First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on August 6th 2023

“DOCTOR WHO IS THE MISS MARPLE OF SCI-FI!”

This week, once again, that regular contributor to VISION ON SOUND, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, is our returning guest, and is sitting in the hot seat as I fling another of our random chat topics in his general direction, and, when we set out on our journey, neither of us have a clue where it’s going to go.

Happily, this week we talk quite a lot about THE AVENGERS in both its Black & White EMMA PEEL, and colour TARA KING phases, before moving on to such hot topics as RECEIVED OPINIONs in FANDOM, the whole notion of COLLECTIBLES, and some of the new and exciting ways to experience television in the modern era.

So, without any further ado, let’s kick up those FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL Time Engines and dive right in, and see where we end up, which, presumably, won’t be anywhere too BIZARRE…

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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 30th 2023

ANDY TATE who we’re welcoming today is a fan of the show, and got in touch with me with a whole list of exciting suggestions of subjects for shows we might want to do on VISION ON SOUND, so it only seemed fair to invite him along and talk to him about some of them.

And what a fun guest he turned out to be, as I think you’ll discover over the next hour, in which, after a bit of a preamble in which we talk about some of his earliest TV memories, we tackle one of the subjects taken from his list of suggestions, a TV topic which is very close to his heart, and talk about one of his favourite TV series, COLUMBO, a series with its roots forged in the very furnace of American television.

Created by RICHARD LEVINSON and WILLIAM LINK, who would also go on to create MURDER SHE WROTE, COLUMBO was apparently inspired in part by both PORFIRY PETROVICH in DOSTOEVSKYs CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and G K CHESTERTON’S FATHER BROWN, and evolved out an episode from the early 1960s anthology series THE CHEVY MYSTERY SHOW called ENOUGH ROPE, which featured BERT FREED in the role of the Detective, and then transformed into a stage play called PRESCRIPTION: MURDER, which was then adapted into a TELEVISION MOVIE in 1968 starring PETER FALK which acted as an unofficial Pilot episode for the television series which later became so iconic.

A second pilot RANSOM FOR A DEAD MAN followed in March 1971, before the series proper began in September 1971 as part of the NBC WEDNESDAY MYSTERY MOVIE strand in which three detective series would be broadcast in the slot on different weeks.

Initially COLUMBO alternated with DENNIS WEAVER as the urban cowboy detective McCLOUD, and ROCK HUDSON and SUSAN SAINT JAMES as the crime fighting duo of McMILLAN AND WIFE, with RICHARD BOONE adding to the mix in the second year as HEC RAMSEY, mixing the western formula with forensic investigations.

COLUMBO was a POLICE LIEUTENANT attached to the HOMICIDE DEPARTMENT of the LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT, and as such, the homicides he dealt with were often – but not exclusively - committed amongst the glitz and glamour of a Hollywood lifestyle, and, more often than not involved people living at the richer and more privileged end of the American dream.

The show was unusual in that the WHODUNNIT aspect was discarded in favour of a HOWDUNNIT, with the murderer often being identified from the outset, and the mystery itself being more about how COLUMBO would trap the criminal into giving themselves away, often after believing that they had committed the perfect crime.

COLUMBO himself was famously charming and courteous to everyone he met, and this, alongside his shabby outfit of a battered raincoat worn over a rumpled suit and tie, his choice of a battered old Peugeot to park alongside the high value sports cars owned by the suspects, and his seemingly easily distracted demeanour, all caused the criminals to underestimate him, often right up until the moment when they would fall into the trap he set them, usually accompanied with that phrase that rather became his catchphrase: various variations on “Just one more thing…”

Forty-three more episodes of COLUMBO aired across seven seasons in the 1970s, featuring a whole host of celebrity killers who pitted their wits against what they considered to be this shambles of a man.

After a break of 12 years, the series was revived in 1989 for a further six editions, and another fourteen films followed across the next fourteen years, with the final – sixty ninth - COLUMBO first airing in 2003.

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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 23rd 2023

A couple of years ago, back in our forty-eighth edition of VISION ON SOUND in September 2021, I welcomed ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON onto the show for the first time, and we spent a happy hour discussing his artistic life, creating his witty television-themed illustrations and graphic images, and about how his love of archive television inspired many of them.

His creation of spoof adverts featuring characters from shows like SAPPHIRE AND STEEL being used to promote products that never actually existed had given ANDY exactly the kind of internet presence that draws attention to people, and, little did I know at the time, but even as we recorded that show he was on the very brink of being commissioned to produce a collection of his artwork in book form.

Two years later, and here, in the summer of 2023, that rather beautiful book is in the process of being released at last into the world, courtesy of DAVID J HOWE and his TELOS PUBLISHING Company.

The book is called THIS IS A FAKE – after the words infamously scribbled onto the back of several MONA LISAs in felt-tipped pen by TOM BAKER’s DOCTOR WHO in the story CITY OF DEATH penned by DOUGLAS ADAMS in 1979 - and is a lovingly crafted volume of delightful and witty works of art which somehow manages to weave an alternative history of the DOCTOR WHO series that we sort-of know and love, and many of the television shows existing alongside it, as seen through the kind of promotional material that could only exist in some other, far stranger, parallel dimension.

