunity to write about 1950s TV here and I'm not really doing so now, since I'm writing about the Hammer film which used the original TV series as its source. This 1953 series is a legend in the world of cult TV: Originally comprising six half-hour episodes, it was the first science fiction production to be written especially for a British adult television audience.[1] Previous written-for-television efforts such as Stranger from Space (1951–52) were aimed at children, whereas adult entries into the genre were adapted from literary sources, such as R.U.R. (1938 and again in 1948) and The Time Machine (1949).[2] The serial was the first of four Quatermass productions to be screened on British television between 1953 and 1979. It was transmitted live from the BBC's original television studios at Alexandra Palace in London, one of the final productions before BBC television drama moved to west London. As well as spawning various remakes and sequels, T...

Today a post which I wasn't sure would really fit the description of this blog, and this lady may not be that well known abroad. On reflection I don't see how I could have had any doubt, since the country's first celebrity chef, who cooked in evening dress in The Royal Albert Hall, was a serial bigamist, invented her own past, cooked food dyed blue and green to look like trees and all sorts of strange things, publicly roared at her common law husband and assistants, and entertained the nation with her cookery programmes... Well if that isn't Cult TV I don't know what it is! I will try to stick to the TV I promise, and not get too caught up in her scandalous private life, but I must just say that Fanny Cradock with her husband Johnny was also the real person behind the character called 'Bon Viveur' who has a column in The Telegraph for years and years. I have found some reflections by her successor in the same role: Trawling the Telegraph’s archives, I ...