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.

"Selling Hitler" - 1991

"Selling Hitler" is a 5 part 1991 mini series, based on the non fiction book written by Robert Harris .

The plot of selling Hitler is a dramatisation of the events leading up to and surrounding the 1983 "Hitler Diaries" affair, albeit changed in places to add more comedic and satirical overtones, however despite these changes, the events shown actually happened exactly as they are presented.

Plot:-
In the late 1970s, journalist Gerd Heidermann (Jonathan Pryce ), a down on his luck German journalist with a burgeoning obsession for Nazi memorabilia (despite ownership of such items generally being illegal in Germany) comes across the rotting hulk of the Carin II, Hermann Gorings personal yacht , moored in a harbour. Although the vessel requires extensive repairs in order to make it seaworthy again, he somehow manages to get the money together to buy and restore it.
His employers, the well respected German news magazine "Der Stern" ("The Star") are skeptical when he states that his purchase and restoration of the vessel will allow him to coax former Nazis to come out of the woodwork in order for him to interview them, the results of which interviews will form the basis of articles and possibly books about the Third Reich which Sterns parent company can market worldwide, cashing in on the bizarre obsession the world seems to have with Nazism. Sterns management reluctantly agrees to this and advances him several thousand Deutschmarks.

Years pass and Heidermann restores the Carin II and interviews many old Nazi military officers, albeit while they are under the influence of drink while at parties hosted by Heidermann on the ship, however the material he produces for Stern is of extremely poor quality, and not worth publishing in any form. Heidermann finds himself almost bankrupt when Stern pulls his funding for the Nazi project, however Heidermann, whose interest in Nazi memorabilia has now become more of an obsession, refuses to give up on finding some sort of story relating to Nazis. A chance meeting with one of his Nazi contacts brings Heidermann into contact with a relic that he believes will give him the story he is looking for, as amongst his contacts extensive (and illegal) Nazi memorabilia collection is a diary, reportedly one of several volumes penned by Hitler himself in the years between 1932 and 1945.
Heidermann becomes fascinated by the idea that there are more of these books hidden somewhere, and immediately begins a painstaking investigation to firstly authenticate whether the diaries are real, and secondly to track down the source of these diaries, so that he can acquire them for himself.

His searches reveal that in the final days of the war, the German high command organised for planes to carry documents from Berlin to Hitlers alpine retreat. The ninth plane in this flight carried the Fuhrers personal archives, however, this plane crashed en route, its cargo presumably lost.
In 1981, Heidermann tracks down and visits the crash site and is overjoyed to find that it actually existed, and there is a strong possibility that some of the planes cargo survived, including the diaries which he covets so much. Further investigation leads him to the home of a "Dr. Konrad Fischer" (Alexei Sayle ), who is the source of the diary he had seen some months previously.
Heidermann is delighted that Fischer says that he can get him more diaries, but their cost is substantial, due to them having to be smuggled into West Germany by his brother who is a general in the East German army. Heidermann, eager to get his hands on the books whilst making a substantial profit at the same time, returns to the offices of Stern and gets the CEO of publishing, Manfreid Fischer ( Tom Baker ) to agree to give him 200,000 DM in cash in order to buy the first three volumes.
By the beginning of 1983, Stern has made nearly 3 million marks worth of cash payments to Heidermann, of which a sizable portion he has kept for himself, using it to purchase more Nazi memorabilia for his own personal collection, as well as spending it on an extravagant lifestyle, however, problems start to occur when the secrecy of the arrangement that exists between him, Fischer and the new CEO of publishing at Stern is threatened when it is requested that the documents he has bought thus far be authenticated.
Copies of several documents are sent to handwriting experts who state that the handwriting (written in almost unreadable Gothic script) is definitely Hitlers, however forensic tests on the documents begin to show anomalies, such as the paper containing bleaching agents which weren't used until the 1950s.
As it turns out, the "Hitler Diaries" are in fact not smuggled out of East Germany by Fischers brother, they are in fact crudely forged by Fischer himself (His real name being "Konrad Kujau") simply by writing in books bought from Woolworths, which are then artificially aged by soaking the pages in cold tea and battering them on his desk before adding embellishments such as official looking seals and lettering, again, made by using cheap plastic items. Kujau pretty much copied everything written in the diaries from other source texts, occasionally embellishing them with bits of his own personal opinions, many of which ended up being anachronistic.


