VISION ON SOUND

STEVE HATCHER considers some TELEVISION MONSTERS (but maybe not the ones you were expecting)

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 28th 2024

Today on VISION ON SOUND, “HERE BE MONSTERS!” as the saying goes, but not necessarily the kind of monsters that you might be expecting.

Well, they certainly weren’t the ones that I was expecting when our regular contributor STEVE HATCHER got in touch and told me that he wanted to do a show on the theme of monsters.

After all, amongst other things, STEVE is very much one of the movers and shakers of DOCTOR WHO fandom, and so I kind of assumed that those sort of monsters were the ones that he most probably had in mind, although, as I was reaching out to grab my copy of the monster book, he explained that he had the more human kind of monster in mind, the kind of testosterone-fuelled monsters that used to inhabit the offices, boardrooms and bedrooms of those high-profile dramas of the sixties and seventies which used to clog up our TV screens with ambitious pant-dropping capitalist anti-heroes involving themselves in dodgy deals and shady shenanigans that somehow came to define the notion of what the world of big business resembled for generations of viewers.

And so, in today’s show we involve ourselves in a whistle-stop tour of the melodramatic corporate power games of THE POWER GAME, MOGUL, THE TROUBLESHOOTERS, THE MAIN CHANCE, MAN AT THE TOP, and HINE, and a couple of others that get mentioned along the way.

So, let’s take a trip into a toxic world of back-stabbing, ladder-climbing power-grabs, where everyone is out to get to the very top by any means necessary…

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 talks about THE TRAITORS

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 21st 2024

This week, VISION ON SOUND moves into uncharted territory… Or does it?

Certainly our main topic this week is not the kind of thing that we usually talk about on the show, as it’s a programme that’s shiny and new, and pretty much up to the minute, and is something that you might even regard as “trendy” if you were of a mind to do so.

And whilst the realms of the kind of television that is grabbing the headlines right now, and leading to the sort of public conversations that usually set my eyes a-rolling are really not our normal subject matter hereabouts, do bear with me, because not everything is as it might seem.

Unless it is, of course.

This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself really, really wanted to talk about latest blockbuster TV game show that “everyone” (in inverted commas) has been talking about: THE TRAITORS, because he’s been watching a lot of it, in several variant forms, over the past few weeks, and might possibly be said to have got somewhat addicted, and maybe even a little evangelical about it.

Anyway, if someone is happy to come onto the show and talk about anything that can quite reasonably be said to be at least vaguely related to television, I’m not going to stop them, even if they want to talk about a television series that I’ve not seen any episodes of.

To be quite honest with you, sometimes those shows where I’m having a programme described and explained to me by someone who is a fan make for the most fun and exciting editions of VISION ON SOUND anyway.

Luckily for me, our conversation also manages to take in such joys as older game shows like TREASURE HUNT, THE INTERCEPTOR, BIG BROTHER and SURVIVOR, and we do also try (in a small way) to examine the psychology of what makes such shows quite so appealing to people who do happen to like such things, whilst wondering just what tricks ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE may one day have in store for the unwary gameshow contestant.

Now, normally, the telly that we are talking about on this show is often so old that spoilers are not something that are likely to be an issue, however, despite me hanging on to this recording for several weeks since we recorded it, I still ought to warn you that there might be one or two things talked about during this hour that you might not yet want to hear if you are still planning to give one or more versions of THE TRAITORS a try, so you have been warned!

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 considers the series SHADOW OF THE NOOSE

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 14th 2024

This week, LISA PARKER, one half of the team behind the ROUND THE ARCHIVES podcast returns to VISION ON SOUND to talk about a series that combines her love of television dramas about Law and Order with her love of period dramas.

The series is SHADOW OF THE NOOSE, an eight part series which was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1989 which does that tricky thing of building a drama series set around the background of true life events, but which also presents fictionalised versions of some of the real people once involved.

In this series we are presented with JONATHAN HYDE playing the celebrated defence lawyer SIR EDWARD MARSHALL HALL, who had a formidable reputation as an orator, and who successfully defended many people accused of murder in many high profile cases that occurred in the late VICTORIAN and EDWARDIAN eras, some of which remain notorious even to this day, and, because of the harsh penalties that were in place during those times, most of such cases did often have, as the series suggests, the shadow of the noose looming over them, at least as far as the defendants were concerned.

Despite being well-regarded at the time, a second series was never commissioned, so, unfortunately, some of the more notorious cases that SIR EDWARD defended were not covered by this ground-breaking legal drama series, but that does not reduce the legacy of the programme, especially in more recent times, as almost any well-known murder case from history seems to still be a source of endless fascination to modern viewers.

It’s always a joy to welcome back LISA, whose research into these shows is always pretty comprehensive, by the way – which always pleases me. Here she presents the case for the defence whilst representing this, perhaps often overlooked, and fascinating case study of a life lived in the legal spotlight in what could possibly nowadays be considered to be a somewhat obscure archive TV drama series.

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 pays tribute to LAURIE JOHNSON

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 7th 2024

Last time we had him on the show, WARREN CUMMINGS turned up with a whole load of notes on the career of a great film & tv music composer that we ended up not using, so it only seemed fair to use them this week instead as VISION ON SOUND pays tribute to the late, great LAURIE JOHNSON.

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 on the multiple TV adaptations of DRACULA

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 31st 2024

This week, STEVE HATCHER wanted to talk about, amongst other things, four distinct television adaptations of Bram Stoker’s book DRACULA, so that’s exactly what we did.

So let’s set those FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL Time Engines to “GOTHIC” and take a trip to the dark side…

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 discusses some of the grim reaper's recent work...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 24th 2024

We don’t often acknowledge the work of the Grim Reaper on VISION ON SOUND, but with Arabella Weir spooking me with talk of SNIPER’S ALLEY on the Christmas GONE FISHING, and the scythe striking down so many TV icons in the past few months, I thought I’d get together with WARREN CUMMINGS to chat about the TV lives of a few of them.

