Murder Most Horrid II – tape 1652

Before the first programme, the end of some old-school Top Gear, looking at a rally race somewhere cold. The kind of story the new Top Gear was never remotely interested in.

There’s a trailer for Laurel Avenue.

Then, Murder Most Horrid starts a second series, with Overkill, written by Steven Moffatt, and Dawn French is in a very dark place.

Before she can carry out the deed, she’s interrupted by Amanda Donohoe.

Donohoe is some kind of assassin, and isn’t particularly sympathetic to Dawn’s intentions. But whoever her enemies are, they know she’s there, shoot up the hotel window a bit, then tell her she has to present herself to them in an hour or else she’ll be brought there.

So she has a proposition for Dawn. “So far in my professional I have killed well over fifty people.” “Oh, so you’re a social worker too?”

Dawn has to pose as her to help kill her target before he can kill Donohoe.

Yay! It’s Geoffrey McGivern.

Donohoe’s targets are Peter Vaughan and Colin Salmon.

It’s a typical Moffat farce, which ends with almost everybody dead, which is an advantage of this programme’s format. Very dark, but funny too.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 3rd March 1994 – 21:00

After this programme, there’s a trailer for Absolutely Fabulous, Then recording switches to the end of another Top Gear and an appearance by Young Clarkson.

There’s a trailer for From A to B: Tales of Modern Motoring.

The next episode of Nurder Most Horrid is Lady Luck written by Paul Smith and Terry Kyan, creators of Colin’s Sandwich.

Sean Gallagher holds up a bank, then hijacks Dawn French in her car to escape the police. She ends up helping him a lot more than he expects, until the final twist.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 10th March 1994 – 21:00

The next episode is A Severe Case of Death by Chris England. Dawn plays a housekeeper to an old country doctor.

She does a certain amount of medical practice herself. “He’s got something I like to call influenza.” “Oh my God he’s got something Latin.”

Timothy West is the doctor, not a very good one, and charging a lot for his services.

But he dies of shock on learning his son has died at sea. French is (of course) dismissed, but she hatches a plan to continue practising medicine.

She poses as West’s son, for whom he had already written a letter of recommendation to the suire of another village, John Fortune, who accepts the letter but doesn’t have much time for doctors, and dismissed the last one because ‘he was a fake’.

All’s going well, although she does start falling for the squire, which could be awkward. And then the old doctor’s son turns up, alive, and insists on living with her and taking all her money.

Things get worse when Brian Hibbard (of the Flying Pickets) turns up demanding money with menaces, as the real Doctor Adams had run up a rather large bill with their employer.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 17th March 1994 – 21:00

The next episode is We All Hate Granny written by James Hendrie. Dawn French is the hated Granny, with Vistoria Wicks (Sally Smedley from Drop the Dead Donkey) as her daughter.

James Fleet is the son-in-law.

Their children are astonishingly rude. When Granny gives them hand-knitted piglet toys, they throw them out of the window in disgust.

Thrift has lost his job, and being an ancient 44 years old, has trouble getting a new one. But Wicks knows that Granny is actually very rich, as she has shares in a large number of successful companies, so they’re just waiting for her to die.

Granny does start to win over the children, though.

But the parents can’t stand it, and waiting for Granny to die is too much, and they move to actively trying to kill her.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 24th March 1994 – 21:00

Next, it’s Mangez Merveillac by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. Dawn French plays Verity Hodge, a beloved food writer, whose famous account of her time in provincial France doesn’t match the reality of the people who were there.

Her book is a massive success, but things go a bit wrong for her when people want to visit the village, as they might discover that she slightly overstated the charms of the village. So she gets the villagers to massively remodel the village.

Soon the tourists start arriving in vast numbers, including Kevin McNally and his family.

But then Patricia Hayes arrives as Dorothy Templecombe, who wrote the recipe book used by the Patron of the hotel Verity stayed in, and who recognised all her recipes in Verity’s book.

This episode has about three different twists, whicb is impressive.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 31st March 1994 – 21:00

The final episode in the series is Smashing Bird by Jon Canter. It’s a London Gangster story, with quite a cast.

Dawn French plays a nightclub singer, due to marry Ray Winstone and move to Spain.

But on a bank job, where Winstone was the getaway driver, he’s killed when his car explodes.

Hywel Bennett is the gang kingpin.

David Bamber (off of Chalk) is his right hand man.

Mark McGann is Winstone’s former best friend.

It looks suspiciously like the gang engineered Winstone’s death to stop him and French leaving, and in particular, to keep French there to skivvy for the gang.

Then, they “get word” that a rival gang in Spain killed Winstone and tell French that she should kill the rival gang as revenge. Of course, it’s another stitch-up.

But she pieces together the clues and realises that they were lying about what happened. She wants revenge, but finds she’s not really a killer. Then she finds a way to get them to do the work for her.

And there’s a last surprise cameo from Michael Elphick at the end.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 7th April 1994 – 21:00

After this episode, recording switches to Channel 4 and an episode of Home Improvement. The two older brothers are being horrible to their younger brother, mainly because Tim Allen is an awful father. His solution is to frighten the life out of the two older kids.

Then, talking about dysfunctional families, there’s an episode of Roseanne. I like her sweatshirt.

This is mid-vintage Roseanne, when Tom Arnold was still listed as an executive producer, and Sarah Chalke was playing Becky. It’s Thanksgiving, and Becky offers to do all the cooking.

After this, recording stops, and underneath there’s this.

It’s Charlie Drake delivering a monologue from a dustbin. Also appearing are Norman Beaton and Stephen Rea. If I had to guess, I’d say it has the aroma of Samuel Beckett.

