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Brides of Christ was an Australian drama series back 20 years ago that takes place in Sydney in the 1960's. It was also partially produced by RTÉ and Channel 4 for broadcast in Ireland and the UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brides_of_Christ
http://www.australiantelevision.net/brides-of-christ/episodes.html
Primeval - Series 5 ended tonight and has been added to Disc 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeval
Jake's Progress....written by Alan Bleasdale (Boys From the Blackstuff, G.B.H., Scully, Melissa) and starring Robert Lindsay (Get Some In!, Citizen Smith, Seconds Out, G.B.H., Nightingales, Wimbledon Poisoner, Horation Hornblower, Jericho, My Family) and Julie Walters (Victoria Wood, Adrian Mole, G.B.H., Melissa, Oliver Twist, dinnerladies, and more films than there's space for here). (Filmed in Dunmore, Ireland which is a somewhat remote place as I recall.)
"Parenthood surprises Jamie and Julie Diadoni late on in life, but son Jake is not born into domestic harmony. Jamie – a handsome failed pop star – loses his job, Julie is forced out to work, and he takes on the role of house husband. Jake grows up loving his father but hating his absent mother. A new pregnancy is the final straw. His misunderstood side manifests itself as he fantasises about pushing his brother off a cliff and attempts to set fire to him. Meanwhile, events take a tragic twist as Jamie has his fortune told and learns he will have an affair – just before he dies. Drawn inexorably towards his fate, he falls in love with mysterious stranger Kate and embarks on an affair after discovering the prophecy was invented by Julie as a joke. But Julie learns just how dangerous it is to play games with fate."
A couple of comedy-drama series.
Jane Hall (47 minute eps) featured Sarah Smart (At Home With The Braithwaites, Murder Prevention, Funland, Five Days, Wallander) as a shy unemployed woman who relocates from Huddersfield to Hounslow and moves in with old university pal Richard. Once ensconced in the house he shares with two other friends, she embarks on an exciting new life - as the driver of a London bus. Also features: Gillian Taylforth (The Rag Trade, Watch This Space, The Bill), Stephen Mangan (Adrian Mole, Green Wing, Never Better, Free Agents, Episodes), Geraldine James (The Jewel in the Crown, Blott on the Landscape, Band Of Gold, Seesaw, Kavanagh QC, The Sins, Amazing Mrs Pritchard, The Time of Your Life), Robert Glenister (Chancer, Spooks, Hustle), Nintin Ganatra (The Jury, Rescue Me, Being April, Meet The Magoons, Mumbai Calling).
Rescue Me (50-minute eps)...I held off on this one for a long time in hopes the missing 2nd episode would turn up. It also has Dutch subtitles. Stars Sally Phillips (Fist of Fun, I'm Alan Partridge, In The Red, Hippies, Smack The Pony, Green Wing, Amazing Mrs Pritchard, Jam & Jerusalem, Miranda) as a recently divorced relationship features writer at a women's magazine. Also features Stewart Wright (Bonkers, Doc Martin, Wild West, World of Pub), Oliver Chris (The Office, According To Bex, Green Wing, Bonkers).
Is it just me? Or does anyone else find themselves in front of the TV tapping their fingers and wondering whatever happened to British comedy? Sure, there's been a few really good one's the past few years but overall there seems to be a disturbing trend developing. Or........maybe it's just me? Anyways, here's a few more to try out if you haven't seen them already.
