After getting so much enjoyment from Blake’s 7, I was keen to explore other work from its contributors. I’d seen various versions of Terry Nation Bingo and 1975’s Survivors seemed to tick the kind of boxes I liked. A box set emerged from my stocking on Christmas Day 2020… I initially liked the idea of …
The posts on this blog are evidence of my huge love for Blake’s 7, so I was delighted when Series A of Maximum Power launched. For me, the podcast has the right balance of a fondness for the show that also enables its fans to gently rib it when it falls short. There is an appreciation that …
This article was originally published in Issue 1 of the Curious British Telly fanzine. The opening episode of Parkin’s Patch sets up its rural atmosphere as Police Constable Moss Parkin (John Flanagan) deals with a case of sheep rustling. In the fictional Yorkshire village of Fickley, Moss knows everyone, cares about his patch and seems respected …
10 out of Callan’s 21 black and white episodes are missing, and Goodbye Nobby Clarke is the earliest. As far as I’m aware, the only part of this episode that exists comes from a censor clip. As just two episodes exist from Callan’s first series, this made me savour the programme’s monochrome era during my …
As the first episode of Callan, The Good Ones Are All Dead emphasises a few key details for those who didn’t see A Magnum for Schneider or else need reminding – it was broadcast five months before. Callan has another similar meeting with Hunter that tells us what the Section is and how Callan came …
As I was drafting this, I wrote variations on ‘this may have been my favourite part of the episode’ several times. Therefore, I decided it was best to simply remove them all because I couldn’t choose one. When we left Ford and Arthur, they were just about to be caught by the Vogons. But before …
In this final part of our Sandbaggers‘ podcast series , I joined Spybrary host Shane Whaley and fellow fans Jeffrey Westhoff and Paul Hodges to discuss the third and final series of The Sandbaggers. Paul’s a long-term fan and had some really fascinating knowledge to bring to the table, so it was great to be able …
The Strangerers follows two aliens that have taken human form on a visit to Earth to find out more about the planet. Written by Rob Grant, The Strangerers ran for a single series on Sky One in 2000, hasn’t been repeated and doesn’t have a DVD release, which are all good reasons why I’d never …
The best thing about my birthday as a kid was that it always fell in half term. We didn’t live that near any multiplex cinemas, so most of my trips to the pictures were in school holidays. My mother started dropping me off at the Showcase more often from the age of 10 or 11 …
Since finishing Blake’s 7, I’ve been enjoying Tim Dickinson’s Watching Blake’s 7 blog and his post on Sarcophagus mulls on a rejigged episode order for Series C. “I did wonder what would happen if this was the penultimate episode of season C. It felt like a late series episode. A coda. A summing up of …
