VISION ON SOUND

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.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, on some archive Australian Cop Shows.

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

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back on his quest to discover and share as many obscure Australian television shows with you as possible, such are the fascinating compulsions of the archive TV fan. PAUL’s motivation is often down to wanting to see other work by some of his favourite actors, and he selects his box sets because of what appeals to him personally, and not through any requirement to experience them in broadcast order.

This week, his exploration of the Australian Drama series takes a look at three more shows that he’s been acquiring and investigating, all of which are hour long – or more accurately fifty minute - police dramas dating from the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies; HOMICIDE (not to be confused with the later American series, a show which ran for thirteen years from 1964 and racked up over 500 episodes; DIVISION 4, which began in 1969 and ran for seven years and over 300 episodes; and MATLOCK POLICE which started in 1971, ran for five years, and offered nearly 230 editions.

PAUL admits that all of these shows are fairly new to him and, at the time of recording, he had only watched a handful of each, but I’m very grateful to him for taking the time to watch these shows to get a taste of them and share his experiences with the rest of us.

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.

STEVE HATCHER on the best of 2025's TV Blu-Ray releases.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 25th 2026.

This week, STEVE HATCHER suggested that we chat a little about the best archive TV Blu-Rays that came out last year, and, as it was a bumper year for quality releases, we found that we had rather a lot to talk about.

So, as well as inevitably discussing the most recent releases of BLAKE’S SEVEN and DOCTOR WHO, we consider the new CHRONICLES OF NARNIA set, and also sink our teeth into some of the new range from HAMMER FILMS (which have at least two television related titles in their collection so far), and the brand new set of THE NEW AVENGERS, as well as a very welcome release for the obscure children’s serial OBJECT Z, and, as they say, much, much more, including some observations on the nature of collecting archive material generally.

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 joins me to discuss how TV affects our moods.

First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on January 18th 2026.

This week, I invited WARREN CUMMINGS back again because I wanted to talk about television and how it can affect our moods. Whilst I was expecting to end up discussing whether or not watching the news channels is a good thing or a bad thing, and whether it’s best avoided, WARREN, as expected, took the topic in a whole other direction, and I think that led to a far more interesting hour, as I hope you’ll agree if you stick around to listen.

So, the following hour will take us on a journey from the final QUATERMASS series, via some peculiar observations about THE GOOD LIFE and the heavily armed businesspeople of the 1960s and 70s, THE NEW AVENGERS, the animated version of STAR TREK, MORTIMER & WHITEHOUSE GONE FISHING, SLOW HORSES, EDGE OF DARKNESS, TW3 and Z CARS, and a whole lot of other distractions as we discuss the kind of television that causes our spirits to either wilt, or soar to the heights of, well, not exactly ecstasy, but certainly somewhere at least vaguely enjoyable.

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.