18:00 – Opening music.
18:03 – Sky – S01E02 – Juganet – More HTV children’s science fantasy weirdness, written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin. This week, Arby’s sister Jane finds them. Sky tries to explain that the world is treating him as an infection and trying to expel him: he needs to find a Juganet to enable him to return to his own time. First broadcast on Mon 14th April 1975.
18:27 – Star Trek (The Original Series) – S01E03 – Where No Man Has Gone Before – Continuing our full run of the classic SF series, this was the unprecedented-in-TV-history second pilot, produced in 1965 after the first pilot, “The Cage”, was rejected by NBC. Reportedly, Lucille Ball, who owned Desilu Productions (where the pilot was produced), persuaded NBC management to consider a second pilot, thereby exercising a special option agreement it had with Desilu, because she liked Gene Roddenberry and believed in the project. Some sources say that she actually put up the money for it herself.
This slightly-reedited-from-the-original-second-pilot version of the episode (see Wikipedia for full details) was eventually broadcast third in sequence in the USA, on Thu 22nd Sept 1966, and it was the first episode to be shown by the BBC, on Sat 12th July 1969 at 5.15pm, eight days before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. It was written by Samuel A. Peeples and directed by James Goldstone. NBC having dismissed the first pilot on the grounds of being “too cerebral”, this pilot deliberately goes the other way to provide an action-packed adventure romp… and it worked!
This episode is very similar to the rest of the series but still has a few minor differences. Kirk (with a different middle initial), Scotty and Sulu are now present (although the latter as ship’s physicist, rather than helmsman), but Lieutenant Uhuru and Dr. McCoy are still nowhere to be seen; in this episode we have Dr. Mark Piper, played by Paul Fix. Spock is still slightly emotional, and the brown ribbed-polo-neck uniforms are still in evidence. Majel Barratt (“Number One” from the original pilot) is nowhere to be seen either, a victim of NBC’s inabilty to cope with a woman as First Officer. She does of course turn up later as Nurse Chapel and every Enterprise computer ever.
19:17 – …And Mother Makes Three – S01E02 – Birthday Bike – More gentle middle-class Thames sitcom, starring Wendy Craig as the newly-widowed Sally Harrison, doing her best to bring up her two boisterous sons, Simon and Peter. In this episode, Simon reveals that he’s been trying to save enough money to buy a bike, Sally takes on some extra hours so she can surprise him on his birthday, and hiding it proves to be as difficult as getting it home in the first place. First broadcast Tue 4th May 1971. This episode features Frank Thornton as a shop assistant, with a performance that was surely an influence on casting him as Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served a year or so later.
19:42 – Brass – S01E02 – More Granada-made northern-drama-satirising comedy, starring Timothy West. This week, Austin Hardacre gets a nasty shock when he walks into his new office. Matthew Fairchild is excited at the thought of going to Cambridge with Morris Hardacre and tells his father whilst he is visiting him in the Cottage Hospital; however, he sees Charlotte Hardacre there and the attraction continues, which in turn upsets Morris, who gains revenge… First broadcast on Mon 28th February 1983.
20:07 – Van der Valk – S01E02 – Destroying Angel – More Thames-made Amsterdam-based crime drama, starring Barry Foster. In this episode, Van der Valk and Kroon investigate when a local prostitute reports that a man is dying. He’s living in rooms above a bar and the police surgeon says he has no hope of recovering. While he can’t be certain, he agrees with the police who feel that he may have been poisoned… First broadcast on Wed 20th Sept 1972.
21:00 – FILM: Adaptation. (2002) – An American meta comedy-drama film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. The film stars Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper with Cara Seymour, Brian Cox, Tilda Swinton, Ron Livingston, and Maggie Gyllenhaal in supporting roles.
Frequently cynical screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has just taken on a new assignment. That is, to adapt writer Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief” into a screenplay, all of it based on the life of the eccentric John Laroche, an exotic plant collector based out of Florida. While his easygoing twin brother Donald, is writing scripts with ease, Charlie finds himself in a perpetual struggle that never seems to end.
Tagline: “From the creator of Being John Malkovich, comes the story about the creator of Being John Malkovich.”
This is the first in what you might call Sheepy’s Film Project. I have a pile of (mostly charity shop) film DVDs that I’ve never got round to watching, and, like Delete with his Project, I intend to – most, but not all, weeks – use this slot to finally get round to watching them. 🙂
22:50 – Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music – S01E02 – Painting with Sound – The eight-part documentary series from 2016, exploring the art of sound recording and music production, continues. I think this is the one I caught some of on Sky Arts a while back, and is hopefully better than last week’s rather self-indulgent opening episode. It features Roger Waters and Brian Eno in the pre-credits sequence, so not a bad start, at least.
23:40 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Original Radio Series) – Fit the Second – More highly-improbable Douglas-Adams-penned space adventures with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and co. Hopefully with better visuals this time.
00:08 – Closedown music.
00:13 – Closedown.