The Full Blake’s 7 “I’m just wondering how long we’re going to live to enjoy our newfound skills.” If we were in any doubt, in Time Squad Blake firmly asserts his leadership by dragging The Liberator’s crew to a planet so they can blow up a communications system. I gather this is Blake’s plan from …
Blake’s 5 “I’m free. And I intend to stay that way.“ It’s hard to pick one single aspect, but this was the episode that finally grabbed me enough to say, “This programme is brilliant and I am loving it.” The bizarre Blessed-led religious community, the vileness of Cygnus Alpha, the emerging contrast of Blake and …
Blake’s 3 “Wake up, Blake! You may not be tranquilised any longer but you’re still dreaming!“ With Blake having failed to escape the Federation’s swift and efficient justice, he’s on a spaceship with a group of fellow convicts, on their way to a penal colony on the planet Cygnus Alpha. In Space Fall we meet …
Blake’s 7 is something I have been planning to look into for years but I didn’t actually know much about it – a BBC science-fiction series with a bunch of people on a spaceship. Was it just going to be a duller, dryer, version of Red Dwarf? I’d first come across it in the pages …
Bringing back a popular show can be enormously tempting. It worked once, so why wouldn’t it work well again? I wasn’t keen on the idea of a revival and reviews from others set my expectations low, then lower again, so I had put off watching this for some time. Wet Job does start reasonably well …
Armchair Theatre was one of several anthology series on television during the 1960s and 1970s. Others include The Wednesday Play, Play for Today, Theatre 625, ITV Playhouse and Thirty-Minute Theatre. Upon first hearing about these, I was rather bemused because there is little resembling an anthology series on television today. Also, they are referred to as ‘plays’, which made me imagine them …
A few years ago I stopped binge-watching television. It wasn’t an entirely conscious decision. I had begun viewing a few programmes and they were so good that I wanted to drag out having ‘new’ episodes of them for as long as possible. I didn’t want to race through them, be done with it and then …
I have spent the last few years exploring several programmes, each of which has given me a different glimpse into an era long before my birth. I am fascinated by the window on a world that is slightly familiar, but not quite. It feels within touching distance. Though not planned, I found myself watching a …
There is something lovely about looking at what was on telly 50 years ago today. It’s that nice round number – 49, or 51 just won’t do quite so nicely. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. Although I was already interested in a few programmes, an enormous influence on me delving …
My View… Keep drama out of the TV rut Producer and scriptwriter Philip Mackie enthuses about the continuation of the television play. Looking through schedules for this period, there are plays in abundance. There are one-offs and more so, there are those under what Mackie calls ‘omnibus titles‘. He names Love Story but there is also …
