Serial offender - Archer's Goon (CBBC 1992)

Its time for another delve into the murky world of children's television serials again...

Archer's Goon was a 1992 CBBC adaptation of the 1984 young adult fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones.


Howard Sykes is an average 13 year old boy who lives with his parents, younger sister and their au pair in the fictional town of Holisbury.
One day, Howard is surprised when a leather clad, thuggish looking man, the titular "goon", turns up in a bin lorry at his home demanding to speak with his father Quentin; a local writer and teacher of English, with regards to "the payment of 2000".
Obviously, Howard and his family assume that this means some kind of monetary payment, and the"goon" is an enforcer for some shady criminal organisation, however, when they finally speak with Quentin, it turns out that "2000" actually refers to 2000 words.
Quentin explains that 13 years ago, he was suffering from writers block, but was miraculously cured of it when he was made an offer by local councillor, Mr. Mountjoy. In exchange for Quentin producing a document containing 2000 nonsense words once a year, Mountjoy would make sure that the Sykes household kept its amenities (gas, electric, water etc), and not have to pay for them, also, writing the document would force Quentin to come out of his writers block, and, oddly, it worked.

The goon explains that this years document did not reach "Archer", despite being delivered to Mountjoy at the local town hall as promised, and, as such "Archer" had sent the goon round to collect the "debt", with failure to produce an acceptable document punishable by having local amenities removed. Quentin sits and writes a replacement document, however this one is later found to be unacceptable, as it contains passages which appeared in previous entries, so, the Sykes family find themselves coming under some bizarre attacks, such as their water and power being cut off, local shops refusing to serve them, schools refusing to allow Howard and his sister to attend, rubbish laying uncollected and, most bizarrely, Howards mothers musical instruments playing themselves loudly and continuously.
The goon takes an unusual interest in Howard, and takes him to see Mr. Mountjoy to find out who "Archer".
As it turns out, the town of Holisbury is actually run by seven mysterious individuals with magical powers, all of whom "farm" certain aspects of town life in order to maintain their power:-

Archer - Controls the towns money and local authorities
Shine - Controls local crime
Dillian - Controls local law enforcement
Torquil - Controls local music, religion, sports activities and shops
Hathaway - Controls local transport, as well as town record keeping and administration
Erskine - Controls local refuse collection and water supply
Venturus - Controls local education and housing

Howard, after eventually getting to meet with Archer, begins to unravel the mystery as to what the 2000 words his father produces are actually used for, and exactly what part he personally plays in all this.

This is one of those stereotypically "British" bits of telly that folk from other countries would find difficult to "get". The fantasy environment it takes place in is wonderfully weird in its premise, insofar as that although most people live in the "ordinary" world, there is in fact a secret "underworld" that few people know or care about that actually pulls the strings of everyone in the town. The story also has a wonderful kind of "whodunnit?" mystery attached to it, and, eagle eyed viewers should be able to spot tell tale signs of the true story right from the first episode.

This is an enjoyable serial, and, having read the book, I can say that the TV adaptation is pretty damn close to the original source material.

Serial offender - Elidor (CBBC 1995)

Once again delving into the murky depths of children's television, I find myself revisiting an oft forgotten serial named "Elidor"

(Series Title Card)

"Elidor" was a six part 1995 fantasy series which aired on CBBC, and was an adaptation of the 1965 novel of the same name by Alan Garner.

Set contempory times (mostly in the mid 90s Manchester and northern Cheshire), Elidor sees a group of young people embark on an adventure to save the magical alternate realm from "the Darkness", an army of men and creatures who are evil.

The world of Elidor is protected by four magical treasures, which are housed in four castles, however due to the war with the Darkness, three of the castles have been destroyed and the treasures have been lost, however, an ancient legend tells that a group of children will one day find the treasures and return them to the remaining castle, where their magic will once again protect the land from evil.

