Mark Taylor
Joe HeafnerI have a confession. In the '70s, watching Three's Company, it was Janet. It was always Janet. #70sTV
Sim BarrFlip Wilson & Tim Conway
Pirate Sketch, 1972
#flipwilson #timconway #theflipwilsonshow #comedysketch #pirates #comedy #seventiestv #tvland #70stv #varietyshow #theseventies #the70s
SandraThe Brady Bunch (1969): Then & Now — 57 Years Later… What Happened?
Here’s the story of a lovely lady and her growing brood. Nearly six decades since they moved into that famous split-level house, we explore the careers, personal triumphs, and lasting legacies of the six Brady kids.
#TheBradyBunch #70sTV #ClassicSitcom #BradyKids #TVHistory #ThenAndNow
https://www.timewarptv.org/the-brady-bunch-1969-then-now-57-years-later-what-happened/
Here’s the story of a lovely lady and her growing brood. Nearly six decades since they moved into that famous split-level house, we explore the careers, personal triumphs, and lasting legacies of the six Brady kids.
#TheBradyBunch #70sTV #ClassicSitcom #BradyKids #TVHistory #ThenAndNow
https://www.timewarptv.org/the-brady-bunch-1969-then-now-57-years-later-what-happened/
CognissartSpent a pleasant day chopping up coffee sacks kindly donated to me by Buxton Coffee Roasters. I had an abstract urge and used a bag from our regular coffee order for a little study which I hope to frame tomorrow. Does anyone remember Issy Noho? #ChildOfTheSeventies 🤣
@textileart
@fiberarts
#Art #FineArtInStitch #TextileArt #embroidery #fineart #ContemporaryArt #MastoArt #ArtistsOnMastodon #FediArt #artist #coffee #abstract #the70s #70sTV
November GrauSo I’ve come to the last episode of #TheOmegaFactor, “Illusions”. It’s a disappointment. That’s somewhat inevitable given that it’s a cliffhanger, made in the hope of a second series. A hope that was, of course, to be dashed by the agitations of Mary Whitehouse and co, who were unhappy about the amount of violence and disturbing paranormal content featured in the show, which came on before the watershed. So obviously there are no tying-ups of loose ends and the whole thing has an unresolved feel to it.
But what if you treat “Illusions” as if it were a mid-series episode? Well, it certainly has it strengths. The writers have brought in a whole new bunch of characters. This didn’t work well in “Powers of Darkness”, but the new faces in that episode were a gaggle of mimsy students. In this case, most of them are high-level spooks, plus a couple of Eastern Bloc scientist defectors everyone is attempting to seize, so things are a lot more grown-up.
This is also a great Martindale episode: he is finally called to account for his actions and we get to find out what makes him tick. John Carlisle’s performance doesn’t let us down. James Hazledine is a little bit overshadowed by it, as he doesn’t have much new to do: like his near-namesake Hazel Dean, he spends the whole time Searching, though the man he’s got to find himself is a missing boffin rather than a bed-warmer. Meanwhile, he’s messing things up big-style with his woman, as his suspicions about Anne drive a wedge between them. Some reviewers online don’t like the way Anne’s character is treated in these final episodes, since her immediate focus drifts from her research to her fraught love affair, but I disagree. Although you might not see her doing a lot of psychic-wrangling, her commitment to her career is stressed again and again in a way that was unusual for the time, and I think the denouement can be seen as very feminist.
And viewers who disapprove of the lady scientist getting her emotions all messed up can console themselves by contemplating the fate of anyone who tries to fuck with a lady spy. Spook supremo Mrs Arden (played by Shakespeare veteran Edith McArthur), is a beautiful, arch and sinister older woman with just a touch of ice; it’s not hard to imagine her as a bridge-playing aunt to Sapphire from Sapphire & Steel, though she’s less alien. You can just about picture her dominating a Britain in Bloom committee on a quiet night off. Which, of course, only makes her ruthless behaviour more distressing. And some of the stuff they get up to with their experimental subjects is very upsetting here, worse even than in the episode Child’s Play.
This introduction of a great new character only makes the termination of the series more annoying, of course. And overall, my sense of disappointment with this episode stems mainly from the lack of supernatural content or thrills in general. Call me old-fashioned, but even a cliff-hanger should have a bit more “oomph” in that department, and that cringeworthy Bacall and Bogart bit (which must surely have felt stale even in the 70s) is no substitute! Put YOUR lips together and blow, Hazeldine. Or better yet, secrete some ectoplasm. Come along now, I’m waiting.