So the book takes us on a visual journey right back to DR WHO’s post-war radio serial roots, which would inspire so much incredible familiarly unrecognizable merchandise, and even a celebratory Garden Fete held in deepest, darkest Sussex, that led to a specifically 1960s form of traffic chaos.

Sadly, as this book is indeed a celebratory pastiche, none of the products pictured within has ever been produced or placed on sale, which is, in several cases, rather unfortunate, as there are many that many Archive TV fans would have snapped up in a heartsbeat.

Obviously, with a brand-new glossy and shiny fresh great big book to promote, ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON has been busily doing the rounds promoting his Magisterpiece, so I was rather delighted that he – or at least someone who looks and sounds very much like him - has taken the time out of his now frantically busy schedule to join me once again to spend a rather delightful hour talking about how the book came into being, his processes, ideas, and inspirations, some of which I hope that you might actually not have heard before, and I hope you enjoy spending time in his company as much 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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 16th 2023

It’s been rather too long since we last heard from our Canadian Correspondent RICK LAWLOR on the show, so when I did finally manage to remind myself of this and get in touch, it was a joy to find out that he was still keen to contribute to the show, despite those pesky time differences that can sometimes make finding suitable moments to record slightly difficult to organize.

But RICK was still keen, even if it meant rearranging our dates and wondering about whether any time lag in the question and answer process might mean adding those NASA style BLEEPS to the end of every sentence and calling each other Roger all of the time.

Neither was necessary, of course, but that moment of nostalgia did remind me that we’d never done one of our EARLIEST TV MEMORIES shows with RICK, and so that’s what we decided to talk about, and I think that if your own TV memories feature POGLES’ WOOD, NORMAN WISDOM, BASIL BRUSH, JACKANORY, VISION ON, THINK OF A NUMBER, ITC series like RANDALL & HOPKIRK (DECEASED) and PLANET OF THE APES, or if you’re someone who just likes to cosy up and watch TV with your own nearest and dearest, I think you’ll find the following hour a rather charming one to spend in his company.

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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 9th 2023

I’ve wanted to cover the iconic TV series THE TWILIGHT ZONE on the show since almost the very first episode of VISION ON SOUND, but for some reason, things seemed to keep getting in the way of me getting around to it, so I was very pleased when ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON joined me for a bit of a chat about the series in all of its many manifestations.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE, created by the legendary television writer ROD SERLING was first transmitted on American TV on the CBS network in October 1959.

Despite being often thought of as a Science-Fiction series, THE TWILIGHT ZONE was something far more insightful, and far stranger than that. Because whilst the overall notion of slipping into THE TWILIGHT ZONE is a fundamentally S-F concept, the stories that it featured were often more about life, and fate, and the whims of chance, or choice, than being about starships and aliens.

Of course, such tales did feature, some so memorable that they have inspired some of the finest moments on THE SIMPSONS decades later, as well as presenting half hour versions of stories that later went on to inspire the minds behind several blockbuster movies.

Taking as its source stories featuring people from all walks of life, themes as diverse as jazz music, boxing, military life, and aircraft pilots would feature alongside the astronauts exploring the final frontier at the start of the space race, as well as the melancholic angst of life in post-war atomic-age America.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE aired for five seasons, but sadly was not as much loved in its day as it would later become, and had only moderate ratings meaning that it was twice cancelled and revived, ultimately running for five years and 156 Episodes, 92 of which were written by ROD SERLING himself.

It has since been revived several times, with varying degrees of both success, and, in the case of the feature film version, tragedy, but these versions have rarely proved to be as lasting, or as iconic as that original series born in the 1950s.

Of course, with a topic as huge as THE TWILIGHT ZONE, we may feel the need to return to it at some point, so do feel free to share your own thoughts on the series with us.

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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on July 2nd 2023

This week I really wanted to talk about some TV CHEESE, by which I mean the sort of television that can become anybody’s guilty pleasure, even if they might never want to fess up to watching it, or the sort of television that’s so bad it’s actually quite good, or, at the very least, enjoyable.

Old curmudgeons like myself, of course, might like to bang on about how that’s pretty much everything that comes on our screens now, especially in the name of light entertainment, but I don’t think that’s quite what I meant either.

There are some shows which have reputations that precede them, shows the mere mention of which can cause people to roll their eyes in mock (or genuine) horror, and wonder why on earth anyone would want to watch them, and yet, when you do watch them, still prove to be satisfying half or full hours of viewing when you take the time to.

Unsurprisingly, several American series from the 1970s and eighties do tend to fall into this category. Shows like THE WALTONS, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, TJ HOOKER, THE DUKES OF HAZZARD, and HAPPY DAYS can be mercilessly mocked and shunned by the classic TV watching community, alongside such bonkers BRITISH TV series like BONEKICKERS, BUGS or CATS EYES, and SF shows like BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and its sequel GALACTICA 1980, and plain afternoon romantic nonsense like THE LOVE BOAT.