In our world, siblings Roland, Helen, David and Nicholas Watson are exploring Manchester, when, after getting a bit bored, they consult a street finder machine (once a common sight in British towns and cities, now almost totally unheard of) to see if it can point them in the direction of something to do. the map directs them to a run down part of the city, where they find a creepy little curiosity shop. After looking at the various knick-knacks the shop has on sale, David chooses to purchase a video game named "the chase", however when he asks the shop keeper how much it is, he begins a long monologue about 4 people being chased, one of whom is strong, but is getting stronger. He then gives David the game for nothing, insisting that he come back later and pay him what he thinks its worth.
The siblings leave the shop and eventually end up in the grounds of an abandoned church, which they end up looking inside when Roland kicks a football through one of the windows, and they enter to try and retrieve it.
Throughout the day, Roland has been seeing a robed, hooded figure seemingly following and watching them, none of the others have noticed this, so dismiss his claims as being stupid, however this figure is Malebron, a man from Elidor who, using magic, has travelled through "the gate" (a place where the walls of reality are thin) to find the four children and get them to find the lost treasures.
The Darkness though has also seen this, and has sent a warrior, along with a creature called a "sniffer" (a sort of goblin like creature that can track scents) to stop the children from completing their task by using both sword and sorcery, as well as trickery.

Most of the story focuses on Roland, the aforementioned one who is "strong, but getting stronger", as he tries to figure out what is going on and what to do in the strange world of Elidor, all while trying to get the treasures (a spear, a sword, a chalice and a stone tablet) to the last remaining castle, where Malebron says he will bring Fyndhorne, the last Unicorn, so he can sing and restore light to Elidor...or something...

I have never read the original book, but from watching the series, I get the distinct impression that there is a lot of stuff missing from the adaptation,  I could be wrong, but it does seem that way.
The special effects used in the series look a bit dated now, being a mix of green screen and early CGI, and the acting, well, the less said about that the better.

All in all, Elidor is a bit of a confusing mess, and watches a bit like how you would expect to see people doing LARP for the first time act as they wander around the woods and dales mumbling pseudo medieval dialogue.
Yeah, its not very good, I didn't like it much back when I first saw it in 1995, and I like it even less now.

Serial offender - "Earthfasts" (CBBC 1994)

The early to mid 90s seemed to be a golden age for CBBC, especially considering the amount of serials they produced and/or screened in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, there seemed to be so many of them coming one after the other at one point, although not all of them were particularly memorable...
This weeks delve into this murky world of CBBC serial drama finds me stumbling across an ill remembered one...Earthfasts...

Eeh by gum, this ones set in Yorkshire, ah tell thee lad!....
*ahem*, Based on the 1966 book of the same name, this five part series stars a pre-Eastenders Paul Nicholls and no one else of any importance, well, other than Bobby Knutt as a secondary character, in a strange mix of fantasy and time travel drama which incorporates elements of Arthurian legend.

The story begins when two friends, Keith and David, are exploring the moors near their home, when they suddenly hear a drumming noise as they get near a sheer rock face.
As they investigate, the rock face opens up and a boy emerges, dressed in an old fashioned military uniform and carrying a drum in one hand and a candle in the other. The boy introduces himself as "Nellie Jack John" (basically, an old fashioned way of saying 'John, son of Nellie and Jack'). Keith and David find Nellie Jack John to be odd, he speaks English, with a Yorkshire accent, but his use of words seems old fashioned.
As it turns out, Nellie Jack John is from the year 1745, and had gotten lost in a cave system that ran underneath the local castle while he was searching for treasure that was supposedly buried under the hill. The event is recorded in local history and states that Nellie Jack John, or more properly, "John Cherry", was never found.
Nellie Jack John refuses to believe that he has emerged in the year 1993, and makes for his home in a nearby village, only to find that it has completely changed. Disheartened, he decides to return to the rock face and try to return to his own time, however he has lost his candle (Keith threw it away earlier) so David gives him a torch, then Nellie Jack John re-enters the rock face and tries to return home.
Afterwards, David and Keith find the candle, which is still burning despite being left in the undergrowth next to the road for several days, and they also find it odd that the candle gives off cold instead of heat, and never seems to burn down either, remaining the same length at all times.
Things start getting weird when they visit a stone circle, known locally as "The Jingle Stones", only to find that the standing stones, or "Earthfasts" as they were once called, seem to be moving by themselves, and then they begin noticing various magical creatures inhabit the area, including a stone giant, and a bogart. Very soon though, other mysterious events begin happening, all of which seem connected to Nellie Jack John and his mysterious magic candle.