So why not sit back as we remember such great names as DAVID SOUL, DAVID McCALLUM, MICHAEL GAMBON, BRIDGET FORSYTH, ANDRE BRAUGHER, and LANCE REDDICK over the next hour which I promise you isn’t half as maudlin as you might fear, although sadly, our FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL time machine can’t bring any of them back…

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, on guilt-free TV.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 17th 2024

This week we welcome back one of our more regular contributors to the show, PAUL CHANDLER, the SHY YETI himself, hotfooting it over from his endless production routine of making THE SHY LIFE podcast.

For this show, I decided to give PAUL a prompt to give us something to talk about, and this was due to the fact that one of the streaming services that I use at home offered me an option of watching some GUILT-FREE TV and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that I was particularly sure what it even meant by that.

Did it mean that I could just watch a whole chunk of it without feeling guilty at quite how much time I was wasting? Or was it offering me permission to watch a whole selection of the type of television that I might never feel comfortable in admitting to watching? Or was it referring to some other, more sinister possibilities in the line of popular entertainment…?

Whichever it was getting at, I swiftly mistranslated its purpose as being all about those guilty televisual pleasures that might not be popular choices if you happened to mention them in polite company, and then realised just how little time I actually spent in polite company anyway.

So, the upshot of all that pointless introspection is that I decided that PAUL was exactly the person I should choose to talk about this stuff, and that became the prompt for our programme this evening, and, even if I suspect we very swiftly moved away from that as the main thrust of what we ended up talking about, I think that the conversation we actually did have did, ultimately, still make for a fairly fascinating hour of telly-related chat, which is, of course, what we always try to bring you here on VISION ON SOUND.

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.

TYLER ADAMS explores the roots of his GOONPOD podcast.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 10th 2024

This week we welcome another new voice to VISION ON SOUND in the form of TYLER ADAMS, although his won’t be an unfamiliar voice to you at all, if you happen to be a listener to his phenomenally successful GOON POD podcast, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, takes as its starting point the 1950s BBC radio comedy series THE GOON SHOW, and has attracted many brilliant people to expand and expound upon the show’s impact into all sorts of worlds beyond.

But I found myself asking what what what what what was it that led a young lad who grew up on the other side of the world in New Zealand, far away from the hallowed halls of the BBC, to form such an enthusiastic connection to this British show which was made long before he was even a twinkle in a farmer’s eye, and I think you’ll find his story, steeped as it is in a whole host of British sitcom classics, a fascinating one…

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 revisits the video age.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 3rd 2024

This week one of my more regular guests on VISION ON SOUND, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and we’re going to take a nostalgic meander that starts off with a few reflections on what it was like growing up in the video age, or rather, growing up in an era when we consumed our films and, perhaps to a lesser extent, television – at least as far as the video rental shops were concerned – via the medium of videotape.

But, of course, because it’s PAUL and I, we also meander off into topics like how we consume such media in more recent times, too, the whole world of collecting physical media, PAUL’S own dalliances with television production, and we even give a mention to his pet cat Deeley, and his efforts to sabotage PAUL’S viewing and editing routines…

So, why not join us as we head back to an age of chunky buttons, programming, top-loading, and VHS…

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 considers The Rivals of Hercule Poirot

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 25th 2024

This week STEVE HATCHER returns and wants to talk to me about what he calls THE RIVALS OF HERCULE POIROT, and, I think we’ll just let him explain what that might be as we go along…

But, as it includes two television versions of LORD PETER WIMSEY, CAMPION, and THE MRS BRADLEY MYSTERIES, I think you’re all in for a very interesting evening of classic sleuthing…

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 looks at the various variants of LAW & ORDER...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 18th 2024

This week we welcome back LISA PARKER from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST and we’re going to have a bit of a natter about one of my favourite USTV shows, the phenomenally successful LAW AND ORDER, the recently revived crime series that launched a franchise consisting of a whole raft of spin-offs, and we’ll also be talking about its UK counterpart unsurprisingly called LAW AND ORDER UK

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 have a grumpy old hour...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 11th 2024

It’s been suggested to me recently that AGEISM has become the last prejudice that television seems happy to tolerate. In an era when inclusivity and tolerance of all kinds of people has quite rightly finally become the norm on TV, it still appears to be apparently quite okay to mock the elderly in advertising, dramas, comedies, and everyday life.

Now it’s sometimes been said that when WARREN CUMMINGS and I get together on the show, it’s like we become the grumpiest of grumpy old men, so who better, I thought, to consider this topic with me? But, of course, because we’re both very old, and likely to drift off topic, the following hour drifts into all sorts of the sort of other television-related grumbles, which may prove that they do have a point.

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.

ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON on THUNDERBIRDS

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 4th 2024

This week ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON wanted to talk about the exciting and colourful GERRY & SYLVIA ANDERSON produced series from the mid-1960s "THUNDERBIRDS," so… well, that's exactly what we did, and, without a fast-cutting montage of highlights of this week's episode, I think you'll enjoy it.

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.

SANDY McGREGOR on MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 28th 2024

We don’t often deal with all that much outrage in the generally cosy world of VISION ON SOUND, where often the most controversial opinion I make is about whether a fifty year old television series is still acceptable for modern viewing, how certain shows came to be wiped, or disagreeing with my guests as to whether certain TV shows can be considered to be absolute rubbish or not, or whether we should, perhaps, only award that dubious accolade to anything produced in the last ten years or so.

Equally, we don’t often consider much in the way of modern or recent television to come under what we loosely call our watching brief.

And yet, because a certain recent ITV television drama has been causing a lot of discussion, and indeed outrage, I felt that we couldn’t really ignore it for twenty years in the hope that it might become worthy of our attention.

So, having already borrowed - and devoured - his copy of the book THE GREAT POST OFFICE SCANDAL by NICK WALLIS, I invited SANDY McGREGOR back onto the show to have a chat about the implications of the recently broadcast powerful four-part drama series MR BATES VERSUS THE POST OFFICE, the story of what has been called one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British History, written by GWYNETH HUGHES and directed by JAMES STRONG, which starred TOBY JONES alongside MONICA DOLAN and JULIE HESMONDHALGH as some of the “little people” doggedly and determinedly pursuing justice by taking on the POST OFFICE in a two decade battle to clear the names of over five hundred of his fellow sub-postmasters in a story which, finally, largely because of the broadcast of this production, has rightly been front and centre in the news agenda.