So, in order to put us on the launch pad for covering some of the lesser-loved classic TV shows from time-to-time on VISION ON SOUND, WARREN CUMMINGS joined me for a wild hour just musing over some of the very worst contenders for qualifying as genuine TV cheese.

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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 25th 2023

Way back in October 2021, in the fifty-fifth edition of the show if you want to seek it out, LISA and ANDREW joined me to chat about the then relatively brand new release of the BBC’s 1960s version of MAIGRET on Blu-Ray and DVD, so, with eighteen months having passed since, it doesn’t seem too soon to return to talking about the Belgian writer GEORGES SIMENON’s Detective creation, who featured in an astonishing 75 novels and a further 28 short stories across a very long and successful writing career.

Especially as it is a Detective series, like SHERLOCK HOLMES, that has been returned to time and again and has been presented in many forms and variations over the decades, so, whilst that version starring RUPERT DAVIES which ran from 1960 to 1963 may hold a special nostalgic place in the nation’s heart, on UK TV alone there have been at least two new versions produced, a very well received version starring MICHAEL GAMBON in the early nineties, and a short-lived variant made about eight years ago featuring ROWAN ATKINSON which proved to be something of a hit at the time but failed to be recommissioned.

All three of these versions have attempted adaptations of the book MAIGRET IN MONTMARTRE, which in itself makes for a fabulous opportunity for the archive TV viewer to see how different eras treat the same source material.

Then there are the other successful versions made both in FRANCE and in other countries across the world, featuring actors like GINO CERVI, JEAN RICHARD, and BRUNO CREMER, all of which have been terribly popular in their counties of origin, and some of which have even managed to make in onto British TV screens so that we can make even more comparisons of how other countries choose to do MAIGRET.

Anyway, STEVE HATCHER is back this week, and, in that thorough way he has of viewing television series in as many of its manifestations as he can get his hands on, he’s been watching several of the versions of MAIGRET made for both film and television over the decades, and he’s joining us to give us the background to as many as he can, whilst putting some VIANDE SUR LES OS of what we call THE SIX FACES OF MAIGRET.

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.

BONUS EPISODE!

Available from 6:00pm, FRIDAY JUNE 23rd, 2023

ADDITIONAL CONTENT featuring LISA PARKER, ANDREW TROWBRIDGE, PAUL CHANDLER, and WARREN CUMMINGS.

For our recent edition which paid tribute to the late, lamented NETWORK DISTRIBUTING, the UK video imprint company that had an eclectic and eccentric range of archive TV releases, STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON suggested that I might want to add some memories and contributions from some of the other regulars into the show, and, for timing reasons, they had to be trimmed to keep us inside our timeslot.

The thing is that, having gathered LISA and ANDREW from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST, and PAUL, THE SHY YETI from THE SHY LIFE PODCAST together, they were never going to keep down to just the ten minutes, and so there was about an hour of material sitting there unused.

Despite looking fondly at all of that extra content, I felt it might have been a little TOO self-indulgent to put ANOTHER whole show on the loss of NETWORK out on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL, but still thought that there was lots of lovely stuff in that hour that was worth hearing, so I’ve decided to put it out as an extra bonus edition, which is (because I never do this) pretty much unedited, and so I hope you’ll forgive any technical flaws that might have crept through.

And do hang on to the end, because I’ve also tagged on the fifteen minutes of chat with WARREN CUMMINGS from THE CINEMATIC SAUSAGE PODCAST which got trimmed for the show, so you get to hear a little bit more of that, too.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 18th 2023

In a change to our schedule, with the sudden unexpected demise of NETWORK DISTRIBUTING, the UK video imprint company that had, with its eclectic and eccentric range of releases, served fans of Archive TV very well for the last 25 years, STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON got in touch and said they wanted to talk how they felt about it, and, along with other some memories and contributions from some of the other regulars, WARREN, LISA, ANDREW and PAUL, VISION ON SOUND presents an hour in which we fondly remember the company, and what it 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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 11th 2023

My regular co-collaborator on the show, WARREN CUMMINGS, has been hosting his CINEMATIC SAUSAGE podcast all about classic movies for the past couple of years, and the thought struck me recently that an enormous amount of the kind of films that he and I both find we enjoy aren’t from the sort of time when we would have been able to see them at the cinema, so the only reason that young whippersnappers like us could possibly have come to know that such movies even existed was because they used to turn up on the telly and we would find ourselves drawn to them, whether it was on long wet summer holiday and weekend afternoons, or in those rather special seasons that used to turn up occasionally, and usually at a time when the news was the only other choice of viewing.

So our young minds would be exposed to extensive seasons of early evening Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce SHERLOCK HOLMES films, or SCIENCE-FICTION CLASSICS, or GOLDEN TURKEYS and late night HORRORS, and our interests would be shaped by these, alongside the afternoon WEEPIES, COMEDIES, or those stone-cold classics – often WAR FILMS - that tended to cling doggedly to BANK HOLIDAY weekends and become instant traditions in many households.

Anyway, WARREN is here to talk about all of those things, as we reminisce about the kind of films we enjoy, and how we first found them, and I hope you enjoy what he had to say as much 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.