A quick search in Genome and it’s Endgame, probably the broadcast from February 1994 given the first programme on this tape is from March, and would have been taped over it. Most likely a repeat of The Day Today. BBC Two – 24th February 1994 – 00:00

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Film 94 – Steven Spielberg on Schindler’s List – tape 1683

This tape starts with the end of Catchword, a BBC quiz programme that was likely concocted as a competitor to Countdown. It’s presented by Paul Coia, a daytime TV regular.

There’s a trailer for The Menendez Trial.

Then, a BBC2 repeat for Film 94 in which Barry Norman reviews the following films:

• The Age of Innocence
• Mrs Doubtfire – “distinguished by a superb performance by Robin Williams, and badly let down by a truly soppy performance by Robin Williams.”
• Decadence

I’m amused by Barry’s comments about Pierce Brosnan’s penchant for light comedy in Doubtfire. “He would have made a splendid James Bond in the Roger Moore style.”

Tom Brook talks to Julia Roberts about her ‘comeback’ movie The Pelican Brief.

There’s a brief obituary for Telly Savalas.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 25th January 1994 – 17:30

After this, we get part (not all) of an interview with Steven Spielberg in the Face to Face series, with Jeremy Isaacs. Here’s the whole thing.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 31st January 1994 – 23:15

There’s another bit of Catchword.

Then, more from Barry Norman and Film 94. “Meanwhile, and so as not to neglect the Cahiers du Cinema crowd, we have Wayne’s World 2”

• Bodies Rest and Motion
• Wayne’s World 2
• Les Visiteurs
• Jack Be Nimble

There’s a location report on Shadowlands.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 1st February 1994 – 17:30

In the next episode, Barry looks at:

• In The Name of the Father
• The Three Musketeers
• Free Willy

As part of the review of In The Name of the Father, Barry rakes director Jim Sheridan over the coals over a few fictionalised elements in the movie. This is a slightly shameful example of the kind of ‘balance’ that’s slightly nonsensical. Barry himself describes the film as not to be missed, and yet he has to ask Sheridan about two or three examples where the film chooses drama over pure fact, simply because the film clearly makes the political and judicial world look really very bad indeed.

There’s also an interview with Tom Hanks, and a look at his role in Philadelphia. It’s rather mind boggling to hear them talk about whether ‘a mainstream audience’ would watch a movie about a homosexual man with Aids.

There’s also an obituary for Joseph Cotten.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 7th February 1994 – 23:10

The next episode (we’ve missed last week’s, in which he reviews Schindler’s List) has reviews of

• Philadelphia
• The Pelican Brief
• Kafka
• Cool Runnings

There’s a location report on Romeo is Bleeding.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 21st February 1994 – 23:25

Before the next episode, there’s the end of an episode of Take Me Home, followed by a trailer for the next episode. Then there’s a trailer for Twins.

Then, a special episode in which Barry talks to Robert Altman about his career and films, on the release of his new film Short Cuts.

BBC Genome:  BBC One – 28th February 1994 – 23:10

Before the next episode there’s the end of another episode of Take Me Home followed by a trailer for The Detectives.

Then, another Film 94 with Barry Norman reviewing

• Shadowlands
• The Joy Luck Club
• My Life
• The Ballad of Little Jo
• On Deadly Ground

There’s a location report from County Wicklow, of Widow’s Peak. There’s also a brief Obituary for John Candy, and for Melina Mercouri.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 7th March 1994 – 23:15

After this, there’s an extra programme, Steven Spielberg on Schindler’s List, in which he talks about his film, and we also hear from some of the survivors of the Holocaust saved by Oscar Schindler.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 8th March 1994 – 23:15

After this, there’s a trailer for Dragnet.

Then there’s the start of Spielberg’s Duel. The tape ends shortly after the film starts.

The Late Show With David Letterman – The Outer Limits – tape 1690

Here’s a few random episodes of The Last Show with David Letterman. For some reason these episodes were on a German language channel, so they are interspersed with German trailers.

First guest is Marv Albert, a US sports person.

It’s a very awkward interview – they both seem to be having fun, but he keeps cracking jokes that don’t land at all in the studio.

Dave’s Mum is reporting from Lillyhammer and the Winter Olympics.

There’s music from Sinead O’Connor

The final guest is the wonderful Ricky Jay, who does some sleight of hand, including at one point getting his trick slightly wrong – he was supposed to cut four aces, but he cut two jacks and two queens. Interesting.

In the next episode, the first guest is Garry Shandling.

Music from Sting.

Then Nigel Mansell, at that time driving Indycar. He’s surprisingly funny.

Next episode features Geena Davis

and Aerosmith

They run out of time for their final guest. These shows are rather badly put together. Far too much time with Dave doing his stupid gags, at the expense of the guests.

After this, there’s an episode of the classic Outer Limits, with The Zanti Misfits, a tale of alien ‘misfits’ (or criminals) being shipped to Earth as a penal colony. Humanity has been ordered to accept the misfits, under threat of devastating attack.

They have to keep the landing area totally clear of people, but of course someone breaks through the corden. It’s a young Bruce Dern, a bad boy and the woman who has run off with him, Olive Deering.

The army have to try to assure the Zanti that they aren’t there deliberately. But the Zanti definitely don’t like him creeping around their (surprisingly small) ship so they attack him.

 

The army have no choice, once the Zanti start attacking, to kill them all, and they are told by the Zanti home planet, that this was the plan all along.

After this, there’s most of an episode of Hill Street Blues before the tape ends.

