PPS - Programme Preservation Society - Radio TellyScope 34

Babylon 5 was a show that crept up on me. I watched the first episode on C4 and was unimpressed. It seemed to be the worst kind of TV SF, lots of made up names, bizarre hairstyles and over-earnest acting. So I left it, and just heard bits and pieces about it over the next two years. The buzz was very positive and when C4 were showing the last four episodes of season two, I tuned in again and was taken back by the originality and sophistication. This show had done a lot of maturing. Plus it seemed to be mixing supernatural elements like angels and satanic pacts into a futuristic world. Intrigued, I started buying the earlier episodes on tape and was drawn in to J Michael Straczynski’s "novel for television".

It’s a groundbreaking show and some of its innovations are still to be picked up on by today’s show. It presented us with a complete future world, filled not only with vast space fleets and bizarre aliens, but public toilets and a Jew wondering if an off-world dish is kosher. Its regulars were often deeply flawed people but they still fought for their principles. But they made mistakes and we watched them deal with the consequences. They grew and changed in surprising ways. Before B5, episodes of US TV shows tended to be self-contained, designed to be switched on and watched in any order. By the time the series went off the air, the phrase "story-arc" had entered the everyday language of TV writers. B5 is a celebration of the simple but profound power of storytelling.

An amazing production, made all the more impressive by the relatively primitive conditions in which it was produced. Nigel Kneale’s literate script provides a great foundation, combining imaginative SF speculation with a lovely eye for domestic details. Rudolph Cartier’s created a series steeped in an atmosphere of growing menace and unease. The design of the alien spacecraft is simple but unearthly. The Martians are believable and menacing. There are sequences which have entered into the folklore of television, such as the terrified workman Sladden being pursued by a psychic force, realised brilliantly by the Radiophonic Workshop as a frightening inhuman pulsing. Other highlights include the appearance of Hob above London and the archaeological site twisting into life. But there’s also time for humour and characters, such as the formidable tea leaf reader and the frightened policeman explaining the history of a haunted terraced house.

Kneale’s Professor Quatermass is one of the best scientists in fiction, brilliant and visionary but with feeling of responsibility for his work. Here he gains extra dimensions as a defender of liberal, rational thought in a blinkered world. The recent DVD restoration has only increased my admiration for this landmark drama.

It is a hard choice between this or Porridge as Ronnie Barker’s finest hour. He’s matched here by the marvellous Lynda Baron and David Jason. Roy Clark’s may have frittered his writing talents away in the last decade on the depressingly formulaic Last of the Summer Wine but I’ll always cherish these two perfectly formed seasons of northern humour. The tiny scale of this sitcom is part of its appeal. A small corner shop with two rooms. A terraced street and a house front. We know places like this and we can recognise the types of people who live here. Arkwright and his nephew Granville are a classic double act, two men with different personalities trying to pull apart but inextricably tied together in their small world. Like most great British sitcoms, it’s a story about losers. It has many of the ingredients for a classic kitchen sink tragedy. But out of this scenario instead comes hilarious comedy. Granville forever dreaming of a rich, sophisticated life and being cut down with a few choices words from his miserly, earthy uncle. Arkwright’s increasingly eccentric schemes to extract extra money from his customers. Gladys Emmanuel, the buxom, level headed state-registered goddess across the road fending off the attentions of her flirty grocer whilst liking him despite herself. Not to mention a parade of northern stereotypes through the shop door: dour battleaxes, elderly set-in-their-ways blokes, young struggling mothers. The show’s brilliance also lies in finding their individualities, their tharwted ambitions and dreams. There’s also the subtle sense of the end of an era. It portrays a kind close knit community that’s growing old and being replaced by a generation who just want to move out. There’s a Co-Op a few streets away and customers are going there. Arkwright’s kind of corner shop is an endangered species. From out of all this comes a show rich in jokes and repartee, that makes low key everyday events seem special.

The BBC have rightly gained a worldwide reputation for their epic documentaries but The Ascent of Man deserves special mention for taking on the complex, rather theoretical subject of the development of scientific thought and making into gripping, inspirational television. For its central figure Professor Jacob Bronowski was the obvious choice for the producers, but a more controversial one for the science academic community which was suspicious of his populalist approach and embracing of television. Frankly they thought that he was an egotist and a smart-alec as well. However his renaisance man qualities, as comfortable with history, literature and art as he was with Einstien’s theory of relativity and the revolutionary ideas of genetic inheritance made him uniquely qualified to draw the links between all the aspects of humanity’s growth and present it as a fascinating story. The series features plenty of spectacular location filming but it is often at its most impressive when Bronowski is finding visual metaphors for new scientific ideas. It is a programme which has definitely enhanced my life.

Few shows have used television as cleverly as Rod Serling’s first anthology. The sets were basic, sometimes starkly simple, the actors often filmed in tight close-ups, lit in film noir light and shadow. It was a programme made for black and white grainy TV screens. Serling was the ultimate anthology host, snappily dressed in his narrow lapeled suits, his urbane voice a mixture of authority and conspiracy. And what stories waited for us beyond that signpost up ahead. A howling man in a monastery of wild bearded monks. A woman trapped in bandages in a sinister hospital. Astronauts vanishing from reality. Five strange characters in a featureless steel room. A frightened passenger watching a gremlin destroying his plane. A world where everyone is beautiful whether they like it or not. A loser’s reflection coming to life to change his owner’s life. Like any anthology not every story worked, many of the comic episodes have dated badly for example. However when The Twilight Zone was firing on all cylinders, it was untouchable scary entertainment.