is there a name or a phrase for or anything much written about that distinctly British CREEPY VIBE prevalent in TV shows and movies of the '60s/'70s? (e.g. The Prisoner, Sapphire and Steel, Baker-era

This seems to be the closest thing we have to a folk horror thread, so I just wanted to mention that I watched most of the Punchdrunk 12-hour livestreamed episode of The Third Day w/Jude Law yesterday. Incredible stuff, can still be watched on the Sky TV facebook page I think.

I wondered what the story was on that when I passed by it and saw that it did seem to be 12 hours long.
I was on the way to something else as I stepped through the channels.
Hadn't realised the tv show itself was on a channel I got

Stumbled across it and looked up what was going on

Enjoyed what I had on, cos I love slow TV, don't think I'm bothered about catching up with another Wicker Man retread tbh

Don't want to spoil it for you or anyone else who might be thinking of dipping their toes in, but I will say that the basic premise is v different from The Wicker Man.

yeah that wasn't fully serious tbh but i'm guessing the filmed eps are not quite as strange a proposition as yesterday's programme?

I haven't seen those yet tbh, I'm playing catch-up as usual!

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/05/jude-law-live-for-12-hours-the-third-day-autumn-pushed-boundaries-but-was-it-good

what a stupid question

Listened to half of the BBC radio adaptation of Children of the Stones, I think they've done it really well. The whole 'investigative journalist podcast within a podcast' thing is definitely overplayed but so far not hampering my enjoyment. You can find it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08sy3qx

ooooh ty

Made in 2018, repeated today so up for replay for 28 days: a radio adaptation of a twice-lost* 1963 Nigel Kneale TV play, The Road. While the programme itself was wiped, the original 1963 sound effects tape was unearthed by Radiophonic Workshop flame-keeper Mark Ayres, and used in this production.

* it was remade in Australia a year later, and also not archived.

I watched 4 of the non-12-hour-episodes of The Third Day and thought it was okay. The first couple felt oddly like a indie video game - following your Jude Law avatar around as he finds a clue inside a box, overhears a conversation, etc etc. Not much thrill power & didn't hit my pleasure centres at the spots it seemed to be aiming for - folklore/ritual uncanny & lingering images.

I don't have any great enthusiasm for finishing watching it but I probably will. tbh the 12-hour thing sounds more interesting.

Also finally watched the Mackenzie Crook Wurzel Gummidge & thought of this thread. I liked it better than almost anything roughly in the zone for a while, I think because it feels like it enjoys the countryside & enjoys telling a story more than it likes the creepy vibe, ie too many of these things reach for the vibe first and don't take a bit of time hanging out, enjoying the landscape (like they are more interested in the Wicker Man than the world). Refreshing to see the creepiness embedded in pleasure-in-nature (& it helps that it's actual kids/family TV, & so has to be relatively straightforward).

The long performance was wonderful just for existing

curiously, Sapphire and Steel is being shown on two different freeview channels at the moment. ForcesTV has been showing it daily with a 6-episode omnibus on saturdays and LondonLive has been showing it in it's 19:00 slot, which is around the time i remember it being on originally, the summer replacement for emmerdale.

i've also just finished reading The Owl Service, the tv series of which would fit here, but i have no memory of it.

I rewatched the owl service within the last year, and still can't remember anything...

there is some discussion upthread.

The Owl Service is brilliant. It does get pretty dark and sexual for a children's TV programme though - I went in expecting more of a Children of the Stones "v spooky but family friendly" vibe and remember being really surprised by it.

the titles are amazing though, aren't they?

I don't get ForcesTV on Freeview?

You should from the December retune I think. It's way up in the 90s channels - 96?

96, yes. i think about half my devices get it, half don't. helps if the weather's good when you retune 8)

it's on Multiplex com7 - ARQC - Arqiva C which says
"Broadcasting to 20.6m UK homes from 30 masts (77%)"
same mux as bbc4hd and bbcnewshd

https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/multiplexes

I don't get ForcesTV in Glasgow. Or London Live, obv

The last time I read The Owl Service, the use of the word 'n*g-n*g' (as a childish insult) screamed out at me - I wonder if it's been removed for more recent editions. It's pretty much the only blemish in the bk, and the TV series is a dece attempt at it.

wasn't in my version (50th anniversary, pullman intro)

i love the Owl Service but I don't think I've seen the show.

if anyone's interested in this stuff and you're on Facebook, join the Folk Horror Revival group

Retuned. Still no Forces TV.

your tv knows you didn't clap for major tom

Who says I didn't?

not our words, the words of Forces TV

I assumed Forces TV was endless repeats of Soldier Soldier and Get Some In!, but it's hard to discern a military theme (or any entertainment value) in Sapphire & Steel.

it's all things like Robin's Nest and Bless This House, Sikes, Dukes of Hazzard, Chips. they've showed Space 1999 and UFO before now. it's an odd mix.

also a lot of Leni Riefenstahl movies

Royal It's a Knockout.