#ScFi #Horror #Occult #70stv #CultTV
But what if you treat “Illusions” as if it were a mid-series episode? Well, it certainly has it strengths. The writers have brought in a whole new bunch of characters. This didn’t work well in “Powers of Darkness”, but the new faces in that episode were a gaggle of mimsy students. In this case, most of them are high-level spooks, plus a couple of Eastern Bloc scientist defectors everyone is attempting to seize, so things are a lot more grown-up.
This is also a great Martindale episode: he is finally called to account for his actions and we get to find out what makes him tick. John Carlisle’s performance doesn’t let us down. James Hazledine is a little bit overshadowed by it, as he doesn’t have much new to do: like his near-namesake Hazel Dean, he spends the whole time Searching, though the man he’s got to find himself is a missing boffin rather than a bed-warmer. Meanwhile, he’s messing things up big-style with his woman, as his suspicions about Anne drive a wedge between them. Some reviewers online don’t like the way Anne’s character is treated in these final episodes, since her immediate focus drifts from her research to her fraught love affair, but I disagree. Although you might not see her doing a lot of psychic-wrangling, her commitment to her career is stressed again and again in a way that was unusual for the time, and I think the denouement can be seen as very feminist.
And viewers who disapprove of the lady scientist getting her emotions all messed up can console themselves by contemplating the fate of anyone who tries to fuck with a lady spy. Spook supremo Mrs Arden (played by Shakespeare veteran Edith McArthur), is a beautiful, arch and sinister older woman with just a touch of ice; it’s not hard to imagine her as a bridge-playing aunt to Sapphire from Sapphire & Steel, though she’s less alien. You can just about picture her dominating a Britain in Bloom committee on a quiet night off. Which, of course, only makes her ruthless behaviour more distressing. And some of the stuff they get up to with their experimental subjects is very upsetting here, worse even than in the episode Child’s Play.
This introduction of a great new character only makes the termination of the series more annoying, of course. And overall, my sense of disappointment with this episode stems mainly from the lack of supernatural content or thrills in general. Call me old-fashioned, but even a cliff-hanger should have a bit more “oomph” in that department, and that cringeworthy Bacall and Bogart bit (which must surely have felt stale even in the 70s) is no substitute! Put YOUR lips together and blow, Hazeldine. Or better yet, secrete some ectoplasm. Come along now, I’m waiting.
#ScFi #Horror #Occult #70stv #CultTV
So we have now reached the penultimate ep of #TheOmegaFactor, ‘Double Vision”, and the screws are being turned on Tom Crane good and hard. He’s begun to see his dead wife on the streets of Edinburgh, and nobody takes him seriously. Not his compromised boss Martindale, not his conflicted girlfriend and colleague Anne, and certainly not creepy visiting academic Vashrevsky, who just happens to be at the department sharing details of his work on hallucinogen-augmented trance states and possession.
Vashrevsky annoyingly believes that no modern African is fully emancipated from such beliefs, but as the episode wears on it becomes clear that whitey, in the form of Tom Crane, is considered equally prone to the call of the occult. At one point Tom bursts into a lab room where a TV is blaring out footage of a tribal ritual soundtracked by the words “To appease the God, sacrifices must be given”. It’s clear who the sacrifice is here, but just who’s the God? Is it just gaslighting of colossal proportions? This is, after all, one of the most paranoid of all the shows of a paranoid decade of television.
I won’t spoil it for you, but this was another episode that’s all about relationships, with no special effects or ghostly stuff at all. There is, however, plenty of atmosphere, as we sense the noose narrowing around poor Tom’s neck, and possibly the most quietly eerie disco scene I’ve ever watched. Tom is shot from above, bumbling around on a sunken dancefloor in an otherwise dark nightclub, chasing after a glimpse of his wife. He’s making progress until ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” segues into Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”, an extremely well-chosen track, both for its lyrics and its quavery, swirly oddness (that singing-bowl vocal must have been so strange to the song’s early listeners). Needless to say, he doesn’t find her, and his patched sports coat certainly prevents him from pulling any other women.
