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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

"I remember that!" best old TV shows

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02:25 / 24.09.05

For bastard, read wanker.

Or somebody who wasn't very nice.

09:47 / 24.09.05

Meludreen, it's not surprising you couldn't remember the name of Murun Buchstansungur. It was quite dark, wasn't it? Can't remember that much else, though.

11:11 / 24.09.05

Ollie the Ox!! Yes I think thats it, and the program was called Ox Tales. My memory is still scant but I googled it, and I think thats right.

Anyone remember the Demon Headmaster and sequels?

And heres another BBC series, that I think came from Australia. It involved time traveling, and a boy and a girl. They were hunted at some point, in a terminatoresque way. The future world was very ideallic.

00:31 / 25.09.05

Shrug.... it could have been goosebumps, but unless somebody can definately link the episode to the series, I have no idea.

Maybe this Meludreen

There was also a British made horror series on CITV with similar self contained episodes of which I can't remember the name. Were the characters British or American?

18:45 / 27.09.05

Sorry to jump in with a theme tune cartoon, but

..chaaasing
the birds and the butterflys,
JAMES THE CAT!

16:02 / 05.10.05

Just came to my head: What about "Max Headroom"? I think I used to watch it as a child but cannot remember anything but a few images of the ugly guy (Max?) in a television.

About to do some research now. This one was buried deep.

18:07 / 05.10.05

13:53 / 06.10.05

"John Dee like character possibly called Hathaway."

Archer's Goon is indeed from the DWJ book, Hathaway farmed transport. I still use the superstition of chanting 'Hathaway send a bus!' to make a bus arrive.

Paranoidwriter, you're thinking of the Oscar-winning 1965 classic romance in lower mathematics 'The Dot and the Line' by Chuck Jones.

paranoidwriter waves hello

18:04 / 06.10.05

Cheers Quantum, that's the one! Good on ya, comrade!

18:37 / 06.10.05

Max Headroom was great fun - can't remember if it was a US show or a UK show first - did he start as a TV personality (supposedly computer head, but played by Matt Frewer) who talked music and film and did interviews, or did he start in the dystopian news-controlled future story-line character?

Anyway, future controlled by news corporations, he's an investigative journalist or something, and he goes into a coma, but personailty gets downloaded inside the 'system' as Max Headroom (the last thing he sees as he crashed into a barrier when fleeing from armed folk on a motorbike) and together with amanda pays, they help people. It was great fun, I managed to pick up a video with about 5 or 6 episodes on it (maybe less, I can't remember) from a bargin shop years ago, and used to love the programme. the little fake adverts were great fun as well.

A fall of geckos

20:21 / 06.10.05

Does anyone remember a Channel 4 comedy from the early 90s called Nightingales?

It was about a trio of security guards (one played by Robert Lindsay I think). The tone was pretty surreal with episodes such as the one where the three unwillingly got sucked into a replay of the Christmas story (with the virgin Mary giving birth to a goldfish). Another featured one of the characters needing psychiatric help after raping a horse because of his suppressed feelings for one of his co-workers etc...

My memories of this are fairly hazy, so I'd love to know if it was actually any good and if it's possible to get hold of any of the episodes.

paranoidwriter waves hello

22:02 / 06.10.05

I remember Nightingales, and (if my memory serves me well) it was damn good and brilliantly bizarre at times. Indeed, I still find myself on occassion singing their little ditty: "There's nobody here but us chickens!" -- especially when I'm working late and start talking to myself.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:20 / 07.10.05

There was also a British made horror series on CITV with similar self contained episodes of which I can't remember the name.

Dramarama? The one with the drummer boy's ghost still makes me wake up screaming.

A fall of geckos

11:16 / 07.10.05

That wasn't just Dramarama. That was Dramarama Spooky - a kind of series within a series with episodes written by authors like Alan Garner.

The drummer boy episode was nasty, but worse was the one with the evil girl in the mirrors - The Exorcism of Amy.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:56 / 07.10.05

Nah, the In A Dark, Dark Wood episode of Dramarama: Spooky was the one that shat me up. The kid's father, who drowned at sea, turns up standing in his room, dripping water and just looking at him... I'm literally shivering now at the memory.

And the one with the couple in the house in the country playing Scrabble and all teh scary phrases come up... that was cool.

Wasn't the drummer boy one a Leon Garfield story?

13:15 / 07.10.05

Two words -- Galaxy Rangers.

Kids these days need more space westerns.

And something I just learned from the above site: Jerry Orbach did Zach's voice!

13:28 / 07.10.05

Kids these days need more unpolitically correct Second World War drama-- the good stuff that my sterling generation grew up on like... The Machine Gunners. I mean, where is there a more cut and dry lesson about kids and weaponry being a marriage made in heaven than that? Responsible programming, I salute you.

Regarding Ulysses 31, I must say that I loved it as a kid, was horrified by its crapness some years later-- and then discovered it in French, where it is MASTERFUL! It is intellectual and well dubbed and fun, all at once-- lines like 'Cerbère-- satellite de reconnaissance à trois têtes!' Priceless.

Does anyone remember an old BBC (I think) series of which I have half memories, of a war between two armies who have bases on each side of a river and one side has a big cannon with a secret weapon that is intended to freeze the enemy, but I think in the end backfires and they kill themselves? It could just be an episode of something, but I have strong-- nay, haunting-- memories of it...

21:41 / 14.04.07

You mean like Bravestarr Laughing?

Sekhmet: Does anyone else remember a cartoon called Pirates of Darkwater?

