It was on Channel 4 in 1983. Far as I know never been seen again. Now on DVD, which means I'm going to have to buy it...

A mini series from the mid 80s with Claire Higgins. It was a great story that stuck with me ever since.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420409/

The first series of Murder One with Stanley Tucci stays in my head too, but I'm sure I can pick that up on DVD or something now.

A film of Buzzy Linhart singing "You Gotta Have Friends" on The Old Grey Whistle Test. I remember it being a very ott performance. I loved it. Never seen it since. It may have been in black and white, or maybe that's my memory of it. Or our telly.

In it's very early days. It was quite late and I can't remember what programme was on. However in the advert break there was this ad for Chinese bamboo steamers. There were two Chinese guys, one in drag the other in a suit and they were pretending to be Fanny and Johnny Craddock. My mate Rob and I watched in disbelief as it seemed to go on for at least twice the length of other ads as the extolled the wonderousness of the steamer (maybe it was normal length, I don't know) and then we both collapsed in fits of uncontrollable laughter when it ended.
We looked out for it night after night after that, but never saw it again. Nor could we find anyone else who had seen it too. Hallucogenic drugs were NOT involved.

followed by "Another Flip For Dominic" were on 'Play for Today' way back when and I still remember them with tremendous fondness, even though I've only ever seen them the once. There was also a song on one of the soundtracks with the refrain "Are there somewhere islands?" which I think was by Sad Cafe but I've never been able to track it down. Ahhh, nostalgia!

...about a couple of young lovers who ran away together. Shown late 70s perhaps. Rather racy and I only saw it becuase mum and dad were out.

Also those trade test transmission films they used to show in the day before daytime TV. About mixing colours and modern buildings. They are but a hazy memory.

Two ITV kids dramas: The Kids From 47A and A Bunch Of Fives.

A documentary thread on BBC2 in the early 90s. Just followed some kids from a very ordinary estate in Lancashire around for a few days, with no voice over, no discernible purpose. It just showed kids doing kid stuff.I remember a wonderful scene of a kid walking home from school swinging his bag around his body clockwise then anti-clockwise singing the line 'Birds eye potato waffles' over and over again. It was a great half hour and I would love to see it again.

Hi David

There was a 1973 Play for today episode that may well be what sticks in your mind.

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0070482/

Rough Plot according to imdb

Playwright Christopher Hudson finds his medical problem hinders his writing. He employs secretary Sandra George and dictates his new play to her, but tensions soon develop between the two. As Hudson creates, scenes from his play are dramatized and interpolated.

Again in C4's early days they ran a late night series called Our Lives. I think it was part of their original community programming (or whatever it was called) remit.
It was (surprisingly) about the lives of ordinary people living in the East End of London. Results were mixed from week to week, but generally pretty interesteing. The two that stick in the memory are the ones about glue sniffers and the one about a gang of lads on "The Knock" selling dodgy kitchen goods from door to door.
I'm sure it's never been repeated and I can't find any sign of it being compiled for DVD.

An animated film, something to do with Harry Nillson I think. Intrigued by it when i saw it on telly some time in the early ’70s when I was about 10. Haven’t seen it since, though I suppose it’ll be on DVD/the interweb. Might have a root round.

via Bob Mills post pub pisstake

If I remember rightly they did a 'where are they now' follow up show a few years back.

but in a rare exception to the Spartan regime that ruled our home I was allowed a day off school ill. While watching our black and white portable with my headphones on (the front room and colour telly verboten ill people are in bed otherwise the classroom beckoned!)

Anyway daytime TV was sparse in 80's and I was watching the lunch time Calendar Yorkshire TV news when they did a piece on the Mod revival and showed Secret Affair playing live (?).

The next day back at school (Leonidas had returned and was annoyed at the lax rule in his kingdom!) I had been the only person to see this wondrous artifact and for few brief hours was the "ace face of the 3rd year". This elevation in status culminated with lads from older years asking me about it in great details without hitting me once. It didn't last but it was good while it lasted.

