Not the Chuck Russell remake, this is the original Jack H Harris production of The Blob starring a young Steven McQueen. Shown on CHannel 4 as part of the Future Features series.
After the movie, there’s a trailer for Equinox: Spitfire. Then we go into a programme about Kiss FM – Radical Radio.
After this, the recording continues. Remember in a previous entry I was saying I didn’t like The Word very much. Imagine my surprise, then, to find an episode of said programme on the end of this tape. Entirely accidental, I assure you.
Anyway, for the sake of completeness, this is the third episode (according to Terry Christian’s intro) and features Amanda deCadenet at the MTV awards, interviews with Nicholas Cage and Billy Idol, the Inspiral Carpets in America, and LL Cool J is in the studio.
808 State perform on their Atari STs
And that episode of The Word is the last programme before Channel 4 closes down for the night.
John Landis’s breakthrough comedy Animal House is on this tape. There’s a segment of bad tape on this so it’s not a good recording, but it’s only five minutes or so.
After the movie, there’s a trailer for John Bird in Rude Health, then the recording runs on with an episode of St Elsewhere (#6313).
After St Elsewhere, a trailer for The Golden Girls, another for Equinox on Motor Racing, followed by the start of an episode of Hot Metal, where the tape runs out.
Adverts:
Lynx Oriental
Delight cheese
Coke – first love
Amplex – featuring Steed and Mrs Peel from the Avengers
AA – “In The Sand. I’m not helping much, am I dad?”
Friday Night on Channel 4 – remember when it used to be worth watching. The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross was a big reason for this (I was less of a fan of The Word which came a bit later). Clearly modelled after David Letterman, but successful because Ross was a great presenter, and picked some really interesting subjects for interview.
This is at least series 2, as the house band is Steve Nieve and the Playboys, replacing Glenn Ponder sorry, Nick Plytas and Ecstasy from series one.
Before the first episode, trailers for Wired and Network Seven.
The first episode here interviews Curry Club founder Pat Chapman, who makes some hit chilli chutney. Bobby McFerrin performs and talks about his unique style – this was before ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ was really big, I think.
Next he interviews Spike Lee. This is after She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, but before Do The Right Thing, and Lee seems fairly nervous. There’s also music from Will Downing.
Final guest on the show is Rob Lowe. There’s a certain amount of ribbing about his private life, but he’s fairly game about it. Jonathan Ross does tend to get the best out of his guests.
Next, there’s a piece from Wired, the C4 music show, about Talking Heads, introduced from outside CBGB.
I always get this confused with the Comic Book Buyer’s Guide
Following the Talking Heads interview, there’s a piece on Jean Michel Jarre and his forthcoming plans for the concert Destination Docklands.
The next episode of The Last Resort follows a trailer for the 1986 Columbian Volcano Appeal concert. Guests on this episode are boxer Nigel Benn, Rowland Rivron as Dr Martin Scrote, live from Wembley where Michael Jackson had just played, music from Kevin Rowland, sculptor Malcolm Poynter, John Inman and Barbara Windsor from Wembley, ad Kim Wilde.
Following the second episode, a trailer for The Conversation, the 70s paranoid thriller starring Gene Hackman and for Red Monarch, a Film on Four presentation. We then have the titles and a tiny part of Wired before the recording finishes, and underneath is an older recording of Nic Roeg’s Bad Timing. Not sure why there’s only two episodes of The Last Resort on the tape, though.
Adverts:
Budweiser
Renault 5
Standard Life
Harrods Sale
TV Times
Impulse – On Fire
Woodpecker Cider
Our Price – Maxi Priest
Fruitella
Sensodyne Search
Pimm’s
Reed Employment
Coke
Gillette Contour Plus
Our Price – Billy Idol
New Woman magazine
Heineken – Susie Blake
Pimm’s
Nat West – Mark Kermode looky-likey plays pinball with a cash machine
Ford Vans
Choices pension
Budweiser
Renault 5
Coke – first love
American Express traveller’s cheques from Lloyd’s Bank
First is an episode of Edward Woodward’s vigilante series The Equaliser. Beyond Control features Woodward’s old boss, Control, coming to him for help to catch a KGB assassin at work in New York.
I wonder if a show like this would ever be made today. Possibly, but today Woodward would be surrounded by a team of good looking sidekicks. Woodward just has the reliable Keith Szarabajka.
The Police’s Stewart Copeland wrote the theme and music for this show – one of the most original themes, very rooted in drum and rhythm.