"Earthfasts" is an interesting enough mystery type story, albeit a rather slow paced one and a little disturbing in some places. It does seem however that sometimes the "Yorkshire" aspect of the show is overplayed to the point at which it almost seems to be a caricature or stereotype, with everyone always giving it an "aye" and "t'mooars" etc etc, almost as if the screenplay was written by someone who had only ever experienced Yorkshire by watching Emmerdale.

Still, they don't make em like this no more.

Serial offender - Dark Season (1991 CBBC)

Another delve into the murky world of childrens "serial" type programs has me arrive at one of the more highly regarded examples to come out of early 90's kids TV.....

Lets set the scene shall we..its the late 1980s, and a young man named Russell T Davies is working as a producer on the CBBCs summertime filler program called "Why Don't You?" (oddly enough, this show also featured a young Ant McPartlin in a segment showing how to make sandwiches..I digress). After he made numerous changes to the format of the show, he decided it would be a groovy idea to try his hand at screenwriting. He came up with the concept for a show named "The Adventuresome Three" and, abusing the BBCs internal mail system, he made sure that the script was put into the hands of the head of Childrens Programming, where it was promptly put in a drawer and forgotten about for 18 months.
Davies was not to be contacted about his scribblings until late spring of 1991, when Tony Robinson decided he wanted a break from writing and producing "Maid Marian and her Merry Men" , thus a gap in CBBCs schedules occurred.

Changing the name of the show to "Dark Season", because "The Adventuresome Three" sucked, filming began on the first three parter story, which began airing on the 14th of November 1991, and continued for the next six weeks, with two 3 part stories forming the first, and only series.

The series is sort of semi famous for featuring a very young Kate Winslet in one of her many roles before she got her tits out in Titanic, and also featured many people associated with British TV shows from the 70s and early 80s, chief among them being Jaqueline Pearce, who starred as Servalan in Blakes 7, and who had feature din another successful CBBC serial "Moondial" a few years before.


As is the norm for a CBBC serial, the heroes of the piece are teenaged children, with the leader of the three being the 13 year old "Marcie", who is basically an extremely skeptical paranoid conspiracy theorist detective type, and her two older mates, Reet and Tom, whose job it is story wise is to get into trouble in some fashion and/or provide much needed clues to Marcie so she can figure out whats going on.

Things get weird when one day a fleet of vans arrives at their school and the mysterious and sinister "Mr. Eldrich" announces that he is giving one of his new "Abyss" computers (a mixture of rebadged Acorn Archemedes computers and some early 90s laptops) to every child, free of charge.
Marcie gets suspicious as the idea of someone giving away thousands of pounds worth of computer equipment to school children means they must have some sort of ulterior motive....cue some sci-fi techno thriller elements which have links to the cold war..and the story moves on to its second part, in which a team of archeologists find some interesting ruins in the grounds of the school, however the ancient ruins turn out to be a cover story for something far more sinister involving cold war politics, and bizarrely, neo-nazi ideology...

Although the series was intended to just be a bit of "filler" until regular programming resumed, "Dark Season" ended up being something so completely different form the norm that it made a distinct impression on those who watched it. For a start, it more resembled adult drama than a childrens program, with a dark and intelligent storyline, albeit one simplified for consumption by a younger audience.
As Russell T Davies was a fan of Doctor Who, he incorporated many elements and references familiar to Who fans into the characters and storyline, most of which would be lost on anyone not familiar with the show, or anyone not familiar with BBC sci-fi in general (oddly, references to Dark Season have turned up in more modern Doctor Who, both on TV and in the books).
The shows only bad points is that due to its limited running time, the storys end up having that extreme "rushed" feel to them, which works fine for less sophisticated shows, but with something as high concept as what Dark Season was, it gives it the distinct feel that the BBC werent really concerned with the shows content, only that it had something to fill the empty programming block with, which to be fair, is what the BBC tends to do regardless of the programming genre.

