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Post by Swampirella on Nov 20, 2020 18:17:32 GMT
I watch very little broadcast TV these days apart from the news, a classic film channel and BBC4. Funnily enough if I want sustainedly well-written television it tends to be US fare of the Sopranos, Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad type. A lot of UK TV now imitates that style, but fails at it. I know it makes me an old f*rt, but things like 70s Ghost Stories for Christmas or Dr Who seem to stand head and shoulders above the current attempts. I have two now teenage daughters and began at an early age showing them old films and the television I grew up with, so we've had the pleasure to have watched together The Avengers, Monty Python, The Prisoner, Porridge, I Claudius, Elizabeth R, The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth, Fawlty Towers, Reggie Perrin, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, the Sweeney and many, many more. I'm glad to say they loved most of them and by request we are now rewatching some of them. At the moment we all sit down on the weekend to revisit the 1970s Upstairs Downstairs. Smart thinking, Mr. D! : ) Glad you can spend quality time with your daughters.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 20, 2020 19:56:44 GMT
That all sounds marvelous, Sam. I hope you somehow get the chance to see the restored Avengers prints from the Diana Rigg and Linda Thorson years. A friend gave them to me earlier this year as a present. Wow! They're gorgeous. I am seeing details I never saw before. Good details not stupid stuff nobody was ever supposed to see.
Is your classic film channel Talking Pictures? I hear they run the kind of film I enjoy on there.
Lovely about your daughters getting into the groove with some fine old gear.
cheers, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Nov 20, 2020 20:54:54 GMT
I was watching an episode of Elizabeth R a couple of weeks ago about the events leading up to the launching of the Spanish Armada. And while the acting, costumes, writing and all of it were stunning all I could keep thinking was "Gee, under absolute monarchy the rulers were actually educated and spoke in complete sentences! Extraordinary!" Not a reflection I care to impart on "social media" in this "enlightened" age. I mostly watch old Brit telly these days. I'm currently watching the Edward Petherbridge/Harriet Walter Lord Peter Wimsey series from the 1980s. I have good memories of this. Saw it ages ago on TV, liked Bunter the butler very much. Unfortunatly it was never rerun. I wonder how Sayers' work weathered the decades. I read a few of the novels 40 years ago and have them as slow in memory.
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 20, 2020 21:33:08 GMT
I was watching an episode of Elizabeth R a couple of weeks ago about the events leading up to the launching of the Spanish Armada. And while the acting, costumes, writing and all of it were stunning all I could keep thinking was "Gee, under absolute monarchy the rulers were actually educated and spoke in complete sentences! Extraordinary!" Not a reflection I care to impart on "social media" in this "enlightened" age. I mostly watch old Brit telly these days. I'm currently watching the Edward Petherbridge/Harriet Walter Lord Peter Wimsey series from the 1980s. I have good memories of this. Saw it ages ago on TV, liked Bunter the butler very much. Unfortunatly it was never rerun. I wonder how Sayers' work weathered the decades. I read a few of the novels 40 years ago and have them as slow in memory. I've got Elizabeth R. (recently given to me by a friend), Wimsey and other 70s and 80s stuff on DVD, but with the quality of TV these days I never get around to watch them. Another cracker was Cribb, with the great Alan Dobie, who was also brilliant in that 70s version of War and Peace. Another mate gave me this recently, a lavishly illustrated book on classic 70s Brit tele. No Ghostlies for Xmas however, but includes Elizabeth R. and Wimsey. And the recent version of Vanity Fair isn't a patch on the 70s Susan Hampshire version.
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Post by helrunar on Nov 20, 2020 21:48:36 GMT
Hi Andreas,
Bunter in the 1980s Edward Petherbridge Wimsey series was played by a classical actor named Richard Morant. I liked him very much as well. My favorite Wimsey is Ian Carmichael from the 1970s, and his Bunter was Glyn Houston who was equally fine in the role. I'm appreciating the Petherbridge series more for its own qualities this time around, not feeling the need to compare with the Ian Carmichael stories. Some element of comparing (and yes, dissing) was present during the original broadcast though I enjoyed the show very much nevertheless.