After being given limited access to the books (as well as being told outright lies by Stern staff) the books are authenticated by noted historian Hugh Trevor-Roper ( Alan Bennett ), however another noted but disliked (due to his antisemitic views and holocaust denial) expert on Nazism, David Irving ( Roger Lloyd-Pack ) casts doubt on the books authenticity when he sees copies of some materials purchased from Kujau from the collection of one of his neo-Nazi contacts and finds them to be fakes, thus casting doubt on the veracity of Trevor-Ropers authentication.
Everything comes to a head when three separate forensic experts finally get to fully test the documents, and find them all to be bare faced forgeries of pretty low quality.
Both Heidermann and Kujau are arrested, the senior staff at Stern, The Sunday Times and Newsweek are forced to resign in shame, Hugh Trevor-Roper is branded an idiot by the press and Rupert Murdoch ( Barry Humphries ) enjoys a field day with "I told you so" style headlines (despite himself bidding nearly $5 million for the international rights to Sterns "scoop").
In the end, Heidermann was ruined and spent four and a half years in prison for fraud (owing to his use of monies given to him by Stern to buy property and memorabilia, most of which were fakes made by Kujau), Kujau served two years for forgery, which was cut down due to his openness and co-operation with police once he was arrested.


"Selling Hitler" is a wonderfully crafted bit of satirical-docu-comedy-drama (its getting harder to classify things these days innit?) , with the "Best actor" award going to Alexei Sayle in his portrayal of Fischer/Kujau as a drunken buffoon who gets so wrapped up in enjoying the money he is getting paid for his forgeries that he doesn't realise the consequences of such a large scale fraud.

Many themes are touched on throughout the series, such as:-

• Sterns naive eagerness to acquire the diaries on a no questions asked basis without checking their authenticity.
• Heidermanns obsession with Nazi memorabilia, despite living in a country where the ownership and trade in such materials is pretty much illegal for private collectors.
• The eagerness in which all concerned have to use the forged materials to get the history books rewritten in order to portray Hitler in a much more flattering light, thus ignoring and/or excusing the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war. 
• The eagerness of all concerned to use the diaries to make ridiculous amounts of profit.
• The casual attitude which nearly all concerned show towards Nazism.

Although the series does take some liberties with the historical source material, the whole picture is still there, and events are presented in pretty much the same way as they happened, including Kujaus increasingly ridiculous explanations as to how the "diaries" get to him, and Heidermannstall tales about how he got one shipment of books in an elaborate "cloak and dagger" type operation, and down to his meeting with Hugh Trevor-Roper in which he proudly showed off a pair of Idi Amins underpants (it omits the bit where an unnamed person allegedly snorted Eva Brauns ashes like cocaine though).

Id well recommend watching this series, which is available on DVD, although it is hard to come by, it can be viewed by other means.


 

God Only Knows!:- The Pit and The Pendulum (1991)

"The Pit and The Pendulum" (also released for a short time under the title of "The Inquisitor"), is a 1991 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poes short story of the same name.
Directed by Stuart Gordon, this film is a closer adaptation of the original story than the classic 1961 adaptation starring Vincent Price, although the film does incorporate elements of other stories by Poe, most notably "The Cask of Amontillado".

The year is 1492, and the Spanish City of Toledo is in the grip of terror. Friar Tomas de Torquemada (Lance Henriksen), the Grand Inquisitor, leads a holy mission to rid Spain of all sinners and heretics, which he and his cronies approach with murderous and sadistic glee.
The opening scene features Torquemada directing his henchmen to open the tomb of a long dead nobleman, whose dessicated corpse is then informed it has been found guilty of heresy and is sentenced to receive 20 lashes. once the sentence has been carried out, the bones are ground up and Torquemada has them placed in an egg timer. When he informs the noblemans wife that due to her deceased husbands supposed heresy, their fortune and lands are being confiscated by the church, she denounces him as a thief, which earns both her and her children a trip to the inquisitions torture chambers.

Later, as Torquemada presides over the noble womans execution, a young woman in the crowd begs him to show mercy, and as soon as he sees her, Torquemada becomes enthralled by her beauty, which leads him to have her arrested for witchcraft. Over time, Torquemada finds himself becoming more and more lustful towards her, so he offers her  a bargain, if she will submit to his lustful desires, he will release her husband.

Throughout the film, Torquemada is seen dabbling with a design for a new torture device, the eponymous "Pit and the Pendulum", consisting of a razor sharp blade which swings from a pendulum and slowly lowers down to slice a victim positioned below it in two, and a pit hidden under a trap door below the victim, which opens to reveal the pit is filled with spikes.
Torquemada explains that he requires the creation of new and more vicious torture devices as people become used to the same tortures, so therefore he has to make sure that the threat of torture remains terrifying to sinners and heretics.

Co stars in this film include Oliver Reed, making a cameo appearance as a cardinal sent by the Pope to investigate the rumours that Torquemadas tortures are becoming too depraved for the Vatican to stomach, and Jeffrey Combs as  Francisco, a cleric in the employ of the Inquisition who takes some pleasure in watching others tortured and killed.

