VISION ON SOUND

MICHAEL HERBERT joins me to talk about TIMESLIP

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

TIMESLIP was a children’s science fiction series made by ATV for the ITV network back in the early nineteen-seventies. It starred CHERYL BURFIELD as Liz Skinner and SPENCER BANKS as Simon Randall, two teenage actors who manage to hold their own playing against some of the finest television character actors working at that time, including DENNIS QUILLEY, JOHN BARRON, DEREK BENFIELD, IRIS RUSSELL, DAVID GRAHAM and IAIN FAIRBAIRN.

Running across twenty-four episodes made in full colour (most of which now only survive in black & white), and consisting of four serials of thought-provoking, philosophical, and time-jumping adventures (THE WRONG END OF TIME, THE TIME OF THE ICE BOX, THE YEAR OF THE BURN UP and THE DAY OF THE CLONE), the series ran from September 1970 through to March 1971, and is fondly remembered by the generation that sat down after school to enjoy it and found that it somehow managed to sear itself into their memories and stimulate their imagination.

This week an old friend of the show, MICHAEL HERBERT, got in touch to tell me that he’d been watching TIMESLIP, and wondered if I might want to talk about it. Naturally I’m always happy when someone suggests a topic for VISION ON SOUND, and today’s edition is the result of the conversation we had which, whilst prompted by TIMESLIP did take us off in other directions to discuss other television series that had a similar style. As ever, when your chat involves a certain amount of spontaneity, and you’re working without copious notes, sometimes facts and memories can get a little confused. So I apologise in advance if any of the details got a little fuzzy, but the enthusiasm for what the show was about does, I hope, still shine through, and we’ll put the rest down to interference via the fourth dimension.

Incidentally, the TIMESLIP event that I mentioned is on APRIL the 18th at the QUAD in Derby, if you want to find out more just head over to their website derbyquad.co.uk/events

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, on TV shows that moved from black & white into colour.

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

This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and he suggested for our archive telly-related topic this week, we might want to discuss TV shows that started off in black and white, but then successfully survived into the colour era, and whether or not something changed about those shows in any significant way due to the introduction of colour.

This was prompted by PAUL’s continuing exploration of some of the Australian archive TV shows that we have covered in some of his recent appearances, but also covers shows like the original LOST IN SPACE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, DARK SHADOWS, THE AVENGERS, BEWITCHED, DOCTOR WHO, PUBLIC EYE, CALLAN, and STEPTOE AND SON, all of which are at least name-checked during our conversation, and managed to a lesser or greater extent to be produced in both formats, and some of which did seem to feel like very different shows once the full spectrum was added. We also wonder whether some Black & White classics like THE TWILIGHT ZONE would have benefitted from being seen in colour, and how significant it was when films and programmes made in glorious colour were experienced on our old black & white TVs.

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 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.