Still, despite its flaws, Dark Season is still quite rightly a highly regarded bit of a kids TV curio, and we have never since seen anything like it in the kids schedules, and are extremely unlikely to either being as kids shows in this day and age don't like to provide any content which challenges the viewers mental capacities.

Dark Season is one of the few CBBC childrens serials to be released on DVD, although now out of print, it can still be found for purchase online, although it is somewhat rare. It can also be found to view by other means for those who know where to look.

Serial offender - "Watt on Earth" (1991-1992, CBBC)

"Serial" type shows were a staple component of kids TV here in the UK from the 70s through to the late 90s, CBBC producing loads, many based on semi popular childrens books and many original productions.
Said serials would usually feature children being the "hero" in some fashion, and would often take place in some sort of fantasy/sci-fi setting.

Although a popular format for over 30 years, its popularity waned in the late 90s and such types of show are now almost totally unheard of.

"Watt on Earth" had 2 series, each consisting of 12 episodes, both written by the veteran TV writing team of Pip and Jane Baker, and centred mainly around the misadventures of an alien prince, the titular "Watt" (geddit? "what/Watt" on Earth...puntastic!) and his human friend Sean, whose job it is to keep Watt hidden from his family (all of whom are journalists of some description) and generally keep him out of trouble.

Watt, who is considered a child on his home planet, despite being over 300 years old in Earth years, is the last remaining member of the royal family, his parents having been "killed in an accident" arranged by his evil uncle who has designs on crowning himself king as he has grown a bit sick of merely being the planets "regent protector", unfortunately for his evil plans, Watt, being the remaining heir, will become king when he comes of age.
Watt is sent into exile on Earth by a faction within his planets government who are still loyal to the royal family until such time as they can remove the Uncle from power and restore Watt to his rightful place as ruler. The uncle though, who isn't stupid, catches on to this plot and dispatches his faithful right hand man, Jemedah, to Earth to hunt down and kill Watt......(wow, heavy stuff for a kids TV show from the early 90s eh?).
Watts people are energy beings, so in order to blend in, Watt and Jemedah use a technique called "Transanimateobjectification" to appear as numerous people and objects found on Earth, although Watt, being only a child, isn't able to use this ability properly, so whenever he changes himself, he often messes it up, for example, in the first series, his human disguise (A shell suit wearing man in his early 20s) is ok apart from his ears being backwards, and in the second series, he gets his ears on the correct way, but they are green. He makes similar mistakes when he tries to imitate inanimate objects as well, such as becoming a teapot that has 2 spouts, an apple what has a blue flashing stalk etc.

The series itself is a fairly bland, middle of the road bit of TV filler, and is packed with teenage cliches, such as Seans sister being obsessed with pop music, and some inoffensive humour, most of which is derived from Watts inability to understand human customs and situations. One such "comedy sequence" that jumps out is during episode 3 where a whole 5 minutes is spent with Watt hunting around the kitchen looking for food, and ending with him making a cat food and squirty cream sandwich, which he then finds disgusting, but still eats anyway (Watt must keep his energy up otherwise he isn't able to transanimateobjectify, therefore he spends a lot of time moaning about being hungry).

The first series deals mainly with Watt acclimatising to living on Earth, but also trying to find out what is happening back home, the second series deals with Watt returning to Earth after being away for a fortnight, although due to relativity issues, a year has passed on Earth. The second series ends with Watt returning home for good to take his place as king.

Like i said, this series isnt too bad, although it is unashamedly a bit of filler used to pad out the CBBC winter schedules schedules between 5:10pm and when Neighbours came on at 5:25pm, its hardly memorable though when put alongside other childrens serials of the same type (in many ways, the show resembles CITVs sci-fi sitcom "Mike & Angelo", another series about an oddball alien arriving on Earth and befriending a series of young children. A show which incidentally ran for 11 years, I dont know why because it was a bit tedious).

