VISION ON SOUND

LISA PARKER on DIXON OF DOCK GREEN and more! This week’s returning guest from our panel of returning regulars is LISA PARKER from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES podcast who volunteered to take part in another of our more random chats which sometimes happen when there’s not much going on in the wider world of ever decreasing telly appreciation circles, at least nothing much that I’m paying all that much attention to. But things have been getting rather exciting lately with regards to the rediscovery of missing television, and whilst we can’t quite get the flags and bunting out because the entire missing ABC archive hasn’t turned up, there are still those occasional golden nuggets that are found that give some of us jaded old hands just a little bit of hope that there are indeed still many archive TV gems to be found out there. And so, knowing that LISA is a big fan of crime dramas, and has been something of a champion when it comes to advocating just how good DIXON OF DOCK GREEN is in the face of much suggestion of its perceived air of cosiness (often from many who’ve never bothered to watch it), it was something of a joy when TPTV announced the discovery of DUFFY CALLS THE TUNE from its fifth series in 1959, one of those finds from the missing episodes of 1950s telly that are just about as rare as hen’s teeth, and unfortunately, mess with the previously neat mathematics of missing DIXONS. Perhaps more amazing too is the fact that TPTV were allowed to actually broadcast the episode very quickly after its discovery, and make it available to all of exactly the sort of viewers who are most eager to see such newly rediscovered gems. So anyway, with LISA (and, you may notice, a sleeping cat) in place, it didn’t take long before we got talking about this find, DIXON OF DOCK GREEN in general, and several other topics across a free-flowing hour of exactly the kind of telly-related chat that VISION ON SOUND is here to provide. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 26th 2024 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.

