First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 26th 2023

For various reasons, I’ve been watching quite a lot of television set in and around Scotland over the past couple of months, and, as it rather luckily turns out, for many similar reasons, so has one of our regular visitors to the programme, and, even more luckily, that visitor is SANDY McGREGOR, which means that we can safely talk about all manner of things related to Scottish made and Scotland set television without much risk of upsetting anybody.

Well, at least he can.

So, over the course of the next hour, we talk about a wide range of Scottish-based dramas such as TUTTI FRUTTI, YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, THE CROW ROAD, SUNSET SONG, and SUTHERLAND”S LAW. We also briefly skirt around the knotty issue of those classic crime dramas TAGGART and REBUS, give a nod to STILL GAME, and, don’t worry, TAKE THE HIGH ROAD does at least get a mention.

We’ll also be touching upon representations of Scotland on television generally, and those pesky “local variations” and whether they tended to annoy a youngster growing up north of the border. And we’ll also be considering at least a few of the issues raised in SANJEEV KOHLI’s excellent programme WHA’S LIKE 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 March 19th 2023

Now that the dust has settled, and the year is rapidly hurtling towards the Easter holidays, it seems like there is no better time for us to calmly sit down and have a bit of a chat about the most recent festive season.

We’re nothing if not topical here on VISION ON SOUND.

No, really… Bear with me on this…

Because, sometimes, right around the time of broadcast, it’s rather difficult to fully appreciate the festive season for what it is. We get hung up on certain programmes as if they’re genuinely the BEST THING EVER, but then find that, after a few weeks bitter reflection, we find that the programmes that briefly seemed so very special and shiny and new, might not have turned out to feel all that memorable after all.

So, was CHRISTMAS 2022 a bit of a classic of iconic television moments, or merely another step on the inexorable journey from the giddy heights of days when CHRISTMAS TELLY felt like the hottest ticket in town down some slippery slope towards just being as “ho-hum” and monotonous as some people tend to suggest? Is the inevitable demise of linear television, and entire families gathering together to watch unforgettable programmes truly on the cards?

I’m not certain we manage to get to the resolution of that during the next hour, but WARREN CUMMINGS and I did get together at the end of January to have a bit of a chat about what we found worth watching on the main channels in late December last year, and whether any of it felt truly memorable or special.

Our viewing choices were surprisingly similar, so we talked a little bit about shows as diverse as MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING, GHOSTS, DETECTORISTS, INSIDE NUMBER NINE, Christmas Ghost Stories, crime dramas, and certain other things which at least manage to draw out one or two opinions on the state of current television programming, which I hope you’ll find as entertaining to listen to as we did in recording them.

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 March 12th 2023

This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI from THE SHY LIFE PODCAST is back and, because we have had several chats over on his show about pop music, I thought it might be nice if we sat down and had a bit of a chat about his experiences of growing up watching music-based television programmes, and if (and how) they might have influenced the kind of music that he enjoys listening to.

So, as we meander through the meadow of his memories of TOP OF THE POPS, and THE CHART SHOW, and CD:UK, amongst others, I hope you enjoy the various blooms we stopped to pick along the way.

As ever, this feels like such a rich field for us to be ploughing through, if any of you feel like joining me for a similarly themed chat one week, do get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.

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 March 5th 2023

A few weeks ago on VISION ON SOUND we celebrated the life of the television writer TERRANCE DICKS and, in passing, we mentioned his writing colleague and mentor MALCOLM HULKE, who co-wrote several television scripts alongside TERRANCE, including contributions to THE AVENGERS and DOCTOR WHO, as well as writing a quarter of the stories (on television) which featured JON PERTWEE as the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, some of which are arguably amongst the most iconic from that era, when TERRANCE DICKS was working as the Script Editor on the series.

