PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI tells me all about some archive Australian dramas - but possibly not the ones you were expecting.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 4th 2026.

This week we welcome back our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, and this week he’s going to venture into perhaps territory rather familiar to regular listeners to VISION ON SOUND.

Because I expect it will come as absolutely no surprise to any of you that we will be discussing that favourite topic of PAUL’s, the Australian Drama series.

But, thanks a particular DVD outlet called Eaton Films making a lot more archive material available – at least as far as Crawford Television productions are concerned - PAUL has been expanding his personal experience of the Antipodean televisual universe, and over the course of the next hour we will be discussing (amongst other shows) two series, one of which is called THE BOX and the other is COP SHOP.

Following a 90minute Pilot THE BOX ran from February 1974 through to October 1977 and across those slightly under four years managed to clock up an astonishing 603 episodes, 474 of which were half an hour, and the remaining 128 running to 60 minutes.

As with a lot of the shows PAUL likes to encourage us to see, it’s described as a Soap Opera, but it’s unusual in being a drama set in a fictional television station in Melbourne, and, like several shows in which television chooses to turn the dramatic spotlight upon itself, it can occasionally prove to be ground-breaking and perhaps slightly controversial, at least with its forward-looking attitude to the sexuality of its characters, and in featuring occasional glimpses of on-screen nudity when such things were far less likely on television.

COP SHOP was – perhaps unsurprisingly - a long running police drama series, and across its seven years of production from 1977 to 1984 produced an incredible 582 fifty-five-minute episodes. In comparison, the seven seasons of HILL STREET BLUES produced 146. They are, of course, very different in style, with COP SHOP perhaps more resembling THE BILL in terms of what it looks like, but it’s still an astonishing rate of production for a police series.

And whilst PAUL’S heart will probably always belong to shows like NEIGHBOURS and SONS AND DAUGHTERS, I think you’ll find his enthusiasm for these other shows infectious, and may find your credit cards screaming from whichever purse or wallet you keep yours in.

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 on some of her recent TV viewing.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 28th 2025.

This week, our friend LISA PARKER returns to share some of her recent viewing experiences with us, which, perhaps unusually, is mostly outside what we generally get to talk about whenever LISA shows up.

This triggers some rather interesting conversation prompted by programmes as diverse as MISS MARPLE, SERGEANT CORK, DOCTOR WHO, Z CARS, HORRIBLE HISTORIES, and even STAR MAIDENS in another of those sometimes rather more investigative explorations of a viewer’s experiences of viewing archive television that I like to think that VISION ON SOUND sometimes does so well.

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 A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 21st 2025.

It’s Christmas time and (as any fule no), that’s a time when ghosts and ghoulies tend to crawl out of the wainscoting, and trouble the very worst of us into at least thinking about changing our ways, and perhaps trying to become better people, whatever that may mean.

Often, such transformations have already fizzled out before the doors open for the Boxing Day Sales, but at least once a year there’s that one small hope that some of us have at least tried to embrace our fellow inhabitants of planet earth for a few hours of the year as it, too, changes its own directions and heads back towards the sun, or away from it, depending upon where you happen to be loitering upon its surface.

This Christmas week we welcome back our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, and he wanted to talk about a peculiar phenomenon known as A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS which ran on the BBC throughout most of the 1970s, and has since been sporadically revived in this century.

Over the next hour, as it’s VISION ON SOUND and we tend to have our little archive TV ways, we mostly concentrate on the original 1970s run, but we have already seriously given some thought returning to cover the later films on another occasion, perhaps when the sun is beaming down and those dark and scary corners can’t conceal any horrors that might wish to lurk there.

So, amongst other creepy tales, we will be talking in a fairly non-spoilery way about THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER, A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS, LOST HEARTS, THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS, THE ASH TREE, THE SIGNALMAN, STIGMA, and THE --- ICE --- HOUSE…

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 explores TV in real time.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 14th 2025.

This week, WARREN CUMMINGS is back again for another of our more random telly-related chats, which ultimately leads to us having a lengthy discussion about the structure of how we watch modern television, and involves things like comparing the different storytelling styles of TV mini-series and feature films, via the early 21st century high-concept thriller series “24” and “Big Brother”.

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.

NICK GOODMAN discusses three JACK GERSON thrillers.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 7th 2025.

This week, NICK GOODMAN was very eager to press his personal Fast Return Switch because he wanted to share his particular enthusiasm for three of the BBC thriller series written by JACK GERSON which were all produced by ROBERT McINTOSH across three consecutive years around the turn of the 1980s.

These were RUNNING BLIND in 1979, based on the novel by DESMOND BAGLEY, and starring STUART WILSON, which was followed over the course of the next two years by a pair of not entirely thematically dissimilar three-part thriller serials THE ASSASSINATION RUN and THE TREACHERY GAME which featured MALCOLM STODDARD and MARY TAMM in the lead roles.