SANDY McGREGOR considers those ROCK FOLLIES. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 19th 2024 This week SANDY McGREGOR returns and, wearing his incisive musical expertise hat, he’s going to talk us through the various madnesses that are the ROCK FOLLIES, a BAFTA award-winning drama series about the experiences of women in the music business which starred CHARLOTTE CORNWELL as ANNA, JULIE COVINGTON as DEE, and RULA LENSKA as Q, a series which was made by THAMES TELEVISION, first broadcast in 1976, with a sequel ROCK FOLLIES OF 77 the following year. 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 looks at some of the more obscure 1960s sitcoms. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 12th 2024 This week, STEVE HATCHER returns and we’re going to start a short occasional series in which STEVE talks about some of the more obscure or forgotten sitcoms of the 1960s. Whilst we’re all probably rather over familiar with the more famous sitcoms of that era, the likes of HANCOCK”S HALF HOUR, STEPTOE AND SON, and DAD”S ARMY were all on TV during that decade, and rightly went on to become mainstays of the conversations we as a nation often have about the comedy of that era, we do sometimes neglect many of the lesser known TV comedies that were on during that rather innovative decade. Several have, of course, been quite rightly forgotten because they were awful, and many suffer from the problem that is the bane in the lives of many archive TV enthusiasts, in that they were largely wiped, but, as STEVE explains, amongst the ones that do at least partially survive, there’s rather a lot of largely forgotten TV gold to be found. Well, I say forgotten, but this week’s selection include several very familiar and even rather iconic TV sitcom titles, but I do sometimes suspect that even these are largely forgotten in the wider world as they are all from the nineteen sixties, were mostly shot in black and white, and haven’t enjoyed quite as much exposure over the years as some of the more well-known comedies of the 1970s have enjoyed as their repeats endlessly cycle around. So today we’ll be talking about the demob happy BOOTSIE AND SNUDGE, the workplace trials of THE RAG TRADE, the domestic travails of MARRIAGE LINES, and the age old battles of GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, along with a few other shows that happen to get mentioned along the way. STEVE’s drawn up a list of around fourteen of these kinds of shows for us to talk about, and, given that this first hour only covered around four of them, I suspect that we will be returning to the topic at least a couple more times as the year rolls along, so you’ve all got that to look forward to over the coming weeks. 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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, returns with some telly set in the middle of nowhere. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 5th 2024 This week, because he felt like getting away from it all, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and, in coming on this show, he’s obviously picked exactly the right place to do it. Well, perhaps not, but PAUL has been watching several shows that he realised were basically set in the middle of nowhere, and, as such, thought that they might make for a pleasant edition of VISION ON SOUND, so here we find ourselves chattering about a rather eclectic mixture of shows both old and new including SURVIVOR, A MURDER AT THE END OF THE WORLD, DEATH AND OTHER DETAILS, and TREASURE HUNT, as well as a whole life-raft of other stuff that gets bunged into the mix whenever we get going. Anyway, it makes for a fun hour of telly related chat, and I really hope that you enjoy it as much as we did. 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 some TELEVISION MONSTERS (but maybe not the ones you were expecting) First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 28th 2024 Today on VISION ON SOUND, “HERE BE MONSTERS!” as the saying goes, but not necessarily the kind of monsters that you might be expecting. Well, they certainly weren’t the ones that I was expecting when our regular contributor STEVE HATCHER got in touch and told me that he wanted to do a show on the theme of monsters. After all, amongst other things, STEVE is very much one of the movers and shakers of DOCTOR WHO fandom, and so I kind of assumed that those sort of monsters were the ones that he most probably had in mind, although, as I was reaching out to grab my copy of the monster book, he explained that he had the more human kind of monster in mind, the kind of testosterone-fuelled monsters that used to inhabit the offices, boardrooms and bedrooms of those high-profile dramas of the sixties and seventies which used to clog up our TV screens with ambitious pant-dropping capitalist anti-heroes involving themselves in dodgy deals and shady shenanigans that somehow came to define the notion of what the world of big business resembled for generations of viewers. And so, in today’s show we involve ourselves in a whistle-stop tour of the melodramatic corporate power games of THE POWER GAME, MOGUL, THE TROUBLESHOOTERS, THE MAIN CHANCE, MAN AT THE TOP, and HINE, and a couple of others that get mentioned along the way. So, let’s take a trip into a toxic world of back-stabbing, ladder-climbing power-grabs, where everyone is out to get to the very top by any means necessary… 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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI talks about THE TRAITORS First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 21st 2024 This week, VISION ON SOUND moves into uncharted territory… Or does it? Certainly our main topic this week is not the kind of thing that we usually talk about on the show, as it’s a programme that’s shiny and new, and pretty much up to the minute, and is something that you might even regard as “trendy” if you were of a mind to do so. And whilst the realms of the kind of television that is grabbing the headlines right now, and leading to the sort of public conversations that usually set my eyes a-rolling are really not our normal subject matter hereabouts, do bear with me, because not everything is as it might seem. Unless it is, of course. This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself really, really wanted to talk about latest blockbuster TV game show that “everyone” (in inverted commas) has been talking about: THE TRAITORS, because he’s been watching a lot of it, in several variant forms, over the past few weeks, and might possibly be said to have got somewhat addicted, and maybe even a little evangelical about it. Anyway, if someone is happy to come onto the show and talk about anything that can quite reasonably be said to be at least vaguely related to television, I’m not going to stop them, even if they want to talk about a television series that I’ve not seen any episodes of. To be quite honest with you, sometimes those shows where I’m having a programme described and explained to me by someone who is a fan make for the most fun and exciting editions of VISION ON SOUND anyway. Luckily for me, our conversation also manages to take in such joys as older game shows like TREASURE HUNT, THE INTERCEPTOR, BIG BROTHER and SURVIVOR, and we do also try (in a small way) to examine the psychology of what makes such shows quite so appealing to people who do happen to like such things, whilst wondering just what tricks ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE may one day have in store for the unwary gameshow contestant. Now, normally, the telly that we are talking about on this show is often so old that spoilers are not something that are likely to be an issue, however, despite me hanging on to this recording for several weeks since we recorded it, I still ought to warn you that there might be one or two things talked about during this hour that you might not yet want to hear if you are still planning to give one or more versions of THE TRAITORS a try, so you have been warned! 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.

