Posts Tagged With 'Ghosts ghouls freaks and fools'

Rentaghost

Posted in R is for... by TV Cream | 15 Comments »

Mumford (right) and puns McWitch and Popov Dobbin and the Meakers

DALLAS FOR primary schools, in that it ran and ran and ran, everybody ended up bored with it, nobody could remember why it had started in the first place, and the whole thing was never less than stupendously preposterous. Original premise involved ghosts back from the spirit world to make amends for failures in their previous lives, and boasted the likes of Victorian dandy Hubert Davenport (MICHAEL DARBYSHIRE) and modern day doesn’t-want-parents-to-find-out-he’s-a-ghost-dilemma Fred Mumford (ANTHONY JACKSON). Presence, however, of bearded tri-corner-hatted gurning minstrel Timothy Claypole (MICHAEL STANIFORTH) hinted at the decline soon to come. Sure enough, as year followed year, all decent storytelling vanished in the onset of joyless japery, courtesy of dopey neighbours Rose and Arthur Perkins, the most unconvincing pantomime horse in the world, MOLLY WEIR (as a Scottish witch), CHRISTOPHER BIGGINS (as himself as camp furniture dealer Adam Painting) and Audrey from Coronation Street (as a Dutch hay-fever sufferer). Eventually “sneezed” off for good when Michael Grade said ’tis done.

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Jesus of Nazareth

Posted in J is for... by TV Cream | 7 Comments »

Christ!GOSPEL ACCORDING To Lord Lew. ROBERT POWELL played Him in Sunday-night multi-buck epic, born out of word-in-your-ear “exchange” twixt Pope Paul and Grade over tea in the Vatican. ANTHONY BURGESS and FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI were on scripture duties, while predictably stellar cast reeled in OLIVIA HUSSEY (Mary), ANNE BANCROFT (other Mary), IAN MCSHANE (Judas), MICHAEL YORK (John the Baptist), LAURENCE OLIVIER (Nicodemus – who?), RALPH RICHARDSON (Simeon), JAMES EARL JONES (King #1), DONALD PLEASANCE (King #2), FERNANDO REY (third King), JAMES MASON (Joseph – not that one), PETER USTINOV (baby-eating Herod), CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER (another Herod), ROD STEIGER (Pilate), STACY KEACH (Barrabus), CYRIL CUSACK (Yehuda), IAN BANNEN (Amos), OLIVER TOBIAS (Joel) and legions more. Three-year shoot based in Italy and Tunisia. Cigar-chomper reputedly arrived at million-pound selling price in above-Atlantic aircraft “daydream”.

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Night and Day

Posted in Time Capsule by TV Cream | No Comments »

ALBION MARKET…with attitude! Stoic attempt to make ITV look all upmarket and posh and pretend that its viewers are aching for a soap opera that crosses TRAINER with SO HAUNT ME. Spoiler: They weren’t. Bonkers plot wouldn’t have looked out of place on MICHAEL WINNER’S TRUE CRIMES. Cross-section of every race, creed and colour lives on a street in Greenwich. They all have humdrum lives, except they don’t, because they all have Hidden Secrets, and when a girl who looks like Sandra Dickinson goes missing, all the Hidden Secrets begin to spew out. One side of the road is occupied, a la STELLA STREET, by a battery of fading faces: Angie off of THREE UP, TWO DOWN, Dorien from BIRDS OF A FEATHER, Sergeant Harriet Makepeace, Dr Who Paul McGann’s brother, one of the prossies on BAND OF GOLD, one half of HE'S PASQUALE, I'M WALSH, and Mike Gambit. On t’other side of street live the Beautiful People, including half the future cast of HOLLYOAKS. They meet in the middle. Much sauciness over the sun-dried tomatoes ensues. As does murder, mistaken identity, mystical visions, a visit from a time-stopping stranger like that bloke off HEROES, and SHANE RICHIE. Originally aired three times a week at teatime, with a fussily-titled “adult” omnibus, NIGHT AND DAY: THE REMIX, once a week after the News at Ten. REMIX subtitle was ditched after just one week. Teatime episodes soon went the same way. Weekly omnibus then slid further back in the schedule until that hallowed must-watch hour of 1am. Final episode fast forwarded four years for no good reason other than to reveal that the girl who went missing on day one had now become – well of course! – a ghost!