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 continues his analysis of UKTV comedy by talking about THE GOODIES.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 30th 2025.

This week, following on from his recent insights into TV comedy, WARREN CUMMINGS is back, this time to dedicate our entire hour to talking about one of his favourites, THE GOODIES which featured BILL ODDIE, GRAEME GARDEN, and the late and much-missed TIM BROOKE-TAYLOR as that wacky trio who somehow managed to reflect and represent between them the Britain of the 1970s in classic comedy form, as we move on into a world of puppet governments, giant kittens, trouser-squeezing disco, sausage-related martial arts, and all manner of other satire disguised as nonsense.

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 himself, on some of his favourite female comedy performers.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 23rd 2025.

This week our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, returns in response to our recent edition in which we did our best to try and analyse some television comedy.

PAUL noticed that much of the comedy we were talking about was focussed on the work of the male comedy performers and writers, and he, quite rightly, thought that he ought to redress the balance and talk about some of the many female comedians who he has enjoyed the work of, and who have inspired him over the years.

So, whilst we start off perhaps inevitably discussing the state of TV comedy in general, once we get that out of the way we spend the bulk of the next hour talking about PAUL’s favorites from, amongst others, the likes of LUCILLE BALL, ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY, BEA ARTHUR, BETTY WHITE, RUE McCLANAHAN, VICTORIA WOOD, DAWN FRENCH, JENNIFER SAUNDERS, TINA FEY, and, whilst we did at least mention her in our previous conversation, DIANE MORGAN.

I think it makes for a fun, thoughtful, and inciteful hour, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as we 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.

WARREN CUMMINGS and I, perhaps unwisely, try to analyse some TV comedy.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 16th 2025.

This week, in a show we recorded earlier in the autumn just as VISION ON SOUND returned from its summer hiatus, I welcome back WARREN CUMMINGS once again, and we took the opportunity to delve deep into an area that is always a little bit outside my personal comfort zone, as we tackle the tricky little matter of television comedy in as analytical a way as we are capable of, as we consider whether or not some of the recognised classics from the archives are as enjoyable as we like to believe they are.

This was prompted by me picking up a bit of MONTY PYTHON on DVD and finding some of it to be “difficult” to watch, and WARREN throws the somewhat problematical nature of some of SPIKE MILLIGAN’s television work into the mix, before we move into a broader consideration of the comedy of a different time.

Over the course of this hour we’ll also touch upon some radio comedy, some TV sitcoms, and the work of metaphorical comedy giants such as PETER COOK and DUDLEY MOORE, as well as talking rather fondly about shows like ALEXEI SAYLE’s STUFF, VIC REEVES’ BIG NIGHT OUT, THE YOUNG ONES and the more recent work of DIANE MORGAN whose PHILOMENA CUNK is one of the more successful recent comedy creations.

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 presents some more of his recent TV viewing.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 9th 2025.

This week we welcome back STEVE HATCHER once again to continue our series of conversations about some of his eclectic television viewing choices.

Steve has a life long love of television and – like many archive TV fans - is always adding to the mix that makes up his own personal TV schedule based around some of the archive TV channels, things he finds on online channels, and his own extensive DVD and Blu-Ray collection which means that he is constantly exploring the fascinating and more obscure corners of the television archives and finding new and often forgotten series to talk to us about.

Not that he confines himself to the dusty old corners of television that some of us have been known to loiter in. STEVE is also interested in television that is bang up to date and only available to subscribers to some of the streaming channels, and likes to add some of those shows to the mix when they appeal to him.

So during this week’s show we will discuss the vampiric horrors of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS a series which has recently drifted off to what we (perhaps inappropriately in this case) called TV HEAVEN, and is now very much in the archives. Keeping with the horror theme, we also discuss the small miracle of the surviving fragments of the late 1960s BBC Horror Anthology LATE NIGHT HORROR which have been saved for posterity thanks to KALEIDOSCOPE.

Different kinds of horrors are explored in the historical dramas SHADOW OF THE TOWER, FALL OF EAGLES, and THE STRAUSS FAMILY which we also touch upon in what I think is an entertaining hour spent trawling the more obscure corners of the worlds of Archive television.

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's TOP TEN BRITISH CHILDREN'S TV SHOWS.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 2nd 2025.

This week our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, returns to present yet another of his Top Ten choices, which this time is his choice of his all time favourite British Children’s Television shows.

As with his other Top Ten selections, I think that you might be a little bit surprised by several of PAUL’s choices, and, of course, there is a vast archive of quality options that have to be left out when you’re making a list like this, and several forgotten classics often pop into the mind almost as soon as you’ve finished speaking.

As ever, PAUL’s Top Ten choices, might set you thinking about what your own favourites might be, and whether you might want to share them with the wider VISION ON SOUND community. As always, if you would like to appear on the show and share your own Top Ten choices about anything Archive TV related, feel free to let me know via the usual Social Media outlets, and we might be able make it happen some day.

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.