And whilst neither of us can claim any insights or personal involvement with the story, other than having taken a keen interest in it, and reading rather a lot about it, as well as discussing the series itself, our discussion does try to consider the power of television to occasionally make great positive changes happen, so we do briefly consider some of the – surprisingly few - other TV shows that can claim to have actually changed lives, and wonder just why it is that an important news story such as this somehow failed to make the same kind of impact in documentary form as it managed to as a drama series, and whether in future, that might be the only way any of us are likely to get the rest of the population to take much interest in some of the important things that are happening but which remain largely ignored.

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, is back to discuss TV ghosts...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 21st 2024

This week we welcome back PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, that prolific podcaster from his very own THE SHY LIFE podcast, and we’re going to talk about GHOSTS, but probably not the GHOSTS that you might think we are.

Because, whilst we ought to note the passing of that much-loved sitcom of recent years on VISION ON SOUND - and who knows, perhaps on another week we will – our topic today is more about the ghosts that have appeared on other television shows that we have enjoyed over the years.

So whilst PAUL and I will be having a general chat about the subject, we will be touching upon RANDALL AND HOPKIRK (DECEASED) in both of its incarnations, PAUL’s perennial favourite DARK SHADOWS, the RICHARD CARPENTER classic THE GHOSTS OF MOTLEY HALL, taking a brief sideways trip into the TWILIGHT ZONE, considering the supernatural elements of SAPPHIRE AND STEEL, pulling off the mask of another janitor with the SCOOBY-DOO gang, chattering about some of those GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS, and even making brief references to Nigel Kneale’s classic THE STONE TAPE.

Not that we’re going into any great depth about any of these shows, as every one of them could be worthy of an hour all to itself – and will be if any listeners fancy joining me to talk about any or all of them.

Instead PAUL and I are just meandering through some of those dark places beyond the mortal realm, and lifting the veil briefly to take the merest glimpse into those worlds beyond, and our human interpretations of what they might be.

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 is back to guide us over to the flipside...

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 14th 2024

What better way to welcome in another year than to take a time travelling journey to the flipside? We’re another year nearer to the future, and one further away from the television that we tend to talk about the most here on VISION ON SOUND.

Anyway, to start us off on our latest brand new shiny adventure, this week we welcome back STEVE HATCHER, and we’re going to talk about a pair of eccentric entries from the later era of PLAY FOR TODAY that rather flew in the face of some of the more usual type of stories that tended to get told in that series, by being rather clever little SCIENCE FICTION time-travel tales attempted on a BBC budget.

These were the 1980 play THE FLIPSIDE OF DOMINICK HIDE and its sequel from two years later ANOTHER FLIP FOR DOMINICK, which told tales of a time-travelling future society visiting the strange and mysterious world of the 1980s, and the interesting outcomes that such visits caused.

Starring, amongst others, PETER FIRTH, CAROLINE LANGRISHE, PIPPA GUARD, and PATRICK MAGEE, the plays were written by JEREMY PAUL and ALAN GIBSON, from an idea by ALAN GIBSON, who also directed, so it was very much a labour of love for them, and certainly the original play was a very well received example of the sweeter side of science-fiction storytelling, and has some strange connections with some other pop culture icons, as STEVEN will explain.

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.

BEN BAKER returns to talk about his book THE DREAMS WE HAD AS CHILDREN

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 7th 2024

Forty years ago this very week, after experimenting with the format through a strand called WATCH IT! during the previous three years or so, CHILDREN’S ITV was launched as an attempt at a coherent approach to children’s television output with linked presentations transmitted across the whole of the ITV network in the afternoon slot from 4:00pm to 5:15 on weekday afternoons.

And, to a lesser or greater extent, with an eventual switch to a designated Freeview Channel, the CITV brand managed to stagger on for nearly forty years until the plug was finally pulled in September last year, and Children’s programming was shifted to ITVX.

This fascinating era produced a whole wealth of fondly – and not so fondly -remembered programming of course, as Children do become very attached to their favourites, and, after far too long an absence from VISION ON SOUND which is all down to me sometimes being a little bit forgetful about these kinds of things, BEN BAKER is back this week to talk about the very personal book he has written THE DREAMS WE HAD AS CHILDREN which picks out his personal choice of the very best CITV had to offer between 1983 and its demise in 2023.

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.

A SHY YETI ON NEW YEAR'S EVE.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 31st 2023

It’s New Year’s Eve and everybody at Fab Towers is off doing whatever it is that they might do to give the ratty old year the old heave-ho, and welcome in another one with its fresh clean slates and all those opportunities to be different that rarely come to pass.

Anyway, here on VISION ON SOUND we didn’t want to try anything too heavy or “in your face” (or should that be “in your ears”?) to see out 2023, so tonight’s show basically consists of returning regular guest PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, and me simply sitting around and having a good old natter about a few things prompted by one or two of the telly-related things that have cropped up during the year just gone.

So over the course of this amiable and relaxed hour we’ll give some thought to the consequences of PAUL’s on-going journey through the YouTube archive, and the additions it may have prompted me into getting for my own shelves, tiptoe briefly around the fact that all of DOCTOR WHO is now on the iPlayer, consider the possibilities that the CHEWITS monster could have had on INVASION OF THE DINOSAURS, meander inevitably down RAMSAY STREET, and mull over the enjoyment (or otherwise) of comedy on the old tellybox.

It’s New Year’s Eve, my friends, so we’re taking it easy, relaxing, and, perhaps, trying for once not to be too incisive or informative. So why not park yourself upon your handiest soft furnishing, grab a little early evening refreshment, and start off what can turn into a long evening, by spending it with us, with not even the merest glimpse of the White Heather Club, probably…?

