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It's only a play, love!
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espresso_addict wondered whether there was much British television SF. Well, once upon a time, there was. During the 1980s it fell out of favour, and we still haven't connected back to the tradition (the closest I think we've come in recent years is with The League of Gentlemen).
Anyway, here is my list of ten classic British television SF programmes. It is partial and rapidly assembled, and I am sure there are gaps. But I hope it gives a glimpse of that wonderful era in Britain cultural life, between the early 1950s and the late 1970s, when the power of speculative drama was understood, and was not considered solely the province of children's or minority audiences.
British Television Science Fiction
1. Nineteen Eighty-Four. This 1954 production of Orwell's novel led to questions in the House of Commons and is still one of the most brilliant pieces of television that you can see. The design is sparse and stunning, Peter Cushing (as Winston Smith) is fabulous. Because television plays at the time were performed and broadcast live, it is only because it was (unusually) performed again and recorded at that time that we have a copy. Cultural history!
2. Quatermass. A phenomenon that spans this entire generation of television production. The first story about Professor Bernard Quatermass (The Quatermass Experiment, 1953) created the audience for intelligent mainstream drama. The first outing for what would become a trope of British SFTV - scientist struggles on behalf of reason and wisdom to counter the implacable forces of bureaucratic imcompetence. Plus there's all that Cold War stuff going on in the early Quatermass stories. The 1979 mini-series sticks John Mills in a violent and decaying Britain of the future, and is bloody miserable and bloody marvellous. The creator of Quatermass, Nigel Kneale, scripted the BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and also various other hugely well-regarded SF plays.
3. The Avengers. I understand that The Avengers defined a decade. It's not a decade I remember myself, but there is something beautiful in almost every single episode - and I don't just mean Diana Rigg in a catsuit. In 1977, Patrick MacNee was filming an episode of The New Avengers in Canada, and while he was out there, bumped into Peter O'Toole. "What are you doing at the moment, Patrick?" O'Toole said. "I'm doing an episode of The Avengers, Peter." "Patrick, you're always doing The Avengers."
4. The Prisoner. Frankly, it's a bit weird and it doesn't make any sense, but - oh! The costumes! The buildings! The mini-mokes! Oh, Patrick McGoohan!
5. Dr Who. Duh.
6. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. I would spoon out my eyes rather that put an entry for just that bloody puppet nonsense (I don't care if the models were brilliant), but it would be frankly churlish not to remember that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson also produced two hugely entertaining live-action 1970s SF series for ITV: UFO and the splendidly watchable and thoroughly nonsensical Space: 1999. Didn't you know that the moon got blasted out of Earth orbit in 1999? Well it did.
7. Doomwatch. Slightly ponderous early 70s BBC series about a quango set up to monitor scientific cock-ups. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis (they invented the Cybermen, you know) extrapolated stories from current science, and captured the mood of a decade that was feeling burnt by the white heat of 60s technology and was becoming increasingly suspicious and environmentally conscious. A good solid and intelligent mainstream BBC drama of the type they don't bother to make any more. Survivors picked up similar themes in the middle of the 70s, but I chose Doomwatch because no-one can ever call it "a post-apocalyptic version of The Good Life".
8. Sapphire and Steel. S&S is here representing the whole tradition of children's SF. I could have gone for something like The Tomorrow People, but S&S is considerably cleverer, and is also as scary as all hell. Joanna Lumley and David McCallum wander around time and space trying to hold back the coldly malevolent forces that try to push through and destroy, you know, the whole fundamental nature of stuff. One of those premises that you instinctively understand as a kid and which don't really stand up to scrutiny when you go back and think about it. Best not think about it. If you cross The Sixth Sense with Final Destination and make it a gazillion times less glossy, you'll have a glimmer of just how great Sapphire and Steel is.
9. Blake's 7. Farewell, British television drama - we love you, we will always remember you.
10. Red Dwarf. The Guinness Book of Classic British TV lists Red Dwarf under comedy, but the thing about Red Dwarf was that we all knew it was really SF, even if the idiots giving it the green light didn't. I'm a Red Dwarf purist and think it's not so great once Norman Lovett isn't playing Holly any more.
There are some obvious gaps in this list. I don't include anything by Dennis Potter because, frankly, I think he's over-rated. I left out Hitch-hikers because, even though the graphics for the book are so fantastic, it's significance is really as radio. I probably should have included the post-nuclear holocaust docu-drama Threads, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it. And I would really like to have included Ultraviolet, for shining like a dark jewel in the midst of our contemporary telly-wasteland.
And now I shall go and watch Edward Woodward and Russell Hunter in episodes of Callan, and remind myself how television only really needs a studio, a good script, and a couple of really great actors. In the words of the immortal Tom Baker: "It's only a play, love!"
espresso_addict wondered whether there was much British television SF. Well, once upon a time, there was. During the 1980s it fell out of favour, and we still haven't connected back to the tradition (the closest I think we've come in recent years is with The League of Gentlemen). Anyway, here is my list of ten classic British television SF programmes. It is partial and rapidly assembled, and I am sure there are gaps. But I hope it gives a glimpse of that wonderful era in Britain cultural life, between the early 1950s and the late 1970s, when the power of speculative drama was understood, and was not considered solely the province of children's or minority audiences.