Woodward is excellent in the role of a former spy turned helper of the hopeless. He’s got a good line in dry humour, and a reassuring stoic presence, and he isn’t afraid to rock a comfy cardigan.
It’s important for super-spies to be able to relax occasionally
Following The Equaliser we have one of magician David Copperfield’s TV specials – Escape From Alcatraz. Backed by the music from Back to the Future, David promises to escape from the escape-proof prison. This is his ninth special, and his mullet rating is low.
His first illusion is an escape from the spikes of death.
Paul Daniels did this trick, I think, but he did it standing up.
Next, some comedy magic featuring Webster the Duck, then an illusion he calls On The Edge where he impales himself on a spike. Say what you like about Copperfield, these are the kinds of tricks that the magician’s assistant usually has to perform, so at least he’s putting in the effort.
After a chalkboard prediction trick, and another comedy trick involving Webster and a child from the audience, the special then moves to Alcatraz prison, where his main illusion is set. This is quite a fun sequence, and if we take them at his word, there’s some great illusions there.
Copperfield’s specials always use a lot of movie music. As well as Back to the Future there’s some James Horner that I can’t place – possibly Krull – and definitely some Cocoon. Maybe it’s all Cocoon.
After David Copperfield, there’s an episode of Mork and Mindy. Not something I recorded regularly. This looks like a fairly early episode. The dialogue certainly suggests they have only just met, so it’s possibly only the second episode.
Following Mork and Mindy, there’s a trailer for The Last Resort
Next there’s an episode of Family Ties – I presume the tape just ran on. There’s a trailer for Network 7, a trailer for The Planets with astronomer Heather Couper, then the an episode of The Making of Britain with Michael Ignatieff, just after which, the tape stops.
Adverts:
London Zoo
Feast
Pond’s Cocoa Butter
Café Hag
Sale at DH Evans, Army & Navy, House of Fraser
Allders
Head and Shoulders
PG Tips
SOS cleaning products
Orangina
Wall’s Magnifico
McCain Oven Chips
Imperial Leather Shower Gel
Whiskas
Slumberland
Dettol
Safeway – Hannah Gordon
YTS
Ginster’s Cornish Pastie
Michelin
Soya Margarine – not sure this is a brand or just a generic advert on behalf of the Soya manufacturers
KP Lower Fat Crisps
Family Credit
Ariel Automatic
Silentnight ultimate sleep system at the Allder’s Sale
No, not the Glen Larson 1970s version, but the classic movie serial starring Larry “Buster” Crabbe. Shown during the morning in the school holidays (before daytime TV was consumed by property and auction shows).
I find these immensely charming, and they’re far more entertaining than, say Barbarella.
Before Chapter Seven there’s a brief segment of BBC Breakfast Time with John Stapleton, doing a piece on bone marrow registers. After episode nine there’s a BBC South East new bulletin, plus a national news bulletin, which had a report about presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis having to release a letter from his doctor saying he had never been treated for depression. The tape ends with the start of the kids’ morning TV strand But First, This.
We come to episode 4 of John Brown’s atmospheric reality-game serial The One Game.
When we last spoke I had missed the last ten minutes of episode 3 thanks to a schedule change by LWT. This episode opens with Nick once again dreaming about previous events, now lit like a music video. He’s locked up in Castle Perilous, the next game location he learned at the end of the last episode. Magnus interrogates his friends while Nick watches from behind a two-way mirror. Clearly he wants Nick to learn some lessons. His ex-wife Jenny is still not cooperating, and finally Nick learns this as she doesn’t answer Magnus’s questions the way he wanted her to. I sense we’re heading for some sort of reconciliation. Redemption is in the air, but I suppose the series could take a different turn.
After another Christmas Cracker puzzle from Magnus – he’s not coming across as the great puzzle brain, but on the other hand Nick is such a duffer that perhaps they’re pitched correctly.
Nick’s CFO tries to organise a takeover by a business rival to fix the problem of the missing (nobody seems to care it was stolen) money, but the board meeting is confronted by Nick. It seems to be too late to stop his rival getting his hands on the company.
One last time, Nick is told to go to the police. Of course, he demurs. Now it’s time for the Endgame.
Nick is led to where Jenny is, back at Magnus’s house. On leaving they talk.
NICK
It's my fault, in a way.
JENNY
It's not your fault. It's Magnus.