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X Men – tape 1702

Some more episodes of the animated X-Men series. First it’s The Final Decision. Anti-mutant Senator Robert Kelly has been kidnapped by Magneto. But he’s rescued, not by the X-Men but by Sentinels – always the scariest threat in the mutant comics, I thought. They’re brainchildren of Henry Gyrich, another in the long line of villainous ginger men (see also Lex Luthor, Ganondorf and Syndrome off of The Incredibles).

There’s a dramatic scene where the X-Men all individually decide they have to save Kelly, despite an injured Magneto telling them they’ll die in the attempt. As they take off in the Blackbird, Magneto watches them go. “You’re all fools. Heroic fools. The brave are always the first to die.”

The sentinels ultimately demonstrate the folly of Strong AI, because although their creator, Bolivar Trask (taller here than in the recent movie) created them to protect humans from mutants, they reasoned that mutants were also humans so humans had to be protected from themselves and… umm… humans should be destroyed? Ray Kurzweil was right all along.

Then Professor X flies the blackbird, with a cockpit packed with TNT and Gas (rather than, I don’t know, some missiles?) at Master Mold, the chief sentinel, and ejects just in time, as the volcano Master Mold was standing in also erupts. Thorough.

And in a surprising twist ending, Cyclops proposes to Jean. Here’s hoping for an uneventful wedding.

Next it’s Till Death Do Us Part Part One. No, that’s really the title.

Wolverine seems to be fighting robots pretending to be Cyclops while dressed for a wedding, while the actual wedding is happening elsewhere. I think it’s the Danger Room.

The priest officiating turns out to be a shape changer. Is that Morph from the first episode who was killed off?

Senator Kelly has been elected president of the United States. I’m sure that’s not going to be a problem.

His first press conference is disrupted by the Sons of Humanity pretending to be mutants to stir up hatred.

Morph (for it is indeed he) is intent on destroying the X-Men who left him to die. By pretending to be other X-Men to cause havoc.

At the end of this episode, the mysterious Mr Sinister is watching the havok on TV. I never really liked Mr Sinister in the comics. But to be honest, by that time the X-books were so prolific it was hard to keep up, and I stopped buying comics regularly around that time.

Before the next episode we get a bit of the DJ Kat show introduction. Did a young generation of kids grow up loving DJ Kat? I’d be curious to know.

In the next episode, Scott and Jean are captured by Mr Sinister, and Morph goes to the mansion as Professor X, but Wolverine recognises his smell.

After some fighting, Scott and Jean are rescued, but Xavier and Magneto are still in trouble in Antarctica.

Although the previous episode was a ‘part two’ the next episode is Whatever it Takes and opens near ‘Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’

A young mutant is taken over by Shadow King. The mutant is Storm’s protegé.

Wolverine is tracking down Morph, who gets away from him by morphing into Jean and being horrible to him.

Xavier and Magneto find themselves in the Savage Lands, being pursued, without their powers, but with Xavier suddenly able to walk.

Before the next episode, DJ Kat and friend are obviously having a Glam day.

Next, in X-Ternally Yours, the team look like they’re fighting a cousin of Kroll.

Gambit has to help his brother because of some old deal with his cajun roots. Cue a lot of unconvincing cajun accents. This is presumably the X-Men’s version of a Star Trek Klingon episode.

There’s another bit of DJ Kat before the next episode, Time Fugitives part 1. It opens in 3999 AD, with a very Terminator inspired fight against robots fighting for Apocalypse another villain I never cared for).

Cable is one of the people fighting the robots when a time storm starts, realigning reality because something in the past has changed. It’s a grotesque post-apocalyptic nightmare, and yet Cable asks his computer what he needs to do in the past to preserve his present. I guess it suits his personality.

The cause is the mutant Bishop, who is from the future, but travelled into the past to stop Senator Kelly being assassinated, and now discovers that his present is even worse, with a plague that has killed mutants, so he goes back again to stop it.

Someone is infecting people with the plague and accusing mutants of being plague carriers.

It’s Apocalypse, of course.

But when the virus is destroyed, Cable, who has also travelled back in time, is told by his computer, that to preserve his appalling wasteland of a future, the mutant plague must be allowed to circulate.

Part two of this story is written by Elliot Maggin, a veteran writer of comics, who also wrote a Superman tie-in novel when the first Christopher Reeve movie was released, but which told a completely different story to the film, because one of the writers on the movie, The Godfather’s Mario Puzo, had it written in to his contract that he had to be paid for every time his story elements were reused in any other medium. I even read an interview with someone from the film who said that this even extended to people talking about the film’s story in interviews, which is why there were stories from that time which talk about stuff which never happened in the movie, like Superman making breakfast and frying eggs with heat vision.

The ultimate irony is that Puzo’s work was extensively rewritten, first by David Newman, Leslie Newman and Robert Benton, and later their draft was radically rewritten by Tom Mankiewicz, who worked most closely with director Richard Donner.

I’d recommend Maggin’s novel, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, although I haven’t read it since I was 14 so it might not be as impressive now. But it did teach me that the indentation in your upper lip between your nostrils is called the philtrum (although my memory is that it was spelled ‘filtrum’ in the book). The amazon reviews of the book seem to echo my memory of how good the book was, though.

Back to this episode, and (putting aside Cable’s motivations, which are improved a little here when he sees his son vanish as his world is getting reconfigured) it starts again at the same point as the first episode, with Bishop arriving back in the present. Cable arrives at the same time and starts fighting Bishop.

I don’t think the anti-mutant protester on the left has really thought through the logic of his placard.

Perhaps he thinks mutants should retreat back to the womb?

