Times 2 - UK (2020-08-11)

8 1GT Tuesday August 11 2020 | the times

arts

E

xplore cult TV with

Britbox, the press

release commands.

Well, first I object to the

“cult”. It suggests there

were only ever a few

fanatics crazed enough

to watch some of the

masterpieces of Sixties and Seventies

commercial television that are about

to be made available on Britbox.

In 1965 Gerry Anderson’s

Thunderbirds was big, very big, and if

you were aged eight (as I was), still

bigger than that. Patrick McGoohan’s

The Prisoner became the talk of 1967,

much of it puzzled, and it remains one

of the most original things ITV has

done. In 1969 Randall and Hopkirk

(Deceased) was primetime fare and

considered sexy and funny. All three

series were uncultish enough to be

remade with varying degrees of

success, respectively, 50, 40 and 30

years on.

In the case of Thunderbirds, the

love remains so strong that in 2015

a bunch of “Fandersons” — maybe

they are a very innocent cult —

made three new episodes to the exact

spec of the originals; these too are

Aliens, puppets and Joanna Lum

As Britbox brings back classic sci-fi from the Sixties

and Seventies (no strings attached), Andrew Billen

says his childhood favourites still stand up today

joining Britbox’s “Out of this World”

collection this month.

So let’s show a bit of respect here.

Am I happy, however, that the

Britbox streaming service, owned by

the BBC and ITV and still remarkably

hard to find on your smart TV or box,

is making available some of the shows

that lit up my childhood? Of course

I am, although I know the reality is

unlikely to match the memory. It is

almost always the case that when you

sit down to watch, say, a vintage 1967

Avengers, you discover a charismatic

show of heady visual élan and strong

character acting severely weakened by

scripts that today seem obvious and

slow (never mind unwoke, but give

them a break).

These programmes were churned

out on B-movie budgets and at a rate

that almost guaranteed continuity

blunders. Steed in The Avengers might

suddenly change suit mid-scene, for

instance. Did we notice at the time?

Perhaps, but with no rewind on our

sets, how could we be sure?

The exceptions to this rule are the

exquisite puppet sci-fi shows made by

Anderson and represented on Britbox

by all 32 episodes of Thunderbirds and

another 32 of Captain Scarlet and the

Mysterons. Anderson, it is said, never

wanted to go into Supermarionation,

as his lip-sync puppetry was called

tongue in balsa-wood cheek. Puppets

were simply cheaper to make than

actors were to hire, and the sets for

their adventures admitted inverse

economies of scale.

Yet as the international earning

potential of Anderson’s earlier

children’s sci-fi series (Supercar,

Fireball XL5 and Stingray) was realised,

budgets increased and proved

generous enough to produce

spectacular and literally explosive

television, backed by some of the

best incidental music to date. The fact

that even in these series’ pomp you

could still see threads jerking the

marionettes’ heads was down to

technical not budgetary limitations.

When ITV triumphantly reimagined

the original Thunderbirds as

Thunderbirds Are Go in 2015, the

producers originally tried employing

puppets, but the 21st-century kids in

the focus groups weren’t buying them

(so CGI figures, with curiously

sculpted features, were inserted into

non-virtual scenery). What had not

dated — at least not once you had

taken the guns and cigarettes from

the Tracy brothers’ hands and had

emancipated their women — was the

idea of an international not-for-profit

dedicated to rescuing those in distress.

Can it really be a coincidence that

David Miliband is the president of

something called the International

Rescue Committee?

In the Sixties the Thunderbirds

Tracy boys were an antidote to male

toxicity — they knew to keep their

hands off Lady Penelope — but

aboard their aircraft and rockets they

displayed the right stuff of test pilots.

Their vehicles were so cool that, with

the exception of Thunderbird 5, none

had to be redesigned for the remake

five decades on. What was exceptional,

however, for a children’s puppet show

was that Gerry’s wife and co-creator,

Sylvia, supplied the characters with

distinct personalities and relationships.

The action sequences — a plane

trying to land on two speeding trucks

— still generate tension, but more

importantly the show had soul.

When the show’s financer, the ITV

mogul Lew Grade, loused up the

negotiations with the American

networks for a second season,

Thunderbirds was cancelled. Its

successor, Captain Scarlet, about a

world government attempt to stave off

an invasion from a breed of Martians

called Mysterons, was a remarkable

achievement technically, but it lacked

some heart (although Symphony, one

of the ravishing pilots of the Angel

Interceptor planes, once had an erotic

fantasy about Captain Blue).

The episodes were shorter than

those of Thunderbirds, so the writers

did not have the time to spare, but

also, while Thunderbirds was about

saving people, Captain Scarlet was

Puppets

were

simply

cheaper to

make than

actors were

to hire

UFO

Thunderbirds