As well as his work on DOCTOR WHO, MALCOLM also wrote scripts for the PATHFINDERS series, CROSSROADS, DANGER MAN, GIDEONS WAY, UNITED!, SPYDER’S WEB and many others, in a prolific twenty year career sadly cut short when MALCOLM HULKE died at the age of 54 years old way back in 1979. Perhaps because of this, his story, and his contribution to television writing as a whole, sometimes gets rather overlooked when people talk about the great television writers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Nowadays MALCOLM HULKE is often cited as a huge influence on the careers of the writers that followed in his footsteps, not least because of his efforts as a member of the Writers Guild, and his book WRITING FOR TELEVISION which became a must-read volume for aspiring writers in that era.

Recently, the freelance historian MICHAEL HERBERT, our guest in today’s edition of VISION ON SOUND contributed an essay on the life and works of MALCOLM HULKE to the rather excellent book SURVIVAL TV: 1970s BRITAIN AND THE TELEVISION SERIES which was published and edited by RODNEY MARSHALL.

MICHAEL is also working on a new biography of MALCOLM that he is hoping to complete this year, and he joined me to talk about the intriguingly complex life and work of this often complicated and iconic television writer.

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 February 26th 2023

This week we welcome back our old friend SANDY McGREGOR to look at another series of the more serious and dramatic telly that he tends to be rather fond of joining us for a chat about.

For this week’s show, SANDY has been watching PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, DENNIS POTTER’S acclaimed, BAFTA award winning six-part musical drama serial from 1978, directed by the late PIERS HAGGARD, and which was one of several collaborations POTTER had with Producer KENITH TRODD.

Acting-wise, the serial stars BOB HOSKINS, CHERYL CAMPBELL, and GEMMA CRAVEN, alongside an astonishingly vivid turn from KENNETH COLLEY as the Accordion Man, and a whole host of amazing and very familiar acting talent.

It’s a complex story of longing for another life, love and death, and the inevitability of fate, all accompanied by an extraordinary soundtrack of the popular tunes from the 1920s and 1930s, and represents the first – but not the last – time DENNIS POTTER would require his actors to mime and dance along to the tunes in often breathtaking sequences that attempt to show the inner lives, hopes and dreams of his characters in stark contrast to the mundane disappointments in their humdrum everyday existences.

This is the story of sheet music salesman ARTHUR PARKER (played by Bob Hoskins in a career-making role) who is unhappily and frustratingly married to Gemma Craven’s JOAN. As the serial begins, they are living in an art deco suburban hell, but, because ARTHUR lives the “on the road” life of a commercial traveller, he has a fateful encounter with EILEEN EVERSON, a Gloucestershire schoolmistress with hidden depths, played by CHERYL CAMPBELL, which has the effect of changing both of their lives in surprising and sometimes very dark ways.

As both of their destinies become intertwined in a tale of scandal, deceit, and murder, the narrative finds new and intriguing ways to pick at the various scabs of society, including politics, education, and the legal system, before going inevitably to a very dark conclusion that, perhaps surprisingly, then pulls one or two extraordinary narrative twists from out of the bag.

About a decade later, POTTER’s other masterpiece THE SINGING DETECTIVE would, in some ways, cover very similar ground in parts, and so PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is often considered a prototype, or a trial run, for that later work, even though its story actually goes off in a very different direction.

And PENNIES FROM HEAVEN is an astonishing piece in its own right, although, perhaps because it was unavailable on British TV screens for a long time for legal reasons, sometimes it doesn’t get quite as much love as it deserves.

Sadly, since we recorded this conversation, the director of the series, the prolific and multi-talented PIERS HAGGARD, who also directed the final QUATERMASS serial for EUSTON FILMS in 1979, has passed on from this realm, but, rather strangely, and regrettably, SANDY and I failed to talk about his contribution in the enthusiastic and frantic hour that follows, so I hope that by at least acknowledging him now, you’ll forgive our ridiculous lapse of judgment.

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 February 19th 2023

This week we welcome back PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, from THE SHY LIFE PODCAST and we’re going to talk about, in a magic roundabout sort of a way, our various memories of, or reactions to, the children’s television that we used to watch when we were growing up.

