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

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.

I've been hip-deep in the first book for weeks now. Soooo many public information films watched, soooo many shows added to the must-see list.

I just tonight found an American analogue that ticks many of the boxes and must've absolutely traumatized a lot of '70s youngsters on our end of the ocean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWWN3tSsgF8

(I've watched a lot of In Search Of and it's mostly very dated and mildly ooky cheese but this is a rare instance where they likely succeeded in freaking young viewers out.)

I only had vague memories so it took me a while to find, but it seems the 70s version of The Phoenix and the Carpet was verily terrifying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kECGc79rek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omega_Factor

starts on Forces TV (ch96) on monday. i don't remember anything about it, only that it gets recommended on amazon when you buy things like tomorrow people and children of the stones.

i remember being v into it as a kid and i think i read the novelization at least once, i never remember to tune in to Forces TV consistently tho

Been watching all of the Quatermass TV series with a friend, just finished the last season, and jeeeesus. So much better than the Hammer films. That last one is a fantastic blend of apocalyptic dystopia, sci-fi and folk horror, and surprisingly bleak.

that last one is one of my v favourites. but yes, an incredible set of tv series.

Do you mean the last one made in the late 70s? Not seen it but always been curious about that one.

Yep, Quatermass IV. It is brilliant, I highly recommend it.

(with added toyah)

Is that only on DVD? I see that some of the episodes are on YouTube

It was on my old Netflix DVD queue for several years, but never materialized

it is also, for any fall fans, where the LAY LAY LAY LAY intro to Lay of the Land comes from.

i think it may be my favourite of the quatermass series too. brings together a lot of pastoral and science fiction elements. also has simon maccorkindale bawling all his lines at point blank range to his interlocutors ofc.

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com/

heh - wrong link!

https://networkonair.com/all-products/2248-quatermass-blu-ray-pre-buy

Yeah I scored that blu at a second hand store recently - but was assuming Andy meant "DVD only" as in "not streaming anywhere".

I watched Quatermass and the Pit yesterday (the original serial). I knew the bit about finding the insectoids in the ship but I thought that was the climax of the whole thing, not the cliffhanger of the middle episode - possibly I watched that episode when it was shown by itself in 1986 - so that was a surprise. The top brass being the bad guys was also unexpected.

Started on IV and wow this is a different thing altogether, heavy Riddley Walker vibes - a book I found hugely depressing.

The initial entry into the Academy might be the hardest part? Or at least the most chaotic (that outdoor area with all the skeletons and dogs).

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners🕸

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com🕸/

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners🕸

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com🕸/

This YT channel is a good little resource for obscure TV from past decades, found some mad Canadian sci-fi series with Kier Dullea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCk78MjZcIF

Okay fuckit, it's called - 50's Sleaze, 60's Ease & 70's Cheese From London

That's a shame Fizzles, would've been v cool to see you there. You don't mention The Stone Tape in your note, which is possibly my favourite because it really does foreground folk tradition v modern technology so well, and Jane Asher being there to introduce it on the Saturday was enough to sell me a ticket.

BFI are just about to reissue his 1984 adaptation on disc:

https://shop.bfi.org.uk/nineteen-eighty-four-dual-format-edition.html

And I keep meaning to pick up The Crunch disc from Network, which rounds up three different one-offs:

https://networkonair.com/features/2019/10/31/lesser-known-nigel-kneale/

It occurred to me today that Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) has a couple of elements seen in Quatermasses Pit & IV - racial memory of demonic looking aliens, and a kind of alien induced mass hypnosis of children.

Also was surprised to see the figure in The Pit with sixfold symmetry (sevenfold in the film) described as a pentacle - then was delighted to learn (via Wikipedia) that traditionally a pentacle can be any kind of magical symbol and is probably etymologically related to pendant (and [pit and the] pendulum!) , not greek penta/5.

I was going to say 'The Crunch is excellent although you probably don't need' then reminding myself what's on it I remembered all three are great in their own way. The Gentlemen's club one is the most predictable, the gentrification one the most contrived but they're all very watchable.

The Stone Tape is probably my favourite Kneale and The Witches is his best adaptation.

Is that only on DVD? I see that some of the episodes are on YouTube

Quatermass IV is easily findable on archive.org, as is Quatermass and the Pit. Otherwise finding some of this stuff to stream, legally or otherwise, is annoyingly difficult, I would have thought that some of the ones released on DVD in the last few years (Penda's Fen, Robin Redbreast) might be available somewhere but apparently not.

The Stone Tape is of course also a parable about the superiority of physical media.