This episode has a bit of a Back to the Future Part 2 vibe with versions of scenes from the previous episode, but with added Cable.

The ultimate resolution of the plot is also extremely neat, with Cable finding a way to stop the plague but keep his own (still frankly shitty) future intact.

The next episode is A Rogue’s Tale in which Rogue is haunted by a face from her past. She’s being manipulated by Mystique, along with other evil mutants. She’s drawn to the hospital where the woman is unconscious. She’s Ms Marvel, whose mind and powers Rogue absorbed while being taught by Mystique, and Xavier made her forget all that when she came to him.

Next, it’s Beauty and the Beast, and there’s more anti-mutant hysteria. I do wonder why the X-Men universe has been slow to enact hate crime legislation to stop these clowns.

And in a shock twist, the head of the anti-mutant organisation is revealed to be the son of the mutant Sabretooth.

Next, it’s Mojovision. Oh, Mojo. I guess there were a lot of late-era Claremont villains I didn’t like, because he’s one of them. But to counterbalance that, this episode features Longshot, who I did like (although mostly when drawn by Art Adams – he looks a bit too Pat Sharp here).

Mojo tries to get the X-Men for his TV service. That’s basically the whole episode.

And that’s the last one on this tape.

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Doctor Who – tape 1643

Something to cleanse our palate after yesterday’s rather disappointing 90s Sci Fi, courtesy of UK Gold. It’s Tom Baker and Mary Tamm in The Androids of Tara, part of the Key to Time series.

The first scene, with the Doctor playing chess against K9, reminds me of one of Tom Baker’s complaints about K9, that it was hard to get a tall man like him in the same frame as K9, so he was forever crouching. Here he’s lounging.

Here, Tom Baker waves a fishing rod into the camera, for the benefit of the few people who had 3D equipped television sets in the 1970s.

The Doctor is more interested in fishing than finding the fourth segment of the Key to Time, so Romana heads off on her own. I do hope she isn’t captured.

Tara itself is a nice, green planet, so we’re spared another quarry. But something is lurking in the undergrowth, watching Romana as she searches for the segment.

She finds it almost immediately, disguised as the head of a statue.

But she’s immediately menaced by a small furry creature with an unconvincing mask.

Luckily, a swashbuckling man in a helmet drives it off with a sword that seems to shoot electricity. Lifting his helmet, he’s played by Peter Jeffrey. Traditional casting rules probably make him a bad guy, but we’ll see. It doesn’t look good, as he asks her if she’s ‘damaged’ and asks ‘your head isn’t injured?’ To those of us who remember The Brain of Morbius fondly, this kind of talk is terribly suspicious.

He’s Count Grendel, Knight of the Gracht (which seems to be pronounced graft) and unluckily for Romana, he notices the segment to the key of time, and insists it has to be registered.

He’s also upset that the statue head that used to be the segment is now missing. “It’s supposed to guard our fortunes.”

He insists on taking Romana back to the castle to tend to her twisted ankle, and ‘register’ the segment.

Meanwhile, the Doctor’s fishing is interrupted by two more men, one with another of those electrical swords, who are very interested in whether the Doctor can repair androids.

Grendel takes Romana to Castle Gracht, the not entirely unconvincing matte painting where he lives. “and it’s quite, quite escape proof I’m glad to say.” No, he’s not creepy at all.

He takes her to his surgeon engineer, Madame Lamia, and they both exclaim over ‘the workmanship’ of Romana, then Grendel tells Lamia to disassemble her, a task she intends to undertake using an electric carving knife.

Of course, it’s no mystery to the audience what’s happening – the story title and the earlier conversation about repairing androids should be enough clue.

The Doctor is taken to Prince Reynart, who wants him to repair his android. It’s an android of the Prince, and he wants the android to be a decoy on the way to tomorrow’s coronation, because he’s expecting to be assassinated by Count Grendel, who would then be in line for the crown. Also in line is the Princess Strella, “but nobody knows where she is”.

Their plan might have worked too, if it wasn;t for the poisoned wine they drink to celebrate, leaving Grendel at the door, gloating.

Int he next episode, the Doctor has to hatch a plan to use the Prince’s android to stand in at the coronation, all the while with the Prince’s loyal guard (he only appears to have one) doesn’t trust him at all.

Meanwhile, we meet the mysterious Princess Strella, who, in a colossal coincidence, looks exactly like Romana, and is held prisoner by Grendel. Grendel and Lamia inject Romana with something. Probably mind control, if I know my Doctor Who tropes.

Going by the big clock in the main hall, they either have a 16 or 32 hour day.

The android Prince makes it there in time for the coronation, and during this, ‘Princess Strella’ arrives to offer her fealty to the new king, but the Doctor grabs the royal sceptre and (it appears) bashes her over the head, shouting “No!”

Episode 3, the ‘princess’ was an android, the Doctor surmises she was sent to kill the Prince. Grendel’s hunchbacked manservant, Till, visits the Doctor – he’s played by Declan Mulholland, who played the human version of Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars, in the scene which was cut originally, but replaced with a CGI Jabba in the special edition.

He comes with a deal from Lamia – Romana’s return in exchange for safe conduct for Count Grendel out of the country. Naturally, Grendel has another Romana android, ready to kill the Doctor.

The Doctor turns up early to the rendezvous, with K9, and foils the attempt on his life. But Grendel is outside the building with his men with laser crossbows. After firing on the building multiple times, and accidentally killing Lamia when she walks out of the building, he calls “Come out Doctor. Surrender. We won’t harm you.” He really must be the stupidest villain if he thinks the Doctor would believe that.

