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Happy Holidays adapted from Hattie by Andy Merriman The Hathaways, Head of the Class & He and She 2010 Mike Spadoni All articles are copyright © Television Heaven or their individual authors where stated |
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Happy Holidays adapted from Hattie by Andy Merriman The Hathaways, Head of the Class & He and She 2010 Mike Spadoni All articles are copyright © Television Heaven or their individual authors where stated |
Short lived but lively musical series based on 'The Wizard Of Oz' and starring Jack Wilde, who had shot to fame as The Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's Oscar winnig film 'Oliver.' In the opening episode, Jimmy (Wilde) and his magic talking flute named Freddie are lured to a fantasy land in a beautiful boat which is then shipwrecked by the nasty sorceress Witchiepoo, who is intent on stealing the instrument. Luckily, the dragon mayor of Living Island, H.R. Pufnstuf, spotted the boy in distress and sent his Rescue Racer team to bring him ashore. Thereafter, Jimmy shared a series of adventures in the company of Judy the Frog, Cling and Clang, Ludicrous Lion and Dr. Blinky. Although Witchiepoo scuppered all of Jimmy's attempts to leave the island, she never got her hands on the flute. The non-human characters were represented by life-size puppets and the entire series was made to the most highest of production values. A feature film was released in 1970.
There have been three attempts to kill Lew Burnett. After the third attempt Burnett decides to stay ‘dead’ - so that he can stay alive. Burnett, owner of an international construction company, begins scouring his past to find out who hated, loved or envied him enough to want him out of the way for good; he is not running from his enemies but trying to draw them out. Undercover and on borrowed time, he has been given a second chance at life. In this state of transition - symbolised by the Hanged Man of the Tarot - he can no longer fall back on his money or influence, just the wits and hands with which he built up his own small empire. In the process, he is forced to confront some painful truths. In an exceptional performance, acclaimed RSC player and character actor Colin Blakely stars as Lew Burnett alongside Michael Williams as Alan Crowe and Gary Watson as hired assassin John Quentin. This powerful eight-part thriller series also features guest appearances from Jane Seymour, Gareth Hunt, James Grout and Frederick Jaeger, and is scripted by Edmund Ward, whose previous credits include The Power Game and The Main Chance. Ward found inspiration for the series in his own experiences in the often morally dubious world of international construction; The Hanged Man is both a story of self-discovery, and a journey into dark places where the global reach of money ultimately holds the power of life or death.
Comedy serial written by Peter Ling (co-creator of Compact and Crossroads) made by the BBC Children's Television department and broadcast throughout the school holidays of 1954. In it, real life husband and wife John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques play Mr and Mrs Mulberry - a childless couple, who, for the summer, look after four children whose own parents are in Ceylon. When the Mulberry's London flat proves to be too small to accomodate all of them they take off for the seaside where the action takes place at the end of a disused pier. Clive Dunn also appeared in the series as the suitably named Mr Grimble. The studio scenes were filmed at the BBC's Lime Grove studios and the exterior seaside scenes were shot on location at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. The six episodes were shown fortnightly on Saturday afternoons between July and September.
Written by future IBA Director-General John Whitney and Geoffrey Bellman, Harpers West One - subtitled Shopping With The Lid Off, took viewers behind the scenes at a busy, but fictional, West End department store employing around 4,000 staff. Said Whitney: "Customers rarely think about the life and organisation of a store. In Harpers we hope to show a department store with the lid off, and in doing this bring to light the dramas and comedies that go on behind the smooth service. We built Harpers on information from many of London's leading stores. The characters are 'real,' the carpet is plush, the atmosphere is authentic..." Most of the concentration for the drama was set on the sixth floor offices. Jan Holden (pictured behind Vivian Pickles) played widowed personnel officer Harriet Carr, PR man Mike Gilmore was played by Tristram Jelinek, male staff controller Edward Cruickshank was played by Graham Crowden. Chairman of the board, Aubrey Harper was played by Arthur Hewlett. The store closed its doors after two series but before that it was responsible in lifting 1961's Johnny Remember Me to the top of the pop charts - after singer John Leyton turned up in the series singing it - as fictional pop-star Johnny St Cyr.
A Cabinet minister is gunned down outside his home in London by a member of the Provisional IRA. Security protocols come into immediate effect, but the assassin evades them and manages to get back to Belfast unscathed. The military send in Captain Harry Brown - a soldier who specialises in deep cover work in hostile situations - into the Falls Road area of Belfast, a place notorious for civil unrest. His mission: to infiltrate himself into the local population, hunt down the assassin and kill him on his own territory - proving to the IRA that they are not safe, even in their "own back yard". It is a terrifying game of cat and mouse, taking place in a civilian-occupied war zone, where one mistake means certain death. Based on a best-selling novel by ex-ITN correspondent Gerald Seymour, this critically-acclaimed top ten ratings winner stars Ray Lonnen as Captain Harry Brown and Derek Thompson and its haunting theme - by the Irish group Clannad - reached the top five in the UK singles charts. The theme music was nominated for a BAFTA and the series won director Lawrence Gordon Clark the prestigious Golden Leopard's Eye award at the Locarno International Film Festival. Harry's Game was not actually shot in Northern Ireland but rather in Leeds, England. Yorkshire Television shot most of the scenes in now demolished housing in the Burley area of the city adjacent to their Leeds Studios.
