is there a name or a phrase for or anything much written about that distinctly British CREEPY VIBE prevalent in TV shows and movies of the '60s/'70s? (e.g. The Prisoner, Sapphire and Steel, Baker-era

(did they ever explain where Barry Morse went?)

Back to Canada I assume.

So his first show was UFO, which was a weird mixture of dayglow wigs and downbeat plots where the heroes always lost. And the Space: 1999, which had some awesome spaceships but every episode consisted of Martin Landau looking worried and Barry Morse looking worried and at the end of Landau would look at the camera and say "there's no hope for any of us, or for the people watching at home, because it's 1975 and there's just no hope, no hope at all".

Ok, I've never had any desire to watch this before but now I'm sold!

Barbara Bain looks worried too.

'Black Sun' is my Space 1999 Series One go-to, absolutely batshit and bleak, until this brilliant 2001-style third act.

Really nice spooky feel to several season 1 eps in Space: 1999; there's the episode where Big Jim Sullivan is playing a coral sitar recital for the team, and that music underpins the rest of the show. Lots of ultra-wide angles, shadows and voids, and age-inappropriate scares. In season 2, the ambient lighting and colour palette get brighter, Maya solves everything by turning into an insect or whatever, and they all have a good laugh in the epilogue at Tony Anholt's homebrew. Not good!

xp

I'd have sold a kidney to own this. pic.twitter.com/NxmJUHQKWh

— Scarred for Life (@ScarredForLife2) March 20, 2023

^ all three of them looking worried

lol yes I love how despite all the attempts at HEY KIDS TOYS advertising that clip still feels bleak a f

Space 1999 is a good call, I can't think of too many contemporaneous U.S. shows that had something of that sinister vibe but that one did.

I watched the movie The Wonder (currently on Netflix) the other night on a giant TV with motion smoothing turned on, and the digital made it look very much like a low budget 70s or 80s BBC production. I thought it really added something, so if you're thinking about watching the movie, I recommend seeing it that way if possible.

Any good cultural studies type writing on the British archetype of the guy who knows more than everyone else and is a total asshole about it? Sherlock Holmes, old school Who, Saphire & Steel...

Henry Higgins …

finally trudging through The Omega Factor after being unimpressed with the first couple of eps when i first bought the DVDs years ago - it is pretty thin gruel, really terrible writing and blah characters - Louise Jameson's presence and outfits probably the high point - there SHOULD be an excellent show here, secret govt department investigating paranormal goings-on in 1979 ought to be a fuckin cracker but it just doesn't work, what a shame

Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland? was on bbc4 yesterday

I love this! I always associate in my mind with Spike Milligan's The Bed Sitting Room (I think Peter Cook is the only person who's in both?)

it's reminding me of Valerie and her Week of Wonders a bit

the Ravi Shankar soundtrack reminded me of this thing in some of Milligan's work where he was raised in India, and there was this idea of India as this exotic, foreign place with strange customs, and the UK as being 'home' and normality, but ofc from his point of view it was India that was home and the UK that was was the strange exotic place - this perspective of the UK as a weird alien civilisation with odd customs

I've known about the 'Dodleston Mysteries' of the early/mid 80s for a while, having come across a few mentions of a book about the events, but here is a very deep dive on YT that goes into a great deal of detail.

Very entertaining and well worth checking out, if an extremely English poltergeist story colliding with time-travelling, numinous beings from the past and future (and here is the best part) all communicating via a borrowed school BBC Micro sounds like your kind of thing.

It could have easily been a late John Wyndham novel.

And if it is a hoax, then it's a rather brilliant, complex and very creepy one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh28A54HF4

I saw something about this a couple of years ago but I can't remember where - I don't think it was a six hour youtube series though.Time travelling poltergeist or hoax... hmm tough one. (Not to diminish the weirdness of the story!)

"100 Years of Horror" on talking pictures tonight. from 1998, fronted by Christopher Lee. no idea of contents.

watching Men which is decidedly creepy but the folk horror aspect seems a bit too knowing, like a formula has been applied.

the last hour of that, it turned into a different film almost. the supernatural thing saved it, i think. when it was possibly just men being men it was uncomfortable. when it all went cronenberg, it did that quite well.

and it made the tacked-on-seeming folk horror aspect less important

YouTube sidebar served me up some 80s Give Us A Clue episodes. There is a subtle creepiness to it, like everyone’s being forced to be jolly at gunpoint.

Eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKUvPSJfyn0 but mostly for Bruce Grobelaar’s cardigan

https://www.instagram.com/p/C6jsS60pxHQ/

Also, misread Dodleston upthread as Doodletown. #onethread!