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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

"I remember that!" best old TV shows

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16:42 / 14.09.05

Eerie Indiana absolutely kicked arse, really funny, excellently written, kicked the shit out of the Wonder Years ("As I pounded Winnie in the ass little did I know it would be for the last time...").

In fact TV around 1990 was much better than it is now, I used to watch Aeon Flux (which will be a film soon) on the MTV export 'Liquid Television' on beeb two at six o'clock, there used to be loads of good foreign animation late night on channel 4, digital TV didn't exist and nobody watched much Sky 'cos it was rubbish except the Simpsons, I haven't even got a telly now because there's a million channels and nothing on, it's like that Dire Straits song, talk about dumbing down and do you remember Round the Twist and the Red Hand Gang and Why Don't You? They were ace but not as ace as Monkey Magic...

This thread for the nostalgic ramblings of people Simon Pegg's age reminiscing about good old TV before Big Brother ruined the whole format. This is the default discussion for our generation, after the one about kids TV we used to watch a couple of years earlier (you know the one, 'Skeletor could beat Mumm-ra!' and 'Bagpuss was way better than Fraggle Rock!' and 'What WAS the name of that programme, you know, used to be on after Transformers, with the burning ship like a bird and the guys in funny...' 'It was battle of the planets you durr brain!')

16:49 / 14.09.05

I just realised it is in fact the same conversation, just the second stage of it. What was your favourite TV show?

And here's a terrifying fact about Fraggle Rock- in the US (apparently) THERE IS NO LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER! They have Sprockett the dog, but the guy who owns him does something else! And is American! Can any US 'lithers confirm this terrifying tidbit? What about Uncle Travelling Matt?

17:31 / 14.09.05

I miss Eerie Indiana.

But the shows I really miss are the old cartoons, like the 90's X-men, Eek The Cat, Howie Mandell's Bobby's World...you know, all that stuff that I loved when I was six.

17:39 / 14.09.05

It's true! We had the Captain played by Fulton Mackay but in the US they had Gerard Parkes playing some guy called Jerome "Doc" Christian! An Inventor! In fact the other countries all got a 'Doc' (except Spain who got a Dudo) but he had different occupations- the German Doc was a chef etc. what was Uncle Travelling Matt's part of the show like I wonder? This is freaking me out man, it's too much.

Anyway, what did you watch around 1990?

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:03 / 14.09.05

Funnily enough, I had a chat with a friend today about 'Eerie Indiana' and we both agreed how great it was, although (eerily) neither of us could remember any of the episodes...

Another program we did remember was 'Round the Twist'; especially the episode where two of the characters got trapped in a wooden shack by a flock of mad seagulls, who proceeded to cover the whole building in loads of thick, white droppings. I remember thinking at the time how there was so much birdshit, it looked like the end of 'Ghostbusters' when the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man had exploded. For me, children's television doesn't get much better than that, and I'm convinced that this program is one of the reasons why so many people I know (me included) dream of living in a converted lighthouse (although 'Fraggle Rock' should also shoulder some of the blame, of course).

Tryphena Absent

18:12 / 14.09.05

Arrghhh! Tupperware!

So the usual bunch:
Dark Season was 1991 and brilliant (Joss Whedon did not do it better). Century Falls which was just terrifying. Moondial. The early '90s were so good for children's TV drama, I wish they would air these shows again.

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:31 / 14.09.05

I remember 'Moondial'! And for some reason, Nina, that also reminded me of The Box of Delights - now that was a classic.

Also, last week I finally saw that Gorillaz video with Shaun Ryder, and it reminded me of a cartoon which I used to love as a child: Space Sentinels

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:42 / 14.09.05

Oops! Just realised that none of my contributions were from the 90's (even the first series of 'Round the Twist' [the one I remember] was in 1989). Sorry all.

19:13 / 14.09.05

Favorite old show has got to be "Good Times." If only for the theme.

Just lookin' outta the window..
Watchin' the asphalt grow-ohoho...

19:14 / 14.09.05

Oooo Dark Season(I never knew The Winslet was in it!).
I was so impressed with the creepy Moondial that I got the book.

I also have vague recollections of a show on UTV/HTV which I thought was somehow the same as Alan Garner's Moon over Gomrath but now realise had patently little to do with it apart from having a similar "modern day fantasy that draws on mythology" element. Something to do with a missing younger sibling that no one liked to mention who was also somehow a spider called Ariadne. In anycase I did quite love it. Does anyone else remember this?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

19:24 / 14.09.05

The fuckin' Space Sentinels!

Ooh yeah.

19:24 / 14.09.05

And T-Bag and The Pearls of Wisdom, and Ulysses, and anyone of those episodic Network Seven productions whose names I can't remember.

P. Horus Rhacoid

19:33 / 14.09.05

Anyone else remember Mathnet, the final segment in each episode of Square One? George Frankly and Kate Monday (later Pat Tuesday) solved crimes (including but not limited to: the theft of the Despair Diamond (twice); Roy 'Lefty' Cobbs's mysterious hitting streak (complete with evil manager Steenbrenner); a parrot who endlessly recites the Fibinacci sequence)... solved them using math! Full of random hilarity.