No, it’s not the Count who’s stupid, it’s the writer, as the Doctor does indeed walk out, into a hail of badly aimed laser bolts. He even comes out a second time to shout “Liar!”.

K9 cuts a hole in the back of the building and they escape, meeting Romana, having escaped earlier on a horse.

So Count Grendel visits the Doctor and the android Prince under a flag of truce, and tries to offer the Doctor the throne if he gets rid of the android. This scene is very strange. It’s shot in a set with two rooms, divided by a curtain with the usual missing fourth wall. The Doctor takes Grendel through the curtain, they converse, then the Doctor goes back through the curtain, but Grendel walks around the pillar indicating the edge of the wall. I can’t work out if this is just bad blocking, a badly designed set, a badly photographed set, or all three.

After all this, Grendel tosses the spear he had tied his flag of truce to, into the chest of the android, then runs out of the room. And, somehow, he’s managed to capture Romana again as he makes his escape.

This really is the biggest load of old tosh.

In the next episode, Grendel plans to marry Romana (as the Princess) to the Prince – he threatens to kill the Princess if they don’t do as he says. His intention would be to then kill the prince, marry ‘the princess’ himself, then bump her off.

Still, at least Doctor Who regular Cyril Shaps is on hand to play the Archimandrite, who has to officiate at the wedding. Clearly Tara doesn’t care much about making royal weddings big public affairs.

The Doctor interrupts the wedding, so Grendel has a swordfight with him. He’s supposed to be the best swordsman on Tara, but the Doctor is more than a match. While Grendel is distracted, they open the gates and the Prince’s men can get in. One of Grendel’s men goes to kill the real princess, but Romana is on hand to stop him by bashing him on the head with a painting canvas. The princess also smashes a pot on his head in case you think a canvas isn’t enough to stun a large man.

Grendel runs away, the prince and princess are reunited, the Doctor has the fourth segment to the Key to Time, so all’s well, and we’re ready for another adventure. Let’s hope it’s much better.

The next story is The Power of Kroll, and at least it’s written by Robert Holmes, probably the best writer to write for the classic series.

A group of Gruff military type men, including Neil McCarthy, Philip Madoc, and Voice of K9 John Leeson in an on-screen role for once, are discussing a gun-runner who may or may not have landed on their moon, intending to ‘arm the swampies’.

McCarthy and Madoc go out on their hovercraft looking for their gun runner – naturally they find the Doctor and shoot him. Meanwhile, Romana is looking for the next segment and gets kidnapped by some green men, dropping the detector for the key, and is taken on a boat by someone who looks like a big game hunter – this would be Rohm-Dutt, the hunter the others were looking for, played by Glyn Owen.

The Doctor is taken to the refinery – a rather lacklustre minature.

The swampies get their guns from Rohm-Dutt, and they decide to sacrifice Romana to the mighty Kroll to give them good luck.

The episode hits a cliffhanger with Romana menaced by something with crab claws.

It’s not actually really Kroll, just a swampie in a costume. The real Kroll doesn’t turn up until later…

It even starts attacking the refinery and grabbing workers there…

In teh next episode, The Doctor, Romana and Rohm-Dutt are tied to a rack, being stretched until they die. Rohm-Dutt tells the Doctor that his guns came from Thawn (McCarthy) at the refinery as an excuse to kill the swampies and discredit a group called The Sons of Earth.

Luckily it starts raining, and the Doctor can smash the window by singing a high note, so the vines they’re tied to start loosening and they escape.

This really does seem like just a dreary schlep through swamps with a couple of dodgy split screens when Kroll appears. I’ve totally lost track of who I should be caring about.

In the final episode, Thawn decides to launch a space rocket, and bring it down on top of Kroll, so at least there’s something for the Doctor to do. Thawn even shoots poor John Leeson to stop him aborting the launch.

Kroll ends up threatening the refinery.

The Doctor has to face it, because he’s worked out that Kroll is the fifth segment of the Key, thus saving everyone.

Not a great pair of episodes, I have to say.

After this episode, recording stops, and underneath there’s the very end of Maroc 7 with Gene Barry.

Then, UK Gold finishes, and What’s In Store starts, running infomercials, with Dennis Weaver (TV’s McCloud) showing us a working television submerged in a miracle liquid called ‘Fomblin’ – but this isn’t a product that will let you have a TV in a fish tank – as useful as that might be – it’s actually the ingredient in AutoFom – a car care product that makes your car shinier. I love these things. They spend half an hour telling you basically the same thing over and over again.

I also like to play a game with these things. When they come to the ordering section, imagine what’s the absolute maximum you’d be prepared to pay for such a product, then compare it with the actual price. Almost always, the price is double my maximum.

After AutoFom, there’s the Great Wok of China – from a time when a wok was actually exotic.

There’s ‘PowerAce’ a 12V battery pack. £150!

Look at this guy with his office on a train. He’s even printing out stuff.

Then, just before the tape ends, there’s the king of infomercials, Mike Levy, with Amazing Discoveries. This time it’s a machine that puts sparkly gems on clothes, but the tape ends before I can see how much it’s being sold for.

Adverts:

• Crunchy Nut Cornflakes
• Walker’s Crisps
• Flash
• Bold
• Asda
• Telemillion
• Now 27
• trail: Saturday Night

The Tomorrow People – tape 1687

Not, sadly, the endearingly clunky 70s original, but the almost slick 90s reboot here. We saw the first few episodes a few months back, but this looks like a new series. Firstly, I should deal with this credit:

No, not Alan Horrox, but Viviane Albertine. That name rings a bell. It’s only Viv Albertine, punk pioneer and guitarist for The Slits. Turns out, after the Slits disbanded, she did a bit of directing.