Finally, someone in a drama says what I always wish they would. There’s always a point where the villain is threatening to do something awful, saying “And it’s all on your head because you won’t do what I want you to do” and I always wish the protagonist would just say “No it’s on your head because you’re the one with the gun.”
And now we get a revelation. Nick and Jenny visit the hospital where Magnus was being treated for his breakdown, and they are told that Magnus wasn’t released, he drowned.
Cue another flashback to the arm in the lake – and we see the whole scene. Nick was in a boat with a woman called Megan, she falls in and drowns. Who was Megan?
But the game’s not over. Nick is led to a swimming pool where Fay is chained and weighted on the diving board. She jumps in. Is it another trick? Nick doesn’t know, but he jumps in – then, underwater, it’s suddenly a lake, and he’s saving Megan.
When he emerges from the pool (with Fay now) Magnus tells him he’s redeemed his debt. And that “Nobody wants to lose their daughter.” So Fay is Magnus’s daughter? Yet Magnus and Nick seem a similar age, and Fay seems close as well – certainly not a lot younger. Is this supposed to indicate that Magnus is some kind of ancient mystic? Or just fuzzy casting?
Finally, Nick takes Jenny to the lake where the original drowning took place and tells her what happened. She asks what now? He says he’ll start again, and they walk off happily.
But the three henchman of Magnus (The Comedian, The Conjuror and The Beggar) are watching them – perhaps the game continues?
The One Game strikes me as a Post Edge of Darkness story. Set in the real world, but underpinned with ancient themes. It’s not nearly as obvious as another ITV drama of the same time, called Crack-Up, which was so clearly modelled after Edge of Darkness it almost used the same dialogue. At least The One Game had a novel idea at its centre.
Where I think it fails is in its positioning of the central character. Nick is really quite horrible, so at first it’s hard to feel sympathy for him. We’re not helped by the style of dialogue which seemed to be popular at this time, where characters seem to declaim rather than talk. And there’s very little humour to leaven the drama here.
The game itself also undercuts the drama. It becomes clear early on that any apparent threat is purely fictional, so the sense of threat is constantly diminished. This does help to make the one actual death in the show more shocking. However, the ramifications of this death are totally ignored. At the end, he’s totally forgotten, yet he was Jenny’s boyfriend, so surely she would at least need to know. It rather throws a wrench into the implied reconciliation between Nick and Jenny, though, which might be why the programme chose to ignore it.
On balance, it’s a show with some nice ideas, and Dillane and Malahide are good, but it lacked something special to really elevate it to classic status.
I’m now interested to watch the David Fincher movie The Game which, I believe, is based on a similar premise. I’d be interested to see if it takes anything from this show.
Barbarella
Following The One Game Alex Cox introduces Barbarella as part of his Moviedrome series. Cox on Roger Vadim: “He’s not a very good director.”
Barbarella could be best described as a porny version of Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon with worse special effects and worse music.
“That’s screaming. A good many dramatic situations start with screaming.”
This tape had a bit of a disaster – the tape leader disconnected from the spool when I rewound, so we had to do some surgery on the tape to get it to play. Here’s hoping, because this is a fondly remembered drama from ITV that just seemed to vanish after its first showing. My recollection is rusty so I’ll watch at least the beginning. WARNING: There WILL be spoilers.
It opens moodily enough. A bearded and bedraggled Patrick Malahide emerges from a sewer (after having gazed hungrily at a rat) to return to his stately home (I’m assuming it’s his). He feeds his dogs, and takes a spoonful of the dog food himself. So he’s clearly a bit mad.
Then he sees Stephen Dillane on TV being interviewed about his company (a computer game company) and is so angry he throws his bottle of beer at the TV.
Dillane’s Nick is painted as a horrible boss – probably filling a stereotype of computer wizards at the time. Malahide grooms his flowing locks, and sharpens knives. It would seem battle lines are being drawn.
Nick is invited to speak to a class studying social anthropology. The professor of the class introduces a video, calling it ‘magic’. It’s the same interview that so enraged Malahide earlier. It’s a very odd interview – the interviewer is extremely antagonistic. “You don’t look like a millionaire”
The students then ask questions, and of course, they baffle Dillane with references to academic writers on game theory, while Dillane says he’s merely a businessman. Asked whether all games will eventually be computer games, he says no, because computer games are for one person, and the best games in future will be played with other people. The game fails to predict online gaming, but I don’t think that’s its point.