"Hey mister, wanna buy a pencil?"
"How much?"
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"Isn't that a little steep for a pencil?"

Man that show was great. Granted, I was about 6 at the time and haven't seen it in about 10 years. But still.

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:05 / 14.09.05

'Ulysees' was excellent, and I'm proud to say that I still possess the annual which was published around the same time.

Ahhh... I just remembered one of my all time favourite TV programs (this time from the 90's!): 'American Gothic'. I never got to see all the episodes, so unfortunately I missed loads of the narrative. But someone once told me that they never actually finished the series because of studio bureaucracy. Does anyone know if that's true before I set out to get hold of the DVD? Also, I figured you must have had a thread about this classic series already on Barbelith, but I couldn't find one when I searched the archives; so could someone PM me if I'm wrong and point me in the right direction? Cheers.

My main memory of the series was that kid, Lucas Black, who played Caleb; he was (IMHO) a brilliant young actor. I remember seeing one episode where he wakes up and there's a gang of creepy burglars in pig masks standing at the bottom of his bed, snorting and grunting menacingly. I thought he was done for, but then suddenly he opened his mouth and exhaled a deep bass note, pushing them all to the far side of the room with his breath and scaring them away. For some reason, that scene really stuck in my memory.

22:25 / 14.09.05

MMmmmm. American Gothic. I now have Paige Turco to think about as I fall asleep. Thank you.
Anyway, you do know Dark Season was written by RTD, don't you? Never saw it myself as it must have fallen in that period between going to school and realising university was really an extended lesson in media studies. Anyway, the sherrif in AG was called Lucas Buck played by Gary Cole. He's been in other stuff.

22:55 / 14.09.05

How about Neat & Tidy: Adventures Beyond Belief? It was about... well, that's the thing. I don't remember many details other than that the theme tune was Elvis' Guitar Man, it was a bit 'whacky' and it was shown on Channel 4 at teatime (I think). However, it's always stuck with me (although I had to Google to find out the name) and I must have liked it enough to watch it regularly at the time (1987, apparently). Can anyone with a better memory say whether it was actually any good?

Otherwise, usual suspects list: Jossy's Giants, Gruey, Your Mother Wouldn't Like It, Teenage Health Freak.....

22:57 / 14.09.05

I'm the only guy who didn't put a link on the shows that I mentioned, aren't I?

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

23:50 / 14.09.05

Know what I remember from when I was a kid?

All those cheesy 1980s American cartoon shows that were SOOO much better than the shite that's out there now. Dinosaucers, M.A.S.K., GI Joe, He-Man, Luminaries, Centurions (...man, that brings back memories of the Barbelith pub arguments)...damn. Yeah.

Been watching a lot of MacGyver on DVD lately. I can't get the damn song out of my head!

00:15 / 15.09.05

Mathnet (and all of square one, really) was a great show...

Voltron was my favourite cartoon for years, but it got confusing when seeing the Japanese toys in the shops and trying to remember whether it was Voltron III or IV that was the one I knew...

00:22 / 15.09.05

Ooh! and COPS was another great one! Especially the drug episode where the bad guys and the cops team up to fight the crystal...not meth... crystal something dealers....

07:41 / 15.09.05

Many of these are still doing the rounds on UKNova, btw. Looking forward to Dark Season.

08:32 / 15.09.05

I had a very weird dream once where I was told that 'Round the Twist' was a communication from VALIS. In the dream, I discovered that the cast and crew were driven insane by constant paranormal activity and weird messages from an alien supercomputer orbiting the earth. Impossible stuff kept happening during filming that scared the hell out of everyone and much of it was actually kept in the programme. Things happen and are caught on film that nobody can explain. The dream was so vivid and felt so much like a 'communication' itself, that I actually tried to research this, but didn't really turn up anything...

10:08 / 15.09.05

The Round the Twist theme tune was played at a club I went to last Saturday. I danced to it, of course. I still want to live in a lighthouse.

Eerie, Indiana I very much adored. All that weirdness, coupled with a cute boy who was a few years older than me, seemed like the perfect show to me. At the time, I don't think I quite understood all of the cultural references, so now that I'm older, I find it more amusing.. such as the No Brain, No Pain episode with The Knack on cassette tape emptied into someone's mind.

Strangely, when I watch it now, Marshall (Omri Katz) doesn't seem like a child to me, so I guess I still watch it through my 13-year-old eyes. I still have magazine clippings from when it first aired in the UK.

I only watched about one episode of Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension and although I found the slight name changes and everything amusing, it just didn't seem right at all.

Every now and again, I wonder what the main characters are doing and look it up on IMDB, but Omri Katz seems to be doing not much (probably sick of TV after Dallas), Justin Shenkarow (Simon) and Jason Marsden (Dash X) seem like they are mainly doing voice work, although I do remember being vaguely surprised to see Jason Marsden in Ally McBeal a few years ago.

