• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

TV & Radio Reminders

After the again Mark Gatiss Ghost Christmas rubbish was listening to his Ghost Hunt with Rev Coles ex Communards and it just reminds me of the UFO types like Jac Valee, Luis Elzondo etc, etc , etc ..boring.
edited as I had a bit too much port and hope I didn't offend all the good people on Fortean Forums.
 
Last edited:
Trevp666 said:
To save me trawling through the TV guide every day, looking for stuff worth recording/watching, I sat and spent about an hour yesterday evening going through everything on my 'favourites' channels over the course of the next 3 days, doing my selections.
TBH I think I only found about half-a-dozen things worth bothering with.
As I pointed out to my son - it's all 'christmas specials' of series that I'm not interested in anyway, or are repeats of same from previous years, or we have the usual 'end of the year' shows that round-up all the things in 'the news'/sport/entertainment etc etc from the past 12 months, or 'blockbuster' action films that we've seen loads of times before, or 'kids' things, (like one-off, 1 and a half hour 'special' with David Walliams etc) and then of course we have all the 'traditional' Christmas stuff like the Queens Kings speech, 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Die Hard', a couple of episodes of each of the 'soaps' in which people are murdered, buildings go up in flames, aircraft crash on the town, boats sink, big fights break out in the pub etc etc etc......
Yeah, Christmas TV sucks.
Click to expand...
It's a Wonderful Life is best.
 
Cloudbusting said:
A little round up of supernatural offerings from the BBC, with some programmes I've spotted in addition to what's already been mentioned (thanks all!)

Thursday 22nd December:
* Blackadder's Christmas Carol - BBC2 @ 6:15pm
* Inside No.9 - BBC2 @ 9pm
* Schalcken the Painter - BBC4 @10:30pm

Friday 23rd December:
* Count magnus - BBC2 @ 10pm

Saturday 24th December:
* Mark Gatiss and Richard Coles are on a ghost hunt - BBC Radio 4 @ 10:15pm

Sunday 25th December:
* The Signalman - BBC Radio 4 @ 3:15pm
* Mystery Playhouse: Blind Man's Hood - BBC Radio 4 extra @ 4pm
* A Christmas Carol: a ghost story - BBC4 @ 7pm
* Ghosts - BBC1 @7:25pm

Sunday 1st January:
* Oh, Whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad - BBC Radio 4 extra @ 4pm

Enjoy the season my fellow ghouls... :litg:

P.S. My favourite adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol' (featuring Patrick Stewart as Scrooge) is on Channel 5 on Tuesday 20th December @ 5:15pm. I highly recommend. :)
Click to expand...

Well... I apologise if anyone actually sat through 'Schalcken the Painter' as a result of my post, what a load of guff.

I wasn't very keen on Count Magnus either. Listening to Gatiss you get the impression he respects MR James, however there's something about his adaptations that always seem way off the mark... they certainly lack atmosphere and suspense. I think I've genuinely been more spooked by some episodes of Jonathan Creek.

The Gatiss/Coles ghost hunt wasn't particularly exciting however Coles did share a brief creepy story towards the end, and no @catseye it wasn't your kiss! :hahazebs:
 
Cloudbusting said:
The Gatiss/Coles ghost hunt wasn't particularly exciting however Coles did share a brief creepy story towards the end
Click to expand...
Coles mentioned two. One was a sort of exorcism or cleansing he'd done of a young man's flat and the other seems to concern a residual-type haunting which also happens to others.
I'd like to find that spot on the pavement and see if I get invisibly bumped into.
 
Cloudbusting said:
I wasn't very keen on Count Magnus either. Listening to Gatiss you get the impression he respects MR James, however there's something about his adaptations that always seem way off the mark... they certainly lack atmosphere and suspense. I think I've genuinely been more spooked by some episodes of Jonathan Creek.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree. I do like Mark Gatiss and admire the way he tries hard to keep ghost fiction on TV but I wish he would have a try at some different authors. I suppose it is easier to 'sell' an MR James story to TV as most people will probably know the name but, for me, the best stories from James have already been done definitively in the 70s TV productions. Personally, I didn't really enjoy the original Count Magnus story and I can't think of any others of his offhand which would benefit from a new production for TV.
 