The sudden, completely unexpected, resignation of Bill Shankly in 1974 was obviously a big deal in Liverpool so Granada sent a roving reporter to the city centre to do vox pop street interviews with shell-shocked fans. It was the days before news was on tap 24 hours a day so most people were hearing it for the first time. The reporter: a heavily sideburned Tony Wilson. Not on youtube (but I have seen a video clip of it somewhere).

or Staying Behind, a tale of 3 wee guys in Greenock late 70s, I can find no trace of it. I did manage to find another favourite Just a Boy's Game and Just Another Saturday in the Peter MacDougal boxset a snip at £10. They were IIRC all shown on BBC2 of a Sunday night.

A spoof conspiracy/investigative documentary threading together: moon landings, NASA hoaxes, the energy crises and the academic 'brain drain'. Originally sheduled for April 1st 1977, but, became delayed and ran late several months later - terrifiying anyone under twelve that saw it (me and my best mate basically). I've only met one other person who caught it at the time

It's viewable on Youtube and features a theme tune from Brian Eno..

Around 1994... Elliott Gould in a BBC play about a has-been jazz-master on a low-rent tour of the British Isles. Absolutely brilliant.

... I think. "Threads" was its name, about a nuclear attack on Sheffield. It scared the bejaysus out of me, but ironically my most vivid memory is a picture of a dazed traffic warden on the cover of the Radio Times.

Even if it is available on DVD, I'm not sure I would want to watch it again.

I seem to remember a drama series in the early 80s about rabies coming to the UK. I was very young and my parents didn't really want me to watch it, but I caught an episode I think - I vaguely remember someone catching it from a lovebite and frothing at the mouth.

Dead scary and made me terrified of the concept of the channel tunnel. I wonder if I'd be scared now?

Karen Black's made for TV anthology horror - the first two stories are average, it's the final tale 'Amelia' that will put the frighteners on you. Featuring a possesed Zuni hunter doll chasing it's victim around her flat, it's a rarely repeated but never forgotten obscurity.

...classic serials on the BBC in the '60s - Sartre's Roads to Freedom, Huxley's Chrome Yellow and Zola's Germinal and Nana. Never seen again and, as far as I know, unavailable anywhere.

Mind you, though but, funny thing, memory - I recently rented recently re-released DVDs of Robbie Coltrane's Tutti Frutti and it's, er, not very good, actually

Watching mid-eighties afternoon tv as a student we were absolutely gripped by what initially appeared to be a live TV news break-in from the USA, covering an unfolding nuclear disaster as live. The disguise was excellent and we only twigged it was a made for TV film about an hour in.

Never seen any references to it since and now haven't got a clue what it was called and anything else about it.?

Mid-70s crime thing set in Birmingham - loved it, never thought of it since until now. Fascinating interplay between Brit and Asian characters. It had a theme tune by Dave Greenslade that burned itself into my brain. Turns out the whole thing is now available as a box set!

I think this may have been on the summer replacement for Saturday Scene around 1974/5. Sparks were in the studio making Ice Cream sundaes and a lot of mess. The host was Micheal Wale. I'm sure it's not been shown again and it was pre VCR so it's unlikely there are copies knocking around.

Must have been sometime in the '80s in (I think) ITV's Sunday night comedy slot. One was 'Hot Metal' about a newspaper which had a theme sung by Alan Price and the other was 'Whoops Apocalypse'. Timothy West may have been in one of them. Both seemed hilarious at the time, not sure if I would still think so.

I'm currently working through series of Watching which I don't think has evert been repeated since first shown. Its not as funny as I remember (is anything ?) but is so '80s its fascinating - and Liza Tarbuck always puts in a good turn !

P'Tang Yang Kipperbang - gets repeated on TV every now and again.

mmmmm a thing of my dreams...

anyway, the thing I remember about Hot Metal is the "I don't believe it" man as the editor whose face didn't fit with the new regime, and his desk/office ending up in an elevator

A TV play, not Play for Today, from c.1970. Featured Cracker, a PE master, and two lads doing detention. Featured graffiti headlined above, and a hand cranked generator/urination denoument. That's all I can recall. Doesn't stop the phrase swimming through my head regularly.