When Anne mentions he’s been talking a lot in his sleep, we’re not surprised that she can’t tell him exactly what he’s been saying. Things have got seriously nebulous, and everyone around him is a suspect. Even the cupboards in Tom’s life have become dubious. His drawer in Anne’s room contains hypnotic medication he has no recollection of taking (yeah we’ve all been there), while her wardrobe features an unexplained wig (suddenly erupting wigs always ramp up the uncanny by a factor of a 1000), while his own late wife’s clothes are all missing from her old room. By the midpoint of the episode he’s floundering, and the viewer is shocked by the callous cruelty of Wardrobe, who dress him in a royal-blue towelling robe of appalling shortness just at the point when he most needs the reassurance of some dignified clothing (Anne, meanwhile, is swanning around in an elegant full-length dressing-gown. I suppose it’s a reversal of the usual gender stereotype, at least.)
But Tom is not going down without a fight! He’s soon back in his sports coat and dingy flares, pounding the mean streets to find his errant wife, dismaying day-for-night photography be damned. “I AM NOT HALLUCINATING!” he asserts, and as someone who’s said that a few times in exactly that tone and with exactly that level of success, I salute him.
#70stv #CultTV #ScFi #Horror #Occult #Ghosts
Vashrevsky annoyingly believes that no modern African is fully emancipated from such beliefs, but as the episode wears on it becomes clear that whitey, in the form of Tom Crane, is considered equally prone to the call of the occult. At one point Tom bursts into a lab room where a TV is blaring out footage of a tribal ritual soundtracked by the words “To appease the God, sacrifices must be given”. It’s clear who the sacrifice is here, but just who’s the God? Is it just gaslighting of colossal proportions? This is, after all, one of the most paranoid of all the shows of a paranoid decade of television.
I won’t spoil it for you, but this was another episode that’s all about relationships, with no special effects or ghostly stuff at all. There is, however, plenty of atmosphere, as we sense the noose narrowing around poor Tom’s neck, and possibly the most quietly eerie disco scene I’ve ever watched. Tom is shot from above, bumbling around on a sunken dancefloor in an otherwise dark nightclub, chasing after a glimpse of his wife. He’s making progress until ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” segues into Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”, an extremely well-chosen track, both for its lyrics and its quavery, swirly oddness (that singing-bowl vocal must have been so strange to the song’s early listeners). Needless to say, he doesn’t find her, and his patched sports coat certainly prevents him from pulling any other women.
When Anne mentions he’s been talking a lot in his sleep, we’re not surprised that she can’t tell him exactly what he’s been saying. Things have got seriously nebulous, and everyone around him is a suspect. Even the cupboards in Tom’s life have become dubious. His drawer in Anne’s room contains hypnotic medication he has no recollection of taking (yeah we’ve all been there), while her wardrobe features an unexplained wig (suddenly erupting wigs always ramp up the uncanny by a factor of a 1000), while his own late wife’s clothes are all missing from her old room. By the midpoint of the episode he’s floundering, and the viewer is shocked by the callous cruelty of Wardrobe, who dress him in a royal-blue towelling robe of appalling shortness just at the point when he most needs the reassurance of some dignified clothing (Anne, meanwhile, is swanning around in an elegant full-length dressing-gown. I suppose it’s a reversal of the usual gender stereotype, at least.)
But Tom is not going down without a fight! He’s soon back in his sports coat and dingy flares, pounding the mean streets to find his errant wife, dismaying day-for-night photography be damned. “I AM NOT HALLUCINATING!” he asserts, and as someone who’s said that a few times in exactly that tone and with exactly that level of success, I salute him.
#70stv #CultTV #ScFi #Horror #Occult #Ghosts
Well pressure of work and generalized Insania has made me fall behind on my reviewing schedule, but here are my thoughts on episode 8 of #TheOmegaFactor, “Out of Body, Out of Mind”.
I actually had to watch this one twice because I just kind of spaced out the first time around and couldn’t remember any of it from earlier viewings of the series. If this suggests to you that it isn’t the most gripping episode of the bunch, you’d be right, but it’s not without interest, just very talky. If you can keep up with the chat there’s a fair bit going on, with a lot of things coming together and the pressure ramping up. The focus this week is on the use of psychic sleeper agents who can be brainwashed and then activated to do Terrible Things on the international political stage, and though it’s not handled too badly (with only two different pronunciations of Hamish Mboto’s name! Cosmopolitan!) it’s the ongoing intrigues that make this episode compelling.