Candy Cabs is listed as being a comedy-drama. Only 3 eps but they're 1-hour each.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Cabs
Friday Night Dinner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_Night_Dinner
Twenty Twelve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Twelve_%28TV_series%29
afterlife was a supernatural mystery drama series about a psychic medium played by Lesley Sharp (Common As Muck, Playing The Field, Clocking Off, Bob & Rose, The Shadow Line, Scott & Bailey, Diary of Anne Frank).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife_%28TV_series%29
Coronation Street 2011 - Disc 5
The Ambassador starred Pauline Collins (No Honestly, Upstairs Downstairs, Thomas & Sarah, Wodehouse Playhouse, Dalgliesh: The Black Tower, Forever Green and more recently seen in Marple and Merlin) as ambassador to Ireland, assisted by Denis Lawson and Peter Egan and about every Irish actor you ever saw on TV in the 90's at one point or another.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118257/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassador_%28TV_series%29
Bob & Rose starred Alan Davies (A Many Splintered Thing, The Brief, Jonathan Creek, Whites, Quite Interesting), Lesley Sharp (Common As Muck, Playing The Field, Clocking Off, The Shadow Line, Scott & Bailey, Afterlife, The Diary of Anne Frank), Jessica Hynes (Twenty Twelve, The Royle Family, Lizzie And Sarah, According To Bex, Spaced, Asylum), Katy Cavanagh (Coronation Street, Dalziel & Pascoe), Penelope Wilton (The Norman Conquests, Ever Decreasing Circles, Screaming, Five Days, South Riding, Downton Abbey), and Daniel Ryan (Trial & Retribution, Linda Green, The Whistleblowers, Sunshine, Just William, Candy Cabs) and was written by Russell T. Davies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_%26_Rose
The Take
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Take_%28TV_series%29
another 3-on-1 comedy
Chambers starred John Bird in a role similar to what he played in Joint Account only instead of being a sleazy banker he's a sleazy lawyer. Also in the show is James Fleet playing the same nervous kind of guy as he was in Vicar of Dibley. Sarah Lancashire has the female lead in Series 1, Nina Wadia in Series 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chambers_%28series%29
Freezing featured Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezing_%28TV_series%29
Shane starred Frank Skinner who isn't all that well known outside the UK, but in the UK is all over the place.
A second series of this was filmed but it remains in the can all this time later due to disagreements between Skinner and ITV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_%28UK_TV_series%29
A 3-on-1 sitcom disc from the 00's.
Celeb was a Harry Enfield project where he plays an aging rocker and was based on a comic strip that appears in a British magazine.
Parents Of The Band starred Jimmy Naill (Auf Wiedersehen, Pet) as the parent of the drummer of a teen band that just wants to have fun but he and the other parents have other ideas. The scripts were edited by the famous writing team of Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_of_the_Band
The House That Jack Built starred the late Adam Faith (Budgie, Love Hurts). Richard Lumsden (First of the Summer Wine, Is It Legal?, Life of Riley, Sugar Rush, The Sharp End), Carli Norris and Gilliam Taylforth (EastEnders) also star.
What's that? You don't live in the UK and you'd like to go there this summer but the cost of air travel, 'affordable' B&B accommodations, meals, transportation and VAT getting you down? Well here's an 8½ hour escape into the beautiful countryside....make that 7½ hours because 1 hour is spent in Iceland.
The Coast To Coast Walk
The Coast To Coast Walk is a 200-mile foot path in Northern England that runs from St. Bees on the Irish Sea, through the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, to Robin Hood's Bay on the North Sea. For those who don't have the willpower or time to take the hike, you can watch this video and do it in 52-minutes from your favorite chair with your eyes in a low-flying helicopter.
Julia Bradbury's Iceland Walk
Julia's back and she's got her hiking boots on again.
"Julia Bradbury heads for Iceland to embark on the toughest walk of her life. Her challenge is to walk the 60 kilometres of Iceland's most famous hiking route, a trail that just happens to end at the volcano that brought air traffic across Europe to a standstill in 2010. With the help of Icelandic mountain guide Hanna, Julia faces daunting mountain climbs, red-hot lava fields, freezing river crossings, deadly clouds of sulphuric gas, swirling ash deserts and sinister Nordic ghost stories as she attempts to reach the huge volcanic crater at the centre of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier."
Julia Bradbury's Canal Walks
"Seasoned stomper Julia Bradbury dons her walking boots once again and this time she is exploring her own British backyard, travelling along the country's network of canals and their accompanying towpath trails. This sees her navigating Highland glens, rolling countryside and river valleys, as well as our industrial heartlands, following these magical waterways as they cut a sedate path through some of the country's finest scenery."
The Dales....with Adrian Edmondson
Adrian Edmondson (of The Young Ones, Comic Strip Presents, Happy Families, Filthy Rich & Catflap, Snakes And Ladders, If You See God Tell Him, Bottom, French & Saunders, Teenage Kicks, etc. fame)
returns to his childhood roots for a summer in the Yorkshire Dales.