Does anyone remember this? It foreshadowed The Blair Witch Project in many ways; even though I knew it wasn't "real", I remember finding it very effective - and downright scary. Sarah Greene's acting performance, especially at the end, was very impressive.

I remember one of those BBC2 theme nights that had a piece of film about a child prodigy guitarist - he was called Thomas McLaughlin and was about 7 or 8, there was a bit of him playing on the back of a truck to massed open-mouthed metallers. No idea what became of him but he doesn't seem to be a guitarist now.

Also a play about a teenager on an exchange visit falling for a foreign girl which featured Cream's Badge quite heavily and I think starred a young Jesse Birdsall unless I am mixing it up with something else.

Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire - that has the young Phil Daniels in it. I don't remember a great deal about it and have never seen it since.

a 13 part children's drama series on the BBC about a lad looking for his Dad up and down the length of the country, and being chased for some reason by a bad guy called Kessler. I can't remember the denoument, which makes it even more sad that it's not, to my knowledge, been reissued on DVD. It was filmed on location, which made it very distinctive for the time. Plus the lad in question was accompanied by a girl played by Jan Francis. I had a massive crush on her at the time. Sigh.

Dennis Potter serial from the mid-90's featuring a fresh-faced Ewan McGregor in, I think, his big break debut role and a young Dougie Henshall. The usual suppressed fantasies and sexual frustrations this time set to an austerity-era Britain backdrop.

I haven't seen it since but it's possibly on DVD and I simply haven't noticed.

Mid-late 70s, there was a play for today type thing about dolphins with Martin Shaw, a scary film about ghostly dolphins in a pool. I also recall it was possibly a bit raunchy (for this 14 year old) with Martin Shaw shagging one of two homeless girls (I think).

Sean's Show - two series if I remember right and recent video tape discovery suggests not as good as it was back in the day

Play at Home - early 80s series on then new C4 where a different group had their own hour long doc - I would dearly love a copy of the XTC (where Dave Gregory shows off his guitar collection and Andy Partridge shows of his toy soldiers) and the Echo & the Bunnymen one

with Kid 'Kid' Jensen burned itself on my brain - the show was called '45'. I remember a low angle shot of Dave Hill on scaffolding in latex trollies and being distressed by how visible his bollocks were. They kept cutting back to the same image. Never seen it since and much as slade are wonderful, don't want to.

Pretty sure it was the same show that had an 'album track' slot and 10 CC did 'Brand New Day' - doubtless in velvet jackets, big shirt collars and with very clean hair. Loved them too (still do) but they were Manc smart arses.

"Lean and Hungry - Life at Brian's" if so I have a poor copy on DVD

about warfare: I remember at the time it was one of the mist fascinating programmes I'd ever seen. This is possibly because it was quite wide-ranging: it started being about how the Allies had to minimise potential martyrdom of leading Nazis (eg all their laundry was burned, although Goering's underpants survived).

Then it went on to cover the real psychological damage caused to soldiers on demob, how they'd done some pretty gruesome things in the course of normal warfare (ie not war crimes) but were celebrated as heroes on their return.

Finally it turned to how the likes of the Baader Meinhof group emerged from some German post-war teenagers' loathing of their oarents' generation's apparent denial of responsibility for atroctities, which led them to take a more relaxed moral view of their own terrorist actions.

It was the first of a three parter, but I remember that the second part wasn't nearly as interesting as the first.

Anyone have a clue what this was?

Snooker themed drama doo-dah with Robert Lindsay, Shirin Taylor and Paul McGann.
One of the most vivid memories is of the titles and seeing the word UB40 in the bottom corner (I didn't know at the time that was the reference for the unemployment cards)

And Big Deal with Ray Brooks (I've got the theme by Bobby G on single (why?))

Those ITV public information films. There was one about avoiding pickpockets featuring a cockney bloke who looked a bit like Joe Brown. And another one about kids avoiding canals or deep water. Then there was one about becoming a helicopter pilot with the Royal Navy where the recruits were ducked about ten times in a diving pool. It put me off joining the armed forces for good.

