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ITV Means ACTION In The 60s-70s

Mythopoeika said:
I think he finally got the message. No more theme tunes since the 90s and no albums since the 80s.
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You forget! The theme tune for 'New Tricks', started in 2003, though I can't think of anything else he's added to his criminal records since then.

And back on track sort of, have we mentioned "The Champions" secret agents granted superpowers by a mysterious hidden Tibetan civilisation. Some of their cases head well into Spy-Fi territory.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
Yeah it's bittersweet. I think of my toys that were destroyed through playing with them or just given away when I got to old for them. Action Man and Star Wars spring to mind.
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I went through a phase when I was about 8-10 years old of imagining my two Action Men coming to life at night. Quite scary at the time, I was convinced they were out to get me. I think it was the size of them - Star Wars figures presented no threat, I could easily squash them but Action Man seemed to be about a foot tall and I'll have only been about 4ft myself. Plus they had weapons.

They were kept in the bottom of the wardrobe in my bedroom, all jumbled up with their jeep and helicopter and of course when the house cooled down at night, there would be strange noises of them shifting about. Sometimes in the daytime I would creep up on the wardrobe and quickly open the door, expecting to see them alive, plotting against me.
(I don't know what use this was apart from to scare myself even more.)

Later, I would guess I was 11 or 12, I would sometimes be left alone at my Granny's house during the day while they went shopping. She had a large collection of figurine ornaments and I would get freaked out sometimes just waiting for them all to move and look at me.
 
David Plankton said:
I went through a phase when I was about 8-10 years old of imagining my two Action Men coming to life at night. Quite scary at the time, I was convinced they were out to get me. I think it was the size of them - Star Wars figures presented no threat, I could easily squash them but Action Man seemed to be about a foot tall and I'll have only been about 4ft myself. Plus they had weapons.

They were kept in the bottom of the wardrobe in my bedroom, all jumbled up with their jeep and helicopter and of course when the house cooled down at night, there would be strange noises of them shifting about. Sometimes in the daytime I would creep up on the wardrobe and quickly open the door, expecting to see them alive, plotting against me.
(I don't know what use this was apart from to scare myself even more.)

Later, I would guess I was 11 or 12, I would sometimes be left alone at my Granny's house during the day while they went shopping. She had a large collection of figurine ornaments and I would get freaked out sometimes just waiting for them all to move and look at me.
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backs slowly away from DP ...

Nah you aren't alone, my cousin had a mortal fear of his action men climbing up his bed-spread, (pre-duvets), and killing him during the night.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
my cousin had a mortal fear of his action men climbing up his bed-spread, (pre-duvets), and killing him
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Ditto-snap. It was partly down to their sheer anatomical toughness (ours were air-pistolled/fireworked/drowned and gravel-rashed, yet they still had that gripping-finger swivel-eyed murderer capability...especially when they were curled-up at the bottom of your bedroom cupboard, at 2am)

Dennis Waterman's infinite panthespian profligacy, immortalised by The Little Britons :
(with apologies to US citizens....a lot of this '70s Brit nostalgia will not really translate, even with the aid of that Canadian you've got in the attic).

Timble2 said:
have we mentioned "The Champions" secret agents granted superpowers by a mysterious hidden Tibetan civilisation
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Oh wow, Alexandra Bastedo <goes away to breathe in and out of a paper bag>

A superb Fortean-themed series....
The_Champions.JPG


This is why I read about a million T.Lobsang Rampa books, at the age of 12 (and I don't care if he was really a plumber from Rochdale....that was in *this* incarnation)
 
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The BBC is currently rerunning the late '70s UK TV series Law and Order (not to be confused with any of the other Law and Orders out there) - which is, possibly self-consciously, a bit of antidote to the action packed giving-it-largeness of series like The Professionals and The Sweeney. It depicts an extremely jaded view of the police and legal system. (Nowadays series that deal with such matters are pretty commonplace - back then, much more contoversial.)

Somewhat clunky in parts, but interesting. And great for spotting in their larval form faces that later became very well-known. Ermintruder's observation is also correct here - the slang is sometimes almost impenetrable; even with subtitles and a glossary this would probably give most non-Brits a migraine).

Also - on a subject I find very interesting - there's an argument that popular culture has changed regional accents by providing a false datum, even to those who are born and brought up in the areas represented; the effect that Eastenders has had on London and cockney (two separate things to those interested in accents) is a common example. I'm no expert, but I've got a pretty good ear, and it does seem to me that the accents in Law and Order - where very many of the actors are London born and bred - although clearly from the same root, does seem somehow different and more liable to variation.
 
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I recently re-watched the first series of Between The Lines on YouTube (BBC: dubbed Between The Sheets by critics for the heroic amount of elicit nookie the lead character engages in) and it was great--lots of cops investifating bent cops and crossovers with 5 & 6 and the various exotic branches of specialised policing.

Excellent stuff--aired in the early 90s.
 
Yithian said:
Although since presented/parodied as emblematic of the era, Regan, the anti-hero protagonist, is actually supposed to be an atavistic throwback in the setting--the one whose methods are ill-suited to the winds of modernisation blowing into the police force (see the Operation Journeyman thread), but he's perfectly adapted for the rough parish that he polices.
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An interesting observation that. It has become fashionable of late to caricature the British culture of the 1970s as being one of rampant Political Incorrectitude. Yet I feel we are misremebering that period, or being a bit selective in our memory of it.

There was a tendency then to expose the viewer to reprehensible attitudes in order to expose them - a la Till Death Do Us Part.