This episode is called The Culex Experiment. You can’t go wrong with a title like ‘The XXXX Experiment’ – it always sounds exciting and Sci-Fi, and yet gives absolutely nothing about the story away.

70s TV comedy  stalwart Denise Coffey makes an appearance as Kevin’s aunt.

Kevin is rushing to meet Megabyte when a man in a white coat runs in front of him, being chased by something insecty. Two men in white suits arrive on a motorbike and sidecar, and take him away.

Kevin gets to the station to meet Megabyte, and calls the police, but he’s also attacked by an insect.

The shifty men in white try to take him away, but Megabyte shoos them away, and Adam, the other Tomorrow Person, jaunts in to see what’s happening.

Adam’s taken to hospital, where his aunt briefly meets new cast member Naomie Harris, long before she co-starred in Skyfall. She’s replaced Kristen Ariza’s Lisa, presumably because the programme couldn’t cope with three lead actors having homophonic names.

Roger Sloman arrives, as an officious police officer.

Naomie Harris plays Ami, whose mother is in the same hospital as Kevin, and she mentally experiences what Kevin experienced, and tells the doctor that he’s been bitten.

Adam and Megabyte explain to her about being a Tomorrow Person, but naturally she doesn’t believe them.

Two identical women attack the doctor treating Kevin to stop him taking a blood sample – although he’s been in there for so long you’d wonder why they hadn’t already taken some.

The women take Kevin, and Ami senses it, so there’s a chase, but they get away with Kevin (in the sidecar again).

Then Adam and Megabyte take Ami to the spaceship[ buried under a south pacific island, and they use their powers to see what actually happened to Kevin.

These episodes are on CITV, and it appears that they’ve ditched their presenters, at least for the second episode, where all you get is trailers and adverts.

Int he next episode, Sloman interrogates the kids, but doesn’t get anything useful. They then do a ‘mind merge’ s that Ami can remember the registration of the motorbike, but when they bring this to Sloman, he just gets cross at them – you’d think he’d welcome new information. So Megabyte has to use the police computer to get the address for the bike, and only then does Sloman do something.

They arrive at the address, a big country house, and are greeted by two very similar looking women (which should raise alarm bells).

The owner of the motorcycle is the great Jean Marsh as Professor Culex, who says the bike had been stolen. So it’s a dead end.

Back at Kavin’s Aunt’s, she’s been treating a dog which has the same symptoms as Kevin (she happens to be a vet), which was bitten up near the big house. She takes a blood sample and takes it to the doctor who was treating Kevin.

The doctor analyzes the sample, and phones Adam with the results. He doesn’t actually say what the results are, or what they mean, he just keeps saying how incredible and unbelievable the results are.

Meanwhile, someone is skulking around the aunt’s vet practice, and kidnaps the comatose dog, then grabs Ami when she goes to have a look.

And just as the doctor might be getting round to saying some actual facts about the blood, rather than just hyperbole, he also is grabbed.

Ami has been captured by Professor Culex, who explains her grand plan – to breed the greatest mosquito as ‘the ultimate predator’, and the cliffhanger has Ami menaced by one of the mosquitoes.

Before the next episode, there’s a ‘databurst’ – a bunch of short frames designed to be still-framed on video, with a bunch of frankly dull information, of which this is the most interesting.

In the next episode, Ami manages to teleport away from the threat. Culex and the twins prepare to clear the house out, and Adam and Megabyte hitchhike on their lorry, discovering Kevin in a box. Megabyte takes Kevin back to his aunt’s house while Adam stays with the lorry.

The lorry heads into London, and drops off one of the twins, doing some kind of miscoloured Mario cosplay.

She heads to the headquarters when Megabyte’s dad, General Damon, works. He’s setting up security for a conference about a piece of hardware which, if it fell into the wrong hands, could cause a catastrophe. Vanilla Mario is pretending to be a window cleaner, and eavesdropping.

I hate the way everything in this show is generalities. They can’t even be bothered to invent what this dangerous machine might be, just that it’s top secret and dangerous.

The lorry arrives at its final destination, and as Adam is looking inside the building, the other twin drops a big barrel on him. Is this another Donkey Kong reference?

Next episode, Megabyte keeps trying to ask his dad for help, but they keep having pointless arguments and not actually telling each other anything that would help them. It’s all artificial drama.

Connie Booth at last turns up as another scientist, the one with the very important top secret device that General Damon was talking about.

She’s travelled with her son – I wonder if he’ll turn out to be a Tomorrow Person.

Culex poses as a limo driver to trap another scientist, but Megabyte is hiding in the boot. Somehow, when someone tosses a metal box into the boot, it manages to knock him unconscious while he’s hiding under a blanket, so Culex can steal the scientist’s palmprint, then pretend to be the scientist and visit General Damon, then get all the security arrangements.

In the car park, a security man finds the unconscious scientist in the back of the limo, then looks in the boot and finds megabyte. For some reason, he looks sheepish – I don’t know why he doesn’t immediately say that Culex kidnapped him.

The 11th World Scientist Convention kicks off, and it’s a packed event.

Connie Booth presents her breakthrough. It’s the duplication of organic matter. “I have here a single grain of rice.” She puts it into her machine, which then starts spraying out loads of (dried) rice. I half expected her to say “Ladies and Gentlemen, as you can imagine, this will revolutionise the business of celebrating newlyweds.”

Then, Booth’s son is kidnapped while playing Quasar, and Culex wants the machine.