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 & ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON join me to chat about DOCTOR WHO's SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS.

A VISION ON SOUND CHRISTMAS BONUS EXTRA EPISODE

Here’s a bit of a Christmas Bonus for you… After the DOCTOR WHO SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY SPECIALS (THE STAR BEAST, WILD BLUE YONDER, and THE GIGGLE) were shown on television for the first time, that pair of regular contributors to VISION ON SOUND, STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON from the DERBYSHIRE WHOOVERS, suggested we get together to talk about those, and the sixtieth anniversary as a whole, so that’s what we did.

Unfortunately, however, there wasn’t a free slot in the schedule between our recording dates and the release of the brand new DOCTOR WHO episode launching the NCUTI GATWA era on CHRISTMAS DAY, so we agreed to pop this one out as a bonus edition and what I hope is a little extra festive treat.

Though please don't forget to listen to the regular Sunday Evening edition that was broadcast on Christmas Eve.

Happy Christmas.

WARREN POPS IN FOR A CHRISTMASSY NATTER.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 24th 2023

Here we are once again having a Christmas Edition of VISION ON SOUND – don’t they come around so fast these days? – and this year I’ve invited one of our more regular guests – WARREN CUMMINGS - to come around to FAB TOWERS, raid the FAB TOWERS fridge and sit in front of our crackling FAB RADIO fireplace with our tiny little twelve-inch black and white portable telly for that authentic seasonal telly experience from when we were both a lot younger, and far less likely to be sharing a bit of amiable curmudgeonly pre-Christmas banter.

Naturally, because we’ve got guests, and have to be sociable, the telly will be staying resolutely off, but, because this is VISION ON SOUND, we’ll just be nattering about our Christmas telly favourites instead, and hoping that nobody’s filled that fire bucket with Gin instead of water, should the roaring fire get out of hand whilst we’re all distracted by mountains of mince pies and fizzy pop.

So, before I open the door, let all the heat out, and welcome WARREN in, let’s stash away all the expensive bottles, hide the good biscuits, and fire up those FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL Time Engines to bask in the warm, mellow glow of some more Christmas Telly memories.

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.

NEW VOICES: LYNNE HARVEY on TV DRAMA.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 17th 2023

This week we welcome another new voice to VISION ON SOUND, LYNNE HARVEY, a creative writing tutor who has an interesting tale to tell involving WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN, as well as having some fascinating memories of PUBLIC EYE, and she’s someone who is also very fond of TV theme tunes, which makes for a rather fascinating hour.

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.

NEW VOICES: SUKY KHAKH's TV MEMORIES.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 10th 2023

This week we welcome a new voice to VISION ON SOUND, although I’m sure it will be a familiar one, as he’s the prolific podcaster SUKY KHAKH from the TREK THIS OUT, AROUND THE CONSOLE, and TAKE YOUR SEATS podcasts.

I first met SUKY at WHOOVERVILLE THIRTEEN, which only goes to show that you lot should always be careful who you talk to, as you might find yourself getting invited to do this show.

Happily SUKY was eager to oblige, and so we spent a fascinating hour discussing how he became such a fan of old TV through a love of books and science-fiction - despite growing up in a household that was far less interested in watching TV than he was - and our chat takes in the idea of season arcs, spoilers, and the addictive nature of some television, as SUKY seems to have found the perfect way to balance his enjoyment of television both archive and modern, which to me seems like an enviable talent to have.

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.

THE SHY YETI RECOMMENDS SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on December 3rd 2023

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back, but instead of continuing his journey through the history of American television shows that he’s discovering through YouTube recommendations, this time he wanted to make a few recommendations of his own.

More specifically, he wanted to share some of his enthusiasm for the darker side of dramatic television shows and tell me about his selection of the current range of psychological thriller series that have been cropping up on the streaming platforms lately.

And so, VISION ON SOUND is going to have one of those rare weeks when it looks into some of the more current television that’s available, rather than delving into the archives this week.

I know… I know…

But, as the suggestion that we’re selling out to the dark forces of popularism die down, PAUL will be telling us all about the series “YOU” – A Netflix serial killer drama starring PENN BADGELY which currently has been running for four seasons, and the black comedy DEAD TO ME, also from NETFLIX, starring CHRISTINA APPLEGATE and LINDA CARDELLINI which ran for three seasons from 2019 to 2022.

He’ll also touch upon the Horror Anthology series SLASHER, which, given some of PAUL’s past appearances on the show, sounds just his kind of thing. This show has run for five seasons on three different networks, and features a revolving recurring cast of actors in each season, which sounds like a very interesting idea.

Finally, PAUL will introduce us to WILDERNESS, a six-part British miniseries created for AMAZON PRIME, and starring JENNA COLEMAN and OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN which was available for viewing as recently as September 2023.

And, because it’s PAUL, we cant avoid mopping up a few details about a few of his favourites, so we also have a brief chat about the return of NEIGHBOURS, and he tells me all about his latest convert to the sublimely ingenious series that was THE AVENGERS.

The cult of Archive TV Fans is out there, people, and it only wishes to bring more joy into your world. If only you’ll let it.

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 REMEMBERS PARKINSON

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

Back in August this year, the lights came down on yet another of the broadcasting giants from the younger lives of many of us, when MICHAEL PARKINSON, the person who many considered to be one of the greatest television interviewers ever, passed on at the grand old age of eighty-eight.

A cornerstone of British television throughout the 1970s and beyond, “PARKY” was a no-nonsense Yorkshireman whose journalistic career took him from the Manchester Guardian via CINEMA on Granada Television, all the way to the BBC where he was finally given his eponymous chat show PARKINSON which ran from 1971 to 1982, and again from 1998 to 2007.

In his own distinctive style, he interviewed many of the most famous people in the world, including many of the brightest stars from the golden era of Hollywood that he would have grown up watching in the cinemas of Barnsley, in shows that have since become some of the most memorable and valued video documents of their time.

