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Running Scared

EYEBROW RAISING (and, at the Beeb, hackles raising) gritty children’s serial, ramming home the titular message with an opening credit double-whammy of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ and a Nike-obsessed tracking camera ‘running’ shot. CHRISTOPHER “Burnside” ELLISON provided the gangster menace, dispensing assorted blackmail, racialism and bullying plots to JULIA MILLBANK’s young girl Paula Prescott. Grim and, at times, shocking stuff for 5.10pm on a Wednesday.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Glenn Aylett

    January 13, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    After a couple of years of being almost forgotten, it seemed KB’s music was everywhere in 1986, and any charity gig or pop show felt obliged to have her as a musical guest. Odd that her biggest hit of the eighties was used for a sinister drama like this, when in reality it’s some kind of love song.

  2. Glenn Aylett

    November 9, 2023 at 1:37 pm

    Stranger Things might have elevated Running Up That Hill to being Dame Kate’s biggest selling single ever, eclipsing Wuthering Heights in sales, but this unsettling drama was its first outing on television a couple of months after it had been a big hit. Also I can remember the BBC using Running Up That Hill for their athletics coverage in the nineties and it featuring in the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, which gave the single a second entry in the Top 10.

  3. Richardpd

    November 9, 2023 at 10:55 pm

    I amused myself last years by posting “Where’s My Bins?!” into links on Facebook to the video for Running Up That Hill posted in connection to Stranger things.

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