VISION ON SOUND

STEVE HATCHER on remakes of classic cop shows.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 8th 2026.

There’s been a tendency in recent years for modern television makers to take a long, hard look at the archives and realise that some older television series were actually once quite popular, and think to themselves that they quite fancy a bit of that kind of success and brand recognition, and so they decide to remake, repackage, reimagine, or reboot some of those brilliant old ideas for more modern television audiences, and perhaps one of the more popular genres for drawing this kind of attention had been the crime or police drama series. For example, even as I was writing this intro, ITV announced that a new version of DALZIEL AND PASCOE was in the works, to add to a growing list suggesting that everything old is new again.

I suppose this isn’t really all that surprising, considering just how many cop shows have filled the schedules over the long history of television, but sometimes it does start to seem as if there really are very few new ideas out there, or that the viewers these days, like with their supermarket shopping only really trust something that is wearing a familiar brand name. So, whilst new variations on the police drama, often involving quirky detectives living on houseboats, or crossword compilers and little old ladies helping the police with their enquiries, are popping up all the time these days, many of the new shows somehow seem more than a little bit familiar…

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI discovers THE PERSUADERS!

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 1st 2026.

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back yet again, to discuss a show that rather neatly complements his most recent appearance on VISION ON SOUND where he wanted to talk about the humour of THE AVENGERS. This led him to finally try out an early 1970s TV show which you might be surprised to find he had never actually seen before, which to many of its fans perhaps represents the very pinnacle of the ITC adventure series, the high-budget, high-glamour, glossy series THE PERSUADERS! which starred ROGER MOORE as LORD BRETT SINCLAIR and TONY CURTIS as DANNY WILDE, a pair of rich, womanising international playboys who were recruited by JUDGE FULTON to redirect their wastrel energies into the pursuit of justice and the righting of criminal wrongs across 24 action-packed episodes, first broadcast in autumn 1971 and which, by coming across as being the kind of must-see television that also filtered through into comics and other media managed to make an indelible impact on the children and parents of several nations.

And whilst those 24 episodes might not seem all that many, these programmes had all the quality to match the feature films of the time and all looked rather fantastic, meaning that the series, whilst not becoming the huge American hit its producers were hoping for, was still nevertheless, an enormous success across Europe.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

ADAM HENLEY returns to talk about watching the BLAKE'S 7 Series Two Blu-ray

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 22nd 2026.

This week we welcome back ADAM HENLEY, who last year guided us through year one of BLAKE’S SEVEN after its Blu-ray release, and he’s back again now to do the same for the recent release of year two, a season of tragic endings, new beginnings, lucky escapes, some non-escapes, professional disappointments, drama, excitement, high camp, new writers, and Michelin men.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, wishes you were here to hear him discuss humour in THE AVENGERS.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 15th 2026.

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back, although this week we’re going to try and get away from the Antipodean content that his recent appearances on VISION ON SOUND have tended to concentrate on, and instead focus on a subject that is almost certainly more familiar to connoisseurs of British archive television: THE AVENGERS, that latterly most quirky of 1960s television drama series.

Our idea was to talk about (and hopefully appreciate) the more humorous aspects of this particular show, showing its development and evolution away from its more urban thriller and kitchen sink dramatic roots in the early 1960s, to the urbane, witty, and charming version as seen during its final season in which PATRICK MACNEE’s John Steed was paired with LINDA THORSON as Tara King, and PAUL picked out a particular episode that he considered to be one of the more broadly humorous ones for us both to watch.

This was WISH YOU WERE HERE, episode twenty of series six, written by TONY WILLIAMSON, and directed by DON CHAFFEY, and, whilst what follows isn’t exactly an episode guide-style examination of that show, it did provide us with an excellent prompt for a conversation about humour in TV drama series that includes references to other episodes of THE AVENGERS, THE NEW AVENGERS, DOCTOR WHO, and even CORONATION STREET, and I hope that you find the next hour as entertaining as it was for us to record it, even though PAUL wasn’t in the most conducive of places (technically) on the day of recording.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

WARREN CUMMINGS gets random again, mostly about Black & White TV.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 8th 2026.

This week, WARREN CUMMINGS returns to the show for another of our random meanders in and around the crazy world of archive TV, and this week our focus is mostly in black and white, as we were prompted by the kind of nonsense I’ve been picking up second-hand on DVD, which led us via the fascinating series that was THE STRANGE WORLD OF GURNEY SLADE starring ANTHONY NEWLEY, to a chat about the careers of actors such as JOHN LE MESURIER, BRIAN WILDE, and NORMAN WISDOM before we focussed on the 1960s for a while with Z-CARS and THE PROTECTORS, and then went on to address why television audiences always seem drawn towards the characters who are clearly the “right bastards” that in real life we might go out of our way to avoid.

PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.