The Blue Light on it? Dont think I get this channel either

Xp re riefenstahl

No I was just drunkenly calling soldiers nazi sympathisers, Forces TV would never show anything as aesthetic as a Riefenstahl movie but if you want to watch 237 episodes of Never The Twain bob's your uncle

Leni Riefenstahl's Royal It's a Knockout is a big favourite with our boys.

I definitely catch sight of Bless This House and George and Mildred when I flick through Freeview of a morning, I think they're on ITV4 too - along with things like The Sweeney and The Avengers (often the Diana Rigg colour episodes). I miss the Kojak repeats, which seem to have dried up at the moment.

Oh haha, bit slow today xp

> The Avengers (often the Diana Rigg colour episodes)

it was actually the emma peel / tara king handover episode on friday.

emma peel is, i recently realised, outside my 'half age plus seven' range now.

This YouTube channel seems to have quite a few video obscurities that are of interest to this thread. I came to it by looking for - and finding – the 80s TV adaptation of Robert Aickman's brilliant short story 'The Hospice'. It doesn't really capture the original's queasily dark laughter at the hell of English cuisine and hospitality, but it's pretty faithful to the text and def has its moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLitwlP-m7c

oooh thanks for the heads-up

I treated myself to a couple of 80s kids shows that are minor players in this/Scarred For Life scene in the recent Network sale.

King of the Castle is very Baker & Martin, with a surreal version of a boy's life after moving to a tower block where there are bullies and the workshy nature of his jazz musician dad jars against his 'ideas above his station' (which seem to amount to singing in a choir), all played out in a broken lift shaft and/or medieval tower. Talfryn Thomas and Milton Jones as the main players should tell you a lot about it.

Raven is bang in this territory, or Alan Garner land, with Phil Daniels as someone who may or may not be King Arthur reborn investigating and trying to stop nuclear waste being dumped in a cave system mapped to the zodiac while letching after Debbie Out Of EastEnders. It's definitely missing something, hence the relative obscurity, but worth the limited runtime.

The Clifton House Mystery, I hate to say, doesn't actually have that much going for it except when Peter Sallies turns up. For fans of This Sort Of Thing it's utterly predictable - and fails to go The House That Bled To Death when given the opportunity, probably because of being screened in the middle of the afternoon. The girl of the children is sidelined in favour of briefcase wanker Justin Bennett Out Of Grange Hill but most annoying of all THE HOUSE IS CLEARLY IN HOTWELLS AND NOT CLIFTON.

Into The Labyrinth was the most fun of all though, at least for the first two seasons with Ron Moody - although the third lets the wonderful Pamela Salem chew the scenery without competition. A sort of Quantum Leap performed as a pantomime, the kids go on a fetch quest while the adults dress up in period costumes and Rep-approved regional accents as they pretend to be ignorant of the plot. There's a genuinely amazing episode where Moody is Holmes and Salem is an 'actress' in Victorian London that's more camp than Duncan Norvelle slap fighting with Charlie Hawtrey. I'm not convinced it's for everyone though...

i am still haunted by a barely remembered scene from King of the Castle which i can't elaborate on right now probly cos it's Friday pub time but there's a weird incestual scene that burned into my head at time of broadcast, couldn't even remember what the show was called for decades after

There was a sampling platter of these shows on my DVD of Children Of The Stones. Months later I saw a kid proclaim themselves king of the castle and was like "oh fuck they're still at it".

https://www.faber.co.uk/blog/the-magic-box-viewing-britain-through-the-rectangular-window/

From the author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music comes a riveting journey into the psyche of Britain through its golden age of television and film.

Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young’s main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button.

The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s – from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman’s travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas – contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions.

Dunno, I'm going to be overly skeptical from the start and say I've read a lot of these (not least Johnny Mains' excellent Scarred For Life). It's bait for me so I'll probably still get it but..

A Canterbury Tale is 1944-ish so maybe somebody could've done some research

Hopefully book is more accurate than blurb.

I had ordered and just received Scarred for Life volumes 1 & 2, and...dear god, I somehow failed to notice the page count on these things. They're massive! Something like 1300 pages between the two of them? I'll be exploring their riches for some time to come.

Also vol 2 is part 1 of vol 2, he realised there was too much for one volume.

Do not go on Network dvd after reading the TV sections, especially when they have a sale on.