"Sci-Fi Britannia": Another BBC4 bullseye

Barney keeps it real with the invaders from outer space coming through the TV:

Arrived home with the best intentions to do some reading for work as I have a mountain of paperwork to hide in at the moment, but ended up watching pretty much all of the opening night of BBC4's "Sci-Fi Britannia" season. There was the first half of the Dr Who story Spearhead from Space with Jon Pertwee, which I have on DVD, but I watched anyway... Then the first episode of the BBC's 1981 version of Day of the Triffids, which scared the hell out of me as a kid all those years back: I wasn't sure whether it would be any good in retrospect but the first episode was a classic. No CGI, fancy camerawork, four-to-the-floor dance music soundtrack, or twenty-somethings getting off with each other: just the actor John Duttine, two eye bandages, a hospital bed, a tape recorder and flashbacks. And the triffids: even they looked pretty good. Then there was a very interesting documentary about British science fiction writing from H.G. Wells through to Arthur C. Clarke with the emphasis on the way aliens are characterised in British sci-fi. Now I'm watching this year's remake of A for Andromeda, which is slow-paced as hell, but maybe that's the idea. All good stuff for Monday night sci-fi buffs - which is just as well, as there was very little else of interest on the box apart from a swathe of news programmes concentrating on the fifth anniversary of the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and how it's been pretty much downhill all the way for British foreign policy since then...

Actually, looking at this A For Andromeda programme again, vast amounts of the programme seem to consist of close-ups of a spinning glitter ball. It's amazing what one can get away with in the name of atmospherics! And there's a guy with a dreadful moustache/designer stubble combo. Well maybe that bit was true to the original 1960s dramatisation but I've never seen it so I dunno. Anyway I will be following this season with great interest - about half of everything I watch is BBC4 at the moment and I'd go so far as to say it justifies the licence fee pretty much by itself (well that plus Torchwood...)