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Post by rawlinson on Apr 14, 2017 22:01:31 GMT
Absolutely loving it, yeah. I even bought a second copy for a friend because I knew she'd love it as well. It was nice to see the Big Finish audio productions get a mention in the Survivors article. They're an excellent companion piece to the t.v. show.
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scarred
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 63
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Post by scarred on Apr 14, 2017 23:01:01 GMT
Absolutely loving it, yeah. I even bought a second copy for a friend because I knew she'd love it as well. It was nice to see the Big Finish audio productions get a mention in the Survivors article. They're an excellent companion piece to the t.v. show. That's very gratifying, thank you. I can't tell you how thrilled I was to find out that Alan Barnes had bought a copy of our book.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 16, 2017 14:11:48 GMT
I seem to remember Michael J Bird serials being tv events to anticipate and to savour back then. There was one called The Dark Side of the Sun set in the Greek islands which I seem to recall had a very sinister satanic undertone. I know Patrick Mower and Peter Egan were in it. There was another called Maelstrom but I can't recall a blessed thing about it.
Then there was Potter's Blackeyes which was creepy for entirely different reasons.
Also recall a great one off tv film called The Lorelei with Amanda Redman. Believe it qualifies.
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Post by rawlinson on Apr 16, 2017 14:39:27 GMT
And Charles Gray brushed off his Mocatta moves for What Dreams May Come (1985), a fab Black Magic episode of Bergerac. Ah, yes, the Bergerac equivalent of Casting the Runes. I see that this episode and the other well-regarded supernatural episode, Fires in the Fall, are both on the same Series 4 DVD set, so I may have to add that to the DVD pile. Just ended up ordering a copy of this, so if it's no good I'm blaming the two of you. I really don't remember Bergerac, is it as mental as early Midsomer Murders? I'm still traumatised by seeing Henry Gordon Jago decapitated.
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Post by rawlinson on Apr 16, 2017 14:44:13 GMT
I seem to remember Michael J Bird serials being tv events to anticipate and to savour back then. There was one called The Dark Side of the Sun set in the Greek islands which I seem to recall had a very sinister satanic undertone. I know Patrick Mower and Peter Egan were in it. There was another called Maelstrom but I can't recall a blessed thing about it. Then there was Potter's Blackeyes which was creepy for entirely different reasons. Also recall a great one off tv film called The Lorelei with Amanda Redman. Believe it qualifies. The Lorelei is excellent. 1990 though. Which is another reason it's a shame there won't be a 90s edition. There was also a great M.R. James influenced t.v. play called Do Not Disturb from 1991 with Peter Capaldi.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 16, 2017 15:41:59 GMT
I seem to remember Michael J Bird serials being tv events to anticipate and to savour back then. There was one called The Dark Side of the Sun set in the Greek islands which I seem to recall had a very sinister satanic undertone. I know Patrick Mower and Peter Egan were in it. There was another called Maelstrom but I can't recall a blessed thing about it. Then there was Potter's Blackeyes which was creepy for entirely different reasons. Also recall a great one off tv film called The Lorelei with Amanda Redman. Believe it qualifies. The Lorelei is excellent. 1990 though. Which is another reason it's a shame there won't be a 90s edition. There was also a great M.R. James influenced t.v. play called Do Not Disturb from 1991 with Peter Capaldi. I understand Capaldi gave up acting a few years ago, but hear he's just announced a comeback.
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scarred
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 63
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Post by scarred on Apr 17, 2017 0:32:09 GMT
Not a fan then? For what it's worth I think he's the best of the modern Doctors!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2017 11:36:50 GMT
Just ended up ordering a copy of this, so if it's no good I'm blaming the two of you. I really don't remember Bergerac, is it as mental as early Midsomer Murders? I'm still traumatised by seeing Henry Gordon Jago decapitated. Not quite (what is?), at least not as frequently, but Bergerac got weirder as it went along, the aforementioned What Dreams May Come possibly the turning point. Might be worth setting your video recorder (or whatever new fangled device you "with it" young people use) for 'The Dig' - a "supernatural" episode - which is being repeated this Thursday on the Drama Channel (freeview 20) at 9am and 4pm. Have not yet had the pleasure of Fires In The Fall but Poison is a nasty one, a Freemason who believes himself the chosen of God kills off posey, opportunist colleagues utilising medieval witch poisons in a variation of Russian Roulette. Bergerac comes face to face with his own dark side during this particularly unnerving investigation. In non-supernatural news, Jim's trouser-leg and the tendons beneath sustain near-fatal injury when former Pans Person Cherry Gillespie demonstrates Olympic-standard fencing prowess in Crossed Swords. I seem to remember Michael J Bird serials being tv events to anticipate and to savour back then. There was one called The Dark Side of the Sun set in the Greek islands which I seem to recall had a very sinister satanic undertone. I know Patrick Mower and Peter Egan were in it. There was another called Maelstrom but I can't recall a blessed thing about it. Just in case you were unaware, Granada published a The Dark Side of the Sun novelisation/ tie-in.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 17, 2017 13:10:01 GMT
Not a fan then? For what it's worth I think he's the best of the modern Doctors! Not really, but to be honest I would have applied the same comment to whomever was incumbent in the part over the course of the last twelve years. Ever since they resurrected it the programme has epitomised everything that is worst about modern British tv. It has demonstrated no ambition to be anything other than a facile, American bandwagon-chasing piece of pantomime pc garbage, built on glib scripts and glibber performances, where spectacle-over-substance storylines foster the impression of being made up as they go along and all problems are resolved with the wave of a magic wand. Nothing more than a hollow edifice built to flatter the monstrous and wholly misplaced egos of its producers. But that's just my opinion of course. Others may feel differently.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 17, 2017 14:13:41 GMT