There were all sorts of weird ITV shows in the mid 70s with surrealistic stories. There was one about a couple of kids who lived in a large Georgian house in London and they were transported back to the Regency period as domestic servants. It was a like a cross between Poltergeist and Upstairs and Downstairs.

Someone mentioned Play for Today. I must have watched hundreds of those in the 70s, especially when my parents went out for the evening and you got to see a bit of flesh now and again. A young sexy Phyllis Logan was in one about a couple of Glasgow girls who shag about a bit while the husbands were away working in the north sea oil rigs. How I miss 70s telly.

The alternative comedy era, between 1982 and 1985, threw up countless shows that were never repeated. Most of them were pretty bad, but one that sticks in the mind is Little Armadillos (C4, natch). It featured Stein and Sweeney, Daniel Peacock, Peter Weir, and a vocal group called the Flatlettes. One episode featured a surreal AA man. It was very good.

Alfresco (Fry. Laurie, Elton, Thompson, Redmond, Coltrane) only recently came out on DVD. Several episodes of that never got repeated. Granada Plus repeated most of it but replaced the first three or four episodes with the very good pilot series There's Nothing To Worry About. (btw. saw it all recently, it's not dated well)

Stomping On The Cat. Another C4 effort. Andy De La Tour was in that. Jim Barclay too. It was a bit like their version of BBC's Boom Boom Out Go The Lights.

There are probably 20 series that have been forgotten completely. Probably for good reason.

That whole era vanished overnight around the time of Live Aid. Boom! It was gone.

....written by Charlie Brooker. Me and the wife really enjoyed it but it was never repeated. Wikipedia says because of "bad reviews." Anyone know where this can be found on DVD??

something with Lenny Henry in which was like a buddy movie with an American guy (John Shea?)which I wouldn't mind watching again. Cherie Lunghi was in it as well as a brief love interest. Music was good as well.

at an exhibition of his work at the V&A some years back. It was from the series 'Master Photographers' made by the BBC in 1983. I haven't seen it since.*

* Only I've just seen that it's on his website!

.....i'm absolutely convinced I went to see a stage version of this show at Slough's Fulcrum (as it was then, now the cinema there,) but definitely remember the TV show. Thank god foryoutube...

Many early episodes were famously wiped in an economy drive at the BBC. If only they'd have known!

I think it was called 'At Her majesty's Pleasure' and starred a young Peter Firth in a Broadmoor like institution. The inmate were putting on a play and I can remember the closing shot of Firth laughing at the top of some stairs dressed as Goldilocks, having just poisoned everyone else with the porridge. It was very strange and unsettling.

I also remember a moment on Blue Peter which nobody else seems to have seen, when the VT failed leaving John Noakes on his own talking to Shep. The Director had a flash of inspiration and the camera pulled back and up into the lights so you could see the whole studio floor and people running about. For about a minute you just had Noakesy rambling on about how everybody else was panicking but that he and Shep would just sit there talking and it would all be sorted out. It was wonderful.

Last one. Watching a Test Match after getting home from school in the mid 70's (I think it was India). I remember Graham Gooch having been hit on the pads turning away from the stumps, then realising that nobody had said anything, turning back. The bowler then said something quietly to the umpire, presumably 'How was that?' and the finger being instantly raised. Did that really happen? Was there ever a time when a batsman could be hit on the pads and there be no appeal?

A marvellous series about the Royal Flying Corps that ran for two series in 1978/9 and as I recall was shown at 8pm on BBC1 on either a Tuesday or Thursday.

I have a dodgy DVD copy that was transferred from a VHS recording from a UK Gold re-run but I would love to see a proper remastered copy on DVD.

Very weird teenage drama - I must have seen a repeat since the net tells me it was first broadcast in 1969 (when I was 6) - I'd read Alan Garner's "Weirdstone of Brisingamen" when I was about 10-11 and because this was by him decided to watch it. It was on Sunday tea times, and I remember being very confused.