This was considered a family sitcom—if you stretched the definition of “family” to include two humans and their three chimpanzees. Jack Weston was real estate agent Walter Hathaway; Peggy Cass his wife Elinore—who was the booker to their trio of chimps Candy, Charlie and Enoch. Elinore treated the chimps as real children, which always worried Walter (did she care more about the chimps than him?). Watching TV authors Harry Castleman and Walter Podrazik called The Hathaways "possibly the worst series ever to air on network TV...utterly degrading...total worthlessness.” Ratings were so low, ABC found only one sponsor—cereal and pet food maker Ralston Purina—willing to even sponsor half the series. Fortunately for all involved, it was cancelled after just one season. Candy, Charlie and Enoch were real performers, billed as the Marquis Chimps. They were a popular act, appearing in commercials, and on Jack Benny and Ed Sullivan's programmes—certainly more dignified settings than The Hathaways could offer.
Private eye series billed as ’77 Sunset Strip’ in Hawaii, and with good reason. Both series were produced by Warner Bros., and it was not unusual for the characters in one show to turn up in the other. Stars of the series (apart from the weekly parade of beautiful women) were Robert Conrad as Tom Lapaka and Anthony Eisley as Tracy Steele , two young and handsome private detectives who were based in the poolside offices of the Hawaiian Village Hotel. The main leads alternated with each episode and both had assistance from local nightclub songstress "Cricket" Blake as played by Connie Stevens and local cab driver Kazuo Kim, who was played by a Hawaiian actor with the name Poncie Ponce (honest). Grant Williams joined the cast as fellow detective Greg MacKenzie and Eisley left the series in 1962, his gap being filled for the final season by Troy Donahue as the hotel’s social director.
Based on John Fennimore Cooper's character, who battled the Huron Indians in the northern frontier of upstate New York during the 1750's, Hawkeye was played by John Hart, who had previously taken the reins from Clayton Moore -but only temporarily, of another Western hero,
'The Lone Ranger'. Hawkeye was a trapper, fur trader and scout for the US Cavalry and was joined on his adventures by his redskin 'bloodbrother', Chingachgook, the 'Last of the Mohicans' of the title, played by Lon Chaney Jnr. Chaney's father had been a famous Hollywood actor who was known as 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' (James Cagney portrayed him in a 1957 film of the same name), playing amongst others, 'The Phantom of the Opera.' Junior had reluctantly followed his father's footsteps into the same movie genre, appearing in the 1941 Universal production of 'The Wolfman.'
When James Hazell was forced to retire from the police force due to an on-duty injury he took to the bottle, became an alcoholic and destroyed his marriage. By the time television viewers were introduced to him he was almost a reformed character, having dried out and, with the help of his cousin, Tel, formed his own private detective agency in an area frequented by London's more seedier residents. Nicholas Ball played private eye Hazell like a Cockney Phillip Marlowe (complete with commentary voice over) in this stylishly film noir series based on the books of former footballer (and future England coach) Terry Venables and Gordon Williams, who also contributed to the TV version. The raunchy theme song was written by Andy McKay of Roxy Music and was a minor hit for Maggie Bell in April/May 1978.
Real life husband and wife Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss starred in this domestic/workplace comedy that was slightly ahead of its time. Benjamin played Dick Hollister, a successful New York cartoonist who created the superhero character “Jetman,” which was turned into a television show. Veteran actor Jack Cassidy played Oscar North, who portrayed “Jetman” on the fictional series. Dick's wife, Paula (Prentiss) was an off-centre social worker whose problems also became Dick's. Kenneth Mars was the couple's fireman friend Harry Zarakardos, and Hamilton Camp played the building's superintendent Andrew Hummel. But despite critical raves and a time slot following Green Acres, He And She was never the hit it deserved to be. One of its producers, Allan Burns, was later part of the Mary Tyler Moore Show team. Ironically, Cassidy turned down the part of that show's pompous newscaster Ted Baxter, saying it was too similar to his He And She role. CBS aired reruns of the series during the summer of 1970.