As is the norm for CBBC serials, it has never been released on video/DVD, although a book was available, so if you want to watch this series, youll have to head over to Youtube, where several people have uploaded the series in fairly high quality video.

"The Machine Gunners" BBC 1983

The Machine Gunners was a BBC childrens drama serial which first aired in 1983, based on Robert Westalls 1975 novel of the same name.

The series (and book) tells the story of a group of children living in the fictional town of Garmouth (based on Tynemouth) in the North East of England during World War 2, or more specifically winter 1940 to summer 1941. As the north east was one of the most heavily industrialised areas of Britain at the time, it became one of the primary targets for the German bombing campaign.

I first saw this serial (and read the book) as part of my GCSE English studies. We were doing a section about how different accents and dialects affect the use of language and our teacher had chosen this book as one of the examples a different and somewhat unfamiliar dialect than the one we were used to.
Being a bit of a fan of war stories the book/series stuck in my mind and I was quite pleased to find the series had been uploaded to youtube., as it -like so many childrens drama serials from the late 70s and early 80s- has never been released on video or DVD.

Starring a cast of people you will have never heard of before or since, the story itself is a kind of "coming of age" type affair, with the children learning over time about responsibility and such, all while dealing with such childhood experiences such as bullying, playground rivalries.

The key points of the story revolve around the character of Charlie "Chas" McGill, who one day while out looking to find stuff to expand his "war souvenir" collection (mainly consisting of pieces of shrapnel, bomb fins, spent cartridges etc, a common hobby during WW2 for many boys) at the site of a burnt out building, he is chased away by an ARP warden while trying to steal parts from the burnt out engine of a German plane.
After fleeing into the woods, he cant believe his luck as he comes across the almost intact remains of a Luftwaffe Heinkel HE-111 medium bomber which had been shot down the night before. As he pokes around the wreckage, he finds an intact, and fully operational MG-15 machine gun as well as over 2000 rounds of live ammunition,but has to return later with his friend Cyril "cemetery" Jones to retrieve it as the weapon is attached to the planes airframe, requiring the use of a hacksaw to remove it.
Chas and his friends eventually build a fortress on the nearby coastline and use the machine gun to shoot at incoming German aircraft - with dubious results - in an effort to "do their bit" for the war effort.
Things don't stay rosy for long though after they find an injured German airman and decide to hold him hostage within their fortress, and when their machine gun breaks they are forced to strike a bargain with him in order to get it fixed, all the while avoiding detection by the local police who know of the machine guns existence and are aware of the possibility that a German may be at loose in the area.


The series can be watched by clicking here.

The Children of Green Knowe (BBC 1986)

"The Children of Green Knowe" was a 4 part BBC Childrens drama serial based on the first book of the "Green Knowe" series by English author Lucy M Boston.


The books centre around the ancestral home of the Oldknowe family, and its seemingly magical ability to make the past come alive and recount the stories of the many generations of the Oldknow family who have lived there.

I remember seeing this series when it originally aired back in 1986, and I know it was repeated once or twice in the late 80s but it has never been released on video or DVD (like many CBBC productions, sadly), but its charming  made enough of an impression on my young mind that I remembered the basic storyline.

The story centres around a young boy named Toseland (or "Tolly" as he prefers), who is sent to stay with his great-grandmother (whom he calls "granny") at the ancestral family home of Green Know. Green Know is an isolated manor house which ends up becoming cut off from the rest of the world during the winter period by flooding, but has stood there for nearly a thousand years.
As Tolly's father is serving in Burma (the series is set during the early years of World War 2), he is eager to see some of his family.
As he explores the house and its grounds, and learns more about his family history from stories told by Granny and the gamekeeper, Mr. Boggins, he begins to encounter the spirits of his ancestors from the period encompassing the reign of King Charles II (who once even visited the village near Green Knowe).
Over the course of his time there, he learns a lot about his family and the history surrounding the house, as well as life lessons from their example.

I was quite pleased to find the series had been uploaded to Youtube, and so here it is, should you wish to watch it...

Episode 1 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Episode 2 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Episode 3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Episode 4 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4