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Children of the Stones (1977)

sherbetbizarre

Special Branch
Joined
Sep 4, 2004
Messages
5,230
Not sure if I ever saw this series... but I've certianly heard about it over the years. Anyway, it's out on DVD next week:

Children of the Stones: The Complete Series

Children of the Stones was an undisputed landmark in children's television. Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray's groundbreaking fantasy series, starring Iain Cuthbertson and Gareth Thomas and filmed largely in Avebury in Wiltshire, combined scientific fact and fiction with pagan mythology and rural folklore in its portrayal of a village held captive by the sinister power of its Neolithic stone circle.

Intelligent, atmospheric and genuinely unnerving, the series – often cited by those who grew up in the Seventies as the most frightening thing seen on television – was the result of collaboration between writers Burnham and Ray, producer Patrick Dromgoole (whose previous credits had included classic HTV series Sky and Arthur of the Britons) and producer/director Peter Graham Scott; classical composer and conductor Sidney Sager scored the series' chilling theme and incidental music. Unsurprisingly, Children of the Stones has gained a devoted cult following in the decades since its first transmission in 1977.

SPECIAL FEATURES
[] An in-depth booklet by Tim Worthington on HTV's fantasy television programming
[] A second disc showcasing HTV's cult shows with episodes of Sky, King of the Castle, The Clifton House Mystery and Into the Labyrinth

http://www.networkdvd.net/product_info. ... ts_id=1463
 
Remember it well. Don't think I was too convinced by the time loop though.
 
I didn't see it at the time either, but caught up with it the first time it was out on DVD. It has a nice, spooky atmosphere, but the explanation for what was going on was absurdly complicated for a kids show.
 
I missed it first time around, but caught up with it at an FT meet up in Glastonbury, a few years back. Johnnyboy1968, our excellent host, had a copy. I just thought that it was a brilliant series, for kids, or adults.

:)
 
gncxx said:
I didn't see it at the time either, but caught up with it the first time it was out on DVD. It has a nice, spooky atmosphere, but the explanation for what was going on was absurdly complicated for a kids show.

I remember watching it first time around. Possibly I didn't entirely understand the complexities, I don't recall - but I do remember enough to know that, if I didn't quite get exactly what was going on, it didn't appear to spoil my enjoyment of it.

I'm no expert on what's going on in the genre now, but I strongly suspect that childrens TV was capable of being a lot darker back then, and less patronising maybe.

(Could someone who's seen it recently remind me: I seem to recall the ending being unsettling, because of a lack of traditional closure - is that just a figment of my failing memory?)
 
Spookdaddy said:
I'm no expert on what's going on in the genre now, but I strongly suspect that childrens TV was capable of being a lot darker back then, and less patronising maybe.

The DVD is rated a "12" so you may have a point!
 
I read the book once. It was very tense for kiddies stuff.
 
I remember this series well, it defined me in many ways introducing me to the concept of ancient stone circles and how they related to folklore. Looking back, I was 7 at the time, it was probably the first time I'd even heard of standing stones et al, and that spark of interest then has grown ever since.

And the music was, and is, very haunting stuff. Similar to some of the choral work Pink Floyd put on Atom Heart Mother.
 
Does anyone remember the following: a children's TV drama centred on the mysterious goings on which follow the discovery of a Bronze Age torque?

I've asked this before on another thread, (and searched the cult TV websites, to no avail), but as I'm sure that the series was contemporaneous with Children of the Stones I though it might be worth asking again here in case mention of it shook something loose in anyone's head.

To be honest, I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined the whole thing; I associate the programme with a family holiday back in the 70's, an episode I connect to a set of very strange and lucid dreams (one of which I've related elsewhere on these threads - but I can't now find it), most of which I can still recall vividly over thirty years later.

Real or imagined, the opening credits showed a farmhouse in darkness, it's windows brightly lit against the night, while in the foreground soil crumbled away from a mound of earth and exposed the buried torque.

Jog any memories?
 
There was a Torque in the children's drama The King's Dragon (a Look and Read drama presentation from 1977):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_Read

Billy West, a fisherman's grandson, discovers some threatening messages made up from newspaper cuttings. When he and a local journalist go to investigate, they discover that they are targeted at an archaeologist working at a local castle whose life is suddenly under threat because of the long lost local treasure; King Harold's golden armring known as "The King's Dragon".
 
I remember The King's Dragon, but don't remember what Spookdaddy described in the title sequence. It wasn't all that supernatural a programme.
 
