The BBC anthology series Play for Today is 50 this month. In celebration, the BFI is releasing a Blu Ray of previously unreleased episodes, including one of my favourites, John Bowen's A Photograph. Play for Today was one of the most important and influential series of British television, running for 14 years between 1970 and … Continue reading The Man from Another Place #6: Play for Today: A Photograph (1977)
The BBC has decided that now is the moment to put an old TV series about negative outside influence, racism, uncomfortable truths, incompetent government, and large-scale social unrest on iPlayer. Never mind about genre, the BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit is one of the finest pieces of television ever made and you can watch … Continue reading The Man from Another Place #5: Quatermass and the Pit (1958/9)
“History is full of darkness.” It’s a pompous line in a fairly pompous (if enjoyable) film, yet outside of the confines of Gore Verbinski’s beautiful and grotesque flop, A Cure for Wellness (2017) the line certainly holds true, and the history of witches and witch hunters shows us the devastating effects of human hysteria and … Continue reading The Man from Another Place #3: Doctor Who: The Witch Hunters (1998)
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