Look, what a nice rabbit hole!

[auroracloud]

This morning I finished listening to the latest weekly episode of Radio Free Skaro (a Doctor Who podcast), and in the news segment they mentioned a thing called Box of Delights, which apparently is a children's fantasy series from the 1980s which is something of Big Thing and stars Patrick Troughton as one of the leads. (The reason they mentioned it on the podcast is that the soundtrack is being released.) I felt curious and looked up what this is, and oh dear, it really sounds like something I would love to watch, even if Patrick Troughton looks very different in it than he does in Doctor Who, and why have I never heard of this before anyway?

I looked it up on Zoom.co.uk (I recently found that website when I looked for a way to find Doctor Who things at a reasonable price without buying them from Amazon) and they have it, and then I clicked on the Patrick Troughton tag there... And it kindly gave me all the Patrick Troughton DVDs they have. In addition to much Doctor Who, there's also a bunch of other TV stuff he made over the decades, including a lot of historical adventures, and ooh, look, I could watch him in a Scarlet Pimpernel adaptation! And apparently he's been in some Count of Monte Cristo adaptation as well - hmm, I've managed to steer clear of Monte Cristo adaptations so far as I really like the book, I wonder if that will hold... And look at all these other adventures and historical dramas and such...

... Oh, what was that phrase about rabbit holes... Something about falling down them...

I should probably get recommendations.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

LOL! Go for it. Also, do you know liadt? They are also a Classic Who fan with a definite love of Two, and watches a lot of old British TV and is likely to have watched some of these, as they have watched a lot more of the swashbuckling serials of that kind & may be able to help. (One of them, I know, also has Roger Delgado, but not in the same episode.) (I don't know who's friended who in this storm of activity.)

The Box of Delights is good and much loved! swordznsorcery (my other main fellow Brit TV fan, and ditto v nice and into Classic Who too) sent me the DVDs the other year, and it is a nice one - a traditional pre-Christmas watch in some places.

If you've got a list, I can tell you if I've watched any of them. I've mostly caught him in odd episodes while watching other things, though. But I am here to support anyone falling down the rabbit hole of watching terrible yet awesome things in blurry b&w and beige colour TV. <3

[auroracloud]

Not yet as such, but I've had the feeling I should. Heck, I can barely keep track of who I have friended lately! :-D

Hmm, I clearly just need to get The Box of Delights. I've been feeling lately like I'm failing Christmas this year - I haven't even managed to put up an advent calendar on my wall yet and it's mid-December - so maybe that would help, if it happens to arrive in post before Christmas. And if not, I'm in mood for charming fantasy stories all year long.

The online shop I'm looking at has titles like Space: 1999 (I'm sure it won't feel dated at all), The Sword of Freedom, the Moonrake, (but he's towards the end of the cast list on the descriptions of those), the Count of Monte Cristo I mentioned in my post, and yes, it has Six Wives of Henry VIII that you mentioned in the other comment. Which sounds really interesting anyway. Isn't it what he started doing right after he stopped filming Doctor Who? It also has a 1956 Scarlet Pimpernel series, and I kind of love that story without having the sort of canon adoration I do for Monte Cristo so it would be safer to watch, but I just noticed it's sold out. Ah well, I'll keep an eye out for it.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I'm sure his Space: 1999 appearance is just a guest of the week (although I haven't yet seen that myself), so probably others like that are too. (It depends how into this you get. *hides mass of DVDs I have acquired for a guest of the week*)

I don't know about the old 1950s serials like that - Liadt does! - I hear that there's a francis Drake one that is unfortunately rubbish, though, and that, on Pat's CV, the 1980s Knights of God is not good, even though it should have been.

He guests in Adam Adamant Lives!, though, which is a fun one - it was what Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert did next. It was supposed to be kind of like ITV's Avengers, but it wasn't really. (It's about an OTT Edwardian gentleman adventurer who gets frozen by his nemesis in 1902 and defrosted in 1966 and teams up with a young swinging 60s DJ, Georgina Jones, to fight crime. Well, I say teams up, he spends the entire series telling Georgie this is NO PLACE FOR A DELICATE FEMALE and pulling faces on finding that she is right in the middle of everything again. It ought to be terrible but it's just ridiculous and charming and very cheering.)