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Stone Tape, The

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Jane despairs of her team for Eggheads ever stopping their bickering over who fancies Judith KeppelRADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP-SATURATED premier league haunted house caper about raising old spooks in a Motley Hall-esque mansion by “playing” the walls with electric detectors to hear the past events in the house. NIGEL KNEALE wrote; JANE ASHER starred, first as herself, then as a pile of bricks.

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Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

Posted in S is for... by TV Cream | 1 Comment »

IF YOU ignore THE FLINTSTONES, which we find easy to do, probably *the* flagship H-B show. Burned-into-minds-of-everyone-under-40 line-up: dull, lantern jawed Fred (plus cravat), “decorative” monster fodder Daphne, orange-jumpered plot-solver Velma (catchphrases – “Jinkies!” “My glasses!”) and the hoary-reminisci-package pairing of Scooby Doo and Norville “Shaggy” Rodgers (voice of CASEY “AMERICA’S TOP TEN” KASEM). Original series stuck rigidly to the well-known format: Kids roll up in Mystery Machine to Daphne’s aunt’s summer house overlooking the old lagoon/mine/deserted mansion; strange things happen; Fred does the old “I’ll go with Daphne – you lot piss off over there” ploy; Velma finds “piece of monster costume”; Velma loses glasses; Shag and Scoob encounter the monster but escape by pretending to be comedy barbers/jugglers/chefs etc; Daphne gets kidnapped and then appears behind a secret panel; the entire gang are chased about to a flaccid 60s bubblegum song; Fred devises elaborate monster trap in which Scoob gets captured instead; monster is eventually captured and, yes, it was the old caretaker/lighthouse keeper/kindly Uncle Wilberforce all along, who wanted to “scare people away” from the whatever so he could have all the secret whatever for himself. Subsequent revivals, however, meddled with this cast-iron formula, first with the “New Adventures” (song: “When Scooby Doo is running from a spooky ghost/Shaggy is a-doing what he does the most”) but then, even worse, with THAT hateful nephew. Most recently seen bedecked with yet another “relation”, Yabba Doo. Eh?

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Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

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ACE DEAD detective capery with KENNETH COPE Rentaghosting about in a Martin Bell suit, and the hapless MIKE PRATT as his earthbound colleague. Fairly routine adventures enlivened by Marty H. appearing at inopportune moments, or failing to turn up at crucial ones to “blow” on things and outfox the three suited heavies. Vic ‘n’ Bob remake was rubbish.

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Bewitched

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SPRAWLING, MULTI-COLOURED, nose-twitching, mouth-wrinkling sorcerama. Early-doors TV beaut ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY played dutiful wife to DICK YORK (who regenerated into DICK SARGEANT) despite obvious coven-leanings. Neighbour suspected but never told. Long-forgotten “relatives” kept showing up to join in the fun. Still bundled out by lazy C4 types as recently as last week. Probably. Dependable distracting half hour whimsy.

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Beasts

Posted in B is for... by TV Cream | 2 Comments »

NIGEL “KINVIG” KNEALE takes responsibility for these plays about various animal/human horror confrontations. BARTY’S PARTY was the best: rats invade the home of a woman via the toilet while she listens, shocked, to reports on the radio (the unseen vermin being much more scary than the shitty in-vision puppetry of your late-period hamfisted DOOMWATCH; cue puppet rats poking heads out of toilet bowl and man whacking them with a broom). Another one had PAULINE “PAULINE QUIRKE’S” QUIRKE as a supermarket shelf-stacker haunted by a ficticious invisible rabbit that was in fact not even a rabbit but a manifestation of her telikinetic abilities to dislodge produce from supermarket shelves. Then there was the one with the dolphin-ghost starring Martin Shaw. Finally there was the disenchanted actor playing a monster in a series of films, THE DUMMY. He starts killing the other actors and blaming it on the monster, but no one believes this until the monster, yes, kills him.