Thus in Fawlty Towers Basil, Fawlty famously attacked some German tourists -but if you really watch that episode you will note that our sympathies are set up to be on the side of the poor toursts and for us to feel embarrased for Fawlty.

Rising Damp was full of it.

The Professionals had its characters expess racist and sexist (as we would now say) sentiments, but the show was a trailblazer in representing interacial love on the screen (one of the two guys, not sure which one, had an affair with an Asian immigrant woman).

You could argue that the reverse situation now occurs: scriptwriters are so scared of offending people that even fictional characters can never say anything against this or that race or group or disability. Or if they do it has to be from the mouth of a ridiclous pantomine villain.This means that the issues can never be dragged out into the open and discussed. We're in denial, perhaps.
 
David Plankton said:
I went through a phase when I was about 8-10 years old of imagining my two Action Men coming to life at night. Quite scary at the time, I was convinced they were out to get me. I think it was the size of them - Star Wars figures presented no threat, I could easily squash them but Action Man seemed to be about a foot tall and I'll have only been about 4ft myself. Plus they had weapons.

They were kept in the bottom of the wardrobe in my bedroom, all jumbled up with their jeep and helicopter and of course when the house cooled down at night, there would be strange noises of them shifting about. Sometimes in the daytime I would creep up on the wardrobe and quickly open the door, expecting to see them alive, plotting against me.
(I don't know what use this was apart from to scare myself even more.)

Later, I would guess I was 11 or 12, I would sometimes be left alone at my Granny's house during the day while they went shopping. She had a large collection of figurine ornaments and I would get freaked out sometimes just waiting for them all to move and look at me.
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Ever seen the movie Xtro? Features your worst nightmare: a life-sized Action Man on a murderous rampage through someone's flat.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
You could argue that the reverse situation now occurs: scriptwriters are so scared of offending people that even fictional characters can never say anything against this or that race or group or disability. Or if they do it has to be from the mouth of a ridiclous pantomine villain.This means that the issues can never be dragged out into the open and discussed. We're in denial, perhaps.
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Maybe not so much in denial as very, very tired of it. It's been almost 50 years since the 1970s and racism, sexism and homophobia (which wasn't called that then) are still around. We think, shouldn't it be gone by now? But then we see an example and are reminded that while things are better, they're not perfect. So when a TV show or film depicts these occurrences, we have lived a lifetime with them and the complaints about "PC gorn mad" have ground us down into a lack of patience with the issue.

I do think you're right, the 70s were a lot more liberal than they seem, they were tackling issues head on, so to speak, with no sugarcoating. This is too much for a modern audience, who look back and laugh or are shocked, but at least it was something. Look at the way the film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was reacted to when it featured a racist character - some thought the mere depiction was an endorsement, instead of that exposure you talk about.

But look online whenever prejudice is brought up, and you'll see a lot of anger, anti or (gulp) pro. We don't like being told what to do anymore.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
Well, he's out of the closet...er wardrobe now
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That commercial reminded me of this:

And here is a question for all you Man in a Suitcase fans. I believe it was made to fill the production slot between the last season of Danger Man and the beginning of the Prisoner. Not only that, but M.I.A.Suitcase was done in color after years of b&w programming. So what I noticed in the series is that the sets look a little weird, particularly early on, like the sets were left the same colour as when they were shooting for b&w but they looked strangely flat in colour. As the series progressed, the sets started to look a little more natural in terms of their paint. Does anybody know if they used the Suitcase series as their live test for colour photography?
 
David Plankton said:
I really hope my mother has kept my Sweeney annual. I wouldn't bet on it though, this woman gave away all of my Star Wars toys.
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Result! I've been through today and asked if I could have a look at the stuff in the back of her cupboards. Not only was there a 1978 Sweeney annual, but a Professionals one from the same year.

They're both a very similar format, a couple of cartoon stories, some solid text with illustrations, fact files and cast interviews. Oh and each has a dice and counters game in the centre pages.
I would say that the artwork in the Sweeney is just about ok but I think whoever drew the Professionals had never seen Martin Shaw or Lewis Collins.

There were also quite a few others not related to this thread, 2000ad, Judge Dredd, Star Trek, Doctor Who (Troughton and Baker), Terry Nation's Dalek annual 1977, Star Wars, various Spiderman, Superman and Hulk (Lou Ferrigno), Fantastic Four, various Action, Tiger and Hotspur, Wacky Races with the Harlem Globetrotters and Scooby Doo.
 
And of course, The Sweeney and The Professionals were ideal viewing for little kids.
 
GNC said:
And of course, The Sweeney and The Professionals were ideal viewing for little kids.
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Best enjoyed with a can of Shandy Bass and a couple of packets of candy cigarettes, whilst wearing a vest to show off your lick'n'stick fake tattoos and toy pistol in it's holster.

Did anyone else nick a pair of their mum's nylons to wear on their heads after seeing bank robbers do it on the Sweeney?
I did it once, but I didn't like it.
 
David Plankton said:
Did anyone else nick a pair of their mum's nylons to wear on their heads after seeing bank robbers do it on the Sweeney? I did it once, but I didn't like it.
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Did you nick them from the 'to be washed' pile?
 
David Plankton said:
Best enjoyed with a can of Shandy Bass and a couple of packets of candy cigarettes, whilst wearing a vest to show off your lick'n'stick fake tattoos and toy pistol in it's holster.

Did anyone else nick a pair of their mum's nylons to wear on their heads after seeing bank robbers do it on the Sweeney?
I did it once, but I didn't like it.
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I once told a girlfriend that when she wore tights her bum looked like a bank robber's face. Never did that again :)
 
Have we done this?




I never could work out the point of the show myself. This title sequence doesn’t make things any clearer.
 
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