VISION ON SOUND

STEVE HATCHER returns to tell us all about NIGEL KNEALE's work in the 1960s.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 17th 2024.

Following our recent conversation about NIGEL KNEALE’S BEASTS anthology from the 1970s, STEVE HATCHER and I thought we might continue discussing the career of NIGEL KNEALE, as STEVE has been systematically working his way through such television programmes as still exist from this great writer’s works, although he has been particularly focussing on the ones that mostly involve themes of science fiction, fantasy, magic, and folk horror – basically the kind of subjects that are most of interest to him, which seems a perfectly reasonable way of choosing what you want to watch to this old viewer.

Anyway, this week we’re going to focus mostly on NIGEL’S work from the 1960s, the period following the fifties successes of the first three QUATERMASS serials, the significant contribution to TV history that was his adaptation of George Orwell’s NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FOUR, and fascinating lost gems like THE CREATURE, but before the seventies which would bring the classic that is THE STONE TAPE, BEASTS, of course, and, later the fourth of the QUATERMASS stories, which starred SIR JOHN MILLS in the title role.

The nineteen-sixties would bring a whole lot of fascinating works including lost classics like the nuclear nightmares of THE ROAD, the Cold War terrors of THE CRUNCH, a different version of NINETEEN-EIGHTY-FOUR, and the prescient broadcasting allegories of THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS.

We also take some time to discuss NIGEL’S film writing which involves several famous films that it might come as some surprise to you that he was involved in, as well as perhaps some less unexpected dabbles with science-fiction and fantasy with THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON and THE WITCHES, as well as the inevitable QUATERMASS AND THE PIT remake.

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.

STEVE HATCHER returns to tell us all about NIGEL KNEALE's BEASTS.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 10th 2024.

This week STEVE HATCHER wanted to talk all about NIGEL KNEALE and his six part anthology series from 1976, BEASTS, and, of course, MURRAIN the play from 1975 that led to that series being commissioned.

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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI discusses THE SIMPSONS and other cartoon sitcoms.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 3rd 2024.

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI is back, and, because he was unwise enough to mention on a previous appearance on VISION ON SOUND that he’d started watching THE SIMPSONS again, I thought that he’d be just the person to join me in a chat about all of those grown-up animated sitcoms that have graced our television screens over the past three decades or more.

So, as well as THE SIMPSONS, our wide-ranging conversation over the course of the next hour touches upon shows like FAMILY GUY, FUTURAMA, AMERICAN DAD, SOUTH PARK, and BOB’S BURGERS, as well as a few others that we happen to mention along the way, and I hope that you find it as interesting as I did.

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.

LISA PARKER joins me to talk about THE SISTER BONIFACE MYSTERIES

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 27th 2024.

This week we welcome back LISA PARKER from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES podcast as she specifically wanted to talk about THE SISTER BONIFACE MYSTERIES, starring LORNA WATSON, the nineteen-sixties set recent spin-off from that daytime drama perennial FATHER BROWN.

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.

WARREN CUMMINGS joins me to talk about PORTMEIRION and THE PRISONER.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 20th 2024.

A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to be treated to a couple of days staying at the hotel Portmeirion which, I’m sure I need not tell you nearly sixty years ago was once used as the primary location for The Village in that short-lived but somehow hugely significant and iconic sixties television series THE PRISONER featuring Patrick McGoohan.

Now, because I’m totally predictable in being an archive TV fan, since we returned home after escaping, we, rather naturally, got to watching the entire series once more, perhaps this time with that slightly smug “been there!” response that some of us can choose to watch television with.

Anyway, having run through the series, the episodes – especially that final pairing of ONCE UPON A TIME and FALL OUT - were much on my mind, and so when WARREN CUMMINGS joined me for another of these television-related chats that we like to have on VISION ON SOUND, it was perhaps inevitable that we would talk about THE PRISONER and several matters arising in what I hope you will find an enjoyable next hour.

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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI returns to talk about some seventies TV superheroes...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 13th 2024.

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI is back, and, because we briefly mentioned watching WONDER WOMAN the last time he was on, I got to thinking about all of those superhero-based television shows that were on TV when I was an impressionable teenager, back in the late 1970s and I thought that PAUL might be just the person to talk to about them the next time he came onto the show.

So, for today’s hour of VISION ON SOUND we have a nice meander around the backwaters of shows like THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN, BATMAN, and THE INCREDIBLE HULK, as well as inevitably returning to WONDER WOMAN, and we consider several of the other shows that would have been on television at the time, and the extent to which they also riffed on the idea of the superhero, or maybe just the gifted stranger rolling into town and solving a particular problem. As well as this, we’ll be trying, in our usual manner, to scratch, however lightly, beneath the surface of what it is about these kinds of shows that made them so appealing to us, both then and, perhaps, even today.

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.

