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

[liadt]

If you want to look at lots of pics of Patrick Troughton in TV shows try hitting the tag on http://linaaaaaz.tumblr.com/ they became obsessed with him some years ago and watched everything in about three months. I think the links to vids are dead though:/

I found 'Francis Drake' dull, but some people like it. I suspect 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' is more of the same but Troughton is in it more!

[auroracloud]

Woo, thanks for the link, I'll check that out! Even if the links don't work, I can always see if I find the vids in new locations. Or just see what sounds like it's worth buying. :-)

I suspect 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' is more of the same but Troughton is in it more!

That is a point in its favour, at least! One of the things that struck me watching 60s Who was how much the way of making TV drama developed in just a few years - though I enjoyed the Hartnell era a lot, in the early stories I felt they hadn't yet figured out how TV drama should and could be different from theatre, and how to use the medium, so it was quite stilted sometimes. But already a few years later they were doing TV drama much more effectively. So it doesn't really surprise me if at least some of the 1950s drama ends up being boring, because the effect would probably be even greater!

[liadt]

Heh, well TV stays theatrical enough for a while yet, you get many of the actors going on about it on who commentaries. It's interesting how in the early 1980s bbc camera work became so static: a backward step. They made an effort with Age of Kings in 1960, static camera but they tried different shots, frequent close ups (cos it's on a small screen) n live special(oh yes!) effects while being v.v.v theatrical being Shakespeare. There is fun 50s TV like The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (William Russell) and The Buccaneers but they were kids tea time shows with action. Robin Hood isn't as fun which I put down to being too well written! Quatermass is also good can't remember how theatrical it was. A for Andromeda and sequel (1960/1) have a lot of talking even for then which I don't mind but shows it was written by someone who mostly did non fiction.