And whilst his presenting skills were utilised on radio in DESERT ISLAND DISCS, and in many television shows such as GIVE US A CLUE, meaning he has over 450 television presenting credits to his name, including a memorable acting turn in the VISION ON SOUND favourite GHOSTWATCH, he was also one of the “Famous Five” who helped set up GOOD MORNING BRITAIN in 1983.

Anyway, WARREN CUMMINGS is a huge fan of dear old PARKY, and so we got together a few weeks ago and had a good old reminisce about our own memories of watching MICHAEL PARKINSON’s television interviewing career, and we also talk a little about the legacy he left, and the current state of the art of the television interview.

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 ON DOCTOR WHO

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

There’s a lot of anniversary celebrations going on at the moment to commemorate the sixtieth birthday of one of those television perennials that crosses the void between archive and modern TV, DOCTOR WHO, and as here on VISION ON SOUND we rarely avoid any archive TV bandwagons, we thought we might have a bit of a chat this week about this old favourite.

With that in mind, this week I’ve invited back STEVE HATCHER to talk about the show and the part it has played in his life as an S-F fan who came to active DOCTOR WHO fandom comparatively late in life, but who then embraced it to the point where he has become something of a leading light of fandom, certainly as far as the DERBYSHIRE WHOOVERS are concerned anyway.

I think you’re really going to enjoy what I hope you’ll find a slightly different, slightly contemplative, and occasionally reflective hour, as we have a bit of a natter about STEVE’s life in relation to this remarkable and seemingly indestructible children’s television science-fiction series that adults still seem to enjoy and follow in a manner that few other shows seem to quite manage.

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.

GRAHAM WARD ON RICHARD CARPENTER

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 12th 2023

This week, we welcome GRAHAM WARD, yet another new voice to the ever expanding list of contributors to the VISION ON SOUND pool of talent, and, whilst we do start off today with my usual introductory interrogation about his own fascinating earliest television memories and so forth, we very swiftly move onto the topic that he primarily wanted to talk very fondly about, which is the television screenwriting career of RICHARD CARPENTER, who, after a brief career as a jobbing actor in the 1960s, is possibly best known to the general public these days for his work on HTVs stunning ROBIN OF SHERWOOD.

That particularly high profile 1980s hit still appears regularly on the daytime ITV channels, but, of course, fans of his work will also remember such delights as CATWEAZLE, THE GHOSTS OF MOTLEY HALL, THE ADVENTURES OF DICK TURPIN, a large contribution to THE ADVENTURES OF BLACK BEAUTY, and THE FAMOUS FIVE, and the swashbuckling adventures of SMUGGLER and ADVENTURER, and he could very much stake a claim for having reimagined the children’s historical adventure series, most often on the ITV channels, for more than one generation.

RICHARD CARPENTER sadly passed away in 2012, but leaves behind him a huge legacy of television work which, whilst remaining much loved by generations of Archive TV fans like the people who listen to this show, is still being discovered by new generations of fans even today.

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.

Another 1970s USTV Quartet with THE SHY YETI

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on November 5th 2023

This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI is back for another in his series of trawls through what YOUTUBE has to offer in the way of classic American TV, and this time he’s reached the mid-to-late-1970s, and his quartet of choices are DIANA, a 1973 American sitcom built around the considerable talents of DIANA RIGG; THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN featuring NICHOLAS HAMMOND in a short-lived action series from 1977 featuring everybody’s friendly neighbourhood web-slinger; RHODA, a 1974 sitcom featuring VALERIE HARPER in a highly successful spinoff from THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW that lasted five seasons; and MRS COLUMBO, a perhaps misguided attempt at a COLUMBO spinoff featuring KATE MULGREW which, despite being retitled KATE LOVES A MYSTERY in order to divorce it from the original show, sank without trace after thirteen shows but may have been the spark that inspired MURDER, SHE WROTE.

At the end of the hour, PAUL also introduces me to one far more successful show, the long-running daytime mystery drama known as THE EDGE OF NIGHT that qualifies as being in this 1970s selection simply because it ran from way, way before it in 1956 until deep into the 1980s.

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 GETS RANDOM

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 29th 2023

This week it’s STEVE HATCHER’s turn to sit in the chair and face up to some of the questions designed to prompt one of our random chats, and, as ever, this prompts a fascinating telly-related conversation that heads off in all sorts of unexpected directions.

So, by taking the recent untimely passing of PETER VAUGHAN CLARKE as our starting point, we discuss THE TOMORROW PEOPLE, in which he played STEPHEN for several years, at some length, as well as giving some thought to the feelings of our own mortality that the losses of the TV icons of our youth can bring along with them, especially if they are more or less the same age as we are.

Moving on from THE TOMORROW PEOPLE, we give some thought to the performances of child actors, consider the merits of other series of that era like ACE OF WANDS and TIMESLIP, and we briefly call in at GRANGE HILL, before mentioning the whole notion of YOOF TV before moving on to debate the world of the television remake, touch upon the tricky topic of conspiracy theories, meander briefly amongst the many iterations of STAR TREK, and ponder upon the knotty issue of fan fiction.

All-in-all, it makes for a fascinating journey around the world of television, which I hope you’ll enjoy sharing with us.

And because we are both getting on a bit, we manage to completely forget the names of several actors that we were hoping to mention along the way, so I’m going to name-check LENNY RUSH, MISAKO KOBA, KRISTIAN SCHMID, DEBRA MESSING and MORENA BACCARIN if you want to get your checklists ready for when they pop up later.

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 GETS RANDOM

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 22nd 2023

This week we welcome back our good friend LISA PARKER, one half, alongside ANDREW TROWBRIDGE, of the team behind the rather fabulous ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST for yet another of our random chats about this wondrous thing that we still prefer to call Archive Television rather than simply “old telly”.

“I can’t watch that sort of stuff, it’s before my time!” might be the kind of words we are hearing more and more these days, but between us, the Archive TV community are doing our best to keep those fascinating programmes very much in the here and now.

