First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 26th 2022

This week we welcome back one of our regular contributors, the encyclopaedic and telly fact-filled mind that belongs to STEVE HATCHER, who has suggested that we might want to talk about the movie spin-offs and adaptations of television series that used to feature prominently in the cinemas in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, several of which proved to be very successful, and some of which were decidedly less so.

Some of these films have gone on to become the more familiar versions of series that no longer seem to get much airtime simply through their regular appearances on television over the years and decades since they were made, and for many viewers, they might even have become the definitive versions of a whole host of television favourites.

Often these films were adaptations of much-loved sitcoms, but also several drama series were deemed worthy of being transferred to the big screen, in colour, sometimes featuring the original television cast, and sometimes bearing little relationship whatsoever with the source material.

STEVE has picked out five dramas (as well as five sitcoms which we’re going to talk about some other time), for us to talk about as specifically British examples that demonstrate the various ways in which these adaptations were achieved by the film-makers of those eras, and, whilst our conversation might touch upon a few others that spring to mind, it’s those five films that we are going to mostly focus our attention on.

So sit back as we mull over the most exciting colourful eccentricities of DR WHO AND THE DALEKS, the colourfully dark and compelling re-imagining of QUATERMASS AND THE PIT in the London Underground Station at Hobb’s End, the strangely detached environmental disaster that prompts the DOOMWATCH team to not exactly leap into action themselves but instead nominate a proxy, the government assassin CALLAN somehow managing to revisit his own past, and the bizarre, much-truncated, late 1990s re-invention of John Steed and Mrs Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS.

We might not get the time to cover all them in any great depth, so there’ll be little in the way of my usual VISION ON SOUND nonsenses of the kind that point out details like the future Roj Blake turning up working at Hobb’s End that I might usually start to weave the interconnectedness of all things around to intrigue you with, especially as one of those five films does actually obliquely name-check this very show, but I hope you’ll enjoy this quick time-trip through some great TV shows dressed up in their best clothes for their various trips to the ROXY and the REGAL.

And once we’ve got back to base, STEVE will return in a few weeks time for a follow-up in which we chat in much the same way about those sitcoms.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.