Does anyone remember the following: a children's TV drama centred on the mysterious goings on which follow the discovery of a Bronze Age torque?

I do. At first I thought it was 'The Changes', which I also watched but it isn't. if I'm correct it wasn't a children's play but, for adults, featuring a teenager's coming of age, connecting arthurian legends with m.o.d. work in the West Country.
 
balding13 said:
Does anyone remember the following: a children's TV drama centred on the mysterious goings on which follow the discovery of a Bronze Age torque?

I do. At first I thought it was 'The Changes', which I also watched but it isn't. if I'm correct it wasn't a children's play but, for adults, featuring a teenager's coming of age, connecting arthurian legends with m.o.d. work in the West Country.

It wasn't David Rudkin and Alan Clarke's Penda's Fen, was it? Never seen it but it sounds like that sort of thing.
 
gncxx said:
...It wasn't David Rudkin and Alan Clarke's Penda's Fen, was it? Never seen it but it sounds like that sort of thing.

Dammit! I got quite excited, until I realised Penda's Fen was much more recent than the thing I'm trying to recall.

balding13 said:
Does anyone remember the following: a children's TV drama centred on the mysterious goings on which follow the discovery of a Bronze Age torque?

I do. At first I thought it was 'The Changes', which I also watched but it isn't. if I'm correct it wasn't a children's play but, for adults, featuring a teenager's coming of age, connecting arthurian legends with m.o.d. work in the West Country.

Good, so it's not just me after all. I was beginning to think that I'd imagined it, mainly because I associate it with a family holiday back in the 70's which I'm convinced had something to do with - or maybe just happened at the same time as - something pretty profound and psyche-forming that happened to me, but which I find impossible to explain, or even define properly: a mixture of the incredibly vivid and impossibly vague, all wrapped up in the conviction that something mysterious, but not unpleasant, was happening to me. (Well before puberty started kicking in - I hasten to add.)
 
Just listened to the doc, great stuff and Julian Cope is in it! But he doesn't like the series, unfortunately. Apparently it's being turned into an opera (not by Julian), so does that mean an hour of the theme music on stage?
 
gncxx said:
balding13 said:
Does anyone remember the following: a children's TV drama centred on the mysterious goings on which follow the discovery of a Bronze Age torque?

I do. At first I thought it was 'The Changes', which I also watched but it isn't. if I'm correct it wasn't a children's play but, for adults, featuring a teenager's coming of age, connecting arthurian legends with m.o.d. work in the West Country.

It wasn't David Rudkin and Alan Clarke's Penda's Fen, was it? Never seen it but it sounds like that sort of thing.

Get thee to Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-YCj8OnEMo

It's a copy of a copy of a copy of someone's vhs tape of the Ch.4 repeat from the 1980s. The last few minutes deteriorate further and are almost unwatchable.

Still, having missed a rare revival at the Cornerhouse a few years back, I was glad of the opportunity to catch up with it. I think I can see why it haunted me at the time, though I had retained very few details. Impossible to imagine such a thing being made today. :(
 
Hope this posts OK - the MB is having minor conniptions:

Happy Days: The Children of the Stones

Writer and comedian Stewart Lee explores the ground breaking television series Children of the Stones and examines its special place in the memories of those children who watched it on its initial transmission in a state of excitement and terror.

In 1977 HTV launched the revolutionary children's television drama telling the story of an astrophysicist and his son who arrive in the village of Milbury to study ancient stones. The residents greet each other with the phrase "Happy day", and the community is held in a strange captivity by the psychic forces generated by the circle of giant Neolithic stones which surround it.

Filmed at Avebury in Wiltshire, it is a strangely atmospheric production with the baleful, discordant wailing voices of the incidental music increasing the tension.

The story, involving a temporal paradox and issues of individuality and community assimilation thematically challenged the after-school audience, which included Stewart Lee.

In this documentary Lee returns to Avebury to discuss the serial's impact, examine its influence on him and explore the history and secrets of the ancient stones.

1970s kids may have dived behind the sofa during Doctor Who, but it was Children of the Stones that gave them nightmares. The series is frequently cited by those who remember it as one of the scariest things they saw as children.

The programme includes contributions from series co-creator Jeremy Burnham, cast members and fans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... he_Stones/

Available until
12:00AM Thu, 1 Jan 2099 :shock:

Don't think I've heard of this before. Time to dive in!
 
Now in a Radio 4 adaptation...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08tk8ff

p08sy3jz.jpg
 
@Kondoru lucky you! were you on business ot just passing through?
 
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