LISA PARKER considers the series SHADOW OF THE NOOSE First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 14th 2024 This week, LISA PARKER, one half of the team behind the ROUND THE ARCHIVES podcast returns to VISION ON SOUND to talk about a series that combines her love of television dramas about Law and Order with her love of period dramas. The series is SHADOW OF THE NOOSE, an eight part series which was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1989 which does that tricky thing of building a drama series set around the background of true life events, but which also presents fictionalised versions of some of the real people once involved. In this series we are presented with JONATHAN HYDE playing the celebrated defence lawyer SIR EDWARD MARSHALL HALL, who had a formidable reputation as an orator, and who successfully defended many people accused of murder in many high profile cases that occurred in the late VICTORIAN and EDWARDIAN eras, some of which remain notorious even to this day, and, because of the harsh penalties that were in place during those times, most of such cases did often have, as the series suggests, the shadow of the noose looming over them, at least as far as the defendants were concerned. Despite being well-regarded at the time, a second series was never commissioned, so, unfortunately, some of the more notorious cases that SIR EDWARD defended were not covered by this ground-breaking legal drama series, but that does not reduce the legacy of the programme, especially in more recent times, as almost any well-known murder case from history seems to still be a source of endless fascination to modern viewers. It’s always a joy to welcome back LISA, whose research into these shows is always pretty comprehensive, by the way – which always pleases me. Here she presents the case for the defence whilst representing this, perhaps often overlooked, and fascinating case study of a life lived in the legal spotlight in what could possibly nowadays be considered to be a somewhat obscure archive TV drama series. 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.

WARREN CUMMINGS pays tribute to LAURIE JOHNSON First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 7th 2024 Last time we had him on the show, WARREN CUMMINGS turned up with a whole load of notes on the career of a great film & tv music composer that we ended up not using, so it only seemed fair to use them this week instead as VISION ON SOUND pays tribute to the late, great LAURIE JOHNSON.   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 on the multiple TV adaptations of DRACULA First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 31st 2024 This week, STEVE HATCHER wanted to talk about, amongst other things, four distinct television adaptations of Bram Stoker’s book DRACULA, so that’s exactly what we did. So let’s set those FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL Time Engines to “GOTHIC” and take a trip to the dark side… 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.

WARREN CUMMINGS discusses some of the grim reaper's recent work... First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 24th 2024 We don’t often acknowledge the work of the Grim Reaper on VISION ON SOUND, but with Arabella Weir spooking me with talk of SNIPER’S ALLEY on the Christmas GONE FISHING, and the scythe striking down so many TV icons in the past few months, I thought I’d get together with WARREN CUMMINGS to chat about the TV lives of a few of them. So why not sit back as we remember such great names as DAVID SOUL, DAVID McCALLUM, MICHAEL GAMBON, BRIDGET FORSYTH, ANDRE BRAUGHER, and LANCE REDDICK over the next hour which I promise you isn’t half as maudlin as you might fear, although sadly, our FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL time machine can’t bring any of them back… 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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, on guilt-free TV. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 17th 2024 This week we welcome back one of our more regular contributors to the show, PAUL CHANDLER, the SHY YETI himself, hotfooting it over from his endless production routine of making THE SHY LIFE podcast. For this show, I decided to give PAUL a prompt to give us something to talk about, and this was due to the fact that one of the streaming services that I use at home offered me an option of watching some GUILT-FREE TV and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think that I was particularly sure what it even meant by that. Did it mean that I could just watch a whole chunk of it without feeling guilty at quite how much time I was wasting? Or was it offering me permission to watch a whole selection of the type of television that I might never feel comfortable in admitting to watching? Or was it referring to some other, more sinister possibilities in the line of popular entertainment…? Whichever it was getting at, I swiftly mistranslated its purpose as being all about those guilty televisual pleasures that might not be popular choices if you happened to mention them in polite company, and then realised just how little time I actually spent in polite company anyway. So, the upshot of all that pointless introspection is that I decided that PAUL was exactly the person I should choose to talk about this stuff, and that became the prompt for our programme this evening, and, even if I suspect we very swiftly moved away from that as the main thrust of what we ended up talking about, I think that the conversation we actually did have did, ultimately, still make for a fairly fascinating hour of telly-related chat, which is, of course, what we always try to bring you here on VISION ON SOUND. 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.

