|
Post by pulphack on May 9, 2023 9:36:57 GMT
Bagpuss was an Oliver Postgate series. Emily had a purple-ish pink-ish and white/cream striped cat (depending on how good your colour telly was back then) that lived in the window of a junk shop. He would come to life and all the toys and puppets around him would follow suit. Gabriel the folk-singing frog, Professor Yaffle the fussy wooden bird (who looked like Arsene Wenger, another 'Professor' though this was before his time), the mice and their mouse organ... it was a bit like a Syd Barrett song in TV form.
Marmalade Atkins was a naughty schoolgirl whose exploits grew ever more outlandish. Live action for kids, and she was played by Charlotte Coleman who was also stunning in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson, now there's a writer...) and died far too young in 2001. Written by Andrew Davies, who also wrote A Very Peculiar Practice, about medics on a university campus if I remember rightly, and wenton to become the go-to man for classic lit adaptations for the next twenty odd years. Marmalade probably looks a bit dull now, but was a bit of a groundbreaker in its time.
Both worth checking out. The 80's were as good and as crap as the 70's, I think - just depends which bits you remember and how old you were at the time, I suspect.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Nov 5, 2022 20:45:41 GMT
Ah, I hate to tell you Steve, but these kinds of annuals were very common on the UK, usually either from the Amalgamated stable (owned by Lord Harmsworth, the man who invented the tabloid as we know it, owned the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, as was responsoble for Billy Bunter and Sexton Blake, his fortune founded on story papers and office boys pulp), or from publishers who used the same writers and format once a year - Marjorie Stanton, Ida Melbourne and Joan Inglesant (Ida was a bloke who wrote under other womens names for these papers - a lot of the writers were men) were all contributors to Schoolgirls Own, Schoolgirls Own, Schoolgirl, and Girls Crystal. They were the distaff side of the Magnet and Gem - Frank Richards as Hilda Richards created Bessie Bunter, who turned out in the hands of other writers to be far more sympathetic than her brother. I saw a couple of these a few years back in Any Amount, from the collection of Mary Cadogan. Should have bought them. I hadn't seen Mary for a few years and didn't know she had passed away. A popular fiction historian and writer, she was a lovely lady.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Sept 24, 2022 15:00:17 GMT
Hello! Well, this is a surprisingly easy one as it's been on Talking Pictures recently! It's called 'The Horse Of The Invisible' featuring Donald Pleasance as Carnacki The Ghost Finder, adapted from W Hope Hodgson short story and part of the series 'The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes', an anthology series from the early seventies. Its on DVD but not youtube by the look of it. They actually go into the cellar for the photographs, but the climax takes place upstairs.
No dream, and you should be able to track it down fairly easily.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 20, 2022 19:25:45 GMT
I agree. The Holmes novels can be hard work in places as pacing in the longer form was not Doyle's strong point. He was a master of the short story. The irony here being that his best work was in the short form and with Holmes (though not solely) yet he yearned to be remembered for his long winded historical novels. Like many writers he was the worst judge of his own work, it seems.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 19, 2022 14:25:11 GMT
Oh nearly forgot - The Zoo Gang was based on a book by Paul Gallico about a group of ex-resistance fighters who, in older age, reunited to fight a few indiscretions. It was hard going for me as a kid but I wouldn't mind seeing it again as I think I'd like it more. Barry Morse was in this, as well. It only did the one series. The name comes from their code names in the resistance being animal based.
Jason King is ropey film wise - apparently the desire to cut costs led to the 16mm over 35mm decision, and it shows. To get the international flavour Berman and Wyngarde took a few flights, had a nice holiday, and got some film that they could get the writers to work around. What I like is to spot the difference between Wyngarde's own thinning bouffant in the filmed travelogues and the luxuriant wig in the interior shots...
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 19, 2022 14:15:36 GMT
There were two UFO tie-ins, both written by John Burke in his Robert Miall guise and novelising episodes. Published by Pan.* I think there were six Space 1999's, published by Orbit, I think, and probably on here somewhere. Ted Tubb did one, and Michael Butterworth did three or four - I think his have been republished in some form or another. This is the Savoy Books/Hawkwind books Butterworth, not the Trigon Empire comic strip writer and crime novelist.