It has been some years since I last drew a dash and an 'X' on my hands to imitate Dash X, but now I'm beginning to worry that I may come across one of those doors and if I don't have appropriate symbols on my hands, I just won't be able to get in. Maybe I should grab the marker pen.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:16 / 15.09.05

Children Of The Dog Star. Hey kids, you're special because this weathervane talks to you! You're special because it's actual part of an alien spaceship! You're special because these aliens are EVIL and want to USE you to INVADE!

Probably started my taste for things with nasty plot twists. And shows that don't quite tell you which genre they are at first.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

11:23 / 15.09.05

Bloody Chocky

"Mind has no mass and so takes no time to travel" - Blue laser in dry ice. Lives in giant upside down glass pyramid on farawy planet.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

11:26 / 15.09.05

12:07 / 15.09.05

I remember reading chocky (I was a Fisk fan) and then thinking the TV version was surprisingly good.

'Arrghhh! Tupperware' (Nina)
see, now this is my theory- despite the hours and hours we spent watching kids TV we can only remember IN TOTAL about an hour of it. Eerie for example, everyone remembers the tupperware twins, Pigeon Street AFAIK consists of one episode. Can anyone here think of any episode other than long distance Clara? Anyone?

12:29 / 15.09.05

Arrghhh! Tupperware!

That reminds me: Dream On. A David Crane and Marta Kauffman creation devised by John Landis for HBO in the early 90s. I loved that show. Funnily enough, its central premise was the same as Tango-Mango’s Inevitable Image Associations thread. A 30-something divorcee, from the first generation to be weaned on TV, finds his emotional life narrated by scenes and images from 50s and 60s TV movies, clips from which punctuated the action. I thought it was brilliant when I was about 15.

I see that series 1 & 2 are available on DVD in the US, so I’m tempted to get hold of it. I worry that it’ll be a horrible disappointment to see it now, and I’m not sure that it’s worth shattering a happy memory.

12:35 / 15.09.05

Early/Mid 80s British TV series. I can barely remember anything of it, however I have these fragments shored up in the ruins of my memory: a weird kid, ghost kids, a gardener and a statue of Saint Christopher that comes alive and carries the kid home in a flood. Oh, and scary and spooky to boot.

Please help me Barbelith. What the hell was the name, and was it any good?

14:19 / 15.09.05

Sounds like a conflation of all the Green Knowe books to me. Ah, here we go. Is that it? Never saw it myself.

15:45 / 15.09.05

Re: Voltron. There's a Voltron movie script floating around - actually paid for and everything.

Pharrell Williams is planning to Executive Produce.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:03 / 15.09.05

But the shows I really miss are the old cartoons, like the 90's X-men, Eek The Cat...

Eek the Cat was great. Sharky the Shark Dog was the shit, also the Terrible Thunder Lizards (pronounced "terrible THUNder LIZards").

I'm hearing a lot about Eerie Indiana, but nothing about The Adventures of Pete and Pete, which was cleary a superior show. Iggy Pop had a role in a few episodes, as did George Burns and other famous people. Freakin' hilarious show. C'mon. Remember Artie, the strongest man in the world? Who once lost a fight with an evil bowling ball?

20:25 / 15.09.05

I'm convinced that this program is one of the reasons why so many people I know (me included) dream of living in a converted lighthouse (although 'Fraggle Rock' should also shoulder some of the blame, of course).

Y'know, I do have an overly romantic notion of living in a lighthouse and I do think these programs are partially to blame. Along with Cockleshell Bay.

But hoh-yeah to all of the above. Thundercats, Visionaries, M.A.S.K. and some weird Irish stop-motion thing which was about Fionn McCuill (I cannot spell that name) and his band o' warriors was surprisingly good.

Err, that last one is for viewers of RTE only...

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:26 / 15.09.05

Holy crap in a hat. I didn't realize just how many famous guest stars were in the Adventures of Pete and Pete until I took a look around. Some I can remember, some I must've been too young to know who they were outside of the show.

Who they were:

Iggy Pop (already mentioned)
Adam West
Steve Buscemi
Micheal Stipe
John McLaughlin
Frank fucking Gifford
Selma Blair
Janeane Garofalo
LL Cool J

That's not all. Hell, even Michelle Trachtenberg had her own character for a season or two.

For those that are interested, Season 1 just recently came out on DVD. Season 2 is rumored for November.

20:47 / 15.09.05

some weird Irish stop-motion thing which was about Fionn McCuill (I cannot spell that name) and his band o' warriors was surprisingly good.

Suprisingly (being that it actually was in Irish, wasn't it?) I liked and understood quite a bit of it.
I was quietly obssesed with Flaherty's Garden and the Mala Men off of Bosco myself. TEH MAGIC CROW!!! Seamus and Shelia McSpud less so. Although that remembrance sort of crosses the gap between best 90's era tv shows and childhood favourites.

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