VISION ON SOUND

Martin Holmes

ADVENTURES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY TELEVISION... AND BEYOND...!Where the television of the past… …becomes the conversation of the present.Join us as we take a nostalgic journey through the television vaults, and my guests and I investigate, discover, enjoy, and chat about a whole world of televisual delights, with some occasional nonsense thrown in from time-to-time.

  1. VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 278 - TX MARCH 15 2026

    1D AGO

    VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 278 - TX MARCH 15 2026

    PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, on TV shows that moved from black & white into colour. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 15th 2026. This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and he suggested for our archive telly-related topic this week, we might want to discuss TV shows that started off in black and white, but then successfully survived into the colour era, and whether or not something changed about those shows in any significant way due to the introduction of colour. This was prompted by PAUL’s continuing exploration of some of the Australian archive TV shows that we have covered in some of his recent appearances, but also covers shows like the original LOST IN SPACE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, DARK SHADOWS, THE AVENGERS, BEWITCHED, DOCTOR WHO, PUBLIC EYE, CALLAN, and STEPTOE AND SON, all of which are at least name-checked during our conversation, and managed to a lesser or greater extent to be produced in both formats, and some of which did seem to feel like very different shows once the full spectrum was added. We also wonder whether some Black & White classics like THE TWILIGHT ZONE would have benefitted from being seen in colour, and how significant it was when films and programmes made in glorious colour were experienced on our old black & white TVs. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

    59 min
  2. VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 277 - TX MARCH 8 2026

    MAR 8

    VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 277 - TX MARCH 8 2026

    STEVE HATCHER on remakes of classic cop shows. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 8th 2026. There’s been a tendency in recent years for modern television makers to take a long, hard look at the archives and realise that some older television series were actually once quite popular, and think to themselves that they quite fancy a bit of that kind of success and brand recognition, and so they decide to remake, repackage, reimagine, or reboot some of those brilliant old ideas for more modern television audiences, and perhaps one of the more popular genres for drawing this kind of attention had been the crime or police drama series. For example, even as I was writing this intro, ITV announced that a new version of DALZIEL AND PASCOE was in the works, to add to a growing list suggesting that everything old is new again. I suppose this isn’t really all that surprising, considering just how many cop shows have filled the schedules over the long history of television, but sometimes it does start to seem as if there really are very few new ideas out there, or that the viewers these days, like with their supermarket shopping only really trust something that is wearing a familiar brand name. So, whilst new variations on the police drama, often involving quirky detectives living on houseboats, or crossword compilers and little old ladies helping the police with their enquiries, are popping up all the time these days, many of the new shows somehow seem more than a little bit familiar… PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

    59 min
  3. VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 276 - TX MARCH 1 2026

    MAR 1

    VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 276 - TX MARCH 1 2026

    PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI discovers THE PERSUADERS! First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 1st 2026. This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back yet again, to discuss a show that rather neatly complements his most recent appearance on VISION ON SOUND where he wanted to talk about the humour of THE AVENGERS. This led him to finally try out an early 1970s TV show which you might be surprised to find he had never actually seen before, which to many of its fans perhaps represents the very pinnacle of the ITC adventure series, the high-budget, high-glamour, glossy series THE PERSUADERS! which starred ROGER MOORE as LORD BRETT SINCLAIR and TONY CURTIS as DANNY WILDE, a pair of rich, womanising international playboys who were recruited by JUDGE FULTON to redirect their wastrel energies into the pursuit of justice and the righting of criminal wrongs across 24 action-packed episodes, first broadcast in autumn 1971 and which, by coming across as being the kind of must-see television that also filtered through into comics and other media managed to make an indelible impact on the children and parents of several nations. And whilst those 24 episodes might not seem all that many, these programmes had all the quality to match the feature films of the time and all looked rather fantastic, meaning that the series, whilst not becoming the huge American hit its producers were hoping for, was still nevertheless, an enormous success across Europe. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

    1 hr
  4. VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 274 - TX FEBRUARY 15 2026

    FEB 15

    VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 274 - TX FEBRUARY 15 2026

    PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI, wishes you were here to hear him discuss humour in THE AVENGERS. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 15th 2026. This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back, although this week we’re going to try and get away from the Antipodean content that his recent appearances on VISION ON SOUND have tended to concentrate on, and instead focus on a subject that is almost certainly more familiar to connoisseurs of British archive television: THE AVENGERS, that latterly most quirky of 1960s television drama series. Our idea was to talk about (and hopefully appreciate) the more humorous aspects of this particular show, showing its development and evolution away from its more urban thriller and kitchen sink dramatic roots in the early 1960s, to the urbane, witty, and charming version as seen during its final season in which PATRICK MACNEE’s John Steed was paired with LINDA THORSON as Tara King, and PAUL picked out a particular episode that he considered to be one of the more broadly humorous ones for us both to watch. This was WISH YOU WERE HERE, episode twenty of series six, written by TONY WILLIAMSON, and directed by DON CHAFFEY, and, whilst what follows isn’t exactly an episode guide-style examination of that show, it did provide us with an excellent prompt for a conversation about humour in TV drama series that includes references to other episodes of THE AVENGERS, THE NEW AVENGERS, DOCTOR WHO, and even CORONATION STREET, and I hope that you find the next hour as entertaining as it was for us to record it, even though PAUL wasn’t in the most conducive of places (technically) on the day of recording. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

    59 min
  5. VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 272 - TX FEBRUARY 1 2026

    FEB 1

    VISION ON SOUND EPISODE 272 - TX FEBRUARY 1 2026

    PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, on some archive Australian Cop Shows. First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on February 1st 2026. This week PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is back on his quest to discover and share as many obscure Australian television shows with you as possible, such are the fascinating compulsions of the archive TV fan. PAUL’s motivation is often down to wanting to see other work by some of his favourite actors, and he selects his box sets because of what appeals to him personally, and not through any requirement to experience them in broadcast order. This week, his exploration of the Australian Drama series takes a look at three more shows that he’s been acquiring and investigating, all of which are hour long – or more accurately fifty minute - police dramas dating from the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies; HOMICIDE (not to be confused with the later American series, a show which ran for thirteen years from 1964 and racked up over 500 episodes; DIVISION 4, which began in 1969 and ran for seven years and over 300 episodes; and MATLOCK POLICE which started in 1971, ran for five years, and offered nearly 230 editions. PAUL admits that all of these shows are fairly new to him and, at the time of recording, he had only watched a handful of each, but I’m very grateful to him for taking the time to watch these shows to get a taste of them and share his experiences with the rest of us. PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

    1 hr

About

ADVENTURES IN TWENTIETH CENTURY TELEVISION... AND BEYOND...!Where the television of the past… …becomes the conversation of the present.Join us as we take a nostalgic journey through the television vaults, and my guests and I investigate, discover, enjoy, and chat about a whole world of televisual delights, with some occasional nonsense thrown in from time-to-time.

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