The Protectors is carried by the actors - Robert Vaughn, Tony Anholt and Nyree Dawn Porter, whereas the scripts are tied by time. NDP was quite an unpleasant lady by all accounts - called Gerry Anderson a c*** in a packed restaurant when she was pissed just because he replaced her make-up person with the one she had actually asked for (go figure). The late Brian Doyle, film publicist and kids fiction expert, worked on a few productions with her and reckoned that she was a nice lady early in the day until she started drinking - then she became the worst kind of nasty drunk.
UFO is a very underrated series in many ways. It deals - like Strange Report - with a lot of issues in a way that isn't obvious or preachy and never gets in the way of the story, using its displacement in the then-future to look at contemporary issues like all good sf. And despite the cheap cracks about wooden acting 'like the puppets' theres some very good acting in there. Wanda Ventham and Vladek Sheybal as mentioned are excellent additions - Sheybal is just watchable in anything and did good line in KGB men in 70's TV as I remember. Michael Billington was brought in as George Sewell was considered too ugly by the suits in the production office. They're both excellent actors, but George is definitely hard man rather than heart throb.
I have a soft spot for George - he belonged to the Old Boys Book Club and was an avid collector of the Magnet and Gem and Sexton Blake. He also went to school with my aunty. His brother Danny was a champion boxer. His mum had a florist in the Seven Sisters Road. Most of all, they wouldn't have dared bin him from UFO if they knew who his dad was - George Snr was a right hand man for Billy Hill, who was the enemy of Jack Spot and mentor to the Krays. My chum Paul has George's ghosted autobiography in mss, inherited from his dad (who was friend of the Sewells) and its a cracking read on the racetrack exploits of the London gangs between the wars.
* (Beat me to it Rip)
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 18, 2022 6:18:38 GMT
I'm supposed to be getting some work done but sod that when I can talk about ITC...
Steve, this is exctly the thing with Jason King - he thinks he's Mark Caine, but he is a klutz in many ways. Dennis Spooner (who bizarrely originally saw Kenneth Moore as a tweedy Oxford Don Jason King) really got into the persona Wyngarde brought to the table and loved the fact that King was the only hero in those series that you could have get knocked out in a stupid way, or arrive on a packing case that left him upside down. I don't know if he was intended as a parody initially, but Wyngarde's sense of the absurd gave King a whole new angle on the thriller series. There is an episode of the Baron that he's in where he plays a middle eastern potentate and the anxious actor who is hired to impersonate said potentate. I haven't seen this for years - probably on youtube... hang on... 'The Legions Of Ammak' where he is King Ibrahim and Ronald Noyes, thank you Google, and of course its on youtube - that's my next 45 mins spent - anyway, Wyngarde is wonderful in this, chewing scenery as only he can.
Speaking of the Baron, it's my favourite Creasey novel series, and I like the TV series but it has bugger all to do with the books except the title and the fact that he sells antiques. Very different animals. Great tune though - they all had great tunes.
The Saint hasn't aged well for me. The stories creak a bit - a common issue with the ITC series as they were pretty high turnover and there is often comment that a rejected script for one would be rewritten hastily for another - but it's a blueprint for what was to come, and suffers perhaps for being a bridge between the swinging sixties series and the earlier thriller shows like The Man From Interpol, Sabre Of The Yard, etc. Roger Moore has always just played himself, and no-one does it better, but Danger Man ages better because of Patrick MacGoohan's intensity. The Prisoner, Randall & Hopkirk, The Baron, The Champions, Department S, Man In A Suitcase (yes, Steve, Bradford's persona really does give this an edge the others lacked), The Persuaders, Jason King (maybe not so much as Dept S - King needed the others to play off, I think) - all of these are shows I love but mostly perhaps as its first loves - like the Gerry Anderson shows, these were programmes I grew up with, and first loves can always blind you to their faults. The Protectors and The Adventurer (particualrly the latter) really suffer for being half hour shows - with just 23 to 25 mins screen time for a self-contained story, there's not much you can do.