In the next episode, Kevon’s aunt, analyzing the blood sample, is getting a bit morose. “We’ve become too clever, you see. When we take on Mother Nature and win, like this, there’s no place left for us in the universe.”

General Damon and Professor Connie Booth, along with Megabyte and Adam, are discussing Culex. She needs the machine because each mosquito takes months of work to produce. I guess we’re supposed to imagine that she manufactures each mosquito by hand, rather than, I don’t know, breeding them.

The twins are stilllurking around pretending to be chambermaids now, and being let into rooms by secret servicemen. Haven’t these people been briefed about twin women?

They want the machine, and Professor Connie thinks she might be able to fool Culex by handing over the machine but with the wrong activation code. The kids steal the machine for her to help her with the plan.

But she ditches the kids and takes the device to Culex. Then, to get the correct code, Culex offers her the antidote to the poison he’s been afflicted with.

Culex uses the machine to make lots of her mosquitoes, just as General Damon arrives, but luckily the kids know how to deal with the insects, freezing them with fire extinguishers.

But Culex still has the antidote, and almost destorys it when she falls from a great height (as all villains must), but Adam catches the vial. Hooray, a happy ending.

Now, regular readers might have noticed how Kevin, a main character in the first story, was comatose for this whole story. I suspect that the makers realised he wasn’t the greatest actor in the vast, and had to sideline him.

There’s another story after this, Monsoon Man. New character Lucy Allen (Laurence Bouvard) is a reporter who Adam bumps into outside a club and finds her travelcard.

She witnessed a strange event – a burglar who activated some strange device in a house was thrown onto the street, and was mysteriously frozen. So she decides to investigate the story.

When she disappears, and her house is suddenly occupied by an old couple who claim they’ve lived there for years, Adam  is worried. He and Megabyte track her to the house, and they’re both captured by the bad guys.

Before the next episode, I think someone on the CITV team really didn’t like Mike and Angelo. Or maybe the ‘See You Next Tuesday’ caption is entirely coincidental.

Ami rescues the boys from their predicament, and at the same time persuades her mother that she should be allowed to use her powers to make a difference.

The bad guys have to tell their boss they lost the boys. Boss is played by William Hootkins, doing the kind of over the top southern accent that only exists in British TV programmes that desperately hope to get a US sale.

The bad guys clear out of the house, so that when the three heroes turn up again, they find another old person living there, apparently for many years. Well, I guess if you have an effective Modus Operandi, you stick to it.

This time the resident in question is Peggy Mount.

They decide to follow Mount when she leaves the house to see where she goes, and they follow her to her casting agent, played by Ian McNeice.

The bad guys want the photos that Lucy took, so they go after her editor, who’s on holiday, and they use their machine, which can control the weather. Adam arrives in the nick of time.

Next episode, and they rescue the editor, get the photos processed, but the bad guy hides a bomb in his office. They hide in a cupboard to survive the blast.

Lucy escapes from the bad guys, and Ami works out that the company behind everything is the Cobb Cereal Corporation.

Megabyte and Ami go to Florida to investigate, and find their way into Hootkin’s private office. Then he gasses them in a lift, and the episode’s over/ Sorry for the cliffhanger…

After this episode, there’s the start of an episode of Home and Away, and then the tape ends.

Adverts:

• trail: Terror Towers
• Heinz Tomato Ketchup
• Frosties
• Kinder Egg – Crazy Crocos
• Cadbury’s High Lights
• Anchor Butter
• trail: Tiny Toon Adventures
• Frosties
• Milk
• Kinder Eggs
• Dettox
• Bold Ultra
• Tunes
• trail: Terror Towers
• trail: Tiny Toon Adventures
• trail: Terror Towers
• trail: Tiny Toon Adventures
• Milk
• Disney Sing Along Videos
• Frosties
• Hovis
• Pontin’s
• Ariel Ultra
• Milk
• trail: Fun House
• Frosties
• mars
• Heinz Pasta Soup
• Pampers
• Mr Sheen
• Sainsbury’s
• trail: Tiny Toon Adventures
• Rice Krispies – Captain Scarlet
• Dime – Harry Enfield
• Pedigree Chum
• Quavers
• Mullerice
• Vidal Sassoon
• Fairy Non-Bio
• trail: Tiny Toon Adventures
• trail: Mike and Angelo
• trail: Terror Towers
• Mighty White
• Imperial Leather – Paul Merton
• Kinder Eggs
• Bugs
• Huggies
• Burger King
• trail: tiny Toon Adventures
• trail: Terror Towers
• Kinder Eggs
• Uncle Bens
• Flash
• Pedigree Chum
• Fairy Dishwasher
• Ariel
• Rice Krispies
• trail: Football
• Dime
• Cool Runnings in cinemas
• Safeway
• trail: Feds
• trail: London Tonight

Between The Lines – tape 1699

More gritty police-based drama with Between The Lines now. The first episode here is Close Protection, from series three where Tony Clark (Neil Pearson) and Harry Naylor (Tom Georgeson) are no longer with the police, but now work in private security.

They’re hired to run protection for a Chilean General, who’s visiting the UK privately, and so doesn’t get official protection. As civil servant Hugh Bonneville explains, Chile’s human rights record means the UK government can’t officially work with them.

They’re getting some serious equipment. Is the Amiga the go-to computer for surveillance and protection?

This is their first job free of their old (crooked) boss Deakin. Clark goes to old colleague Maureen (Mo) Connell (Siobhan Redmond) to research possible Chilean political threats to the General. Getting the old gang back together.

Meantime, Clark’s (ex?) girlfriend Sarah Teale (Sylvestra Le Touzel) wants to make a documentary about the General’s visit, hoping her ties to Clarke will get her access.