The film is a character driven piece of supernatural horror, although there are elements of dark humour in there, one particularly chucklesome example of this is when a witch is being taken to execution and Francisco apologises to her that they didnt have time to torture a full confession out of her before she was executed.

Although little more than a "direct to video" film, which never had a cinema release proper (it was shown at a few film festivals), and suffers from some bargain basement special effects, it is nonetheless a very good film, with Henriksen putting in a brilliant performance as the fanatical and evil Torquemada.

I give it 8 out of 10 sacrificial lambs.

God Only Knows!:- Hudson Hawk (1991)

Hudson Hawk is a 1991 Action/Adventure/Comedy film starring Bruce Willis, Andie MacDowell, James Coburn, Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard and David Caruso (among others, all in all theres quite a few biggish names in this flick).

The film itself revolves around the premise that Leonardo Da Vinci accidentally discovered a way to turn lead into gold whilst looking for a way to mass produce cheap bronze that he needed in order to build a giant statue of a horse he had been commissioned to make for the Italian noble house of Sforza.
Knowing this invention would probably cause problems, Da Vinci hid the three parts of a crystal required for his gold making machine in some of his artworks.
500 years later, Eddie "Hudson Hawk" Hawkins, a master thief is blackmailed into stealing these artworks by a conglomerate of groups consisting of a small time mafia family, a rogue C.I.A spec ops unit, the Vatican's secret service and a disgustingly rich married couple called Darwin and Minerva Mayflower.

Now, ill be honest, this film is AWFUL, which reflected in its reviews at the time of its release, and subsequent poor box office and home video performance, however, in recent years Hudson Hawk has become something of a cult hit, due to its pseudo religious steam/clockworkpunk-esque leanings, as well as its rather bizarre and unholy amalgamation of cartoon-esque violence, farcical comedy and over the top action.

There are a few running gags that occur throughout the film, first and foremost is Hawks inability to enjoy a cup of cappuccino, which was first on his "to do" list after he got released from prison, but every time he manages to get his hands on one, it ends up being ruined by one means or another.

The second major running gag in the film is Grant and Bernhards portrayal of the comic book villains of the piece, the Mayflowers. This married villain team are so ridiculously over the top that scenes with them in end up being both painful to watch but also horrendously unintentionally funny.

The third major running gag is Hawks budding relationship with the Vatican secret agent Anna Baragli (MacDowell), whom everyone other than Hawk himself knows is a nun, and thus not really able to enter into a relationship with anyone.


The actual film itself doesnt seem to be able to decide whether it wants to be a family movie or an adult oriented action movie. Co-written by Willis himself, the film features many scenes of cartoony violence, which would make it an ideal family movie, however it then goes on to feature scenes with a lot of swearing and scenes of a sexual nature, as well as some scenes which would be considered too violent for the average child, even back in 1991 when it was released.
These two things combined confused audiences and critics alike, one minute you were seeing Willis engaging in a farcical fistfight with someone, the next he was telling someone that they were "motherfuckers" before blowing them up with a bomb, its almost as if Willis' contribution to the screenplay was simply handing the scriptwriters a  copy of the shooting script for "Die Hard 2" (which he had just recently starred in) and told them to use that as inspiration.
Bad editing also has a lot to answer for, as many of the scenes lurch uncomfortably from one to another, which often creates plot holes or bizarre non-sequiturs (possibly an attempt to keep up the "comic book" tone of the film). Elements of exposition seemed to be trimmed down or rushed through in order to maintain a "fast paced" filming style.

To sum up, "Hudson Hawk" is a bad film simply because it watches like an ego trip on Willis's part, with Willis himself not really putting in much of an effort to make Hawk an interestign character outisde of his occasional foul mouthed outbursts or smug satisfaction when he pulls off a job, and then there's the musical numbers...oh god the musical numbers....a recurring theme is that Hawk and his partner in crime Tommy "five-tone" Messina sing songs in order to keep time when performing jobs. This was a gag worked in basically to add something to what would be normally tedious scenes of them breaking into buildings or performing tasks required to set up the theft of something, but instead it just makes for uncomfortable viewing as they both give away their positions and/or reach a crescendo duet at the climax of a job, oh, and most of these duets were featured on the films soundtrack album to boot, not that anyone of sound mind bought it.

One final word, the religious aspect of this film is encompassed totally by the Vaticans self interest in preventing anyone from stealing art treasures from its vaults, cue lots of mumblings about God not approving and so on.

Yeah, Hudson Hawk, a good idea, ruined by egotism, bad editing, corny jokes and simply not knowing what direction it was wanting to head in.

I give it 3 sacrificial lambs out of 10.