Tour of Duty (1987-1990)

Much like World War two, the Vietnam war is a seemingly endless time period in which all sorts of military tomfoolery went off. Renowned for being one of the worst defeats suffered by the United States military, the repercussions of the war can still be seen and felt today.

Despite the humiliations though, Americans seem to view the war with a curious mix of nostalgia and disgust.

                                                           (Series Title Card)

"Tour of Duty" ran for 58 episodes, spread out over three series and aired between 1987 and 1990.
The three series can be seen as distinct from each other as the core group of main characters change locations in between series, which is explained as them being "assigned to other duties", but in the real world, it was due to the producers wanting to cut down the cost of location filming.

Initially filmed at a marine base in Hawaii, series two saw the production move to Los Angeles, explained in show as the unit being "Reassigned to SOG duties" and being based in Saigon; this led to a running joke of the same locations being used multiple times, but always as "something different". The second series saw the introduction of numerous female characters in an attempt to entice viewership away from rival network ABCs "China Beach", which was also set during the Vietnam war but focused on the lives of a group of Army nurses, it didn't work.

The core characters of this series are introduced in the first episode, which starts the series off in early 1967:-
2nd Lt. Myron Goldman is the officer who is assigned to command Bravo Company, 2nd Platoon; following the death of their commanding officer in combat during the opening scenes of the pilot episode.
Staff Sergeant Zeke Anderson has been in effective command of the unit, and as a long time Vietnam veteran, he provides much needed advice to Goldman.
Both characters bond over the course of the series, with both men learning to respect each others abilities.
The remainder of the unit changes over the course of the fulls series, with troops either returning home at the end of their terms of service, being killed or being removed from the unit for various reasons (its usually a sign that when a new face appears in rank and file of the unit, it means that they will either be killed by the end of the episode, or discharged for some, usually dishonourable, reason). The unit itself is made up of a variety of "stock" characters, and over the course of the series the unit goes through various iterations of these characters, complete with their stereotypical back stories explaining their various outlooks on life and hangups etc, what is surprising though is that the series writers have no qualms about killing off established members of the unit.

The series writers also had no qualms about making whole episodes which had very little by way of machine gun exploding things action and instead concentrated on individual characters and stories looking at things like racial prejudice, drug abuse, sibling rivalry etc etc. This is one of the things which makes the series stand out amongst series of a similar premise, as not only was the war and its various foibles explored, but so was the everyday lives of the people fighting in it, and moreso, the consequences associated with their particular foibles.

By the time of the third series, which saw Carl Weathers  in the role of Colonel Brewster take over and assign the platoon to undertake "secret" missions behind enemy lines; came around, viewing figures for the series had dropped significantly, which wasn't helped by CBS "schedule hopping" the show so that it eventually ended up directly competing with NBCs "The Golden Girls". The series was cancelled after the third season drew to a close.

One of the things about the series was its use of time accurate pop music, so much so that several compilation albums were released, however, in a legal oddity, when the series was released on DVD in the US, all of the series music was replaced, including the shows iconic use of "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones as its theme tune, by generic "soundalike" tunes or original instrumental compositions, this didn't go down too well, especially as fans of the show outside of the US got a completely unedited DVD release, including all the music and a lot of the violent bits that were cut out for US release.

While the series started out strong, the gradual erosion of its main concept and attempts to make the show more "family friendly" led to its eventual position of being yet another generic military program with talky bits.

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.