Some more TV Stuff of the Retro Variety.

A thousand apologies to anyone who just might be following this blog. The extreme tardiness in getting anything completed and put up here is down to a workload, in extremis, in the lab. The external verifiers have been in and given us an obstacle course to navigate on top of providing a service to all the sick and needy of the area. Enough of that. Here's the next wee bit, as they say in the homeland.

As I keep saying, this stuff isn't mine and may very well be pulled for breach of copyright. You can, of course, go looking on YouTube, or its foreign variants, for copies. I'm sure you know how.

In my younger days, it was thought by my elders that it would be a good idea to have access to a wide range of TV, as an education, and an entertainment too you understand, but as I sit staring at the TV today, I wonder what on earth possessed anyone to make the tripe before me. Doesn't matter whether if it is supposed to be dramatic or funny, it isn't. Maybe there was something to only having three tv channels and only for a limited time. I suppose there isn't enough class to fill up every minute of the day schedule.

Not like the old days.....and this brings me to the early 60s

1962 to be precise and The Saint.

Like Danger Man earlier, I probably watched this alongside my mum. Not when it was first shown as we lacked a TV back then but later on as re-runs. I liked the Roger Moore incarnation not only because I didn't really have much choice but because the stories were usually very well written and the special effects limited. I skip over the effects in the giant ants episode. In general, these stories were simple standalone affairs - none of todays' ongoing story arcs and such.

The later versions of the Saint I didn't really watch much of - I suppose I was doing other things when the Ian Ogilvy version was on TV.

Like the other programmes of the sixties, all it took was a stock shot of the Eiffel tower and a poster on the Elstree Studios backlot of "Pastis 51" or some such and you were in France. It also got us out of Scotland, not that there was anything wrong with Scotland you understand.

Along with the Eiffel tower and poster advertisements were jets, pre-British Airways, BEA and BOAC, other foreign locations, cultures, politics - the whole shebang. And all before we were in the EU.

I am really glad that this material is still available. When you consider that some of the great TV stuff of old (albeit videotape) was wiped and that today's TV offerings of reality tv dross and wall-to-wall shite, this material (like Templer) is a breath of fresh air without the need of rose-tints.

That's it. Hopefully, the next bit of this blog will be sooner rather than later.

Comments, whether in agreement or not, are always welcome.

TV both old and new : Interpol Calling

Here I will begin a feature dealing with the TV that has tickled my fancy over the years. That's MY fancy, it will be MY review. I have never been one for paying attention at the back when it comes to what the critics have to say about anything.

Having said that, let's begin:

This first one is an early TV detective series and one I certainly did not watch as a child as it pre-dates me by a few months.

It was a 1959 series called Interpol Calling. To set the scene we have the following:

"Crime knows no frontiers. To combat the growing menace of the international criminal, the police forces of the world have opened up their own national boundaries. At their headquarters in Paris, scientifically equipped to match the speed of the jet age, sixty-three nations have linked together to form the International Criminal Police Organisation, INTERPOL!"

It stars Charles Korvin as Inspector Duval and Edwin Richfield as Inspector Mornay.

As usual, there is a wiki link at Interpol Calling and a Youtube one at Mr. George . You'll also find a very limited link at The IMBD . To date, I have not managed to find any fan sites. Sad that, as they often have a fund of information.

However, if what I say tickles your fancy, you might want to point your mouse over this.

The link provides a summary of the episodes, like most of the Google hits.

Why does it interest me the voice in my head asks? I went looking around on the good old 'net. Like I said, I did not see it on TV originally and I did not have the funds as a teenager to go looking for videotapes. It was only with the advent of DVD that this became available to me. I must have been on Amazon's site and either found it with a search or good old Amazon and the "cookies" offered it to me as something I might like.

But to answer the question: It is set in Europe, mostly. I know this. The Backlot of the film studio doesn't fool me.

Anyway back to the script:

These programmes are rather short at about 30 minutes give or take. Who says that our attention span has diminished?

As a cop/detective show, the usual low-lifes are out in force. Drug smugglers, people smugglers, counterfeiters, etc. Our heroes, using wit and guile, manage to put them in the hand is the local police and all ends well.

Suspend your disbelief right at the start - just before the bit that says "the jet age"? In the 21st century?

As usual, feel free to read this and leave any comments.