I've just found its wikipedia entry and it's no wonder I was confused and a lot of it went over my head if I was 12-13 when I saw it. Perhaps it explains why I subsequently liked programmes like Twin Peaks though... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_Service_%28TV_series%29

Didn't he do a late night (Friday?) show where he commentates on a Sunday park football match? I recall it being very funny but it cold have been a post pub haze.....

and Shelley

series shown on the BBC in the seventies i think and involved a bunch of kids who i think lived on a council estate in London. I remember one of the girls was a punk but apart from that i have no idea what it was called. Another show i remember seeing when i was growing up was a cartoon series featuring a band made up of four Crickets(or Grasshopers)who sang songs a bit like ....er The Beatles.

... that Granada made sometime in the early nineties (I think). I seem to recall it being black and white - a very wierd play-type thing. I'd love to see it again, particularly in the light of Backbeat and The Hours and Times coming out a few years later. I also remember it was the first time I'd ever seen that footage of the Beatles playing in the Cavern, which was interspersed with the main narrative at some points. Surely someone must have it on video and could put it on Youtube?

Yes.
A collection of Whimseys on a pink doiley on top of my Auntie Eileens Sony Trinitron.
The telly got nicked, along with the Whimseys and the doiley. The police thought they'd used the doiley to carry the Whimseys, or maybe wipe finger prints from door knobs and windows.

Find that on You Tube.

it was on there but got removed due to copyright infringement.

ok Here's mine
The Kids from 47a. Oldest sister looks after siblings after parents die.
The Fuzz (starring Michael Robbins(Arthur, On The Buses) he was a Copper and there was a running gag about Chips.
Down the 'Gate: Reg Varney's post On The Buses sitcom
All Our Saturdays : Diana Dors manages a Rugby League team
The Dustinbin : A sitcom set in Manchester where one of them got loads of Stick for being a City fan
Don't think any of these were ever repeated

A strikingly odd Phil Cornwell thing on, I seem to remember, ITV kids telly in the late 80's. And not really for kids. We used to watch it in amazement. Here's a clip.

And if that's not enough, here's one with Wendy James in it. Hubba. And, indeed, hubba.

There's some very odd stuff before you get to Wendy James. Imagine this at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.

"The Knights of God" a Sunday teatime thing about Britain under a strange fascistic government. Remember it being on, but was a bit young for it at the time, I think.

Actually, watching that trailer reminds me ever so slightly of "The Worm that Turned" off the Two Ronnies...

Also, did anyone else catch much of Sean Lock's Fifteen Storeys High? Have never seen that repeated, but what I did see was very very funny.

Anyone else remember Horace? A tale of a simple man in a northern town, early 80's.

...I don't know why though:

c.1979-80 - a TV play (probably BBC) set at a school in the late 60s which features some kid rebelling and telling anyone who'll listen that Hendrix is where its at, while a teacher hangs himself. Something like that anyway - quite strange and powerful to see, if you were 11 or 12 and the 60s seemed like a century before.

mid 70s, BBC - 'Fabulous Animals' fronted by David Attenborough. probably done on the cheap, unlike his major docs, but it was utterly enthralling stuff to a kid at primary school, with a few stills of imagined medieval beasts and the godfather of compelling voiceovers. Never seen one second of it repeated or online anywhere so no doubt long erased.

late 70s/early 80s kids series, possibly on Sundays, based around the 'Wizard of Oz conceit' - a kid gets knocked unconscious in some kind of trapped lift situation (as is revealed I think at the end) but for the guts of the series it seems he has descended this lift to some kind of creepy underworld where people he met 'up above' reappear as grotesques. Can't recall much more than that, save that one of the star adult characters was that Welsh guy with the glasses and greased back hair who had previously appeared in a few of the later episodes of Dads Army as a Welsh journalist 'embedded' in the Home Guard. I recall this being quite a scary concept/show at the time, though I'm sure it would seem about as scary as an average 70s Dr Who episode with rubber monsters now. Still, I'd love to know what it was called. Any ideas?