This idea was mostly prompted by two things really; First there was the range of single episodes dating from what many people consider to be a “Golden Age” of children’s television that were put out on BBC4 last year as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations, which gave modern viewers a rare chance to see the likes of THE MAGIC ROUNDABOUT, VISION ON, and RENTAGHOST on their televisions for the first time in what seems like an absolute age.

Not that our conversation is exclusively restricted to the BBC’s output however, because the other prompt for us to have this conversation was the imminent release of the rediscovered masters of Southern Television’s classic series WORZEL GUMMIDGE which featured JON PERTWEE, UNA STUBBS and GEOFFREY BAYLDON, which has now been lovingly remastered for a brand new high-definition Blu-Ray set.

So, over the course of this hour we mention that, alongside shows like BLUE PETER and the various SATURDAY MORNING options that we were given to view back in the day, and talk about the sort of television that most appealed to us when we were both knee-high to various grasshoppers and hadn’t yet graduated to full control rights for the household remote control box.

It’s a bit of an amiable ramble down memory lane, really, so don’t expect any massive insights, or production details, or anything like that, but I do hope you enjoy travelling along those pathways 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 February 12th 2023

Until recently, the ABC TELEVISION logo animation and accompanying jingle tended to make be immediately think of the very early series of THE AVENGERS because that was almost exclusively what I tended to see it attached to.

ABC TELEVISION LIMITED created a whole host of shows for the ITV network in the UK between 1956 and 1968, and recently NETWORK TV have been releasing a whole load of their content in a series of “theme night” DVD releases which, fortunately, our regular guest team of LISA and ANDREW from THE ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST, have been buying up and watching, and they’ve joined me today to tell us all about them.

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 February 5th 2023

Space… Between my ears…

These are the voyages of the good ship VISION ON SOUND…

It’s ongoing mission…

Nah, let’s not do that…

Basically, WARREN is back this week to talk all about the original version of STAR TREK, so let’s kick up our warp engines to slingshot around the sun, and see if we can find ourselves back in the latter half of the 1960s where the small screen adventures of CAPTAIN KIRK and the crew of the STARSHIP USS ENTERPRISE all began…

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 January 29th 2023

STEVE HATCHER’s back this week to take us on a whistle-stop tour of all those great swashbuckling adventure series from the fifties and sixties, including the likes of ROBIN HOOD, THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, THE BUCCANEERS, SIR LANCELOT, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, THE GAY CAVALIER, and many more, so let’s don our doublet and hose (grab our tights), unsheath our swords and head back to those days of old when knights were bold, and all that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, the online connection for this recording was playing up on the ay, but I hope that the occasional technical issues don't diminish your enjoyment of this otherwise fascinating conversation.

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 January 22nd 2023

This week we welcome back our regular contributor PAUL CHANDLER, the SHY YETI himself, who’s found a few spare moments to once again venture into his imaginarium of televisual treats and share his choices for the section of the museum set aside specifically for the strange and quirky subset of television drama – and occasional comedy – that we think of as the ANTHOLOGY SERIES.

Now, of course, you might suggest that much of what we think of as being scripted television is some sort of anthology series, really. A series of serious television plays like PLAY FOR TODAY could be considered to be an anthology of sorts, as can any drama series that features a collection of characters but places them in a different situation to have to cope with each week.

Also, despite featuring the same lovable characters in every episode, many sitcoms place those characters in different situations week after week, often with "hilarious" consequences.

But the anthology series is something different really, despite often having a format in which the different weekly stories and scenarios, and different weekly cast of actors, are introduced by a familiar figure each week. These series were designed to tell different stories under a blanket identity, and were often terribly successful, perhaps simply because the audience knew that even if last week had presented a disappointing edition, maybe this week’s would be a lot better.

I suspect that it’s a format that I’ve subconsciously mimicked in the creation of this very show, hopefully with a similar outcome.

Anyway, over the course of the next hour, PAUL and I will touch upon series as diverse as ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, NIGHT GALLERY, TALES OF UNEASE, BEASTS and, perhaps the most anthology of all anthologies, TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, so I hope you’ll stick with us and enjoy what we had to say.

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.