Anyway, during the next hour, LISA will be updating us on their progress through that mammoth DVD box set of CROSSROADS that both of them joined me to talk about a few months ago, before our discussion moves on to the undeservedly rather obscure detective series which was broadcast around the cusp of the dawn of the 1970s, THE MIND OF MR J G REEDER, and we have a little chat about that in anticipation of their own podcast covering the show in far greater detail.

We also have a short discussion about the link between television and literary detectives before moving on to consider whether THE GREAT EGG RACE has any modern television equivalents, and finally we have a chat about MODERN FAMILY, the differences between American and British sitcoms, and all sorts of other nonsense that I know that you’re going to enjoy.

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

A QUARTET OF USTV SEVENTIES COP SHOWS

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 15th 2023

This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, is back with another quartet of TV shows that he’s been watching in his quest to discover what sort of television he might be able to find when he’s off on his travels and far, far away from his own personal archive of DVDs, blu-rays, and other television that he might have about the house to entertain himself with.

This week he’s reached the early 1970s and has been watching four American series that, coincidentally, all happened to be popular crime dramas from that era, which, perhaps shouldn’t be all that surprising to us really, as, with the popularity of the Western fading fast in the television output of the time, it was the crime drama towards which the Networks and Production Companies turned in order to find their next sure fire hit in a turbulent and often gritty, grimy, and crime-ridden decade in which fear and anxiety often stalked the urban streets on both sides of that vast continent, and TV crime was fought mostly by the Cops, the Lawyers, or the Private Eyes.

So, during the next hour, PAUL will be talking about BARNABY JONES in which BUDDY EBSEN moved from spending many years as a comic oil millionaire into the more murky world of Private Detective work in L.A., KOJAK, in which TELLY SAVALAS was a streetwise cop fighting crime in the bankrupt city of NEW YORK, PETROCELLI, in which BARRY NEWMAN took on cases in Californian Courtrooms, and POLICE WOMAN featuring ANGIE DICKENSON as PEPPER ANDERSON in a ground-breaking yet hard-hitting police drama.

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

THE FUTURE OF ARCHIVE TV WATCHING.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 8th 2023

Recently I was pointed in the direction of a particular streaming platform because it happened to have made available, gratis, for free, and without any need to subscribe to anything, the opening episode of STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS season two, so that the more disinclined, or financially challenged, amongst us might have a look at it and perhaps find out what all of the fuss was about when it comes to this new iteration of STAR TREK that seems to have made fans of the classic series very happy.

The series does take several of the elements that made the original 1960s series so popular, give them a modern twist so that they can be viewed without the perceived shortcomings that the old show might have to modern audiences, and take the show broadly as it appeared in its original Pilot, and boot it well into the television landscape of this century.

But watching it did set me thinking about modern styles of television in general, because, whilst I did find that episode to be a very enjoyable hour of television, with its effects heavy visuals, smart, snappy dialogue, and complex storytelling techniques, it resembled the original in very minor ways, and I began to wonder whether viewers brought up on this brand new spin on the old show, might find little to enjoy in the original series any more if they went off to watch it after seeing this high octane version.

In the end I was wondering whether the old series would now seem far too slow, creaky, simplistic, or downright silly once this sophisticated, glossy new version, often resembling the high speed narratives involved in playing a video game, had been experienced.

And that set me wondering how many, or indeed if any, older television series might still appeal to viewers brought up almost exclusively on such programmes, and whether the kind of Archive Television that I enjoy talking about on this show, will one day be consigned to sitting unwatched, mouldering in dusty archives somewhere, whilst all the newer, flashier descendants are being loved and adored in their place.

In short, are we perhaps the last generation who will remember watching the old style of television that we adore, and, more to the point, are we the last which will want to watch it?

And as to whether future generations will be as interested in them, I do wonder, and the same can also be said for the television of the distant past, and, as I was recently told, even the more recent past.

Sometimes, it would seem that, no matter how much we might bang on about classic comedies, or significant dramas, or just fun old shows, even television that is as little as five years old has little appeal to the general viewer in the modern era.

This week, VISION ON SOUND once again welcomes back WARREN CUMMINGS from THE CINEMATIC SAUSAGE podcast, and we both try to get to the core of the knotty problem of whether, in the future, once the likes of us have slipped from this mortal realm, anyone else will care about the kind of television we enjoy watching, or will it be left to fester unloved in such archives as might exist whilst the mighty television machine rolls ever onward without looking backwards for anything other than inspiration for far flashier, and yet possibly lesser works.

Basically, what do we have to do to persuade anyone growing up in the modern television era, that the Archive TV we watch is actually worth watching, and isn’t just boring old nonsense as destined to be forgotten about as, apparently, even those brand new “must see” shows of the moment are.

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

A FOR ANDROMEDA & THE ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 1st 2023

This week, our resident researcher of some of the earliest examples of television science-fiction, MICHAEL HERBERT returns, this time to talk all about the seven-part 1961 BBC television serial A FOR ANDROMEDA, and its six-part sequel from the following year, THE ANDROMEDA BREAKTHROUGH.

Mostly remembered as being a breakthrough role for JULIE CHRISTIE, and possibly as one of the stepping stones towards the creation of DOCTOR WHO in 1963, all but one episode of A FOR ANDROMEDA is lost, presumably forever, although the surviving episode, alongside episode reconstructions based upon surviving film clips and the telesnap archive mean that you can sort of get to watch the serial, albeit in a somewhat fragmented form.

THE ANDROMEDA BREAKTHOUGH, however, survives in its entirety - although sadly for home viewers, in a long-deleted DVD set. Such are the quirks of the television industry of that time, however, it now featured SUSAN HAMPSHIRE in the role of Andromeda.

Written by FRED HOYLE and JOHN ELLIOT, both serials feature a rare leading role for PETER HALLIDAY playing the hero JOHN FLEMING. HALLIDAY is an actor who listeners might know better for his roles in several DOCTOR WHO stories such as THE INVASION and CARNIVAL OF MONSTERS, but, as we discuss, that’s not the only DOCTOR WHO connection that A FOR ANDROMEDA has.