Just ended up ordering a copy of this, so if it's no good I'm blaming the two of you. I really don't remember Bergerac, is it as mental as early Midsomer Murders? I'm still traumatised by seeing Henry Gordon Jago decapitated. Not quite (what is?), at least not as frequently, but Bergerac got weirder as it went along, the aforementioned What Dreams May Come possibly the turning point. Might be worth setting your video recorder (or whatever new fangled device you "with it" young people use) for 'The Dig' - a "supernatural" episode - which is being repeated this Thursday on the Drama Channel (freeview 20) at 9am and 4pm. Have not yet had the pleasure of Fires In The Fall but Poison is a nasty one, a Freemason who believes himself the chosen of God kills off posey, opportunist colleagues utilising medieval witch poisons in a variation of Russian Roulette. Bergerac comes face to face with his own dark side during this particularly unnerving investigation. In non-supernatural news, Jim's trouser-leg and the tendons beneath sustain near-fatal injury when former Pans Person Cherry Gillespie demonstrates Olympic-standard fencing prowess in Crossed Swords. I seem to remember Michael J Bird serials being tv events to anticipate and to savour back then. There was one called The Dark Side of the Sun set in the Greek islands which I seem to recall had a very sinister satanic undertone. I know Patrick Mower and Peter Egan were in it. There was another called Maelstrom but I can't recall a blessed thing about it. Just in case you were unaware, Granada published a The Dark Side of the Sun novelisation/ tie-in. Thanks Dem. No, I wasn't aware of it but I guess I shouldn't really be surprised: everything bar the weather bulletins seemed to be novelised back in that period. The series has now been released on dvd but the picture quality isn't supposed to be very good. I would imagine he's almost forgotten now but there was a time when Bird was pre-eminent amongst that generation of writers that were made by tv in the 1950s: the likes of Clemens, Spooner, Woodhouse, Holmes, Kennedy Martin, Banks Stewart et al. Visionaries all, and we don't see their like today. Not because writers aren't as creative today but because episodic tv isn't produced in the same vast quantity to nurture and encourage them.
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Post by helrunar on Apr 17, 2017 14:52:14 GMT
Hey Cro, Agree with you about the Who revival. A lot of sound, fury and silliness signifying nothing...
I will add the caveat that I watched and mostly enjoyed the entirety of that first Christopher Eccleston series. I honestly forget the details but I thought it was an interesting take on the Mythos, if that is the proper word in this context. Eccleston was really very good in the role and sort of fitted where the character had left off with Sylvester McCoy. I think it was mostly real life stuff that made me fall off the bandwagon once the David Tennant series got going, but I did see an episode here or there (once when I was at a friend's home and she wanted to show it to me--the plot involved the Doctor at the Globe theatre in the era of the Virgin Queen with a very odd version of the Witches from that Scottish play). It failed to tug at my interest. The definitive realization that the new Who did nothing for me came when there was a screening at a workplace lunch hour of something set in a library with some kind of spacetime warp thing going on. I think Catherine Tate, who is so talented, was in that and she was completely wasted. It was from the Matt Smith era. The plot made no sense, which could be said of Who in the time of Tom Baker periodically. But in the Tom Baker shows, I'd be intrigued and want to find out how to make sense of what was going on. With this it was just that "timey wimey wibbly-wobbly" shite.
Of course masses of viewers STRONGLY disagree and as far as I am concerned they are welcome to it. I was interested when I heard that Mr. Capaldi had taken the role but apparently it was being run by the same people who believe that things such as narrative and characterization are too distracting from their preferred salad of videogame spaghetti. *grump*
Thanks for the fascinating Fathom review. I've seen bits of the film years ago but had no idea there was a novel. My experience of most genre adaptations into film or TV is usually they only keep the name of the lead character and the fact that he owns a talking skull, if that.
cheers, H.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2017 18:52:22 GMT
Would be surprised if nobody has yet recommended this for Scarred Vol 2, but just in case - The Borgias (BBC, 1981). If I remember it came in for a hammering from critics and public alike - too much sex and mumbling - but at least one viewer adored it.
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Post by cromagnonman on Apr 17, 2017 19:54:16 GMT
Would be surprised if nobody has yet recommended this for Scarred Vol 2, but just in case - The Borgias (BBC, 1981). If I remember it came in for a hammering from critics and public alike - too much sex and mumbling - but at least one viewer adored it. An inspired choice Dem. And while we're on the subject of the historically authentic and educational how about The Cleopatras? Richard Griffith's finest hour. There wouldn't be so many tits seen on screen again until they televised Parliament. Also, anyone for Kinvig?
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Post by helrunar on Apr 17, 2017 20:49:38 GMT
Cro, I'm laughing--I was reading Dem's post and thinking but what about The Cleopatras? Your comment about Parliament almost made me scream out loud.
I never saw the Cleos when broadcast (I was living in Taiwan then), but some of it showed up on Youtube a couple of years ago. It's a really bizarre little artifact. Fruity Brechtian hijinks on sets composed of black cardboard, mirrors and some gewgaws retrieved from the Brighton junkshops, it would seem...
H.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Apr 18, 2017 9:14:18 GMT
Ah, yes, the Bergerac equivalent of Casting the Runes. I see that this episode and the other well-regarded supernatural episode, Fires in the Fall, are both on the same Series 4 DVD set, so I may have to add that to the DVD pile. Just ended up ordering a copy of this, so if it's no good I'm blaming the two of you. Season 4 is where Louise Jameson joins the regular 'Bergerac' cast, so there's always that factor.
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