For most of the series Tom’s brother Mike has been recovering from a mental collapse of shadowy origins, and the realistic, unsensational depiction of severe mental illness and psychiatric care has been one of the strong points of the series. Well, in this episode Tom finally discovers more about the part his immediate boss Martindale (John Carlisle) has played in Mike’s breakdown. Martindale, who has maintained a pleasant, urbane surface throughout most of the series, now begins to really crack the whip, both in his sizzling confrontations with Tom and with his superiors. It suits him, I very much enjoyed his office full of beetle pictures (there always seems to be one just over Tom’s shoulder) and in future I will be aiming to respond to 90% of all questions put to me with the words “Sorry, Classified” in the polite, clipped, fuck-you-very-much tone Martindale deploys here.
This ep also offers Anne (Louise Jameson) a chance to shine. In the early episodes she’s a fairly bland figure, a Lady Scientist with a line in faintly smug flirting that feels right out of central casting for that era. But her character has become tougher and I enjoy the way she pushes back at Tom when he tries to get between her and her research (even though he’s not exactly doing it for misogynistic reasons). At the same time, their romance is still bubbling away, and I liked the hints you get from the camera and editing about the complicated nature of it all – after Tom suggests they run off together, the camera pans out to show them on the steps of a church, but it’s a great, hulking dark building in which you can imagine wedding bells sounding like the clanging chimes of doom. At one point the pair walk over a heart-shaped pattern of pavement slabs, but seconds later they’ve become separated by traffic and can hardly hear each other through the noise.
So yeah, this episode has an in-between feel to it, and I wasn’t bowled over by the main plot (or the dodgy astral travel special effect, or that one Omega agent moaning about the intolerable burden of having to sleep with Loftus Burton, like by all means allow me to relieve you of your duties Madam) but there was still a fair bit to enjoy, at least on second sight!
#SciFi #CultTV #70sTV #Horror #Supernatural
I actually had to watch this one twice because I just kind of spaced out the first time around and couldn’t remember any of it from earlier viewings of the series. If this suggests to you that it isn’t the most gripping episode of the bunch, you’d be right, but it’s not without interest, just very talky. If you can keep up with the chat there’s a fair bit going on, with a lot of things coming together and the pressure ramping up. The focus this week is on the use of psychic sleeper agents who can be brainwashed and then activated to do Terrible Things on the international political stage, and though it’s not handled too badly (with only two different pronunciations of Hamish Mboto’s name! Cosmopolitan!) it’s the ongoing intrigues that make this episode compelling.
For most of the series Tom’s brother Mike has been recovering from a mental collapse of shadowy origins, and the realistic, unsensational depiction of severe mental illness and psychiatric care has been one of the strong points of the series. Well, in this episode Tom finally discovers more about the part his immediate boss Martindale (John Carlisle) has played in Mike’s breakdown. Martindale, who has maintained a pleasant, urbane surface throughout most of the series, now begins to really crack the whip, both in his sizzling confrontations with Tom and with his superiors. It suits him, I very much enjoyed his office full of beetle pictures (there always seems to be one just over Tom’s shoulder) and in future I will be aiming to respond to 90% of all questions put to me with the words “Sorry, Classified” in the polite, clipped, fuck-you-very-much tone Martindale deploys here.
This ep also offers Anne (Louise Jameson) a chance to shine. In the early episodes she’s a fairly bland figure, a Lady Scientist with a line in faintly smug flirting that feels right out of central casting for that era. But her character has become tougher and I enjoy the way she pushes back at Tom when he tries to get between her and her research (even though he’s not exactly doing it for misogynistic reasons). At the same time, their romance is still bubbling away, and I liked the hints you get from the camera and editing about the complicated nature of it all – after Tom suggests they run off together, the camera pans out to show them on the steps of a church, but it’s a great, hulking dark building in which you can imagine wedding bells sounding like the clanging chimes of doom. At one point the pair walk over a heart-shaped pattern of pavement slabs, but seconds later they’ve become separated by traffic and can hardly hear each other through the noise.
So yeah, this episode has an in-between feel to it, and I wasn’t bowled over by the main plot (or the dodgy astral travel special effect, or that one Omega agent moaning about the intolerable burden of having to sleep with Loftus Burton, like by all means allow me to relieve you of your duties Madam) but there was still a fair bit to enjoy, at least on second sight!
#SciFi #CultTV #70sTV #Horror #Supernatural