Incidentally, as well as all of his insights into A FOR ANDROMEDA, MICHAEL also has a brief update to share about his continuing work on his biography of MALCOLM HULKE that he shared in a previous edition of the show, so you’ve also got that to look forward to as we head back to the radio astronomic new frontiers of the early 1960s…

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 on THE INVADERS, THE WILD WILD WEST, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, and BEWITCHED.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 24th 2023

This week, all the way from THE SHY LIFE PODCAST, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back here on VISION ON SOUND because, well, he had an idea that he thought that I might like to talk about for the show, and knowing - as he does - that I’m always eager to grab at any such demonstration of enthusiasm from the team, he suggested that I might like to try it out.

So, basically, PAUL asked himself the question about what sort of Archive TV he might be able to see if he was up and about and away from home and didn’t have his extensive collection of television with him. What kind of programmes, essentially, could he watch on a website like THE TUBE THAT IS YOU that might just scratch that itch when he was far, far away from the shelves of YETI TOWERS…?

Over the course of several evenings he picked out a few random choices of single stories from four American television series that were popular in the 1960s, and whilst narrowing this down to choices from a single decade might not be quite as completely random as he initially planned, it does give us the opportunity to return to this theme on another occasion by selecting shows from another decade.

Anyway, future planning aside, the four very popular and successful series PAUL chose were THE INVADERS, a QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION from 1967 which featured ROY THINNES as ARCHITECT DAVID VINCENT in an era of deep paranoia when you had to have a responsible profession in order not to be a complete “ALIENS ARE HERE” spouting crackpot, apparently.

After that he ventured into THE WILD, WILD WEST featuring ROBERT CONRAD and ROSS MARTIN, before taking a VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA with RICHARD BASEHART and DAVID HEDISON, and ended up being BEWITCHED by SAMANTHA the urban witch as played by ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY.

For THE INVADERS PAUL picked out THE TRIAL from the second season, from THE WILD, WILD WEST, he chose THE NIGHT OF THE SIMIAN TERROR from late in the third season, and from VOYAGE he picked TERROR ON DINOSAUR ISLAND from the second year. Finally, it’s a pair of fifth season offerings from BEWITCHED, that he chose, in order to keep the running times consistent, the two-part story COUSIN SERENA STRIKES AGAIN.

So if you want to watch the specific shows we’re talking about after the programme, at time of recording PAUL found all of these episodes on YOUTUBE, and it’s always a joy when I can present a show where my guest has done all of the homework.

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 on T J HOOKER...!!!

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 17th 2023

This week WARREN CUMMINGS is back and we’re talking about a show we touched on when we discussed TV CHEESE a few weeks ago, the strangely successful WILLIAM SHATNER Police Series from the early 1980s, TJ HOOKER...!

So let’s kick up those FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL TIME ENGINES and do an unnecessary forward roll back to 1982…

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.

VoS live on stage at WHOOVERVILLE 14 with guests GARY RUSSELL, TIM TRELOAR, JONATHON CARLEY and STEVE HATCHER.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 10th 2023

As an Archive TV fan, I’m always very impressed whenever I hear about any kind of organized event where fans of a certain type of television gather together to celebrate and appreciate any kind of archive television show.

This is, after all, how we keep the memory of these classic series alive and pass on the knowledge of them to future generations.

Some series, of course, have a bigger following than others, and are able to offer much larger events for people who love those shows to gather together, and so we get huge events that celebrate the great series that almost everybody in the “NOT WE” world have at least heard of like STAR TREK, THE PRISONER, and, of course DOCTOR WHO.

Now, in STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON, we have a couple of regular contributors to this show who also happen to be the movers and shakers behind one of the more popular, inclusive, and friendly annual DOCTOR WHO conventions, in that every year on the Saturday after the AUGUST BANK HOLIDAY – pandemics permitting – for the past decade and a half or so, they’ve organized – with the help of their loyal fan group known as the WHOOVERS - a one-day gathering in DERBY for fans of DOCTOR WHO that is known as WHOOVERVILLE – and they’ve recently released their fourteenth WHOOVERVILLE into the world on SATURDAY THE SECOND OF SEPTEMBER 2023.

Happily STEVE was also able in their busy schedule to arrange an afternoon slot for me to attempt to record this VISION ON SOUND so I could once again try to do a live show in front of an audience, with several of the guests who had been invited to WHOOVERVILLE made available to talk to me.

Rather less happily, on the day, and entirely due to my own shortcomings, the gremlins got into the recording equipment, and so the sound quality of the following is rather sadly not the greatest, but hopefully you’ll be able to hear enough of what this fantastic quartet of guests had to talk about on the day.

And so, after hearing me explaining to the audience a little bit about what I think VISION ON SOUND is all about, you’ll also hear STEVE HATCHER co-hosting the discussion with me from the safety of a necessary armchair, with GARY RUSSELL, JONATHON CARLEY, and TIM TRELOAR joining us on stage.

GARY RUSSELL was the editor of Doctor Who Magazine between 1992 and 1995 and the original executive producer for Big Finish Productions from 1998 to 2006, and has written many Doctor Who comics and novels. In recent years he has been executive producer of one of the groups working on animations of missing Doctor Who stories.

JONATHON CARLEY voiced the War Doctor and the Twelfth Doctor in the Doctor Who Lockdown webcast Doctors Assemble! In 2021, he took over the role of The War Doctor for Big Finish and has delighted audiences with his extraordinarily accurate recreation of the late Sir John Hurt, and you may also recognize him from the recent series THE POWER OF PARKER.

TIM TRELOAR's interpretation of the Third Doctor has garnered great acclaim since 2015, including from many of those who worked with Jon Pertwee on television. Beyond Doctor Who, he has appeared in TV shows such as Casualty, Lewis, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Doctors and Russell T. Davies' Mine All Mine. You may have seen him recently in Agatha Christie's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? and the six-part BBC miniseries WOLF.

So, let’s transport ourselves back to SEPTEMBER the SECOND 2023, and the stage of CINEMA TWO in THE QUAD in DERBY for our live discussion at WHOOVERVILLE 14.

