Shadows Series 2 - Titles (1976)

Steve

Shadows - Series One (1975) pt 2

Today, via DVD, I returned to the1975 TV series; Shadows, to view the remainder of the season one episodes.

• Ep 4 The Waiting Room by Jon Watkins (24/9/1975)
• Ep 5 An optical Illusion by Thom Clarke (1/10/1975)
• Ep 6 Dutch Schlitz's Shoes by Trevor Preston (8/10/1975
• Ep 7 The Other Window by Jacquetta Hawkes, J. B. Priestley (15/10/1975)

And what a mixed bag it was.  Interestingly while I didn't have any recall of ever having watched any of the first three episodes on the set, I'm fairly certain, with my memory now jogged, that I saw at least two of the above episodes on original transmission.

The Waiting Room is the first one that feels familiar and not just because of the plot, although it is a bit of a classic set up for a ghost story. The haunted waiting room of the old railway station at night, the anniversary of a disaster, history playing its self out again and trying to pull the modern back into the past.  Its all good stuff and done very well.  Its also got Jenny Agutter in it who delivers her performance with such conviction that she almost seems to elevate the whole thing above its simple premise

Watching again it reminded me now of the second Sapphire and Steel story shown in 1979 and also the film; The Ghost Train originally released 1941 but viewed by me on some rainy Saturday afternoon also in the late 70's on TV

An optical Illusion is also a fairly straightforward ghost story set up but with some quite "light" acting and a very slow plot build which fails to add any suspense and makes it all feel like a bit of a fail after the previous story.  Maybe with 7 days between them on original broadcast, the comparison wouldn't have been a problem but its hard to escape on a  DVD box set.  It does feature Richard Willis who is one of those familiar and reliable TV faces from back in the day who I always liked.

Dutch Schlitz's Shoes is something of an oddity being a sort of spin off of Ace of  Wands starring as it does Russell Hunter as the villainous Mr Stabs.  Less ghost story and more supernatural farce.  I had already watched this last year as a bonus feature on the Ace of Wands DVD and a second viewing so soon wasn't the easiest to sit through although you have to love Hunter chewing up the scenery almost as wonderfully as he did in the 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death.

The Other Window was perhaps the most disappointing with the only real pleasure to be had from the fact that I remembered the weird lens around which the plot barely hangs and unearthed some hitherto lost memory of having sat through it before in 1975.  The idea is actually quite a good one but the script is full of awful theorising and lecturing of beliefs that doesn't seem remotely realistic of any character.  Given that one half of the writing partnership was J. B. Priestley, who's enigmatic works inspired P J Hammond to create Sapphire and Steel, I dared to hope for better.

Out of the seven episodes there are two absolute keepers and a few others that are entertaining
enough that I could imagine sitting through them again. Volume 2 awaits but not for a while I think.

As a concept for kids TV, the anthology supernatural series seems to be a thing of the past which is a shame really and not because the kids wouldn't be interested nowadays but because I doubt any of the TV stations would have the balls to go for it.


Steve

Shadows - Series One (1975) pt 1

It was 1975 in my living room this Sunday gone, at least for an hour and half, as I sat and watched the first three episodes of Thames Television's spooky anthology kids show; Shadows. I say "spooky" by way of description rather than an admission.  However, even though, I'm a little too old to be disturbed by the content of the episodes now days, I can see how they would have been effective on a younger version of me.

• Ep 1 The Future Ghost by Roger Marshall (3/9/1975) 
• Ep 2 After School by Ewart Alexander (10/9/1975) 
• Ep 3 The Witch Bottle by Stewart Farrar 917/9/1975)

The series has a bit of a cult rep, which may well be deserved, although sometimes it can just take the right theme tune and opening credits to lay the foundations upon which less noteworthy content is  raised higher than deserved.  Perhaps not in this case though.

The Future Ghost was perhaps the least likely to spook (lets keep using that word) anyone as although it was sort of a ghost story, it was more about giving the concept a bit of a spin than putting its audience on edge.  Not a bad way to open the series, if only to have put any dutiful parents at ease about letting their children watch this show.  The Future Ghost made me think of a stripped down version of The Amazing Mr Blunden which is ghosts in a family friendly way.

If After School reminded me of anything its shades of Kes in its initial set up, although Gareth Thomas doesn't quite pull off sadistic football coach in quite the same way Brian Glover did.  After that he disappears leaving the two welsh school kids alone to be gently poltergeist'ed  into discovering where the earthly remains can be found and exhumed.

Now The Witch Bottle is for me the most interesting one and the first bit of old TV that I've watched with adult eyes and found myself considering - just for a moment - if it was entirely suitable for a children's teatime show.  The plot is a tried and tested formula and concerns the curse of a wronged long dead witch but its strength comes in the fact that its written very straight and is incredibly well acted by the two female leads.  At less than half an hour an episode all the stories are denied the opportunity to build the tension too highly but there are enough elements here: witchcraft, possession, curses, and cruelty to keep little Peter and Jane in nightmares for a week.  Its certainly the episode I'll be going back to for another viewing.

There is a lot of witch history and folklore casually exchanged between the characters, including mention of Matthew Hopkins, The Witchfinder General, as made famous to all by the 1968 horror film with Vincent Price.  And so. on the strength of Farrar's script, I decided to look him up only to discover that here was a writer that would have made my old English teacher proud with his golden rule of; "Write about what you know".  That's Farrar right there, standing behind the attractive naked lady.

Because, as you may have guessed by now, Farrar was the real deal.

Wikipedia introduces him thusly;

Frank Stewart Farrar (28 June 1916 – 7 February 2000), who always went by the name of Stewart Farrar, was an English screenwriter, novelist and prominent figure in the Neo-pagan religion of Wicca, which he devoted much of his later life to propagating with the aid of his seventh wife, Janet Farrar.

 

and;

 

After being initiated into Alexandrian Wicca by Maxine Sanders in 1970, he subsequently published one of the earliest books to describe this newly burgeoning religion, What Witches Do (1971). Within only a few months of being initiated, he had risen to the position of High Priest and founded his own coven in south London,

All of which is quite fantastic and goes a long way to explaining why The Witch Bottle speaks with a greater truth than the previous two episodes.  Although dramatic it is never sensational and now, armed with this new knowledge, I realise it was probably meant to be educational as well.  I suppose some might consider the most spooky thing of all.

 

 

Steve

TV Times - 22 June 1974 - Whodunnit?

Only a couple of weeks after his demise and transformation on the floor of the UNIT laboratory,  3rd Doctor; Jon Pertwee was up and about, and not in the least bit Tom Baker'ish, as he hosted this murder mystery quiz show on ITV.

 

I've a vague recollection of watching an episode or two of this and finding it all a little odd and something of a bonkers concept!  It's still strikes me as a fairly unusual idea now which makes it all the more surprising that someone hasn't resurrected it as a bit of daytime filler at the very least.

 

 

 

Steve