I have been watching these as they were a educational book from my childhood and couldn't afford the ridiculous prices of the reprints on eBay but this chap has done it like in a way of Jackanory and been far more entertain then some of the rubbish we have had to put up on the number Tv channels.
 
Gerald McBoing-Boing said:
He can be a good actor. I saw him on stage in All About My Mother and he handled a tricky drag-queen role with sensitivity. Agreed, in general one should separate the artist 's personality from their work but there's a degree of self-satisfaction in his writing that mars it ultimately. He has Van Gogh's ear for dialogue, and often botches opportunities for real drama and atmosphere in favour of "See what I did there?". Yes, he's a knowledgeable and devoted fan of Conan Doyle, James, Kneale, etc. and I think that's part of the problem. For him, such material is a mirror, and passion plus unbridled ego isn't always an aid to creativity. There seems to be a notion kicking around that he's a natural successor to these people - the curator, flame-keeper, go-to talking head - when as a person or an artist he's not in their league, nowhere near.
Click to expand...
When I was a Tv Extra I did a scene with him in George Gently and found him quite arrogant and he kept messing up his lines.
 
Cloudbusting said:
A little round up of supernatural offerings from the BBC, with some programmes I've spotted in addition to what's already been mentioned (thanks all!)

Thursday 22nd December:
* Blackadder's Christmas Carol - BBC2 @ 6:15pm
* Inside No.9 - BBC2 @ 9pm
* Schalcken the Painter - BBC4 @10:30pm

Friday 23rd December:
* Count magnus - BBC2 @ 10pm

Saturday 24th December:
* Mark Gatiss and Richard Coles are on a ghost hunt - BBC Radio 4 @ 10:15pm

Sunday 25th December:
* The Signalman - BBC Radio 4 @ 3:15pm
* Mystery Playhouse: Blind Man's Hood - BBC Radio 4 extra @ 4pm
* A Christmas Carol: a ghost story - BBC4 @ 7pm
* Ghosts - BBC1 @7:25pm

Sunday 1st January:
* Oh, Whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad - BBC Radio 4 extra @ 4pm

Enjoy the season my fellow ghouls... :litg:

P.S. My favourite adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol' (featuring Patrick Stewart as Scrooge) is on Channel 5 on Tuesday 20th December @ 5:15pm. I highly recommend. :)
Click to expand...
Just watched Schalcken the Painter as couldn't find it on YouTube years ago and got to say I loved it like I loved the MR James and other from the 1970s Tv.
 
What was Inside No 9 like? We don’t usually watch it as it’s pretty weird. I just wondered as they kept advertising and it looked interesting.
 
MorningAngel said:
What was Inside No 9 like? We don’t usually watch it as it’s pretty weird. I just wondered as they kept advertising and it looked interesting.
Click to expand...
We liked it but not a word will pass my lips. :wink2:
 
MorningAngel said:
What was Inside No 9 like? We don’t usually watch it as it’s pretty weird. I just wondered as they kept advertising and it looked interesting.
Click to expand...
Not objecting to this just pointing out there is a specific thread on Inside No 9 and there is some discussion of the latest episode starting here

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/inside-no-9.55519/page-9#post-2227865

At current time of writing there are no spoilers there.

Personally I much preferred it to the Gatiss M R James.
 
I’m a big M.R. James fan. l enjoyed Gatiss’s Mezzotint, but l had mixed feelings about Count Magnus.

Part of it is Gatiss’s relentlessly PC approach to whatever he’s adapting: l find myself cringing as l await the ticking of the “required” boxes. l will grant him an extra point, however, for casting the delicious MyAnna Buring as Froken de la Gardie.

