Can you help TV's The Prisoner?

Heading off to Portmeirion for a few days. 

Hopefully will be back Thursday. 

Activity for the journey sorted. 

Just need to find a crayon...

EastEnders - Kathy Beale is Watching!

She's back... and TV Kack has the exclusive!

Vintage Target Book Covers for Vintage Doctor Who Stories

I can't seem to not do Target book covers these days. Some are serious, some are silly. I'm currently just over halfway through doing the Target covers for Peter Capaldi's second series. Just need to confirm a couple of story titles and check some the origin of some images I'm using. I'm amusing myself that I'm designing these covers without having seen the episodes. I get the feeling some of the original artists were also in a similar situation.

These are a little sideline that I did over an evening last week. They're based on photos that don't get seen all that often but using the original Target design to make them look familiar... if you see what I mean.

Blake's Kingdom - the theme park experience for all the family!

Being a veteran of the theme park entertainment experience, I'm always on the look out for the latest in days out for all the family. (I'm not really as I'm single and don't get out much but it sounds like a better opening sentence for this post than "I'm a lonely middle-aged man living on his own in the East Midlands...") 

Theme parks need themes. So as Disney announces that it plans a 'Star Wars Land', I've looked back into my extensive archives - a box file next to the gas meter under the stairs - and re-discovered this little foreshadowing of the famed Mickey Mouse company's latest plans.

Behold..... BLAKE'S KINGDOM!!

(Inspired by a tweet by Mr. C Hickman.) 



Further posts about Terry Nations's Blakes's 7 can be found by clicking on these handy links's.

Blake's 7 - The Virgin New Adventures

The Blake's 7 Dinosaur Book

Come Back Mrs Noah on BBC DVD (and VHS!)

There are some TV shows that are still crying out for a DVD release. One of these is the sadly maligned 70s sitcom 'Come Back Mrs Noah'.

From the writers of 'Are You being Served?' - Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft - the show was a starring vehicle for Mollie Sugden. She played an ordinary British housewife who - after winning a national cookery competition - finds herself trapped on a British space station as it blasts off into Earth orbit. It also featured Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles from 'It Ain't 'Alf Hot Mum' and Ian Lavender from 'Dad's Army'. There was also early roles for 'Allo Allo's Gordon Kaye (as a newsreader) and Vicki Michelle. 

It's never been released commercially or, indeed, been repeated. This is probably because it was a huge flop at the time of its original broadcast - garnering poor ratings and reviews. Clips appear with alarming regularity on TV shows about the worst TV ever - often out of context so the viewer is given little opportunity to make their own mind up. 

During the halcyon days of the BBC releasing everything and its aunty on VHS and DVD, I had hoped it might slip through - on the heels of its illustrious predecessors like 'Are You Being Served?' and 'Dad's Army'. Sadly this was not the case. 

So this little DVD sleeve here is a little taste of what could've been...





(As a footnote, here's a rare VHS sleeve from the programme's US release back in the 1980s. As was the case with many 'foreign' films and TV shows, 'Come Back Mrs Noah' was heavily re-edited, re-formatted and re-titled into something the producers thought would be more palatable to the American market - a hard hitting sci-fi thriller...)