Malahide tries to hack into Nick’s company. At first it looks hopeless, as the security is “better than GCHQ, where’s I’ve also got in”. But Malahide’s Magnus knows the special codes that gets him in to the system – SDRAZIW, YNNEJ and SUNGAM. For reasons passing understanding, the hack then pulls a knife on Magnus, but he disarms him (magically, it seems) then makes him fall from a third storey window, then ties his body to the hacker’s computer and throws him in the canal. He clearly means business.
This has oodles of atmosphere and foreboding, but it’s also feeling a bit mannered. Nick decided that the waiter in the restaurant he visits with his girlfriend resents him because he must have seen him on the chat show (“with the yuppie’s Terry Wogan”)
Nick also appears to be having visions of an arm rising from a lake. He has to make a call to the office, from the carphone. Someone has cleared them out. The Royalty Fund has been raided, and the quarterly royalty payments are due after the Bank Holiday. He doesn’t want to call the police to avoid publicity, apparently.
Nick’s company is called Sorceror – The name rang a bell, which I think was because of the Exidy Sorceror microcomputer that was around in the early 80s.
A nice touch – Nick visits his ex-wife and former partner in the business. On the wall is a large card with the Sorceror logo and a lot of signatures on it – her leaving card, we presume.
Magnus enlists four skinheads to menace Nick. This is in the days when four skinheaded young men was implicitly scary. They’re playing a very boring punk song too, so it’s obvious they’re dangerous. Nicholas sees his ex being bundled into a car, then he receives a video from Magnus telling him he’s playing a reality game.
End of Part One. There’s a very pleasant theme song by Clannad, although the incidental music is by Nigel Hess..
Before part two there’s a trailer for the excellent C4 drama A Very British Coup.
Nick’s mental recollection of his ex wife’s kidnapping is suddenly staged and lit like a Bonnie Tyler music video. He’s clearly a man on the edge.
As the game continues, Nick is led to a deserted village where he’s shot at. He acquires a pistol, and in a neat scene tries to fire it, finds the safety catch is on, releases the safety and lets off a shot at the ground near his feet, scaring him. It’s a nice piece of realism in the deliberately artificial scenario.
The medieval themes start foregrounding when Nick is sent to the George and Dragon, and has to do some motorcycle jousting.
Come Episode 3, and DAMN YOU, ITV! The programme runs 20 minutes later than billed, so I won’t have the whole programme recorded.
Episode three, and we get a bit of the backstory behind the schism between Nick and Magnus. I notice Nick’s office is equipped with Atari STs – very likely for a game developer in 1988. His ex-wife Jenny tries to escape from Magnus, but fails. Is she having visions? It’s all getting slightly metaphysical.
I have to say, from what we see of Magnus’s clues, they’re hardly cryptic, although Nick is such a dunce he can’t solve them without the help of his girlfriend/stooge Fay.
We get some nice stunt work in an abandoned church as Nick tries to find someone who can lead him to Magnus.
Nick meets his ex-wife Jenny’s new boyfriend, and enlists his help in finding her. It’s close to the end of episode 3 before Nick thinks to go to Magnus’s old house. “Why didn’t you come here first?” “Don’t know. I suppose I was playing it his way.”
Here we get the first truly shocking event – an apparently real death, one that doesn’t seem staged, although of course we can’t assume anything. Jenny’s boyfriend is attacked by Magnus’s guard dogs, and falls to his death from an upper balcony. This is about the first time any threat has appeared real, but it does slightly point up the lack of true menace the rest of the time.
The tape ends before the end of the episode – I estimate we lost about 8 minutes of the programme. I hope the ‘previously on’ on episode four will show anything important that we’ve missed.
Naturally, there’s some ephemera around the edges of these episodes. There’s a trailer for the new Ruth Rendell mysteries. One for A Very British Coup. Then, thanks to the schedule change, an entire ITN bulletin before episode 3. The bulletin covers the attempted assassination of the Turkish prime minister, plus some football where England were rubbish.
Aggravatingly, the bother to play a trailer for the actual episode we’re about to watch not just before the news bulletin, but immediately before the programme starts. If they hadn’t bothered, I’d have anther couple of minutes of that episode. Bad ITV.
Ads:
Rover 800 Fastback – “Britischer Architect” My goodness, adverts seem a lot more pompous back then.
Gillette Blue II – cheap disposable razors, so I suppose they’re no longer ‘The Best a Man can Get’. Here’s the pitch:
Ext: Train Station.
Young blonde girl is waiting, looking at the clock.