TYLER ADAMS explores the roots of his GOONPOD podcast. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 10th 2024 This week we welcome another new voice to VISION ON SOUND in the form of TYLER ADAMS, although his won’t be an unfamiliar voice to you at all, if you happen to be a listener to his phenomenally successful GOON POD podcast, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, takes as its starting point the 1950s BBC radio comedy series THE GOON SHOW, and has attracted many brilliant people to expand and expound upon the show’s impact into all sorts of worlds beyond. But I found myself asking what what what what what was it that led a young lad who grew up on the other side of the world in New Zealand, far away from the hallowed halls of the BBC, to form such an enthusiastic connection to this British show which was made long before he was even a twinkle in a farmer’s eye, and I think you’ll find his story, steeped as it is in a whole host of British sitcom classics, a fascinating one… 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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI revisits the video age. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 3rd 2024 This week one of my more regular guests on VISION ON SOUND, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and we’re going to take a nostalgic meander that starts off with a few reflections on what it was like growing up in the video age, or rather, growing up in an era when we consumed our films and, perhaps to a lesser extent, television – at least as far as the video rental shops were concerned – via the medium of videotape. But, of course, because it’s PAUL and I, we also meander off into topics like how we consume such media in more recent times, too, the whole world of collecting physical media, PAUL’S own dalliances with television production, and we even give a mention to his pet cat Deeley, and his efforts to sabotage PAUL’S viewing and editing routines… So, why not join us as we head back to an age of chunky buttons, programming, top-loading, and VHS… 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 Rivals of Hercule Poirot First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 25th 2024 This week STEVE HATCHER returns and wants to talk to me about what he calls THE RIVALS OF HERCULE POIROT, and, I think we’ll just let him explain what that might be as we go along… But, as it includes two television versions of LORD PETER WIMSEY, CAMPION, and THE MRS BRADLEY MYSTERIES, I think you’re all in for a very interesting evening of classic sleuthing… 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.

LISA PARKER looks at the various variants of LAW & ORDER... First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 18th 2024 This week we welcome back LISA PARKER from the ROUND THE ARCHIVES PODCAST and we’re going to have a bit of a natter about one of my favourite USTV shows, the phenomenally successful LAW AND ORDER, the recently revived crime series that launched a franchise consisting of a whole raft of spin-offs, and we’ll also be talking about its UK counterpart unsurprisingly called LAW AND ORDER UK 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.

WARREN CUMMINGS and I have a grumpy old hour... First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 11th 2024 It’s been suggested to me recently that AGEISM has become the last prejudice that television seems happy to tolerate. In an era when inclusivity and tolerance of all kinds of people has quite rightly finally become the norm on TV, it still appears to be apparently quite okay to mock the elderly in advertising, dramas, comedies, and everyday life. Now it’s sometimes been said that when WARREN CUMMINGS and I get together on the show, it’s like we become the grumpiest of grumpy old men, so who better, I thought, to consider this topic with me? But, of course, because we’re both very old, and likely to drift off topic, the following hour drifts into all sorts of the sort of other television-related grumbles, which may prove that they do have a point. 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.

ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON on THUNDERBIRDS First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 4th 2024 This week ANDREW-MARK THOMPSON wanted to talk about the exciting and colourful GERRY & SYLVIA ANDERSON produced series from the mid-1960s "THUNDERBIRDS," so… well, that's exactly what we did, and, without a fast-cutting montage of highlights of this week's episode, I think you'll enjoy it. 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.

