British and American cult television from the 1960s and 1970s
Black Lagoon is a 2006 action-adventure anime TV series. While it was made in 2006 the setting seems to be a bit earlier, maybe the early 1990s. Rokuro Okajima is a young Japanese salaryman. At times he feels vaguely dissatisfied but there’s nothing he can do about it. He’ll rise slowly through the ranks and become a middle-aged salaryman, probably with a wife and kids. He’s resigned to living a…
Between 1979 and 1986 a series of Sherlock Holmes TV-movies were made for Soviet television. They were hugely popular in Russia (they triggered a real Holmes craze there) and well received internationally. Vasily Livanov starred as as Sherlock Holmes with Vitaly Solomin as Dr Watson. The 1983 two-part fourth film, The Treasures of Agra ( Sokrovishcha Agry ), adapted both the 1890 novel The Sign of…
The Year of the Sex Olympics is a 1968 television play made by the BBC as part of the Theatre 625 anthology series. It was written by Nigel Kneale, best remembered as the creator of the Quatermass serials which aired on the BBC in the 1950s and which were adapted by Hammer as three very successful feature films. The subject of The Year of the Sex Olympics is television itself. It is set in the…
I’ve just finished reading (and reviewing) The Saint and Mr Teal , a 1933 collection of three Saint novellas by Leslie Charteris. Interestingly all three novellas were adapted as episodes of the 1960s ITC Saint TV series towards the end of the series’ black-and-white era. Having reviewed the novellas I thought it would be fun to do parallel reviews of the TV episodes in question. It should be…
Much to everyone’s surprise Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. You do need to watch season 1 first. I reviewed it here . There were some changes in season two, some of which were forced upon Whedon but some reflected a slight change in his approach to the series. Whedon also wanted a different visual style - more shadows and a more atmospheric film noir-tinged look. Whedon…
The cyberpunk TV series Dollhouse , created by Joss Whedon, ran on the Fox Network in 2009 and 2010. Whedon’s career was up and down at the time. The Firefly TV series in 2002 was a disaster and was cancelled before the end of the first season although it later built a cult following. There was general surprise when Dollhouse was renewed for a second season. The ratings were mediocre but it did…
Tales of the Gold Monkey is a U.S. action/adventure TV series which ran for a single season from 1982 to 1983. It was created by Donald P. Bellisario who was also responsible for such cool 80s TV classics as Magnum, P,I. and Airwolf . The cancellation of the series was not due to poor ratings. The show was a huge hit. It was network politics that killed it. Although you could certainly be forgiven…
In 1969 and 1970 three original novels based upon the television series The Prisoner were published by Ace Books. Since there is some ambiguity about their place in the timeline of the series it’s probably a very sound idea to watch the series before reading the novels. In the case of the first novel you really must be at least vaguely familiar with the TV series. That doesn’t mean you need to…
The Lost World is an adventure TV series based (rather loosely) on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic 1912 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. It was a Canadian-US-New Zealand-Australian co-production and was shot in Australia (in Queensland). It ran for three seasons. The two-hour pilot episode (which was later split in two to comprise the first two episodes of the first season) is…
Peter Gunn belongs to the first golden age of American private eye TV series. In the closing years of the 50s 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye and Richard Diamond, Private Detective all hit the airwaves. And, more interestingly, there was at the same time a crop of decidedly hardboiled TV private eyes - Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer , Johnny Staccato and Peter Gunn . These three series were all…
Noir is a 2001 anime TV series. I’m not going to give any plot details other than those pertaining to the first of the 26 episodes. It opens with a cute blonde French girl (we later find out that her name is Mireille) in Paris. It looks like the opening for a fluffy romance story. Then the killings begin, and a dozen men are left dead. Mireille really is a charming, pretty very feminine young…
Having watched and written about selected episodes in the second season of Naked City (which originally went to air on ABC from late 1960 to mid-1961) I’m now filling in the blanks. The more I see of this series the more I love it. Everything about it is unconventional, offbeat and original. Even the outrageous episode titles. It’s not unconventional just for the sake of being unconventional.…
