VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 192 - TX JUNE 9 2024

06/09/24 • 59 min

STEVE HATCHER considers the TV life of HADLEIGH.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 9th 2024.

A few weeks ago on VISION ON SOUND, STEVE HATCHER took us on a brief tour through the television lives of several characters who were the kind of testosterone-fuelled monsters that used to inhabit the boardrooms and bedrooms of those high-profile dramas of the sixties and seventies whose dodgy dealings and shady shenanigans somehow came to define the notion of what the world of big business resembled for generations of viewers.

It was in VISION ON SOUND 186, if you are the kind of listener who might want to look that sort of thing up.

One character who was initially on that list ultimately didn’t manage to make the cut as he turned out - unexpectedly - to be rather too nice to be included on such a list, and that was JAMES HADLEIGH, as played by former ADAM ADAMANT GERALD HARPER, across four incredibly popular series of a show which was created by ROBERT BARR and ultimately consisted of 52 hour-long episodes (unsurprisingly titled HADLEIGH), which was produced by Yorkshire Television that ran across the ITV network between 1969 and 1976.

HADLEIGH told of the various ups and downs in the life of the local squire – something I’m sure we can all relate to - as he protects the welfare of his tenants in the role of a kind of knight in shining armour, correcting social injustices from behind the wheel of his Aston Martin as one description would have it, although it’s probably more about HADLEIGH’s financial trials and tribulations, and the ups and downs of a complicated personal life, all of which seemed to become compulsive viewing for anything up to 17 million viewers during the years that it was being broadcast.

Also, as STEVE will explain, the HADLEIGH series was itself a sequel to a very different hour-long drama series that was also created by ROBERT BARR and produced by YTV in 1968, GAZETTE, which was an altogether much harder-hitting and more working class drama based around the activities of a local newspaper based in the north.

Anyway, as STEVE’s now finished watching all of HADLEIGH’s televised adventures, he thought it might be fun to come back onto the show and discuss what he made of a series that he actually found quite compelling viewing despite it sounding like it really would not exactly be his cup of Earl Grey in a bone china teacup at all.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

STEVE HATCHER considers the TV life of HADLEIGH.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 9th 2024.

It was in VISION ON SOUND 186, if you are the kind of listener who might want to look that sort of thing up.

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VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 191 - TX JUNE 2 2024

PAUL CHANDLER considers his TV happiness.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 2nd 2024

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back once again for another of our cosy chats that might take the subject of television as its starting point, but then plays fast and loose with the self-imposed restrictions VISION ON SOUND has set itself.

I was in something of a downbeat, sombre mood when I arranged to talk to PAUL, and so I thought that I might try something slightly more philosophical than our usual run through his most recent archive TV discoveries, or something fresh, new, and exciting that he was going to try and persuade me of the virtues of, and, instead, I thought that I might try and get PAUL to help me pin down what it is about the kind of television he watches, or his interest in the subject of television itself, that brings joy and happiness into his world, in another of our experimental formats that are usually for one week only.

As ever, by the end of the hour, I’m not sure that we come to any real conclusions really, but PAUL takes us on a very personal journey through the friendships that he has made by sharing his love of certain television shows with other people, and tells us a little bit about some of the creative elements in his life that have come about from simply having an interest in the process of making television.

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy what he has to say in this week’s edition, and, should our conversation inspire you to want to take part in a similar discussion, feel free to get in touch with me via @visiononsound1 in the social media service formerly known as TwitWorld.

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VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 193 - TX JUNE 16 2024

MICHAEL HERBERT on DOOMWATCH.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 16th 2024.

This week’s returning guest from our ever growing group of returning regulars is MICHAEL HERBERT who, you might remember from some earlier editions of VISION ON SOUND, has spent a lot of the last few years researching the life of MALCOLM HULKE, which, of course, because everything in the world of television is all interconnected somehow, means that he comes across other things that interest him, and he got in touch to see if I fancied having a natter about DOOMWATCH.

Now, despite rumours to the contrary, I absolutely adore DOOMWATCH. Perhaps it’s because it simply appeals to my own inflated sense of pessimism, but there’s just something very entertaining about a television series built around the potential disasters that humanity is capable of causing through its own hubris if we allow ourselves to go ahead with our experimentations unchecked and without a certain amount of accountability, and there is an enduring appeal to the stories it told more than half a century ago, many of which still feel very relevant today, when some of the actions of governments and individuals really do feel as if they still need reining in.

Created by DR KIT PEDLER and GERRY DAVIS following their successful collaborations on DOCTOR WHO, and broadcast on the BBC across three series between 1970 and 1972, DOOMWATCH explored new and unusual threats to humanity which were appearing in many ways, as the human race was busily developing the white heat of technology in the post-nuclear age, in a series of stories involving subjects as diverse as plastic-eating viruses, artificial hearts, toxic waste, and rats with a genetically enhanced taste for human flesh.

The series involved the dramatic experiences of the fictional DEPARTMENT FOR THE OBSERVATION AND MEASUREMENT OF SCIENTIFIC WORK – You can see why they preferred to use DOOMWATCH as a title – as they attempted to protect the world from the dangers of unprincipled scientific research, as they were set up “to investigate any scientific research, public or private, that could possibly be harmful to man” which basically meant that DOCTOR SPENCER QUIST and his team were often irritants to those who were heavily invested in the steady march of progress.

No change there then.

Starring JOHN PAUL, JOBY BLANCHARD and SIMON OATES, amongst others, the series made a star of ROBERT POWELL, whose character TOBY WREN’s untimely demise at the end of the first series sent shockwaves through the pages of the RADIO TIMES in a way that the serious concerns being talked about in the storylines seldom did.

It may surprise you just how many of the stories told in this series seem to be about things humanity has only recently begun to have concerns about, when the writers involved were trying to warn us about it decades ago, but, well, that’s human beings for you, isn’t it?