STEVE HATCHER returns to some of those lesser-known sitcoms.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 6th 2024.

Earlier in the year, STEVE HATCHER started taking us on a guided tour of some of the more forgotten TV sitcoms from the 1960s, and we thought it was about time that we went back and picked up where we left off in taking a look at the not insubstantial list of ancient television rib-ticklers that he’s been studiously working his way through.

So, over the course of the next hour, we’ll touch briefly upon the ATV HANCOCK series that’s apparently finally been given an airing on REWIND TV, before investigating STEVE’S list and talking about CITIZEN JAMES, the BBC series written for SID JAMES after the acrimonious split with HANCOCK; BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR, a mid-sixties class and workplace comedy initially starring PETER JONES, with JUNE WHITFIELD, REG VARNEY, and PAT COOMBS; SAM AND JANET a “married with children” set up which featured JOHN JUNKIN and VIVIENNE MARTIN; NOT IN FRONT OF THE CHILDREN, a terribly middle-class hit that launched WENDY CRAIG into playing similar roles for the next couple of decades; and MISTER DIGBY DARLING which again featured PETER JONES in a workplace sitcom alongside SHIELA HANCOCK (No relation).

We also have a bit of a natter about a few other things that the topic of the sitcom happens to prompt, whilst I wonder about the fact that several of these scenarios seemed to turn up time and again with slight twists on the recognised formula.

Incidentally, if afterwards you want to seek out our earlier discussion on almost forgotten sixties sitcoms, you can find that in the 188th episode of VISION ON SOUND if you are looking for it, which, like all of our previous episodes, can be found on spotify by typing VISION ON SOUND into the podcast search box.

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.

MICHAEL HERBERT discusses COUNTERSTRIKE.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 29th 2024.

This week the historian MICHAEL HERBERT returns to talk about another obscure piece of television science-fiction. This time, it’s a nine-part series, which seems to have been largely forgotten about, made by the BBC in 1969 after being first proposed in 1966 then shelved because of its similarity to a little American show called THE INVADERS.

It’s called COUNTERSTRIKE and, like a handful of other series from that era, involves an alien invasion of the earth by stealth, and the series tells exciting stories about what our heroes are doing to combat this deadly threat to the world.

SIMON KING is a benevolent member of a different alien species who are keen - for some reason - to protect humanity, and his sidekick, a nurse who he meets up with in the opening episode, because she becomes fascinated by his strange biology, is named MARY.

Film Actor JON FINCH played KING, and SARAH BRACKETT played MARY, in a series that, with an exciting opening title sequence typical of the action/adventure series of the time, promised much, but somehow failed to deliver, at least as far as we can tell from what survives of it.

Ten 50-minute black and white episodes were made, in the “videotape with film inserts studio-based” style of the times, and nine of these were broadcast, with the other episode scheduled but never shown. These days, of the ten, only the first four episodes remain in the archives (which is more than some series of similar vintage of course), and they are yet to get any kind of official commercial media release.

Luckily, if you know how, it is possible to view the episodes, and MICHAEL and I were able to do so (mainly because I was able to borrow the copies he had access to), but at this did mean that we could at least talk about the programmes with a certain amount of informed insight.

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.

WARREN CUMMINGS takes a look at some Childten's Television Dramas.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 22nd 2024.

This week WARREN CUMMINGS is back again, and this time he wanted to talk about three of the children’s television dramas that made a lasting - or is that disturbing? - impression on him when he was growing up.

So, over the course of the next hour we will talk about the sinister stone circles of CHILDREN OF THE STONES, the steamy tales of THE FLOCKTON FLYER, and the terrifying nuclear brinksmanship of THE DOOMBOLT CHASE, as well as a few other things that cross our minds along the way.

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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI talks about the women in his TV life.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 15th 2024.

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI is back, and, I don’t know about you lot, but I’ve been noticing something about the kind of shows that PAUL has been telling us that he enjoys as he’s come onto the show to talk about them over the years.

I mean, regular listeners will already know that, yes, he obviously enjoys his Australian soaps, and they’ll recognise his liking for horror stories, (and he’ll sometimes mention that mixture of soap opera and horror stories that begat DARK SHADOWS), and, of course, the regard in which he holds BERGERAC is beyond repute, but there does seem to be a common factor in the shows that particular draw the attention of those YETI eyeballs, and that seems to be that the majority of them do feature very strong female characters in significant roles, and so that’s what I decided to get him to talk about today.

So, for the next hour, alongside his usual meanderings, we’ll mull over this topic and mention in passing series like THE AVENGERS, DOCTOR WHO, BLAKE’S SEVEN, SAPPHIRE AND STEEL, THE BIONIC WOMAN, and DEMPSEY AND MAKEPEACE, as well as venturing briefly into the more familiar territory of RAMSAY STREET and CELL BLOCK H.

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.