I used to love this when I was a teenager and would often reminisce about it. About four years ago I bought some DVDs of it through eBay. Bit of a gamble as it was never officially released because of some kind of rights wrangle, so I knew it would be some kind of bootleg.

It's semi-professionally done, clearly recorded off the TV (there's a channel logo in the corner) but plenty good enough to watch.

It's still an enjoyable series but I have to say it didn't quite live up to my memories. Gary Olsen is good as Pincy but Brian Bovell's acting as his mate Billy is a bit iffy. Still good fun, though and well worth a watch. Great theme tune and title sequence, too. See below...

1/A play For today type about a man who is actually an alien and ends up living with a woman and amazing her with his weirdness.
At the end he gives her the winning lottery numbers and clears off.

2/American series about a small red firetruck and possibly Robert Ulrich...I have googled but nothing.

Avaiable on DVD in the States.

....and it involved my good self on the TV. I still can't believe it was even aired once and I've certainly only ever seen it once.

It was around 1982/3 because I was 17 and in the Midlands we used to have a regional TV programme on the BBC that was a look at the local music scene, the name of this programme escapes me for now (See! Hear! maybe.....) but it was presented by a pre-hits Toyah Wilcox and was something of a local institution at the the time and it usually featured a live band or two in its half an hour slot. Now Toyah started having hit records and obviously didn't have the time to devote to the programme so it just disappeared from the screens. BBC Midlands obviously were keen to revive the popular programme but also decided to change the format to something more modern, so they decided to pilot a new programme just to test out the waters and as the Midlands at the time was a hot bed of new music they should have been onto a winner.

One of my mates spotted an ad in the local paper advertising tickets for this pilot program which at this point was to be called Square One (I think it ended up being called Track One because the original name had just been used for a quiz show on the other side), we in our juvenile haste applied for tickets and two of us were successful so we got 4 tickets, we considered this a result!

So we end up in Pebble Mill with about a 100 other people all intended to be in the audience for this pilot show and we're chatting and wondering what is going to be happening, who will the presenters be? which bands will be on? when we're let into the studio for all to be revealed. The bands were Fashion and The Bloomsbury Set both local bands trying to jump onto the Electronic / New Romantic bandwagon of the day, for us, this was sort of disappointing as it wasn't our scene so much but what the heck, we were possibly going to be on TV, this was still a great day.

Now who were the presenters? The male presenter I really can't remember but the female presenter was that girl who sang in that band The Lazers from Shropshire who were always on the old programme, what was her name again? Yep that's it, Carol Dekker (yes that Carol Dekker)

So the programme starts to be recorded and we're shepherded about the studio at the whim of the director, as each band plays and the presenters do their stuff. But during this whole experience one of the four of us was becoming increasingly irritating.......(tbc in next post)

Okay here is my list:

The Moon and the Sledgehammer or was it The Sledgehammer and the Moon? - A genius documentary about a strange family. It has recently been released on DVD and the director has done a few Q and A sessions. I had three quarters of it on VHS.

Grown Ups - Mike Leigh available on DVD in the States I think.

Elvis Costello in Nashville - recording Almost Blue. I think it was a South Bank Show but nowhere to be found now.

A documentary about some rather pathetic bikers in Suffolk or Norfolk, who spent most of their time crushing bear cans and standing about. I saw it in the seventies I think, but can't remember its name.

Finally an advert for wallpaper starting Noddy and Big Ears having a punch up. It was pulled after complaints - or did I dream it?

Every Christmas the BBC used to show A Ghost Story For Christmas (late 70's/early 80's). Some great plays and very spooky.
Denholm Elliott in The Signalman, One about a Dutch Painter with Cheryl Kennedy, and the best of all one with T.P.McKenna as a storyteller on the radio. His story involved locking a little boy in a box. Which was fine until he got home at night and he got phone calls from a little boy asking him not to lock him in the box. They all gave me the willies I can tell you. And a few others. Some are available on DVD if you can find them. But they go for about £45.