This above-average high school sitcom starred Howard Hessman (who gained fame as Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP In Cincinnati) as Charlie Moore, an out-of-work actor who became a substitute history teacher at Manhattan’s Millard Filmore High School. One of his classes included members of the school’s Individualized Honors Program. They were a group with above-average intelligence, but they weren’t so great with social skills. The IHP class included nerdy Arvid Engen (Dan Frischman); overweight and blustery Dennis Blunden (Dan Schneider); conservative Yuppie Alan Pinkard (Tony O’Dell); spoiled rich girl Darlene Merriman (Robin Givens); grounded Sarah Nevins (Kimberly Russell); overachiever Maria Borges (Leslie Bega); Indian exchange student Jawaharlal Choudhury (Jory Husain); artist Simone Foster (Khrystyne Haje); 11-year-old student Janice Lazarotto (Tannis Vallely); and greaser Eric Mardian (Brian Robbins), who was intelligent despite his dislike for anything academic. It was up to Charlie to give the IHP students street smarts, along with book smarts–much to the dismay of blustery principal Doctor Harold Samuels (William G. Shilling) and the admiration of his assistant Bernadette Meara (Jeanetta Arnette). Head Of The Class became the first modern American entertainment series to film an entire episode in the Soviet Union (Charlie and the IHP class went to Moscow to face their Russian counterparts in an academic tournament). The show also featured the cast doing mini-musicals; once each season, the students would perform such productions as Hair and Little Shop Of Horrors. During the show’s run, Givens became a media sensation, thanks to her marriage to controversial boxer Mike Tyson. There was gradual turnover among the students; several left before the show’s demise and a few new IHP members were added, including problem student T.J. Jones (Rain Pryor). Hessman also decided to leave the series after four seasons; his replacement was Scottish-born comic Billy Connolly as Billy MacGregor, who was more of a stand-up comic compared to the droll educator Charlie Moore was. The series ended its five-season run with the remaining IHP students graduating from Filmore High, which was waiting to be demolished. Dan Schneider (who played Dennis Blunden) went on to produce and write a string of successful teen sitcoms on the Nickelodeon cable channel, including iCarly; The Amanda Show and Zoey 101. The New York Times later called Schneider the Norman Lear of children’s television. Co-star Brian Robbins also worked with Schneider, and later produced such network series as Smallville and One Tree Hill.
Real life husband and wife Jack Lemmon and Cynthia Stone co-starred in a twice-a-week 'live broadcasted' domestic comedy. Each episode only lasted 15 minutes and featured the misadventures of newlyweds Pete and Betsy Bell. Unlike other domestic sitcoms it was the husband who was responsible for much of the mayhem with his tendency to jump headlong and headstrong into a problem before realising the possible consequences. It was his wife, an ex-secretary turned homemaker, who would get Pete out of trouble. He was an assistant buyer in a New York department store and they lived together in a two-room apartment. The series had a short run, September to December 1952. Lemmon and Stone divorced in 1956. She only enjoyed a brief career in television whilst Jack Lemmon went on to a hugely successful movie career. Their son, Chris Lemmon, is a successful author.
Starring Hollywood Oscar winner Broderick Crawford as Chief Dan Mathews, ’Highway Patrol’ is today seen as the father of the TV Cop show genre with it's all-action storylines involving the pursuit of murderers, bank robbers, smugglers and hijackers, by car, bike or helicopter across the highways and byways of the Western United States. Made on a shoestring budget and starring no other regulars apart from the star himself (who was also a part-owner in the production company that made the series, Ziv TV), the series was a massive hit around the world. In Italy it was known as ’Policia Della Strode’, in Spain –‘Petrulla de Seguridad’ and by various other titles in twenty other countries. Its most enduring legacy was the introduction to the phrase 'Ten-Four', meaning 'message received and understood.' Crawford, a Californian, had begun his career in the 1930's playing tough gangster roles and won his Best Actor Oscar in 1949 for ’All The King's Men’, plus a special critics award for ’Of Mice and Men’. He insisted on doing most of his own stunt work and as a result of this incurred a number of injuries, as he explained in 1958. "Running around filming in helicopters and fast cars for three years you're bound to have accidents, and I've certainly had my share. So far I've fractured my skull, broken an arm and an ankle and taken hundreds of falls." The series ran from 1955 to 1958 and at the end of its run Crawford secured the lead in ’King of Diamonds’ and later in ’The Interns’ before popping up as a guest star in ’Get Smart,’ ‘Burke's Law’ and ’Fantasy Island’, to name a few.
Hugely popular long-running comedy series starring former stage partners Hugh Lloyd and Terry Scott as a type of modern day Laurel and Hardy double-act, forever finding themselves in hot water and situations that tested their friendship to the limits. At his mother's house at 33 Lobelia Avenue, Tooting, Scott was the overbearing work-shy bachelor who aspired to wealth in a number of 'get-rich-quick' schemes. Lloyd was the rather dim-witted, hapless lodger who worked at a local aircraft factory and who was easily led from one misadventure to another by his boisterous partner. By the end of the fifth series both Lloyd and Scott decided to call it a day, but after some persuasion by the BBC they returned for another series but with a different setting. After Lloyd won £5000 on the Premium Bonds the pair left behind Terry's mum (Vi Stevens) and two sets of nosey neighbours (the Crispins and the Wormwolds) to go on a world cruise. The pair teamed up one more time after this in a parody of a US adventure series in 1968 -'Hugh and I Spy'.