Strange Report was always my favourite because of Quayle and the black cab (don't ask me why, I still can't explain), and it was never repeated as often. So when the DVD box came out I was happy to see it was just as good - better - than I remembered. The scripts are a notch up, they do deal with some issue based stuff, and like you, Steve, I do like the way they handled the witchcraft episode. There's also one where Barry Fantoni crops up as a studio engineer making electronic noises like the radiophonic workshop in the midst of helping Strange untangle the mysteries of a voice recording. Martin Shaw is in one as a dissident eastern European student and there's an interview with him where he happily discusses the show - not something he's prone to do for a lot of the TV he's done.
I always thought that a second series stalled because Qualye wouldn't sign, but I've read elsewhere that he was quite keen as he enjoyed his first foray into series TV (contrary to what I've read elsewhere, so who knows?) and that the series actually stalled because of issues between ITC and Arena.
Incidentally - ITC and ATV, Steve: ATV was the company that Lew Grade ran which had a broadcasting franchise in the UK for the midlands region and also produced shows that were primarily for homegrown use; ITC was the division that was intended to produce series on film rather than tape which would be sold internationally and so were devised with this in mind. As the seventies wore on and Grade wanted to make movies, so ITC faded and later shows tended to be ATV, which is how come Sapphire And Steel was on tape and an ATV show when half a decade earlier it would have been film and ITC, like the The Protectors or The Adventurer.
Finally (for today) I'd be up for the blue plaque where Dem bought his bass - but don't you have to be dead before they give a blue plaque? Or have they changed that?
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 17, 2022 15:11:24 GMT
Afternoon, Rip - yes, I fondly remember Strange Report on a Sunday afternoon in summer - out in the garden but making sure I was in to see Anthony Quayle and his old black cab!
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 17, 2022 14:44:37 GMT
Imagine the Godlike Mr King imploring a woman in a kilt to make her 'own stumpy way' to the drinks trolley or mini-bar with such disdain, whilst wondering which clan's tartan he should use for a cravat... Mike Pratt would of course be familiar with Mr Paramor as he was the composer of Tommy Steele's immortal 'Little White Bull'. And of course his son has done time with Dave Gilmour in various post-Waters Floyd line-ups (including playing on the canals of Venice? Not sure if he was in that line-up). It's a long way from his first band in Sarfend, bruv.
R&H was a great series - apparently it gets less jokey half way through as Lord Grade ordered them to get serious after some feedback from US series buyers. It has the obligatory cars and that block of London flats that appears in all ITC series, as well as lots of car chases around Bushey. That was half the fun of them. Mike Pratt has been under-rated as he died relatively young. Hellraiser, too - there is one episode he does from bed as he managed to try and climb into his flat a few floors up and fell into the basement flat's courtyard, breaking several bones in the leg regions. Oops. Probably too pissed to notice until the next morning...
I like the one where the ghost of an Al Capone era gangster comes up against Marty...
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 13, 2022 17:08:07 GMT
Yes, I'm getting Harvey and Bacon confused - and it is Harvey the frog dissecting Pendle bloke and discoverer of circulation I was talking about. Getting Harvey confused with Bacon's chum Dr Witherbone, who does sound like someone who should have been involved with chickens - Dr Wishbone, possibly. Old age getting to my memory and should check google first.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 13, 2022 13:53:13 GMT
That's a lovely old edition, Des. The stories are good, but the seeming oddity of the publisher just adds to it. M&B didn't set out as purely romance, though, they were a general publisher who found a lucrative seam and stamped their identity on the market and became a brand (one of the first, I'd wager, in publishing). I've never read it, but in 1915 they published the autobiography of Edward VIII's chauffeur. I'd like to read it purely because it was ghosted by Dornford Yates, who basically turns his subject into Jonah Mansel (hero of his thrillers) in the way he speaks to the reader. Very odd, and of limited interest now, but nonetheless an example of how they M&B were just another publisher with an eye on the main chance before the romances clicked.
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Aug 13, 2022 13:48:03 GMT
I do love old Harry - a man not above the odd 'apportment' of his own (why else keep a half brick in your mac pocket?) but still a searcher for truth, even if he'd sort of made up his mind about what that might be before hand. But he was a decent writer and a great storyteller who, in another life, would have been a decent midlist novelist during this period. And maybe he was right about some things. I know Dem is inclined to dismiss psychics etc as a bit dodgy, and I don't disagree with him, but I do think you were right on another thread, Steve, where you posited that to dismiss 'supernatural' phenomena out of hand is too dismissive - they thought Harvey was a witch for putting chickens in the snow and digging them up later and eating them to prove they were still preserved (they were dead in the first place, I hasten to add) - he'd discovered refirgeration! All science is superstition until someone in a white coat with a clipboard works out the theorem to prove it (yeah, you can tell my age by my stereotypes of scientists).