Also a BBC version of The Woman In Black by Susan Hill. Spookiest stage play I've ever seen and the TV version was just as good.

Also there was a programme on Channel on a Friday afternoon at about 5 (just after Car 54. DVD please) in the early 80's which featured a boy and a girl on the run in the States/Mexico. It featured Elvis Presley songs throughout. Well shot. Very surreal and funny. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called. Any ideas?

Also Karaoke and Cold Lazarus by Dennis Potter. Never been on video or DVD.
Double Deckers also needs a DVD.
And that XTC doco mentioned above I remember well. Let's' have that.
Stomping On The Cat was Paul Merton's first exposure on TV. As well as the Oblivion Boys. I have that on video somewhere.
Also a great doco on Ian Dury on Arena I think.

Network 7 - the Birth of Magenta Devine and that asian bloke whose name now escapes me in a Janet Street Porter produced Yoof TV magazine programme that really did break new ground

Snub TV (I discovered some great bands through this programme, AC Marias, Fatima Mansions and a few more besides and as it was still in the times when bands having videos were rare, if the band didn't have a video, snub would make one for you, iirc the Fatima Mansions "Only Losers Take The Bus" was one such video

and the first series of the Tube which the idiots in charge of Tyne TV taped over almost straight away

Don't think any of those were repeated, ever

is available from a guy on the IMDB on dvd. for a tv movie that was only ever shown once it's got a message board on there with more posts and members than some hollywood movies! i recall lenny's scouse accent being pretty good.

and it's fantastic. seems to paint a picture of an odd luridly coloured world of the post-punk early Thatcher era London suburbs that i don't recall seeing in any other tv show or film. grim and romantic in equal measure.

that's gary oldman's first wife in the lead role dontcha know.

Even with the pandora's box of dvd, cable and BBC4 resurrecting forgotten cults there are some great shows (as opposed to the shit we normally recall in a nostalgic reverie) that have never seen the light of day since first broadcast.

"One about a Dutch Painter with Cheryl Kennedy" That was "Schalken the Painter". Quite brilliant. In the great BBC tradition of MR James adaptations, this was based on a Sheridan LeFanu story and directed with chilling atmospheric texture and stillness by Lesley Megahey who went on to make the wonderful Hour of the Pig. That image near the end of the chaste newlywed (played by Cheryl Kennedy), finally tracked down to a crypt after abduction by a cadavorous stranger, naked and riding her abductor cowboy-style, is seared on my memory. For a teenage boy this was a dose of pure eroticism.

"Brond" was one of those early Channel 4 dramas. Written by Glasgow crimewriter Frederic Lindsey and the debut of both actor John Hannah and director Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal, Rob Roy) it was a stunning puzzle of paranoia with an edge of the surreal. Stratford Johns was mesmerising in it, like a charismatically malevolent Orson Welles playing the Devil.

Boy this topic is bringing back memories. Some great stuff here.

...with Kenny Everett and - astonishingly - Germaine Greer and this is where memory fails, a series set on a building site in post war austerity Britain. The only line I remember is "before the world turned lax and sour" - anyone?

Zokko-psychedelic kids' TV
http://out-on-blue-six.blogspot.com/2007/05/its-zokko.html

and at the other "Reflections", a Film 4 dramatisation of John Banville's "The Newton Letter".

Am pleased how much stuff does turn up,e.g. The Ploughman's Lunch which is on R1 DVD.

I can remember virtually nothing about this show except the refrain of the theme tune, that the star was Gary Warren (the boy from "The Railway Children") and his big sister was played by uber-crush Adrienne Posta. For some reason it was the one programme my parents let me stay up late to watch (on Sunday nights IIRC.) A brief web-trawl tells me it was 1971/72 and had a big Jewish slant (which would have been way over the head of my 8 year-old self.) Would love to see it again, if only to try and establish why it's stuck in my head the way it has...

Also, around the same time (way before Swap Shop & Tiswas), a Saturday morning kids' show, probably BBC, set in space with a "robot" reading out postcards and introducing cartoons - can't even remember the name of it...