The problems of dealing with a fascist General are demonstrated when an older woman who attempts to confront the General at a banquet to ask about her daughter, one of the ‘disappeared’, is taken out the back and beaten by the General’s men, and Clark and Naylor have to wade in to stop it.

Later, someone plants a bullet casing in the old woman’s flat. She finds it and passes it on to Le Touzel who tells Clark. They infer there’s going to be a hit on the General, placing the blame on the protesters.

While Clark is out, Naylor gets a message that his house is broken in to. The General’s head of security tells him he should go home to sort it out – he seems far too eager. Sure enough, as soon as Naylor leaves, he turns off the security system, and the shifty bloke who planted the shell casing makes his way onto the property.

Clark arrives back, just in time to tackle him, but the equally shifty Chilean head of Security shoots the man dead.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 16th November 1994 – 21:30

Before the next episode, there’s the end of the Nine O’Clock News, a trailer for Tony Robinson in Great Journeys, and Newsroom South East, looking at the possibility of new terror attacks in London.

Then there’s weather from Peter Cockcroft, a trailer for Airplane, and a trailer for Crocodile Shoes.

Then, another episode of Between The Lines. In Blooded, Redmond is undercover with an animal rights group, carrying out attacks on fur shops.

Harry is undercover at a laboratory where animal testing is going on.

At one point, the (evil?) John Deakin is on a park bench reading, when a dog comes sniffing around him, so he whacks the dog on the nose with his book. It’s a book about Saint Francis of Assisi.

There’s a lot of surveillance in this episode, and Redmond and Georgeson have terrific fun in a scene where she has to pretend to pick him up in a pub – awkward for the longtime colleagues. And of course the leader of the radical animal rights group drives a blue VW Camper Van – like the Libyans in Back to the Future.

Things don’t go well for the team when the activists dump Redmond and go early, beating up Harry and leaving him unconscious with bombs ticking.

Clark and Connell find the researcher in the lab who had been feeding the lead guy information, and tell her what’s happening. She’s surprised, since as far as she knew, she’d been selling industrial secrets to a Swiss pharmaceutical company, and the animal rights stuff is just a front to damage the company.

Mo uses the PA system to tell the group about their leader’s true intentions, and Harry gets released, but the other members of the gang can’t let to go at that, shoot the leader in a hail of bullets, then blow the bombs up themselves, giving Harry a ‘cool guys don’t look at explosions’ moment.

In the credits there’s a disclaimer: “The laboratory premises filmed for this episode do not use, and have never used, animals for any procedures whatsoever” – added, no doubt, by the owners of the building, worried that idiots might thing they were secret vivisectionists and do something drastic.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 23rd November 1994 – 21:30

There’s a Christmas trailer for BBC1 before the next episode.

Then, there’s a Budget Response from Gordon Brown to the budget.

There’s a trailer for Corocodile Shoes.

Then, more from Between the Lines, and an apparent suicide by a young Asian man might be something else, as the family don’t believe it could have been suicide. The man worked as a computer engineer in the defence industry, and the coroner ruled that it was suicide caused by stress at work, but his wife doesn’t believe that.

Tony and Harry are brought in by a journalist, James Nesbitt, to investigate the death.

They don’t take long to determine that the method of suicide – he was found under his car, in a closed garage, with the engine running – was extremely unlikely. They can’t even close the door from the inside given the position of the car.

It’s all very suspicious. The coroner was read a statement in private. The defence firm tells them that the victim ‘didn’t have much of a future at the company’, and most suspicious of all, old boss John Deakin warns Tony off the case. “You don’t want the defence industry mucking up your CV.”

Things start to get hairy. Tony’s flat is broken into. Mo and reporter Nesbitt are involved in a car accident with a car driving straight at them.

Then Tony is bundled into a van, has a plastic bag put on his head and is told to drop the investigation. So Tony caves, but has trouble persuading Mo and Harry. But in the end, they drop the case.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 30th November 1994 – 21:35

Before the next episode, the end of the news, and Newsroom Southeast. Plus, Suzanne Charlton gives us a bad weather warning.

There’s a trailer for the National Lottery, and a trailer for Crocofile Shoes.

Then, more Between The Lines. There’s a violent shootout between uniformed men and a bunch of drug dealers.

Mo is brought in by her former boss to talk to Roger Allam of MI-5. He’s worried that John Deakin is getting unauthorised work from rogue elements in MI-5 and wants Mo to spy on Deakin, with the promise she might get her old job back.

It all starts getting a bit neo-nazi, as the uniformed gunmen at the start are suspected to be far right wing vigilantes, and it’s possible their guns were smuggled in by MI-5. I’m afraid I’ve lost track here of who;d supposed to be good. I suspect nobody.

There’s a scene where one of the nazis (wearing an old German helmet) is playing a video game. I can’t see what the game is supposed to be, but he’s playing it with a big 90s-style joystick, and the sound effect sounds a lot like Defender. I suspect that’s a generic ‘video game’ sound effect used by the sound mixer.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 30th November 1994 – 21:35

After this, recording continues with a trailer for Casualty. “Who will be the Casualty?”

Then there’s a trailer for Sports Review of the Year 1994.

Then there’s the start of a film, starting with words to strike fear into the heart of all moviegoers.

It’s a Charles Bronson/Michael Winner film called The Mechanic. The name rings a bell, and sure enough, this film was remade in 2011 by Simon West, with Jason Statham in the lead role. I bet that one’s better than this version. Golly, it looks boring.

The tape ends during the film.