Gareth Preston's Blog, page 7

Very British Futures – The Nightmare Man

The Nightmare Man was one of the first titles I wanted to cover with this podcast series, however finding the guests to talk about it proved harder than I expected. It seems this BBC SF/Horror serial is even more obscure than I thought and quite a few of the people I thought had seen it and would like to talk about it, revealed themselves unaware of it. Happily Ian Taylor, who I had met through amateur dramatics, was a big fan. So much so that he had created a horror discussion group on Facebook...

Very British Futures – Threads

A definite change of tone for this episode and possibly the most serious drama I’ll be covering in the series. Not to mention being a BAFTA award winning production. Threads is Mick Jackson and Barry Hines’ coal-black spectre at the feast of television. A dramatic portrayal of the effect of nuclear war on Britain, including the then new theory of a nuclear winter. What makes Threads such a shocking watch is not the graphic radiation injuries, the shootings or the wrecked towns and cities, it is ...

Very British Futures – Star Cops

Star Cops is a series which has grown on me over the years. When it was first shown on BBC2 back in 1987, I watched it but left with the impression it was distinctly average. In trying to get away from one set of SF clichés, it had ended up embracing a whole bag of detective tropes instead. Years later I bought the VHS videos at a charity store and viewing it again it seemed a lot stronger and cleverer than my 21 year old self had given it credit for.

When I was canvasing friends for what TV ...

Very British Futures – Max Headroom 20 Minutes Into the Future

Somewhere in the world between the USA and Europe is a city ruled by television, where gangs roam the dirty streets, the rich live in skyscraper fortresses, life is cheap and technology is a retrofitted mix of hi-tech computer networks and 20th century junk. It’s world in need of a hero, but what its going to get is a video celebrity who’s not even real – or is he? 20 Minutes Into the Future has no right to be as great as it is. Designed to launch a new pop video show on Channel 4, it’s a pop ro...

Doctor Who Most Wanted Episode One

Shortly before I started out making my own podcast series, I took part in Nigel J Anderson’s own video podcast Doctor Who Most Wanted, alongside Brian M Clarke. The same line-up would meet again online a couple of weeks later to record the first episode of Very British Futures.

, Nigel

Now that podcast is available on Youtube and I urge you to watch, especially if you have been enjoying Very British Futures. The focus of this episode is on reconstructions of missing episodes, both official...

Very British Futures – The Uninvited

The Nineties were a busy time for SF television, just not for British voices. Whilst the success in syndication of Star Trek: The Next Generation ushered in a purple patch for US television – The X-Files, Deep Space Nine, Stargate SG1 and countless short-lived shows with a range of quality, it seemed to me that the UK lost confidence in the genre once Doctor Who was cancelled (bar the one-off 1996 TV Movie). It’s noticeable that a lot of what was produced by TV companies in this decade for peakt...

Son of Terror

Grisly, lurid artwork. An array of horror fiends, both classic and original. Yes it is the return of Rik Hoskin, Tim Brown and Chatri Ahpornsiri’s labour of love Terror Trumps a card game which is also a homage to the classic Seventies Top Trumps Horror packs. I wrote about this project a few months ago. Now I’m the proud possessor (ho ho) of the enhanced version 2.0. Not only do many of the cards feature fresh characters and new art, but each carries a witty description by Rik too. Plus they’ve...

Very British Futures – Star Maidens

Star Maidens is exactly the kind of show I originally set this podcast up for. Not quite a lost show, but certainly an obscure one, at a time when there was not that much SF on mainstream television that was not Doctor Who or from the Gerry Anderson stable. A British-German co-production, it’s certainly got a lot of problems in both concept and execution, but there’s some interesting ideas in there and for a relatively low-budget production, the world of Medusa is quite impressive thanks to Keit...

Very British Futures – The Tripods

One of the benefits of inviting different combinations of guests on to each episode is that you get a variety of tones. It keeps it fresh and surprising. This episode, covering the BBC Eighties series The Tripods, for example welcomes Andrew Roe-Crines to the guest sofa, along with regular contributor Kevin Hiley. Andrew is a senior university academic and he brings a certain thoughtfulness and rigor to his answers. Combined with Kevin’s great enthusiasm for this programme, it results in our dee...

Monsters’ Inn

I was checking the stats for this website yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see that the short vampire story When the Bells Ring Out I uploaded before Christmas has been downloaded 49 times, which by the standards of this blog makes it practically a runaway bestseller. So it’s encouraged me to dust off another from the Monsters talking book CD release.

Monsters’ Inn is a shorter, much more lighthearted piece than When the Bells Ring Out. Written by Mark Simpson, read by Mark Kalita an...