I have an impression that the books by Dorothy L. Sayers have some quirks that often result in high dudgeon erupting on "social media" when these come to light, inevitably from some carping, whining blog post about how awful it is that people in the past weren't as perfect and ideologically pristine as we are today (yes, I am rolling my eyes). I don't know if Sayers was a Tory--the book somebody wrote about her life was called Such a Strange Lady and there is no doubt that she was strange. An odd duck. She composed a translation of Dante's Inferno bluntly entitled Hell--I have always thought that that may have given some measure of her spiky personality. The type that used to be called "no nonsense" but her view on what constituted nonsense may have resulted in ill temper from those in her orbit.
I would enjoy seeing the Jeremy Thorpe serial someday.
cheers, Steve
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Post by helrunar on Nov 20, 2020 21:52:57 GMT
James, that's a lovely book. Alistair Cooke was the presenter on the US public broadcasting network's Masterpiece Theatre series which we were invariably told was "made possible by a grant from Mobil Oil Corporation." So thanks to the oil barons we got an hour of British programming on Sunday evenings (I don't know if this had anything to do with oil rigs positioned in the North Sea--perhaps it did).
Alas and alack the beautiful and enthralling Ghost stories for Xmas were never shown on that slot--or if they were, I never heard of it. So I never saw any of them until the current century/Millennium. The first one I saw was on a DVD-R of the early 70s "Lost Hearts" a friend sent me circa 2008.
cheers, Steve
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Post by jamesdoig on Nov 21, 2020 0:55:42 GMT
James, that's a lovely book. Well, it looks like someone has poured a pot of tea over it.
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Post by andydecker on Nov 21, 2020 10:13:09 GMT
Hi Andreas, Bunter in the 1980s Edward Petherbridge Wimsey series was played by a classical actor named Richard Morant. I liked him very much as well. My favorite Wimsey is Ian Carmichael from the 1970s, and his Bunter was Glyn Houston who was equally fine in the role. I'm appreciating the Petherbridge series more for its own qualities this time around, not feeling the need to compare with the Ian Carmichael stories. Some element of comparing (and yes, dissing) was present during the original broadcast though I enjoyed the show very much nevertheless. Oh, I realize I mis-remembered. I only know the Carmichael version. Didn't even knew that they made a new version. I guess it is the same as with Christie which gets remade every few years and the old ones got forgotten. Can't remember when I last saw the Hickson version. It is out of circulation. At the moment the rather new and wacky French version of Christie novels is constantly re-run on TV. I wonder if Mrs. Christie would have approved. I have an impression that the books by Dorothy L. Sayers have some quirks that often result in high dudgeon erupting on "social media" when these come to light, inevitably from some carping, whining blog post about how awful it is that people in the past weren't as perfect and ideologically pristine as we are today (yes, I am rolling my eyes). What? An educated pre-WWII woman had different standards than a Millenial? I am shocked, sir, shocked!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2020 12:05:06 GMT
His is a quite recognisable name if you live here. He was a Conservative MP for several years under Margaret Thatcher, an odd mix of humane ideas and monetarist ideology, and now a leading columnist. The Vicar of Stiffkey, (pronounced 'Stookey'), who, from the back page is covered in his book (and the inspiration for the film The Missionary) was a sad and amazing character, quite possibly innocent. He spent so long saving 'fallen women' in London that he was known to cycle up the nave in his home village at the very last minute to conduct his services. I wrote the following brief summary when I was writing about another larger than life character, J Maundy Gregory - it got edited out as too peripheral, so at least it will see some use here: Gregory does seem to have had one genuine friend: his former classmate Harold Davidson, the Rector of Stiffkey in Norfolk. Best known as ‘the Prostitutes’ Padre’. Davidson worked tirelessly to save the fallen women of London’s East End. Too tirelessly, his parishioners said. The press circled, then closed in. His bishop called a consistory court. It left no rule unbent. He was defrocked. He struggled to raise funds to appeal the verdict, including by exhibiting himself in a barrel. True to form Gregory failed to save him. Broke and broken, rejected by the church, Davidson turned to the circus instead. He would enter the big cats’ cage, protected only by his faith. He trod on a lion’s tail and was mauled to death. His dying words were said to be ‘Did I make the front page?’ This book is dedicated to the memory of the Reverend Harold Davidson, Rector of Stiffkey until he was unfrocked, who was unfortunately savaged by a lion. He is most certainly covered in The Great Unfrocked, Sam, and as you might expect, steals the show. After the "exhibiting himself in a barrel" episode followed an "exhibiting himself on Hampstead Heath - with a dead whale" Easter Monday only performance. "Elsewhere, he entered a glass oven and was slowly warmed while an automated demon prodded him in the behind with a three pronged fork." I even trampled past the lechery section to get to him, which must be some kind of first.