2 new crime drama's:
Case Sensitive
"Detective Sergeant Charlie Zailer and Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse are called in to investigate the shocking deaths of a mother, Geraldine Bretherick, and her five year old daughter Lucy.
Unsure whether it is murder or suicide Zailer and Waterhouse must examine every angle, including putting husband Mark under close scrutiny. Meanwhile Sally Thorne who previously had an affair with Mark decides to get back in touch with him only to discover that the man she believed to be Mark is someone else entirely!"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1744638/
Case Histories
1 - An unusual take on the detective genre featuring Jackson Brodie, who has served with the army and the police, and is now a private investigator. Jackson takes on the mysterious case of a girl who went missing 30 years ago. As well as helping a grieving father to find the man who murdered his daughter, Brodie must deal with flashbacks to his own traumatic past.
2 - Jackson helps a crime novelist who is caught up in a road rage incident whilst hunting down the killer of a drowned Russian girl. His daughter's imminent move to New Zealand sends him to Yorkshire to visit his past.
3 - Whilst investigating a routine 'cheating wife' case, Jackson is caught up in a terrible train accident that brings yet another lost little girl into his life. This sets off a series of seemingly unconnected events that will have a far greater impact on his life than he realises.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Histories_%28TV_series%29
"Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of......shows............."
Okay, if you didn't live in the USA in the 60's and always ate your Saturday night dinner while watching ABC's Wide World Of Sports, that is not going to make any sense to you at all.......my apologies.
Readers of this blog have been exposed to TV programs not only from the UK but Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well (not to mention the Wallander's from Sweden). Now I'm pleased to add a few mini-series from South Africa.
As most of you are aware, English is a minority language in South Africa spoken as a primary language by only about 8% of the population. However, it is spoken as a secondary language by a considerably larger percentage than that and is considered to be the language of commerce and research. I'm not sure how much programming is produced there in English, but here's a few interesting titles for those seeking to expand their television boundaries.
Ella Blue
"Ella Blue is set in the year 1961 and tells the story of a woman's physical, emotional and spiritual journey through the process of race classification in terms of the Group Areas Act of 1950 South Africa.
Ella and her family have lived peacefully for generations in a remote fishing village on the Cape Coast, until the day it is announced that the Census Official is arriving to classify every person in the small, secluded community according to their colour. Bit by bit the intimate little community is torn apart and is ultimately destroyed by the political policies of the day. Darrell James Roodt, who directed the Oscar-nominated film "Yesterday", is at the helm of this production. The title role is portrayed by Natalie Boltt and among her co-stars are Tertius Meintjes, Jonathan Rands, Nico Panagio, Anthony Wilson, Bo Peterson and Sean Cameron Michael."
Feast Of The Uninvited
"Feast of the Uninvited is the story of small lives touched by war. The backdrop to this story is a war with more than one name: The South African War; the Boer War; the Anglo-Boer War. The name of the war depends on the point of view of the speaker. It was fought between 1899 and 1902 between the British Empire and two Boer republics in Southern Africa. The reasons why it came about are many and varied, but in the lives of those who had to suffer through it, reasons are of marginal importance. The immediacy of their plight was their concern, not the abstractions that lead to it. To Captain Brooks, Harry the Welsh miner, the wealthy Van Wyk family and people like Daantjie van Wyk and his beautiful wife, Magrieta, the war became the ultimate test of who they really were. Never could they have imagined that such nameless fears, jealousies and hatreds lurked inside them. That rape and murder could enter their lives was unthinkable. Perhaps only the little dreamer, Fienatjie Minter, understood the things that would happen to her and the people around her because, in her strange dreams, only she could hear the dying children sing. This award winning drama has a relatively slow start in episode one, but stick with and the later episodes are great."
This series applies authentic language. The English speak English and the Boers speak Afrikaans with English subtitles.
Innocent Times
"There were good times, there were bad times & then there were Innocent Times.
Innocent Times is part road movie, part love story and part dark comic thriller and tells a story that unfolds across the past and the present. When Genevieve Scott-Thomas is let out of prison after almost two decades, her son Zac is killed when he falls off a balcony. Most think it is suicide, but Gene knows differently. To her it is a sure sign that her past is catching up with her. She decides to team up with award-winning journalist Jeff Levine and takes him on a journey into her dark past. As she reflects on her life, we flash back to a landscape of the mind, a strange world where a murder spree took place.
