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Friends in Space

WELL-REMEMBERED comedy edition of the usually straight and serious ITV PLAYHOUSE strand, co-written by JOHN “CLIFFY” RATZENBURGER. Retired professor ROBERT STEPHENS leads the Friends in Space Society, a harmlessly eccentric bunch of binocular-toting, long wave-trawling suburban UFO nuts (including Ratzenberger, ELEANOR BRON, TERENCE ‘SOFTLY, SOFTLY’ RIGBY and PAT HEYWOOD) who, inevitably, happen upon a genuine alien (resembling a translucent half-jellyfish, half-lampshade, half-man thing) which they rather brilliantly name The Nigel. The rest of the play works out as a sort of EXPLORERS in reverse, as they determine their ‘Nigel’ is just a kid, revert to suburban type, and try and get in touch with its parents to fetch him home, making for the most mundane alien encounter ever filmed.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. h

    February 26, 2011 at 5:14 am

    finally … i saw this as a 9-year-old and it always stayed with me … but i never knew what it was until i chased down the case of cruelty to prawns and realised it was probably part of the same run of shows … and here it is … this was probably not an awesome piece of tv but it occupies a rare place in my memories … being something ( along with lets scare jessica to death and king of the castle ) that was glimpsed once and remained for a long time a mystery … god bless british tv from the 70s and 80s … a fine time and place to grow up in from of the screen

  2. Dawny

    August 24, 2013 at 1:49 am

    I’ve been hunting this gem down as well and agree with H above. This play lives on in my memories. But I disagree as it was awesome! As a 12-year-old I was glued to this and even loved the glow-in-the-dark alien family. This was a GOOD play! And it’s nowhere online. Sad really.

  3. Danny

    June 14, 2015 at 11:28 am

    OMG! I’ve been looking for this for years. Watching it as a kid it stayed with me and I never forgot it!

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