Someone is late.
CUT TO:
Mr Gillette wakes up, looks at watch. He's late.
But rather than rush out unshaven, he takes the time to
pull out another Gillette Blue 2 disposable razor
and shave his manly stubble off. He washes his face, then
throws the remaining packet of razors into an overnight bag.
CUT TO:
Mr Gillette running down some stairs.
CUT TO:
Blonde girl boarding a train, looking sadly towards the
platform entrance
CUT TO:
Mr Gillette running through turnstiles (past a big poster
for Gillette Blue 2).
CUT TO:
Blonde girl is on the train looking soulfully out of the
window. It's too late, the train is pulling out.
CUT TO:
Mr Gillette arriving on the platform, unhappy that his
one chance at happiness has been missed. If only he
hadn't bothered to shower and shave for 20 minutes
he might have made the train.
CUT TO:
A train pulling in at the adjacent platform. It's a blue
train. What could this mean?
A dark-haired woman, dressed in blue, alights from the
blue train.
CUT TO:
Mr Gillette, still looking down, despondent, his life is
shattered, he looks up and HOLD THE PHONE, WHO'S THAT?
he's clearly thinking as he looks over at Miss Blue.
CAPTION:
Step into the blue. Gillette Blue II.
I bet you’re feeling foolish now for thinking he was wasting his time shaving when he should have been running to meet the love of his life. Because clearly, the act of shaving was an act of sacrifice which has conjured up a physical embodiment of the Gillette Blue II razor in the form of a beautiful woman. And naturally, a woman born of such sharp-edged stock would be repelled by the barely visible bumfluff Mr Gillette so carefully scraped from his chin.
So the moral of this story is, always shave rather than meeting your girlfriend, because you might get to cop off with someone better who’d hate a stubbly chin. Or something.
Back to the advert list:
Delsey luggage
Evening Standard
Braun Independent
Renault 21
BT guide to saving time at work (?)
Guardian Royal Exchange
Metro – Eric Idle, Nigel Mansell, Murray Walker
ICI
Stones Best Bitter
BMW 5 Series
Ambre Solaire
Mercury Communications
Chessington World of Adventures
Esso
Heinz Salad Cream
Clerical Medical
Sainsbury’s Italian tomato ketchup
McDonalds
Scream for Cream
Bonusprint
News of the World – digging the dirt on Eastenders stars as usual
American Express Traveller’s Cheques
YTS
Heinz Weightwatchers Spaghetti
Legal and General
KP Lower Fat Crisps
Sunday Mirror
Crocodile Dundee II
Clerical Medical – Sound the Slatterywatch Klaxon
Vax
British Airways Club World – where businessmen are portrayed like Bond villains
Tissot Two-Timer – analogue and digital? And it’s Champagne proof? I must have one.
The first tape in the next carton, and we’re heading a bit further back in time with a lot of these tapes. They are from slightly earlier than the first batch, and having had a sneaky look at the labels, there’s some excellent stuff to look at.
First out of the box is a definite treat. Bill Forsyth’s relatively obscure follow-up to Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, a semi-comic tale of warring ice cream vendors.
I don’t know if there’s a rights problem with this movie, but it’s currently only available on a DVD that costs £50 on Amazon, so I presume it’s been deleted. It hasn’t been shown on BBC television in the last seven years, but it might have turned up on Channel 4 or Film 4 at some point. However, it’s definitely hard to find.
Before the movie, there’s quite a long trailer for the Film Four production Eat The Peach.
This was the first TV showing for Comfort and Joy.
After the movie, a trail for a repeat of Neil Jordan’s Angel. Also, one for the Terence Davies Trilogy, and My Dinner with Andre.
The tape continues with an armenian film, The Colour of Pomegranates. One of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th Century according to iMDb. Judging from a small sampling, it makes Peter Greenaway look as traditional as Howard Hawks. Sadly, the tape runs out before the film’s end, so it’s incomplete.
Adverts
Apple – “You did that on a computer? What kind of computer?”