To create this multi-layered story, the technical production team of Innocent Times spent months refining the hyper-real CGI scenes of the past, shot under the direction of Tristan Holmes. The present-day scenes were directed by Alex Yazbek who created a film-noir effect, with characters that are slightly larger than life to follow through and compliment the styles of the past. To put the scale of this production into perspective, Innocent Times is a show made up of six episodes, but contains more special effects than an entire season of the popular American series, Heroes.
Filled with sinister twists and some shocking characters, Innocent Times promises to grip viewers from the start. The show boasts a small and stunning cast that is made up of Nina Milner (who made her debut in Ella Blue) as the young Gene, Justin Strydom (of Snitch fame), Quentin Krog as Zac Snr, Juliana Venter as the older Gene, Az Abrahams in the role of the journalist, and new-comer Matthew Lotter as Gene's son Zac Jr.
The cutting-edge technological effects with which Innocent Times is infused, are both stylistically breathtaking and emotionally heart wrenching. Innocent Times is very much a love story - as twisted as the love sometimes is, it is still very real and very much the driving force of this ground-breaking show. See how the characters of Innocent Times seek to outrun their destinies and live the perfect life.
Please note: this show has a very strong content warning (mostly for violence) and is not for sensitive viewers.
Bugs was an "action / intrigue" drama about a team of young, hip, swinging model/secret agent/techno wizards that take on the bad guys and save the universe...or something. Sort of like Mission: Impossible but prettier. Or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugs_%28TV_series%29
Bodily Harm starred Timothy Sprall, George Cole, Annette Crosbie, Lesley Manville and Elizabeth Berrington.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0396291/
"Timothy Spall stars with George Cole, Annette Crosbie and Lesley Manville in Bodily Harm, an intense and moving, two-part story of modern family life. The Greenfields are an apparently ordinary suburban family whose lives are suddenly rocked to their foundations. As Mitchel Greenfield (Timothy Spall) approaches his dreaded 44th birthday party he would seem to have it all. His marriage to Mandy (Lesley Manville) is a loving one. He is a successful sharebroker. He dotes on his teenage daughter Nic (Sadie Thompson) and Mitch can't do enough for his elderly parents Sidney (George Cole) and Sheila (Annette Crosbie). On the surface all seems well in this safe suburban world but Mitchel is about to experience the worst day of his life. He loses his job. Nic wants to leave home and he accidentally discovers that Mandy is not the loyal wife he once thought. Added to this he finds out that his father's illness is terminal. All this is played out as family and friends gather to celebrate Mitchel's 44th birthday."
Close And True was a legal drama starring Robson Green, James Bolam, Nicola Grier......
"Robson Green stars as John Close, a well meaning but inexperienced solicitor who takes over the running of a run down Newcastle legal practice. James Bolam plays Graham True, the founding partner of the practice John takes over and who now happily resides in a mental hospital and becomes an unlikely mentor for John Close."
Halifax f.p. was an Australian psycho-crime drama starring (New Zealander) Rebecca Gibney who these days stars in Packed To The Rafters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_f.p
http://www.australiantelevision.net/hfp/halifax.html
I've had these two lying around here for about a year waiting for something suitable to pair them up with and that's long enough.
Charles Endell, Esquire was a comedy-drama spin-off of Budgie. ITV technicians went on strike after the second episode was aired so the other 4 episodes weren't broadcast until over 9 months later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Endell_Esq
Zodiac was also a comedy-drama starring Anton Rodgers and Anouska Hempel where Anton was a detective and Anouska an astrologer and together they solved the mysteries of the universe? I really don't know and there isn't much information available.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161207/
Softly Softly was a crime drama that had a nice long run of 269 episodes from 1966 to 1976. Originally a spin off of Z Cars, the name was changed to Softly Softly: Taskforce in the 70's. Very few of the 60's episodes survive and for all I know these are all of them. All 8 series of Taskforce are said to exist but they don't seem to be in circulation for the most part.
The quality of these files vary and would probably be enjoyed mostly by those really into the program, the genre or that period of television.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softly,_Softly_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softly,_Softly:_Taskforce
