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Dramarama

POSH KID alert! This enduring bric-a-brac franchise at the very least gave you a chance to play spot-the-regional-logo, and at the very worst gave those regions some less than impressive caught-in-the-headlights national exposure. A playgroup Play For Today, essentially, with wild swings in quality from the crazy to the crap. Curtains-and-vocoders theme was cue to sit down, shut up and watch. Highlights included:

SWEET REVENGE: Computer hacking storyline! Posh Kids arrange for tons of chewing gum to be sent to their school after teacher demonstrates how modem works. Whilst hacking kids sing song “gum gum gum gum gum gum gum gum”.

JACK AND THE COMPUTER: Titular lad befriends a computer by beating it at noughts and crosses (pressing random buttons on an enormous console), then he buys a duff radio from a market. The computer takes revenge on the market trader when he won’t let Jack return it – he puts the radio strap around his arm and then the computer (from several miles away) tightens it so he’s in intense pain. There’s a lesson there.

MR STABS: ACE OF WANDS-related palaver with DAVID JASON.

THE UNIVERSE DOWNSTAIRS: Kid finds backward dimension in his basement, where a mangle is “more advanced” than a washing machine.

SCHOOL FOR CLOWNS: What it says.

DEAF ANGEL: More kids sneak into a wrestling arena to try and get a glimpse of eponymous masked wrester. One gets caught by staff, another falls off the building trying to escape. The third gets into Deaf Angel’s dressing room. The scary man has his back to us. He peels off the mask. The kid makes a noise. Deaf Angel begins to turn and just as we begin to see something horrible we cut to the kid in his hiding place, looking. He gasps…Roll credits.

DOPPLEGANGER: Boy is being driven somewhere by his dad along a quiet road in the middle of nowhere. They pass a figure by the side of the road in a monk’s cloak – we don’t see the face. The dad lets the kid off and says he’ll collect him later. The figure reappears and chases the kid for the entire terrifying episode. It gets dark and the boy sees a church with light and singing. He bursts through the doors to find…inside it’s empty and dark. The monk confronts him, pulls back the hood – it’s him! The monk has the boy’s face! Arrrrgh! The boy runs to the road and there’s his dad’s truck but just as he reaches it the truck drives off – dad has the doppleganger in the passenger seat.

8 Comments

8 Comments

  1. Ken Shinn

    June 5, 2009 at 1:30 am

    IN YER PANTS!

  2. VladTheInhaler

    August 9, 2010 at 12:59 am

    Very good drama series!

  3. Matt

    August 3, 2014 at 7:57 pm

    I remember an episode, i think it was in an abandoned funhouse. I forget most of it but I remember the boy is told not to go through a certain set of doors or he’ll lose his mind. He’s sitting in a ghost train carriage and two people push the carriage through the doors. For some reason the doors make a belching sound as if it’s devoured his mind. Any idea what the episode is called?

  4. Droogie

    July 6, 2020 at 6:35 pm

    I’m surprised this series never gets mentioned whenever they have any list of Terrifying Childhood TV Moments . Some of the episodes in the earlier Spooky series of horror stories were downright traumatic for any sensitive kid watching. The ending of Death Angel mentioned above where the masked wrestler makes a reveal was bad enough, but an episode called Amy / Amelia about a young girl possessed by a demon has a horrifying twist ending that would make even Rod Serling gasp.

  5. richardpd

    July 6, 2020 at 10:48 pm

    I remember one episode where a boy had been shot in the eye with an air pistol, which felt like a lost Grange Hill episode.

  6. droogie

    July 7, 2020 at 12:00 am

    Yes! I think it was called Because I Said So. A taught drama about a psychotic school kid shooting another in the eye in with an air pistol. A teacher has to interrogate the other kids who witnessed it but who don’t want to grass him up before the police arrive to find out what happened. ( It had the same Manchester stageschool kids from Your Mother Wouldn’t Like it!)

  7. richardpd

    July 7, 2020 at 10:22 am

    Thanks, I remember it was a lot grittier than the usual Dramarama fare.

  8. Droogie

    July 7, 2020 at 3:17 pm

    I remember one of the kid actors In that was Simon Schatzberger who later appeared in that classic Yellow Pages advert as the teenager who discovers a scratch on his parent’s expensive table after a wild party. He also played the lead in Adrian Mole the musical too.

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