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Why yes, that is BLAKE AND TWO. HANGING OUT. IN WALES. MY CAPSLOCK IS ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED. Bonus Trout in comments for the unbelievers!
How the hell did I never see this at the time? 1987, ITV, crazypants Nazis from 'Anglia' in black helicopters trying to defeat the citizens of 'the north' while being harassed by Welsh rebels. (CASTING GARETH THOMAS AS A WELSH GUNRUNNING REBEL? CRIVENS!) There are 13 episodes and I've only seen one, but we've already had:
- awesome credits with a burning Union flag and some marching jackboots
- Julian Fellowes (with hair!)
- a youthful Welsh hero called Gervase, who is now pretending to be called Llewellyn Ap Griffiths to prove how completely and entirely Welsh and heroic he is
- a quarry
- the only kid in the entire story getting killed off, despite this being kids' telly
- Paul 'The Castellan' Jerrico
- Nigel 'old bloke in loads of things including Time-Flight' Stock
- the immortal line 'You will go to Caernarfon when I tell you and not before!'
- BLAKE AND THE TROUT OMG
Has anyone else seen this wondrous thing? I'd never even heard of it till kind friend sent me a dodgy tv rip. I foresee many happy hours of not going to Caernarfon in my future.
- Mood:
amused
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Comments
...is win, yeah. It's so sad that this is such an obscure piece of telly, because more people need to see it. It's good stuff.
The TV rip is horrible, but I suspect a dvd's fairly unlikely: stuff made by no-longer-existing bits of ITV and written by bloke who never did anything else = tragically never to see light of day. Yay for the internets!
And you're right--back in those days, they still did some challenging, hardcore stuff and expected kids/young adults to have brains. After the mid-eighties, dark and intense stuff like that has almost completely disappeared off the telly. Everything has to be nice and fluffy and not too scary and blah. Hooray for archive telly! And yay for internets indeed.
80s kids telly was quite loony, yes. I watched Survival a while back and was really struck by how self-consciously political it was, in a manner you'd never even try now. It was quite craply self-consciously political, obviously, but props for effort. :)
This looks quite epic though, wow.
I think you'd quite love it. It's definitely more B7 than Sapphire & Steel. The accents are really fucking incomprehensible, though, and I say this as a card-carrying Welsh person.
I don't have any Blake's 7 icons, waaaah. :(
Email me at snowgrouse at sci dot fi, and give me your email addy and I'll invite you back in:)!
Ta for icon link, I foresee much ridiculously-costumed glee.
I'm torn between wanting to see it and running shrieking in terror because OH MY FUCKING LORD the Trout looks like my father there. Especially the buggy eyes if he's had to hit the asthma medication hard. Uncannily so.
So much so that my first reaction on seeing it was "wtf? Dad?"
*traumatised*
My mate says it gets really dull and slow, but possibly he doesn't watch quite as much 80s telly as me. Or get so excited about being able to shout 'the Castellan!' and the like. I might try and up the first one somewhere if people are interested, though.
I think he somehow went from Moses to Methuselah.
STOP IT, TROUT. STOP IT.
Boo you and your lack of downloadability! No dvd, alas, but I can post you it if you like (and do not mind giving me your address, which obviously I wouldn't use for nefarious non-bonkers-80s-kids-telly-dissemination purposes).