by Martin Holmes
ADVENTURES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY TELEVISION... AND BEYOND...!Where the television of the past… …becomes the conversation of the present.Join us as we take a nostalgic journey through the television vaults, and my guests and I investigate, discover, enjoy, and chat about a whole world of televisual delights, with some occasional nonsense thrown in from time-to-time.
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Publishing Since
10/12/2020
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April 20, 2025
<p>STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON (plus guests!) on ACE OF WANDS and AN AUDIENCE WITH TAROT at DERBY QUAD.</p><p><br /></p><p>First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 20th 2025.</p><p><br /></p><p>On SATURDAY the 29TH of MARCH, our friend ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON along with his colleague STEVE HARDY organised an event at THE QUAD in DERBY to celebrate all things ACE OF WANDS, the popular (but largely now lost) children’s fantasy drama series created by TREVOR PRESTON which was made and broadcast by THAMES TELEVISION for three years across 46 episodes, and 14 stories from 1970 to 1972.</p><p><br /></p><p>Two of the series’ stars, TAROT himself MICHAEL MACKENZIE alongside PETRA MARKHAM who played MIKKI DIAMOND in the surviving third season, were on stage to answer questions and available to pose for photographs with fans, and two complete stories - THE MEDDLERS and PEACOCK PIE - were shown on the big screen, and, by all accounts it all went down rather well and was something of a success which hopefully might lead to other similar Archive TV themed events.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was unable to attend in person, but happily our old friend STEVE HATCHER was on hand and was able and willing to grab a few quick interviews with MICHAEL, PETRA, and co-organiser STEVE HARDY which will pop up during today’s show, in which I am joined by STEVE HATCHER and ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON to talk all about the enduring appeal of ACE OF WANDS, as well as their experiences of the event itself.</p><p><br /></p><p>PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.</p>
April 13, 2025
<p>PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI and IRWIN ALLEN</p><p><br></p><p>First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 13th 2025.</p><p><br></p><p>Recently, I’ve been re-watching a whole load of late-era VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA episodes, as well as a smattering of examples from THE TIME TUNNEL, and this set me to thinking that I’d quite like to talk to one of my regulars about the quartet of high-concept television adventure series that were created by IRWIN ALLEN in the mid 1960s, which also included LOST IN SPACE and LAND OF THE GIANTS.</p><p><br></p><p>Across a highly productive five years from 1964, around three hundred episodes of these shows were produced for the American networks, which, in an era of three main channels, where having just one show on the air is quite some achievement, is nothing short of impressive.</p><p><br></p><p>Granted, the IRWIN ALLEN productions can sometimes be rightly accused of being a little bit eccentric or simplistic in their storytelling, and perhaps sometimes concentrate far more on the action and not so much on the drama, but these four shows definitely influenced a generation, both at home, and internationally, as they were sold across the world, and excited young minds wherever and whenever they were broadcast.</p><p><br></p><p>Furthermore, such were the strong ideas at the core of these shows, that elements from all of them have often been taken and used in other series that built upon the imaginative ideas that were always at the core of IRWIN ALLEN’s shows.</p><p><br></p><p>Anyway, after our shows last year in which PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI joined me to talk about various quartets of classic USTV shows, he seemed the obvious choice to join me this week to mull over his experiences of discovering these four shows during their repeat runs in the 1980s, and I hope you enjoy the hour as much as I did.</p><p><br></p><p>PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.</p>
April 6, 2025
<p>ADAM HENLEY on BLAKE'S 7 series one</p><p><br></p><p>First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 6th 2025.</p><p><br></p><p>A couple of months ago, a new voice joined us on VISION ON SOUND in the form of ADAM HENLEY, and he introduced himself by talking about both his personal television history and a little bit about THE WEST WING.</p><p><br></p><p>This went so well, that ADAM felt like making another appearance and, as he’d just finished watching the exciting new Blu-Ray release of the first series of BLAKE’S SEVEN, we thought we’d spend an hour having a bit of a chat about this iconic late 1970s BBC science-fiction series as it gets re-introduced to its long-standing fans and, perhaps a brand new generation eager to explore this fascinating dystopian drama.</p><p><br></p><p>BLAKE’S SEVEN was a science-fiction series created by TERRY NATION who had been one of the early writers on DOCTOR WHO, for which he created the iconic Daleks, and he had also created the post apocalyptic drama series SURVIVORS for the BBC a few years earlier, so this exploration of a rebellion against the forces of the evil Federation was definitely just the sort of bleak vision of the future that you might expect from him.</p><p><br></p><p>The series itself lasted for four series and fifty-two fifty minute episodes and ended on a shattering cliffhanger that definitely left its scars on a generation of television viewers just before Christmas 1981.</p><p><br></p><p>Its first season introduced BLAKE played by GARETH THOMAS and his loyal–ish gang of rebels and freedom-fighters as played by SALLY KNYVETTE as space pilot JENNA, MICHAEL KEATING as lock-picking wizard VILA, DAVID JACKSON as the man-mountain GAN, JAN CHAPPELL as the telepathic alien CALLY, and PAUL DARROW as the enigmatic AVON who would eventually take the leading role as the series progressed. They were helped enormously by the fact that they luckily managed to acquire the super starship LIBERATOR and its wise master computer ZEN, as voiced by PETER TUDDENHAM, and this was how the original SEVEN was made up.</p><p><br></p><p>Towards the end of the first series, and another devastating cliffhanger that helped give the show an astonishingly high profile at the time, another super computer ORAC was introduced, which changed the dynamic of the show in its second year.</p><p><br></p><p>The forces of the Federation were mostly represented by JACQUELINE PEARCE as SERVALAN, a powerful and ruthless woman prone to wearing astonishing gowns, and STEPHEN GREIF as TRAVIS, a hate-fuelled leather-clad cyborg with an eyepatch and a gun for a hand, and they crossed swords with BLAKE and his crew on several occasions during the second half of this series.</p><p><br></p><p>Fans of BLAKE’S SEVEN had been waiting a long time for it to get the Blu-Ray release that they felt it deserved, with many of its special effects updated from their somewhat low-budget and dated roots, and ADAM was one of the enthusiastic early adopters, and was very eager to share his enthusiasm with us today.</p><p><br></p><p>And here's a link to Adam's Marathon challenge, if you are able to contribute https://2025tcslondonmarathon.enthuse.com/pf/adam-henley</p><p><br></p><p>PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.</p>
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