SANDY McGREGOR on MR BATES VS THE POST OFFICE First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 28th 2024 We don’t often deal with all that much outrage in the generally cosy world of VISION ON SOUND, where often the most controversial opinion I make is about whether a fifty year old television series is still acceptable for modern viewing, how certain shows came to be wiped, or disagreeing with my guests as to whether certain TV shows can be considered to be absolute rubbish or not, or whether we should, perhaps, only award that dubious accolade to anything produced in the last ten years or so. Equally, we don’t often consider much in the way of modern or recent television to come under what we loosely call our watching brief. And yet, because a certain recent ITV television drama has been causing a lot of discussion, and indeed outrage, I felt that we couldn’t really ignore it for twenty years in the hope that it might become worthy of our attention. So, having already borrowed - and devoured - his copy of the book THE GREAT POST OFFICE SCANDAL by NICK WALLIS, I invited SANDY McGREGOR back onto the show to have a chat about the implications of the recently broadcast powerful four-part drama series MR BATES VERSUS THE POST OFFICE, the story of what has been called one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British History, written by GWYNETH HUGHES and directed by JAMES STRONG, which starred TOBY JONES alongside MONICA DOLAN and JULIE HESMONDHALGH as some of the “little people” doggedly and determinedly pursuing justice by taking on the POST OFFICE in a two decade battle to clear the names of over five hundred of his fellow sub-postmasters in a story which, finally, largely because of the broadcast of this production, has rightly been front and centre in the news agenda. And whilst neither of us can claim any insights or personal involvement with the story, other than having taken a keen interest in it, and reading rather a lot about it, as well as discussing the series itself, our discussion does try to consider the power of television to occasionally make great positive changes happen, so we do briefly consider some of the – surprisingly few - other TV shows that can claim to have actually changed lives, and wonder just why it is that an important news story such as this somehow failed to make the same kind of impact in documentary form as it managed to as a drama series, and whether in future, that might be the only way any of us are likely to get the rest of the population to take much interest in some of the important things that are happening but which remain largely ignored. 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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, is back to discuss TV ghosts... First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 21st 2024 This week we welcome back PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, that prolific podcaster from his very own THE SHY LIFE podcast, and we’re going to talk about GHOSTS, but probably not the GHOSTS that you might think we are. Because, whilst we ought to note the passing of that much-loved sitcom of recent years on VISION ON SOUND - and who knows, perhaps on another week we will – our topic today is more about the ghosts that have appeared on other television shows that we have enjoyed over the years. So whilst PAUL and I will be having a general chat about the subject, we will be touching upon RANDALL AND HOPKIRK (DECEASED) in both of its incarnations, PAUL’s perennial favourite DARK SHADOWS, the RICHARD CARPENTER classic THE GHOSTS OF MOTLEY HALL, taking a brief sideways trip into the TWILIGHT ZONE, considering the supernatural elements of SAPPHIRE AND STEEL, pulling off the mask of another janitor with the SCOOBY-DOO gang, chattering about some of those GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS, and even making brief references to Nigel Kneale’s classic THE STONE TAPE. Not that we’re going into any great depth about any of these shows, as every one of them could be worthy of an hour all to itself – and will be if any listeners fancy joining me to talk about any or all of them. Instead PAUL and I are just meandering through some of those dark places beyond the mortal realm, and lifting the veil briefly to take the merest glimpse into those worlds beyond, and our human interpretations of what they might be. 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 is back to guide us over to the flipside... First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 14th 2024 What better way to welcome in another year than to take a time travelling journey to the flipside? We’re another year nearer to the future, and one further away from the television that we tend to talk about the most here on VISION ON SOUND. Anyway, to start us off on our latest brand new shiny adventure, this week we welcome back STEVE HATCHER, and we’re going to talk about a pair of eccentric entries from the later era of PLAY FOR TODAY that rather flew in the face of some of the more usual type of stories that tended to get told in that series, by being rather clever little SCIENCE FICTION time-travel tales attempted on a BBC budget. These were the 1980 play THE FLIPSIDE OF DOMINICK HIDE and its sequel from two years later ANOTHER FLIP FOR DOMINICK, which told tales of a time-travelling future society visiting the strange and mysterious world of the 1980s, and the interesting outcomes that such visits caused. Starring, amongst others, PETER FIRTH, CAROLINE LANGRISHE, PIPPA GUARD, and PATRICK MAGEE, the plays were written by JEREMY PAUL and ALAN GIBSON, from an idea by ALAN GIBSON, who also directed, so it was very much a labour of love for them, and certainly the original play was a very well received example of the sweeter side of science-fiction storytelling, and has some strange connections with some other pop culture icons, as STEVEN will explain. 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.