TV Cream

TV: T is for...

Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten, The

HARD-UP AUNTIE resorts to slapping on another shitty import to eat up expensive airtime on hot August mornings, when no-one will be inside watching telly anyway. Eponymous band of Oz youngsters, mixed-ages, kill time in dirty early-1900s provincial nowhere. Weekly assembly of packing-case make-believe town interrupted by occasional outbursts of excitement, such as when very large tree falls on old woman breaking her back. From the stable of ex-pat Kiwi children’s drama stalwart ROGER MIRAMS, who’d go on to give us the likes of THE MAGIC BOOMERANG and THE LOST ISLANDS, the UK showings of which inspired many a Brit kid to emulate their down under counterparts, and get the hell out of doors.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. John Harvey

    June 11, 2010 at 12:06 am

    Im not sure it was called Ten Town, but that’s how I remember it too. The villain of the piece was a kid with the glorious name of Freckles O’Foote.

    • TV Cream

      June 11, 2010 at 9:04 am

      You’re right, it wasn’t called Ten Town, as we’ve now acknowledged. Cheers for the heads-up, John.

  2. Martin Harris

    October 8, 2013 at 11:48 pm

    Funny – I haven’t thought about this since the mid 60s and I was searching for Ten Town (Tommy?) which is what I remember it as. The main thing I remember was that the boys had walkie talkies – something that I dreamt of having…

  3. Chris Davies

    October 12, 2013 at 9:56 pm

    My father worked on this show as the sound recordist/dubbing mixer.
    He always used to refer to it as Ten Town. I still have a couple of the original 16mm release prints stored away at home somewhere.

  4. George Cox

    November 25, 2013 at 11:52 pm

    There was an almost identical Canadian kids’ show that we got here in uk. If I remember correctly, it was called ‘The Forest Rangers’ and came along a year or two after ‘The Terrible Ten’… or was the TT a year or so after the FRs?

  5. Richard Felstead

    December 16, 2013 at 10:18 am

    Chris Davies. I worked with your dad @ Crawford Productions. Also with Lindsay Parker (RIP) and John Phillips.

  6. Tess Clohesy

    July 12, 2014 at 10:34 am

    my grandfather Leo Clohesy was the set production maker for all these productions of the adventures of the terrible ten, magic boomerang and adventures of the seaspray where my dad and his family lived in Fiji for two years and originally from Mount Macedon

  7. bill

    August 27, 2014 at 12:11 pm

    all very interesting stuff to bring back memories. btw, it wasn’t shitty to an 8 yr old tired of bbc puppet shows-B&B, Looby ****ing Loo etc. etc. and the kids had accents we’d never heard before. it wasn’t quite up to the standard of US import Hawkeye, but it was still ADVENTURE- still an anathema to bbc execs.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To Top