I do. I remember very little about it but it did exist, and elicited a similar level of all over body excitement as getting up early to watch Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and having far too sugary cereal.

But mainly I have a question. There was a show, not a cartoon, that would have been showing in the UK I guess around 87-89. I don’t remember the title, but it was sort of gameshow where various contestants ran around with these weird white backpacks with little bulbous black things on them, and they were being chased by people trying to shoot their backpacks with some sort of laser gun. There was a blond guy in black who was either a presenter or the guy chasing them. I don’t really remember what the point was but it beat the shit out of Challenge Anneka and at the time it was THE BEST SHOW EVER RIGHT?

[post interrupted for general jumping around, self-congratulation and praising of the internets ]

I found it! Interceptor! How weird… Ohh! There’s a lot of wearing leather trenchcoats and jumping around isn’t there? And a helicopter too! This is fantastic!

Anyone else remember this?

22:02 / 14.04.07

Should be able to download short clips here

“He’s chasing me on a horse… *squeals*”

They’d do this with real guns now wouldn’t they? Isn't there a recent film about something like that?

00:15 / 15.04.07

Ox Tales!!! Yes! Ollie and his little turtle mate. That was ace.

Does anyone remember Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Some of those were proper scary, like the one where the girl can see parallel Earth only it's populated by faceless shadow-people.

And they're invading. Brrrrr. Shitting stuff.

Or the one where the cursed high school swimming pool keeps claiming victims. Particularly bad as I'm rubbish at swimming.

I remember the AYAOTD movie being pretty fucked-up and all. As much as kiddyteeny Nickelodean fare could be.

Daemon est Deus Inversus

01:49 / 15.04.07

My life changed, and I became totally over-sexed, and totally susceptible to Women, when I watched s re-run of something called "Farmer's Daughter" (Inger Stevens starred) at age seven. Does anyone else remember it?

07:55 / 15.04.07

I remember Interceptor. Although I had it mentally tagged as 'Inquisitor', which probably says a lot to a psychologist. I believe it has the magic opening sequence where he vaults/flips over a country gate even though there's a style/small gate on the edge of it, just because he's that cool?

07:59 / 15.04.07

Seriously? That Cool?

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

09:02 / 15.04.07

aww, he looks sleepy.

Does anyone remember Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Some of those were proper scary, like the one where the girl can see parallel Earth only it's populated by faceless shadow-people.

Fuck yes. Sometimes just the opening credits were enough to spook the shit out of me.

Christ, who thought of this stuff? "It's a sci-fi horror show, but...wait for it...for kids. Eh? Eh? Yeah." No matter how obscure your phobia was, they had an episode for it. Mirrors? Check. Ventriloquist dummys? Check. Masks? Check. Aliens? Check. Alan Thick? Double check.

08:27 / 16.04.07

A few years late but heck, here we go:-

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.

Well, that would be the BBC adap. of 'the Children of Green Knowe' by Lucy M. Boston, first run in 1982. It's one of a series of books about a house in which history comes alive or, to put it in Alan Moore-friendly barbeloid terms, all time is concurrent. So, not strictly ghost stories, but full of peculiar imagery: walking statues, demon trees, coded language and song. Later books carry plots heavy in stone circles and black magic.

In my final year at university, I discovered that the house is very much a real place and was near to where I was studying. Visiting was much like stepping into my on memory: so many of the objects and details of the stories are drawn from real life. A wonderful experience.

a site about the show

a site about the house

09:36 / 16.04.07

does anyone (prob an aussie) remember a kids sat arvo show called 'yellow house' where a clown hosted (was it played by ronnie burns, or am i dreaming?) a show that served as a vehicle to play various cartoons and things like the banana splits?? anyone?

other than that - bring back marine boy, i say. c'mon flasher, pass me my oxygen gum.

Earlier than I thought

19:16 / 16.04.07

Upthread and about two years ago, our Stoat dared to mention "Dark Dark Wood". However, any mention of said episode is incomplete unless you mention the sailor doll that COMES TO LIFE and winks at the very end, leaving a generation in shock.

Even longer ago, someone enquired about a series which had child/teen actors playing public figures (Thatcher springs to mind) in a comedy-scifi context (time portal in a toilet, since you asked).

This would be Palace Hill and I only mention it after all this time because of the ominously prescient final series; the cast are joined by "Di", an blonde, fashion obsessed aristocratic irritant from space who is forced into a loveless relationship with a boy called Charles who is enamoured of a harridan Thatcher look alike. Di arrives in the series by crashing her spaceship into a concrete pillar, though the royal family she's from deny involvement.

Inexplicably, ITV refuse to repeat this series, for some reason.

Cowboy Scientist

17:49 / 17.04.07

Ha, second the Pete & Pete love; remember the time Little Pete answered the phone that had been ringing for 27 years, or when Daylight Saving Time ends in the fall, and he prepares for the extra hour like it was real time travel, or the existential dread of Big Pete when he forgot to study for an test, or when he is stuck on a school bus trip departing for the darkest corners of the human mind, or when he and Ellen imitated nuclear fusion in a cheerleading coreography, or the "Orange Lazarus", or Artie & Little Pete vs. the Atlantic Ocean, or "Endless" Mike Hellstrom (best name ever!) or, or, or,...

Does anybody remember the Action League?

The Flesh — He's super strong and super naked!
Thundergirl — She flies... like thunder!
Stinky Diver — A former Navy commando with an attitude as bad as his odor!
And Meltman — With the power to... melt.

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