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Post by samdawson on Nov 21, 2020 12:05:50 GMT
Is your classic film channel Talking Pictures? I hear they run the kind of film I enjoy on there. Lovely about your daughters getting into the groove with some fine old gear. cheers, Steve Hi Steve, it is indeed Talking Pictures. We used to do classic TV on Friday evenings and a family film on Sunday evenings (with poster put on the fridge midweek and meal on laps), starting the former with the Avengers and the latter with Laurel and Hardy when the girls were about 3 and 5 - The Avengers because I remember being called in from play on a Saturday early evening and the whole family sitting round a TV with doors to watch it.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 21, 2020 18:31:53 GMT
We used to do classic TV on Friday evenings and a family film on Sunday evenings ... with poster put on the fridge midweek ... Ah, that is lovely. Who drew the posters, or was it a team effort?
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Post by samdawson on Nov 22, 2020 13:35:15 GMT
Ah, that is lovely. Who drew the posters, or was it a team effort? I'd find the original poster on the web then print it off, then hear one of them excitedly tell the other what the film would be. I have a boxfile of them still...
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2020 10:14:14 GMT
Runaway Lovers: Eamonn Casey: The Bishop of Galway felt obliged to resign when an American divorcee, Annie Murphy, kissed and told all about their steamy affair in what author Paris assures us is "her dreadful book," Forbidden Fruit: The True Story of my Secret Love for Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway (Little, Brown & Co., 1997). The Irish public, bless them, mindful of the sincerity of his campaign against world poverty, forgave a man who represented "the human face of the Catholic church." Galway rockers the Saw Doctors commemorate the episode in Howya Julia.
The Curse of Lincoln: Britain’s Unhappiest Cathedral: Appointed by M. Thatcher in 1992 after a cathedral restoration fundraising venture culminated in scandal and international embarrassment, Dean Brandon Jackson was instructed by the PM to "get rid of those dreadful canons." He duly became embroiled in an increasingly spiteful and unchristian public feud with Canon Rex Davis. Relations hit rock bottom when someone leaked details of Jackson's alleged affair with a verger ("a large, lumpy woman" according to the Daily Ma*l), a romance, the court decided, which existed only in her own mind. The Bishop repeatedly called on both warring parties to resign for the sake of the church, Jackson finally doing so in 1997, having allegedly negotiated a generous golden handshake.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 8, 2020 18:45:41 GMT
St. George of Cappadocia ... or was it Alexandria? Purveyor of Pork and Patron Saint of England: Who would dare suggest that our dragon-slaying martyr either (a) didn't exist or (b), even if he did, was a one time bacon-supplier to the Egyptian army turned corrupt, tyrannical, despised bogus Archbishop? Needless to say, Edward Gibbons version of St. George in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire does not sit well with patriots. As the Dean of Cape Town fumed way back in 1888, "It is inconceivable that the Church of Christ, and emperors and kings of nations, would pay homage to a defunct pork-purveyor." There are several to choose from, but this may well be my overall favourite chapter in the book.
Much to my dismay, Assorted Miscreants is a strong contender for least favourite. "The filthy vicars in our Midst. Just what has happened to all the Upstanding, God-fearing vicars and priests whose morals were once as clean as their freshly laundered dog-collars?" fumed the sainted News of the World in October 1987, going on to catalogue the sexual peccadilloes and misdemeanours of multiple errant clergymen exposed in their pages since the beginning of the year. I was particularly looking forward to this entry but, as with the chapter devoted to the 'Knicker Vicar,' the laugh sticks in the throat when you think of the the disgusting violations of privacy, the lives ruined.
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