His Thriller episode is fun, actually. I wouldn't buy the whole set because it is a massively long anthology, and he's mostly in the beginning and ending, but he's a drunken priest who battles Satan who is Diana Dors who wanders around Britain terrorising stray Americans. (The thing about Thriller that is funny is that it was one of the made on film for US networks British TV series, which means they have to have an American in it if they can. This is fine in most series. When your anthology series is a horror one, this means that Americans, fake Americans, and Canadians get murdered in the UK every other week by British character actors.) It's here on YT. (It isn't a scary one, just cheesy. I don't know if anyone even dies in it? Hmm, one person I think. Many DW serials are scarier!)

Um... did I mention babbling about old TV? sorry.

[auroracloud]

The summary for Space: 1999 helpfully contained a lot of info, so I learned that he played the villain in one of the episodes. If I know me, there is a big risk I'll eventually hunt down all sorts of things just for the guest of the week. But maybe I'll try to at least start with something bigger!

It's about an OTT Edwardian gentleman adventurer who gets frozen by his nemesis in 1902 and defrosted in 1966 and teams up with a young swinging 60s DJ, Georgina Jones, to fight crime. Well, I say teams up, he spends the entire series telling Georgie this is NO PLACE FOR A DELICATE FEMALE and pulling faces on finding that she is right in the middle of everything again.

Oh dear, this sounds terribly much like the sort of thing I would find very entertaining.

Unscary horror sounds like something I can watch. I'm terrible at actually scary horror (heck, when I first watched New Who S1, I couldn't proceed from The Empty Child for weeks though I'd loved every moment of it!). But I'm fond of the sort that isn't actually scary even for me. Like Gothic horror.

Don't worry, one of the reasons I actually wrote this post rather than just thinking about writing it was that I figured you at least would have things to say about it!

[thisbluespirit]

If I know me, there is a big risk I'll eventually hunt down all sorts of things just for the guest of the week. But maybe I'll try to at least start with something bigger!

That sounds reasonable! (on both counts, heh. :-D)

Oh dear, this sounds terribly much like the sort of thing I would find very entertaining.

swordznsorcery got me into it! I mean, it depends a lot, because Georgie is no Mrs Peel, just a plucky teenage DJ who sometimes helps and sometimes gets into trouble (but she's always unrepentant and determined to look after Mr Adamant, who is after all a nonagenarian with a tendency to believe in the goodness of women, even though he never meets a single lady who doesn't bash him over the head with something, or betray him, or shoot him). There's also Simms, an ex-music hall artist they pick up, who becomes Adam's manservant. He likes housework, keeping well out of danger, and delivering terrible limericks. So it's 60s and Edwardian and problematic but deliberately ridiculous and adorable and also has quite a bit of heart, so yes. I love it, as you can tell!!

I made a (non-spoilery) vid a while back, if you're okay with watching vids.

But I'm fond of the sort that isn't actually scary even for me. Like Gothic horror.

Gothic is a about my limit, too! I'm a complete horror wimp. The Troughton one is okay - most of the others aren't scary, either, but there were more skeevy 70s sex killers across the anthology than anyone would ever want to encounter! But there were a few supernatural ones which were fun, especially the one with Troughton which is entertaining and cheesy & has a good female lead and a very pretty male cast - it was my favourite (save for the equally cheesy but mundane one that had my particular favourite person in. he was murdering a lot of women, but not for sex, and he would rather have been reading classic lit. He did feel bad about it).

[auroracloud]

Thanks, I'll check out the vid at some point! It does sound very entertaining. And regarding problematic stuff, I do have a fondness for 19th century literature, so I've got a lot of experience of reinterpreting problematic stuff to fit my worldview somehow, heh.

and he would rather have been reading classic lit. He did feel bad about it

That sounds like my kind of murderer! Er, or something like it.