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Turtle’s Witch

Posted in T is for... by TV Cream | 1 Comment »

SPURIOUSLY WEIRD US comedy drama about a husband and wife detective team, the twist being that she is, yup, a witch. Technically she has somewhat unpredictable psychic powers like psychometry and telekinesis, conveniently low budget enough to avoid a grotesque outlay on special effects (hence much pointing and things falling down, or holding an object and having psychic flashes). She was played by CATHERINE HICKS and her hubbie was TIM MATHESON. By aiming low it didn’t come over too badly. Plus without the pre-credit sequence, each episode was a whodunnit. Grampian showed it with the teaser, STV showed it without.

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Clifton House Mystery, The

Posted in C is for... by A to Z | 1 Comment »

BELT-AND-BRACES HORROR business dressed up as child’s fare more to disguise iffy production values more than anything. Eponymous structure is newly occupied by a family (replete with Posh Kids, naturally) who then discover co-habitee is a poltergeist. Sealed rooms, glowing Civil War helmets, ancient skeletons, exorcism, eerie coloured lights and self-activating music boxes ensue. 17th century soldier “comes back to life”, but is quickly put in cupboard. Kids go on local news. The end.

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Pardon My Genie

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A HAPLESS young tyke going by the name of Hal Adden (do you see?) played by ELLIS JONES is cheerily polishing his watering cans when out pops HUGH PADDICK. The genie, for it is he, turns out to be 4000 years old with a bad back and, inevitably, a penchant for pissing up his spells. All of which spells a lot of bother for Hal’s boss in the hardware shop Mr Cobbledick (ROY BARRACLOUGH), not least when Hugh regenerates into ARTHUR WHITE for the second series. Kids fare that did the business, from the pen of BOB “RENTAWRITER” BLOCK. Stunning last episode found the genie running amok in – hooray! – Thames Television, raising the hackles of EAMONN ANDREWS, TONY BASTABLE, WENDY CRAIG, DICKIE DAVIES, JACK SMETHURST, WILILAMS MERVYN, SUSAN STRANKS and, er, PUFF THE PONY.

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Groovy Ghoulies, The

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UNRULY AND indeed unwelcome animated argy-bargy from America ripping off ROWAN AND MARTIN’S LAUGH-IN stock gimmicky, something which obviously had bags of resonance over here. Titular ensemble goofed and gooned through 20 minutes of overloud sound effects, shitty animation, laughter tracks, baddies-as-goodies, pratfalls, slapstick and all the sodding rest, linked together with that characters-opening-doors-within-giant-wall-to-deliver-shit-joke business (“Why didn’t the skeleton go to the ball? Because he had no body to go with!”).

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Ghosts of Motley Hall, The

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SUPERLATIVE SUPERNATURAL derring-do dished out over teatimes for kids and adults alike pitting battery of cross-generational ghouls FREDDIE JONES (po-faced Victorian general Sir George Uproar), ARTHUR ENGLISH (court jester Bodkin), NICHOLAS LE PROVOST (fey foppish gambler Sir Francis, aka Fanny), SHEILA STEAFEL (depressive wailing White Lady) and SEAN FLANAGAN (stable lad) up against property tycoon PETER SALLIS. Aforementioned band of spirits repeatedly conspire to deny sale of titular hall to unassuming local types thanks to much pulling-out-chair things-flying-through-the-air antics. Exceptional stuff all told, and written by the same bloke responsible for the decidedly less impressive CATWEAZLE to boot.

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Spine Chillers

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SPOOKEEE SPIN-OFF of Jackanory, as the likes of MARTIN “RINGS” JARVIS tell mildly hair-raising tales in pre-NATIONWIDE slot.

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