Just before Christmas, LISA PARKER joined me to talk about her recent TV viewing.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 5th 2025.

As we reach the moment when the decorations are supposed to be coming down and are being packed away as yet another festive season reaches its inevitable conclusion, we’ve just got time to welcome back LISA PARKER for a chat we recorded way back in November, in which we talked about her recent archive TV viewing, some of which was in the latest edition of the ROUND THE ARCHIVES podcast that she produces with her partner ANDREW, her delight at the return of WOLF HALL in THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, as well as discussing some of what she planned to watch as a whole host of classic TV Blu-Ray releases were on the very brink of being delivered to their home just in time for Christmas.

So, whilst our conversation wasn’t really meant to be a festive one, the season was very much on our minds, so it only seemed right to share this show with you now whilst we are all still feeling at least vaguely in the mood for one last festive treat.

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 for a pre-New Year's Eve seasonal chat.

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

As it’s usually a bit of a quiet time of year in Radio-land, I thought I might try and sneak out one last show for 2024 whilst nobody was paying all that much attention, and so I invited WARREN CUMMINGS to join me for one more chat before we pack up the show and start thinking about what to bring you next year, which is, as ever, swiftly heading our way without a care in the world.

At least not so far, anyway.

So, as we settle down for a slightly seasonal chat, we naturally cover one or two of the films that are likely to show up on the telly around this time of the year, and reflect upon some Christmas classic TV, and consider some of the telly that really doesn’t – and shouldn’t – turn up on our festive TV screens any more.

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.

THE SHY YETI at Christmas.

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

This week’s special guest our old friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself who, because it is very nearly Christmas, has decided to pop round for a bit of a festive chat next to our FAB TOWERS crackling seasonal fireplace.

So, we’ll be talking about all sorts of nonsense including his favourite traditional festive viewing which includes several horror films, the bauble that was once JIM ROBINSON from NEIGHBOURS, those BERGERAC and DOCTOR WHO Christmas Specials, MORECAMBE AND WISE, THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, INSIDE NUMBER NINE, THE AVENGERS, and a whole load of other archive television related nonsense as we meander through the 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.

OLIVER CROCKER on the original ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

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

This week’s special guest is the film-maker, researcher, prolific podcaster, and author, OLIVER CROCKER who joins me to talk not about the long-running police drama THE BILL, about which he is something of an authority, but about another long-running drama from the 1970s and 1980s, the popular Yorkshire-set veterinary series ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL based upon the books by the author ALF WRIGHT who was better known by the pen name JAMES HERRIOT.

Starring CHRISTOPHER TIMOTHY, ROBERT HARDY, CAROL DRINKWATER, and PETER DAVISON, with the likes of JOHN McGLYNN and LINDA BELLINGHAM joining the cast for its revival, ALL CREATURES was a huge success across seven series, ninety episodes, and appeared in the BBC schedules for over a decade, making household names of all of its stars, with a popular combination of light comedy, heart-wrenching drama, and lots and lots of the kind of photogenic cute furry animals that had viewers tuning in in their millions.

OLIVER quite literally wrote the book on ALL CREATURES with his popular ALL MEMORIES GREAT AND SMALL, a collection of memories and production details about the making of a series which was so well loved that it has been successfully revived by CHANNEL FIVE for five series and counting, so I am very pleased to welcome him to VISION ON SOUND this week, to talk about this, and his TV career in general.

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 the TV adaptations of the work of JOHN LE CARRÉ

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 8th 2024.

For various reasons, recently I’ve been watching rather a lot of adaptations of the work of the novelist John le Carré, or David Cornwell as his family knew him, mostly, perhaps, because I’ve started reading his books, partially, of course, because SANDY made reference to him our show about ROCK FOLLIES earlier in the year, and also maybe because several of the adaptations have been made more widely available on the BBC’s iPlayer service.

Anyway, whatever the mysterious dark truth of those reasons might turn out to be, I’ve recently watched THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL; THE NIGHT MANAGER; TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY; SMILEY’S PEOPLE and also the film of his 1960s classic THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, and, at time of recording, I’m also about to give A PERFECT SPY a rewatch after several decades.

Le Carré’s world of spies, counter-spies, mistrust, intrigue, and intense Cold War hostilities entertained us for several decades, and mostly centred around the enigmatic character of GEORGE SMILEY, as perfectly personified in two of the television adaptations of the late 1970s and early 1980s by SIR ALEC GUINNESS, and it is mostly upon those two series, TINKER, TAILOR and SMILEY’S PEOPLE that my conversation with WARREN CUMMINGS over the course of the next slow-burning but hopefully intensely engaging hour will concentrate, but, as long as neither of us turns out to be the Mole, then maybe we’ll return to talk about a few of the others on another occasion.

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 on some more contemporary psychological thrillers.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 1st 2024.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI is back, and this week he wanted to use as our starting point some of the telly that he’d been watching recently, and, because that’s always a good prompt for an interesting television-related discussion, we did precisely that.

So, whilst this does mean that, once again, the television we’re talking about is a lot more modern than I’m usually familiar with, it does also mean that we’re returning to a type of television that I’ve discussed with PAUL on at least one previous edition of the show, as we delve into the murky waters of the contemporary psychological thriller serial, the kind of show that Channel Five in particular seems to be producing in large numbers, and which it is promoting widely to a large audience who, much like PAUL, completely lap this kind of thing up.

Our starting point today takes in three of serials first broadcast in 2024 that PAUL has enjoyed, THE CUCKOO starring JILL HALFPENNY and LEE INGLEBY which is a four-part series; THE WIVES, a six-part thriller with JAMIE BAMBER, JO JOYNER and TAMSIN OUTHWAITE; and THE TEACHER, another four-parter featuring KARA TOINTON and WILL MELLOR which serves as a follow-up to a previous series from 2022 featuring SHERIDAN SMITH.

As ever, whilst this may be our starting point, our conversation meanders into all sorts of other mostly-related areas, and I do hope that you enjoy our observations over the course of the 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.

In a packed programme tonight, WARREN CUMMINGS really wanted to talk about a new dawn for DOCTOR WHO, but possibly not the one I might have been expecting…

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 24th 2024.

In this edition of the show we (mostly) talk about season seven of classic DOCTOR WHO, first broadcast in 1970, featuring JON PERTWEE in the title role, and which consists of the following four stories:

SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE (4 episodes)

DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS (7 episodes)

THE AMBASSADORS OF DEATH (7 episodes)

INFERNO (7 episodes)

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 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.