If you like the booklet, Steve, dig up anything by Harry you can find, you'll have a blast!
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Jan 7, 2022 9:55:44 GMT
Heh - lack of information - that sums the world up for the last two years really...
Yeah, it's been an odd time and it's not getting better sooner. Been occupied this last twelve months working with this ex-NASA guy which has meant I've read very little other than technical stuff to do with sustainable energy (hint - it's not very at the moment) and also with solar energy harnessed from space and transmitted wirelessly, which isn't as sci-fi as it sounds at first hearing. It explains the Chinese and Musk and Bezos arguing about space junk. I was never great at physics, so this has been fascinating but hard work.
I'll bet the Pendleton books do read clunky these days - he was never the greatest stylist, and almost at times on Rosenberger standards for a bit of lengthy diatribe. Sapir and Murphy were better technically, though much of The Destroyer has aged. Murphy's son was discussing movie rights with someone about a year ago, but I haven't caught up with him for while. It would be an ‘interesting’ job to refashion the original setting and period for a post-millenium audience but it could be done, and a decent action movie franchise fashioned. Of course, it depends on whoever is managing the estate.
Good to see Mertz is still at it – he’d know how many of the early books Pendleton handed over, and there were a few things about it he said on Joe Kenney’s blog, which I check in on occasionally. The odd thing is that there is a lot of old-scholl stuff like that out there, and a lot of it through the ebook specialists. There’s still an audience, and as long as these guys can reach them it’s all good. The paperbacking for a living crew have moved into kids/YA and tv/film franchises these days.
I suspect Bolan’s day has passed until such time as he becomes the kind of history that means he can be rediscovered like a lot of once popular fiction. There’s a lot of rights selling going on, and some companies that have bought estates to market for cross-platforms, like IPL. A lot of their successes are ‘golden age’ writers who slipped out of fashion after their death. Forty-fifty years and then rediscovery seems to be the sweet spot at the moment. It all comes round again, and will probably do so more and more as the amount of media grows and there is more that is preserved digitally and not in paper stocks that can be burned, lost or damaged. The problem these IP holders will have then is how they monetise it, as that’s their purpose…
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Jan 7, 2022 9:54:50 GMT
Probably was published first in the US as his agent then was Bob Tanner, and all those ex-NEL guys had ties with the likes of Pinnacle and Dorchester. The good Mr Hutson found his metier with the horror paperback - I've never read any of his romance titles but I bet they're interesting... Those days it was 'what do you want? I can do you 60,000 words chief, no problem'...
I still think the best bit of publicity he ever did was the interview where he said that his next door neighbour had knocked at the door with a copy of Slugs, asked him if he'd written it, and then called it the most disgusting thing he's ever read and punched him when he replied that he had. Doesn't matter if it was true - imagine how many kids read that and then went out and bought it...
I prefer his later books as I'm not a big fan of splatter, but the man is always reliable (still) and delivers what it says on the tin. Can't ask for more than that!
|
|
|
Post by pulphack on Jan 6, 2022 19:33:34 GMT
In one form or another this forum has been ticking over for - I think - seventeen years this year. Most people still here have been on it for almost that long. People come and go, and a hardcore come back when they have something to say. I think most of us are fairly ancient and actually have lives outside the internet. Just because you don't post doesn't mean you don't look in, it just means that you don't write unless you have anything to say. A large post count means nothing. Other forums operate according to the people who use them. This one carries on in its own way. If visitors want to sign up, or don't; or want to come back, or don't, then that's their choice and why it should bother anyone else I don't know. This one works according to its own rules, and that's all there is to it. The majority of posts on here are relevant to the subjects and the people who make them are involved. There are always some who don't post that way, and seem to like the sound of their own typing. Its' best to ignore them, really.*
But thanks for the patronising lecture from your extensive internet travels.
(*I am aware I am breaking my own rule here, by the way.)
|
|