Salvation

 I'm currently starting to rewatch Salvation, a TV series from 2017.

It's about an asteroid heading for Earth and the scrabble to stop it hitting.

26 episodes makes it quite long. I have watched before but I've no idea how far I got so I'm starting again.

Asteroids or otherwise heading for our planet are a Sci Fi constant.

There are loads to choose from. When World's Collide, Deep Impact etc.

Do you have a favourite planet killer or Apocalypse?

Out of the Box

Being away from home I'm finding that we just don't watch TV. TV as in live TV. Normal TV.

We do watch a downloaded series on our tablet at the end of the night.

Is this your behaviour too readers?

Do you watch TV anymore readers? At home or on holiday?

IS CHRISTMAS TELLY RUBBISH NOW?

Is it just me or is Christmas TV in the UK utterly rubbish?

I know there's a global pandemic and shows can't be made like they were, if at all, but there are literally millions of old shows, series and films that could be shown that aren't complete trash.

OK, to give BBC4 its due, on Christmas Eve there were a few Mark Gatiss repeated ghost stories late on, for which I was truly thankful for, but these appeared to be a rare example of TV programmers actually scheduling anything different for Christmas.

The same old gaggle of tired comedians, inane minor celebrities, endless repeats and reality re-runs, not to mention exactly the same dire barrel-scrapers like Knives With Wives on just the same as if Christmas didn't exist at all.

What the hell happened? When I was a kid there were just three channels for God's sake, but the programmers managed to show, over the Christmas holiday, every Sinbad film, every Hammer horror, every Buster Keaton comedy, every Laurel and Hardy show, a full run of Flash Gordon and for monster nuts they even made their own ghost stories just for Christmas Eve.

Has Christmas programming on 'normal' channels hit rock bottom or am I missing something here?

Do I have to sell my soul to Sky, Netflix, SkyNet and Cyberdyne to get any proper Christmas telly?

DO THEY LIVE IN THE TELLY 'COS THEY'RE ALWAYS THERE!

Is it just me or do the same gaggle of minor celebrities and so-called TV 'personalities' haunt all the UK's TV shows, each others' TV shows and all the shows that are yet to come for all time?

The Schofields, the Willoughby's, the Skinners, the Fieldings, the Becketts, the Widdicombe's and so on and so on!

Why don't the UK TV channels give normal unknown people a chance to earn a few bob during this pandemic and stop fattening these B-listers' already bulging pockets?

Rant over!

MOLLY AND MACK'S TOY STALL

I enjoyed watching Molly and Mack on CBBC with Moonbase Junior yesterday. He liked it too.

Molly and Mack have a second hand toy stall in the Big Hub Market in Bridgetown, a fictional Scottish town. 

The children's show is all about the adventures Molly and Mack have on the stall and the things they stock. Very cute all round. 

Here's the stall. There's some interesting stuff. A few robots too. Anything you like?

Here's Molly and Mack's page on CBeebies,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/molly-and-mack

Molly and Mack is filmed in Govan in Glasgow and North Queensferry in Fife, with the tremendous Forth Bridge used as a backdrop for the made-up Bridgetown.

Its unusual to have a vintage toy stall centre-stage in a kids show. I like it of course! It reminds me of that obscurity in the worlds of Gerry Anderson, Candy and Andy, who also helped out in a toy shop, a magic one run by bears. Just a comic though and a Dinky toy. It never made it to TV.

Here's Candy and Andy's toyshop. Anything you like?

Have you seen Molly and Mack?

Its on before Sarah and Duck.

IS KIDS' TV DEAD ON THE MAIN TV CHANNELS?

It's odd. Modern British kids don't talk about TV programmes like my generation did. In fact they don't mention them at all.

I would say that they have become an irrelevance to high school age kids 11-16. There screen watching consists of You Tube and Netflix and none of the 'main' TV channels like BBC and ITV, which I grew up with.

I could name a hundred kids' TV shows I loved back in the Sixties and Seventies. My daughter could as well from the Eighties and early Nineties.

I wonder what effect this shift has on toy marketing and product placement? Back in the day we watched TV, say Thunderbirds, and rushed straight out with our parents to buy the toys and then watched the next episode and rushed out and so on. How can this process happen now?

Is there a future for TV-related toys, the very essence of our baby boomer childhoods?

It almost questions the future relevance of the main TV channels completely if an entire generation doesn't bother with them now. Will they ever?

What say you readers?

TV FOG

Its Easter night and after a long Easter weekend away with family the Missus and me are back home and quite knackered as they say in the horse trade.

There were no collectables to be had to be honest I wasn't looking. We did go to a garage sale, which is an unusual thing I think here in northern England. It was a huge sale spilling out of the garage and into a very large yard. Mostly gardening implements and books, there was nothing to take my fancy.

I did heft a long plastic toy sword in a toy shop looking for last minute Easter nik naks for our Grandson. It was fun to draw it from its long scabbard like I would have done in the Sixties as a Knight-mad kid. I adored wearing my plastic silver breastplate, wearing my knight's helmet and brandishing a huge toy broadsword in the garden! Somewhere I have a photo of part of this get up.

Easter always make me think of old TV as it was on Easter Monday that we watched Disneytime at 6pm. Do you remember it?

Lost in time now, there are a couple more TV programmes which seem to be just stirrings in the mists of my memory.

One was something called UFO Milton Keynes or something like that. I can't recall a thing about this programme. Milton Keynes was a new town in England, made from scratch last century I think. I visited it when I was studying urban conservation as it was a modern example of how to manage green corridors for wildlife in towns. I imagine the UFO idea came from the fact that it was brand a brand new town. There may have been a large pyramid involved too.

Another TV programme I can't remember was something like A Weekend in the Country or similar. It was about a group of town lads maybe from Liverpool who were taken to North Wales, I think, on a weekend stay in a log cabin or chalet. they were out of their element and I'm pretty sure one of them fed a Blackbird chick some Mars Bar!

Do these ring any bells?

I'm sure there are more swirls in my TV fog but that's it for now. 

Happy Easter Monday to come!

IS KIDS' TV DEAD?

Kids never mention TV to me anymore.

We lived for the telly in the 60's and early 70's.

The talking point at school was always what was on the box tea-times and Saturday mornings or the latest tv-related comic or toy you got.

Thunderbirds, Banana Splits, Double Deckers, Kung Fu, TV21 and Look-in to name but a smidgeon all ruled the day. We just couldn't get enough of kids TV.

These days schoolkids talk about computer games, You Tube and snapchat. No mention of terrestrial TV at all. I wonder in this kind of climate if children's TV can survive at all?

The whole format of kids culture is changing. Their heroes are YouTubers who show videos of themselves playing Fortnite and Minecraft or any other computer game topical at the time. Modern kids watch this stuff on their consoles all day and all night. Family TV viewing appears to be dead.

I cannot think when the last time was a kid talked about a TV show.

Like the household telephone. almost universally obsolete, I fear that childrens' TV for older kids will also go the way of the dodo. Maybe TV's themselves have had it too?

How can a kids' TV producer stop this receding tide?

What's your take on this readers?

In the Space 1999 Garden

I've been watching a lot of In The Night Garden with Baby Moonbase.

Its a hypnotic slice of surreal Kids TV.

One feature is the fun train, the Ninky Nonk. Its middle section is a vehicle shaped like an onion.

Whenever  I see it I always think of this onion-like toy vehicle from Space 1999 by LJN, 1976.

I don't know much about this toy. Did the vehicle feature in Space 1999?

Come to think of it this toy reminds me of the Mechanoids from Dr. Who! You?