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 September 3rd 2023

This week we welcome back PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself for another one of our more random television-related chats, which will take us on one of those journeys where neither of us are really certain of where we’re going.

However, somehow PAUL managed to make at least some little sense out of my usual word salad, and so we ended up tip-toeing lightly around the subject of celebrity podcasts in our own non-celebrity manner, made a brief visit to soap-land so that PAUL could revisit SONS AND DAUGHTERS and inevitably update us about NEIGHBOURS, before taking us INSIDE NUMBER NINE, visiting RUBY WAX CASTAWAY on her desert island, having a brief but BIG STEAM ADVENTURE, and settling down to talk about cliffhangers.

All in all, quite a convoluted journey for us to be making this week, but with PAUL to navigate us, what could possibly go wrong…?

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 August 27th 2023

Like a lot of other archive TV fans, over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of Telly-related ephemera, much of which seems destined to sit around undisturbed in dark corners of the house waiting for me to notice that it’s there.

Anyway, in a recent rare moment of churning, I randomly picked up a copy of the RADIO TIMES that was in a festering stack in a forgotten corner of the room. That particular edition was dated 24 – 30 AUGUST 1996, and, because it had STAR TREK on the cover, I thought it might be fun to whizz through it with WARREN CUMMINGS, and so I gave him a call, and I think you’ll find the next hour quite a lot of fun as we natter about pretty much everything from Cabbage patch dolls to Bilbo Baggins, Sister Wendy and the Saturday Banana, and all manner of television that was broadcast across one not quite forgotten August Bank Holiday weekend over a quarter of a century ago.

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 August 20th 2023

Often it was the exciting thumping nature of the theme music that became most identified with so many TV series, and was remembered long after the various shenanigans of that week’s episode was forgotten, and so, for one week only, VISION ON SOUND presents an hour of what might be the most exciting TV theme tunes ever...!

In a playlist including STINGRAY, SUPERCAR, FIREBALL XL5, THUNDERBIRDS, UFO, CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS, SPACE: 1999, THE AVENGERS, REDCAP, THE NEW AVENGERS, THE PROFESSIONALS, Z CARS, THE PRISONER, HAWAII FIVE-O, KOJAK, IRONSIDE, THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE APOLLO LAUNCHES, DEPARTMENT S, RETURN OF THE SAINT, and THE SWEENEY, with me burbling on in between them trying to make some kind of sense of what makes each of them feel so very, very exciting...!

Whilst we can’t quite promise to deliver the most exciting hour of radio you’ve ever heard, I hope that you enjoy it.

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 August 13th 2023

Fans of archive television didn’t used to talk about CROSSROADS much, despite it having an iconic theme tune written by TONY HATCH, an amazing array of guest performers, a whole host of top behind-the-scenes talent often cutting their teeth on this show, and being a series that ran for twenty-four years across several golden ages of British television production, which, for a lot of its long history produced an astonishing five episodes of drama week after week after week.

Produced by first ATV and later Central Television, CROSSROADS, the story of the ups and downs in the lives of the people populating a Midlands-set Motel, was created by HAZEL ADAIR and PETER LING and started in November 1964, and would clock up a staggering 4510 episodes before finally closing its doors in April 1988, and then even managed to be resurrected for another 320 episode run between 2001 and 2003 which may, or may not, have all been a dream.

Despite the fame of its most high-profile star, NOELE GORDON, around whom the series was initially built, and creating a whole host of iconic – and much imitated - TV characters, CROSSROADS was never considered to be the highest quality television series ever made.

In fact, in certain quarters it became the benchmark for everything that was bad about cheaply made television, and yet it may have inspired some comedy gold from the mind of VICTORIA WOOD, and been an inspiration for NEIGHBOURS in Australia.

However, in recent times, CROSSROADS has been getting a lot more favourable reappraisal, both with RUSSELL T DAVIES’ high profile drama NOLLIE telling the story of the troubled era in the show’s production when it chose to dispense with its star, and with arguably the last great release from the much-missed NETWORK DISTRIBUTING, who sold a box set containing over 700 episodes across more than ninety discs earlier this year, a box set which sold out, by the way, as it found a new and very delighted audience.

Those regular contributors to VISION ON SOUND, LISA and ANDREW were amongst those eager purchasers, and have become huge advocates for the series, and so they offered to join us today to share their views on CROSSROADS as they continue to work their way through that stack of shiny discs crammed full of high drama, controversial issues, and unintentional moments of hilarity.

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 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.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 4th 2023

This week, our regular visitor is my occasional co-presenter on VISION ON SOUND, SANDY McGREGOR, that connoisseur of the cleverer end of classic telly who I am always keen to welcome back to the show in order to elevate my usual choice of topics to chat about above the usual television fayre that I tend to squander my days watching so that I can talk to you about it.

As well as his love of the more “grown up” aspects of classic telly , SANDY is also a bit of a fan of lists, or at least the sort of lists compiled by the GUARDIAN of the “fifty favourite television moments” variety.

And it was because of one of those lists that he happened to spot that, as part of our ongoing occasional series of television anniversaries that ought to deserve a mention on the show, we’d somehow completely failed to notice that the American Television production company HOME BOX OFFICE (HBO) had marked fifty years of service towards the end of 2022.

Responsible as they are for such well recognised television gold as THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE, SEX AND THE CITY, GAME OF THRONES, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, and the latter-day hit SUCCESSION, amongst a whole heap of other highly-regarded series, the success of HBO seems counter-intuitive when you consider its roots in the form of “pay-per-view” sporting events.

And yet, despite such a background, HBO has most definitely thrived, and so SANDY joined me to have a bit of an old natter as we rattled our way through the GUARDIAN’s list of THE FIFTY GREATEST HBO SERIES ever, as compiled by MICHAEL HOGAN and SAMMY GECSOYLER, a list so packed in quality television programmes that shows like WESTWORLD, JOHN ADAMS, and GENERATION KILL don’t even get a mention.

Honestly, this is a list of such rich pickings that it can even afford to omit series from its younger sister HBO MAX.

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.