The general atmos was well handled, and l quite liked the scenes covering the encounter between the two poachers and “those who should not be walking.”

l felt that much more could have been made of Wraxall’s growing terror, and particularly James’s description of his frantic efforts to count his fellow passengers on the canal boat:

“The net result of the reckoning is always the same. Twenty-eight people appear in the enumeration, one being always a man in a long black cloak and broad hat, and the other a 'short figure in dark cloak and hood.' On the other hand, it is always noted that only twenty-six passengers appear at meals…”

One trivial point: Why did James’s “Mr. Wraxall” become Gatiss’s Mr. Wraxhall”?

l’d give it 6/10.

maximus otter
 
merricat said:
Just a couple of my favourites:



Click to expand...
Thanks for posting. Watched the first one last night and very much enjoyed it. I’m sure I must have seen them before when they were first broadcast but its so long ago I can’t recall anything that happens. Looking forward to watching the rest and The Exorcism.


I bought the DVD of Schlaken the Painter a number of years ago to watch one Christmas. Buying something spooky to watch became a habit each Christmas and it gave us something to look forward to TV-wise amongst the usual ‘load of guff’ (that made me chuckle @Cloudbusting :chuckle:) which is always on TV over the festive period. Strangely enough when I first watched Schlaken I didn’t care for it, but watching it again a few years later I enjoyed it and thought it was very atmospheric.

I was left underwhelmed by Count Magnus, I was hoping it would be as good as last year’s Gatiss offering of The Mezzotint with the beautifully creepy ending, but I found it very disappointing.
 
I think so much of M R James writing genius is in the hinting at the darkness and then just letting the reader's imagination do the heavy lifting. He doesn't lay it on quite as thickly as many of his generation did, and it means that you create your own atmosphere. So watching an adaptation is never going to quite live up to the scariness you can engender in your own mind (the whole 'less is more' theory of spooky writing).

So maybe the adaptations are best watched as something separate, something in their own right.
 
Mooka said:
Thanks for posting. Watched the first one last night and very much enjoyed it. I’m sure I must have seen them before when they were first broadcast but its so long ago I can’t recall anything that happens. Looking forward to watching the rest and The Exorcism.


I bought the DVD of Schlaken the Painter a number of years ago to watch one Christmas. Buying something spooky to watch became a habit each Christmas and it gave us something to look forward to TV-wise amongst the usual ‘load of guff’ (that made me chuckle @Cloudbusting :chuckle:) which is always on TV over the festive period. Strangely enough when I first watched Schlaken I didn’t care for it, but watching it again a few years later I enjoyed it and thought it was very atmospheric.

I was left underwhelmed by Count Magnus, I was hoping it would be as good as last year’s Gatiss offering of The Mezzotint with the beautifully creepy ending, but I found it very disappointing.
Click to expand...
Glad to hear you enjoyed them. I wasn't too impressed by what felt like a rushed, rather 'creepshow-esque' jump scare ending to the Gatiss 'Mezzotint'. I didn't mind 'Schalken' though, especially for the dimly lit Dutch period interiors and the meandering pace. I do like a meandering pace :D
 
After me asking for the original series of 'The Twilight Zone' to be broadcast, in full, in the original order they were first broadcast, my request has been fulfilled (blimey...maybe this is my year?)
Tonight on 'Legend' channel, at 8.30pm, Season 1, Episode 1 "Where is Everybody" (1959) is on.
From checking the 'upcoming episodes' section of the TV guide, it looks like following episodes will be broadcast at 8.30pm on each Saturday & Sunday evening ongoing.
 
The Prisoner is on UK tv again - Ch 8 London Live, Mondays 8pm. First episode was last week.
 
hunck said:
Horror channel is now called Legend. I had a search but can’t find The Prisoner on it..
Click to expand...
They have another channel called HorrorXtra.
 
Beresford said:
All 17 episodes are available on ITVX.
Click to expand...
I can’t get ITVX to work on my computer - I get sound but no picture.

Weirdly I get the picture on adverts but not on the programme - screen is black.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top