Chambourcy
Tango
Oil of Ulay
Benetton
Bradford & Bingley
Crown wallpaper – sorry, ‘wallcoverings’
Unisys
Vidal Sassoon
Malaysia
British Telecom International
Shell Gemini motor oil
Hamptons estate agents
Fosters
Amstrad Portable PC – another Amstrad delight I’d utterly forgotten
Looks like a bit of a monster to me
Best of Tina Turner Live
Petits Filous
McCain Pasta Classics – horribly sexist ad
Lenor
Skol lager – Hagar the Horrible
Vidal Sassoon
Whiskas
Abbey National – David Jason
Ariel Automatic “We asked a bunch of soldiers to roll around in the mud wearing their white uniforms”
The Essential Karajan
Courage Best
Flotex carpet
Flora
Bold
Pedigree Chum
Anadin
Unisys
Whiskas
Holiday in Australia – Paul Hogan offers to slip an extra shrimp on the barbie.
We’ve reached a milestone of sorts. This is the last tape in the first big carton of tapes I’m archiving. Over 100 tapes (with one that I still haven’t done because the tape got detached in the cassette, so I have to fix it – more on that in a forthcoming entry.
This tape contains the LWT production of A Handful of Dust. I must confess that I have lumped this in with Merchant Ivory, and had thought this was another of their literary adaptations, along with A Room with A View, but this was produced by London Weekend Television, directed by Charles Sturridge, who directed another Evelyn Waugh adaptation a few years previously, with the hugely successful Brideshead Revisited.
Once again, I confess that I’ve yet to watch this movie, so I can offer no commentary on it, so we’re reduced to listing adverts and trailers.
Before the movie there’s a backslapping montage of ‘classic’ ITV moments with Billy Joel singing Just The Way You Are.
Following the movie is a trailer for The Grass Cutter – or should that be Grasscuttersince the trailer has it both ways– a thrilling looking drama with lost of car chases and shootouts, if the trailer is to be believed. Well at least Francis Barber is in it.
After the ads, there’s an episode of the Ray Brooks sitcom Running Wild, a programme I have never seen. The tape just carried on, so there’s a whole episode here – episode six, if you’re interested.
After Running Wild, there’s a trailer for Jason Donovan and Friends which is the big Bank Holiday Monday treat.
Following Running Wild, there’s part of an episode of Soap – still dealing with Jessica’s guilty verdict. But the tape runs out before the episode ends. However, this is the same episode as found on a previously archived tape, so I’m not that worried.
Adverts:
BP
Country Life
Chessington World of Adventures
Audace
Do It All
Surf
Right Guard
Wall’s Vienetta
Bird’s Eye Captains Table
Braun Independent
Citroen AX
The Bell’s Scottish Open
Barclaycard
Sunsilk
Vauxhall Nova
Pizza Hut
Holsten Export
Save & Prosper
Persil Liquid
Allied Sale
Ambre Solaire
Timotei
Walker’s crisps – free music challenge books
The Enterprise Initiative
Tuborg
National and Provincial
IBM PS/2
Philadephia cream cheese
Harmony hairspray
Cornetto
Sunkist
Avis – Julian Glover
Flymo
IBM PS/2 again
Heinz Salad Cream
Coca Cola
Carlsberg – Ice Cold in Alex – the ad men must have wet themselves when they found this scene.
Singapore Airlines
BT
Metro/Maestro Surf specials
Sky TV – “Decoder required to receive Sky Movies when it becomes a subscription channel November 1989” meaning it was unencrypted for a time after launch?
Sprite
Texas
Philadelphia
Tuborg
Ambre Solaire
Holsten Pils
Invicta FM – wonderful cheap local advert
Crimestoppers – another horrifying tale of assault. These are terrifying.
Garnier Grafic
Polycell
Child’s Play – trailer which showcases audience reaction to the movie, but uses American moviegoers, which seems a little lazy.
The tape label says this is episode 5 of V so I think it’s the last part of The Final Battle miniseries. Both miniseries were shown consecutively on ITV during the 1988 Olympics, because ITV didn’t have the rights to the sport, so they did some counterprogramming, which worked out well for SF fans at least.
This recording was from Thames, but I took out all the ad breaks as it was recording, so it’s just the episode itself.
V is followed by an episode of Columbo. Not a programme I was in the habit of recording, so you might be curious why. The episode is called Murder by the Book and a quick look at the credits gives a clue. Produced in 1971, it was written by Steven Bochco of LA Law and Hill Street Blues fame, and directed by Steven Spielberg.
The plot involves a mystery writer who is murdered, and suspicion falls on his writing partner. Now, I’m not convinced this guy is a real writer. Take a look at what he’s typing:
“YOUR WET UMBRELLA GAVE YOU AWAY”
Nice golfball typewriter, but what kind of writer types all in upper case?
And after Columbo, the recording stops with nothing extra.
VHiStory 