British Television Science Fiction
1. Nineteen Eighty-Four. This 1954 production of Orwell's novel led to questions in the House of Commons and is still one of the most brilliant pieces of television that you can see. The design is sparse and stunning, Peter Cushing (as Winston Smith) is fabulous. Because television plays at the time were performed and broadcast live, it is only because it was (unusually) performed again and recorded at that time that we have a copy. Cultural history!
2. Quatermass. A phenomenon that spans this entire generation of television production. The first story about Professor Bernard Quatermass (The Quatermass Experiment, 1953) created the audience for intelligent mainstream drama. The first outing for what would become a trope of British SFTV - scientist struggles on behalf of reason and wisdom to counter the implacable forces of bureaucratic imcompetence. Plus there's all that Cold War stuff going on in the early Quatermass stories. The 1979 mini-series sticks John Mills in a violent and decaying Britain of the future, and is bloody miserable and bloody marvellous. The creator of Quatermass, Nigel Kneale, scripted the BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and also various other hugely well-regarded SF plays.
3. The Avengers. I understand that The Avengers defined a decade. It's not a decade I remember myself, but there is something beautiful in almost every single episode - and I don't just mean Diana Rigg in a catsuit. In 1977, Patrick MacNee was filming an episode of The New Avengers in Canada, and while he was out there, bumped into Peter O'Toole. "What are you doing at the moment, Patrick?" O'Toole said. "I'm doing an episode of The Avengers, Peter." "Patrick, you're always doing The Avengers."
4. The Prisoner. Frankly, it's a bit weird and it doesn't make any sense, but - oh! The costumes! The buildings! The mini-mokes! Oh, Patrick McGoohan!
5. Dr Who. Duh.
6. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. I would spoon out my eyes rather that put an entry for just that bloody puppet nonsense (I don't care if the models were brilliant), but it would be frankly churlish not to remember that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson also produced two hugely entertaining live-action 1970s SF series for ITV: UFO and the splendidly watchable and thoroughly nonsensical Space: 1999. Didn't you know that the moon got blasted out of Earth orbit in 1999? Well it did.
7. Doomwatch. Slightly ponderous early 70s BBC series about a quango set up to monitor scientific cock-ups. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis (they invented the Cybermen, you know) extrapolated stories from current science, and captured the mood of a decade that was feeling burnt by the white heat of 60s technology and was becoming increasingly suspicious and environmentally conscious. A good solid and intelligent mainstream BBC drama of the type they don't bother to make any more. Survivors picked up similar themes in the middle of the 70s, but I chose Doomwatch because no-one can ever call it "a post-apocalyptic version of The Good Life".
8. Sapphire and Steel. S&S is here representing the whole tradition of children's SF. I could have gone for something like The Tomorrow People, but S&S is considerably cleverer, and is also as scary as all hell. Joanna Lumley and David McCallum wander around time and space trying to hold back the coldly malevolent forces that try to push through and destroy, you know, the whole fundamental nature of stuff. One of those premises that you instinctively understand as a kid and which don't really stand up to scrutiny when you go back and think about it. Best not think about it. If you cross The Sixth Sense with Final Destination and make it a gazillion times less glossy, you'll have a glimmer of just how great Sapphire and Steel is.
9. Blake's 7. Farewell, British television drama - we love you, we will always remember you.
10. Red Dwarf. The Guinness Book of Classic British TV lists Red Dwarf under comedy, but the thing about Red Dwarf was that we all knew it was really SF, even if the idiots giving it the green light didn't. I'm a Red Dwarf purist and think it's not so great once Norman Lovett isn't playing Holly any more.
There are some obvious gaps in this list. I don't include anything by Dennis Potter because, frankly, I think he's over-rated. I left out Hitch-hikers because, even though the graphics for the book are so fantastic, it's significance is really as radio. I probably should have included the post-nuclear holocaust docu-drama Threads, but I haven't been able to bring myself to watch it. And I would really like to have included Ultraviolet, for shining like a dark jewel in the midst of our contemporary telly-wasteland.
And now I shall go and watch Edward Woodward and Russell Hunter in episodes of Callan, and remind myself how television only really needs a studio, a good script, and a couple of really great actors. In the words of the immortal Tom Baker: "It's only a play, love!"
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OTOH, it was groundbreaking as the first TV series I can recall that really used computer graphics, also the first SF/humour crossover I can recall. It also, like Red Dwarf, had some brilliant ideas, even to a non-techie like me.
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You know, that explains a lot about the Teletubbies.
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I'd definitely include both Threads and HHGG, the latter for the reason given below; the former because it was hugely memorable, though I don't think I'd like to watch it again.
The other thing that might be worth considering in this context (though, in the main, not sf) is drama featuring scientists. I'm thinking of things like The New Men from the CP Snow novel, which I think was tele-dramatised in the 1980s (or I might be completely making this up)?
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A B&W episode? Context, m'dear, context. Also, you will have been watching a telerecording, and not how it was originally transmitted, so it would have looked all knackered and snowy.
Avengers was sf? I'd pigeonholed it in my head with The Professionals!
Heh! Well, they do have robots (Cybernauts) and all kinds of nonsense. I think it has more fantastical elements than The Prisoner, to be honest, which is really a spy programme. (It came out of McGoohan's previous programme, Dangerman, in which he plays a secret agent).
I can't remember an adaptation of The New Men, but it's entirely possible you're right.
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Starhunter 2300
Re: Starhunter 2300
It's weird to reread this entry now and think that in the intervening two-and-a-half years there's been such a renaissance in British telefantasy.
Re: Starhunter 2300
Re: Starhunter 2300