Outlaw Star is a 1998 anime space adventure TV series created by Hajime Yatate. It fits vaguely into the “western set in outer space” category but it’s also very much in the “bunch of ill-assorted misfits adventuring in outer space in a stolen super high tech spaceship” tradition. This is a formula that was used with success in series like Blake’s 7 and Farscape but Outlaw Star has more in common…
The Time Tunnel is a TV tie-in novel written by Murray Leinster. Quite a few well-known very good authors ended up writing such books as their usual markets started to dry up. TV tie-in novels sometimes had a feel that was subtly different from the series. It was not unusual for the first tie-in novel associated with a series to be written before the series actually went to air, with the author…
The third season of Lexx went to air in early 2000. This third season does not just have a season-long story arc. Lexx had done extended story arcs before. The second season had had the multi-episode Mantrid story arc. But the third season is one continuous narrative. Season 3 assumes that the viewer is familiar with the Lexx universe. There are vital things about the characters and the…
Murder Me, Murder You is one of two Mike Hammer TV-movies which served as pilots for projected TV series. Murder Me, Murder You screened on CBS in April 1983 and the response was positive. The series went ahead and was quite successful, running from 1984 to 1987. Stacy Keach plays Hammer in both the TV-movies and the series. This was a TV-movie so there was no way the budget was going to stretch…
Ergo Proxy is a 2006 Japanese cyberpunk anime TV series. The setting is a vast high-tech future city known as Romdo, a paradise on an Earth that is otherwise inhospitable and almost uninhabitable. There are citizens and non-citizens in Romdo but non-citizens can become citizens. This is a society based on conspicuous consumption. Shopping is practically a duty. Life is easy thanks to the…
Van der Valk was a British cop show from Thames Television that for three seasons from 1972 to 1977 and was then briefly revived in the early 90s. While the episodes are original stories the inspiration was Nicolas Freeling’s van der Valk detective novels. And the series captures the offbeat approach and the distinctive character of the detective hero remarkably well. This is a very quirky TV…
Gunbuster is a 1988-89 anime OVA. For those new to the world of anime an OVA (original video animation) was a bit like a mini-series but intended for the home video market rather than television broadcast. They were straight-to-video and later straight-to-DVD releases. It was an incredibly useful and flexible format and since they were not broadcast on TV they could deal more openly and easily…
The Blazing Affair was the second original novel based on the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. TV series. The first two novels were both written by Michael Avallone. These TV tie-in novels were sometimes written before the series in question had even begun its run and were based on the original concept of the series and perhaps the first couple of scripts. As a result they sometimes have a tone that differs…
Blood-C is a 2011 anime TV series with interesting origins. In 2000 Production I.G. made a short feature film called Blood: The Last Vampire about a girl named Saya who hunts supernatural monsters. It was an absolutely brilliant movie which has never received the acclaim it deserves. There does seem to have been some thought of turning it into a TV series. That finally finally happened in 2011…
V was a two-part 1983 American TV mini-series which gave birth to a franchise. It originally aired on the NBC network. I must confess that I had until now never seen the mini-series or any other parts of this franchise. Flying saucers suddenly appear over major cities across the globe. But it’s OK. They’re friendly. We know they’re friendly because that’s what they told us. They look just like…
The Ghost in the Shell franchise began with Masamune Shirow’s original manga in 1989. There were two follow-up volumes. The Ghost in the Shell movie was released in 1995. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocenc e followed in 2004. Both were directed by Mamoru Oshii. The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series first aired in 2002. The second season (or 2nd Gig) began its run in 2004. The film…
A few episodes from the 1958-59 second season of Perry Mason . The character had to be toned down quite a bit for television but this series was still a great deal of fun. This is a series that raised the bar in terms of complex plotting in American series television. In The Case of the Fraudulent Foto we get to see Perry in a new rôle - as Deputy District attorney for Waring County. He’s standing…
Cyber City Oedo 808 is a 1990 Japanese anime OVA (original video animation). These were a bit like mini-series but intended for direct-to-video or later direct-to-DVD release. Cyber City Oedo 808 comprised three 45-minute episodes. It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, one of the great anime directors who was responsible for such crucial anime movies as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire…