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Strange Report
Tabbythecat
Posts: 33,953 Forum Member
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I love this series with Anthony Quayle as Dr Adam Strange, which suprsingly wasnt an ITC production as was the trend in the 1960's (it was made by a tiny company called Arena) had a fine theme tune composed by Roger Webb, nice to see it being repeated on ITV2. must get around to updating to the dvd boxset
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If you look at the credits for many ITC shows,even later episodes of The Saint,you will see that they were often made by companies created purely to make said programmes,but they all were financed by ITC and are owned by ITC(Granada).
The Saint colour stuff was made by Bamore,co owned by Roger Moore
Yup indeed it was, he happens to own the rights solely now I beleive, but not however to the earlier series
its ok but suffers from the usual thing i dislike about series of that period, all a bit too cheery and polite and with a few token americans
thats a good brucie bonus
They needed to sell it to the American market
It was killed in the UK, like so many other good shows, by the lunatic regional network system. It wasn't shown in Yorkshire for example, until long after it was axed.
But its still good to know that people like us wont let it get consigned to the TV vaults never to be seen again
I had never seen until it was shown on ITV4
What do you think of it?
Pretty much par for the course for ITC
Interesting to see Anneke Wills though, as I've never seen her as Polly in Dr Who
I'd never heard of it and I thought i knew all of the itv dramas from the 60's.
How come this got shelved and hidden away when Dangerman , The Saint etc. got repeated in the following decades.
I wish itv4 would put it back in it's sunday slot as i miss it at 6pm in the week.
Ah the sweet mystery of ITV4 eh has its own ways & workings
Yup but you just gotta dig the theme tune, its groovy (goes back to his catnip
Like Strange Report it, shouldn't be allowed to vanish forever (and it's very good, if, obviously, dated). :cool:
I remember Gideon's Way
BBC4 is currently showing the b & w Mrs Peel episodes of The Avengers
Indeed they are and uncut too, but will they shown the Tara King ones (The lovely Linda Thorson PHWOARRRRR)
I don't know. For some reason they showed the colour Mrs Peels before the b&w ones
Couple of days ago I saw a programme on the Biography channel about Catwoman and her various incarnations.... to which I only have two words to say...... Julie Newmar!!!!!
Reasons could be obtaining the rights to those b/w ones as I think they are owned by Canal + me thinks, oh yes Julie Newmar (MEOW MEOW) better than Eartha Kitt (thought that was a set of garden equipment)
Like Julie Newmar, she's still going strong and sounds better than ever. :cool:
The Diana Rigg episodes have always been the most popular,especially the inferior colour ones so its no surprise that BBC4 started with those and have not even bought the Tara King stories.
13 or 14 episodes of Strange Report were also shown by Bravo about 10 years ago.
I knew Canal+ had those rights, its amazing how a british institution is owned by the French
I understand that there was a second series planned and it was to be made in the US, but Quayle wouldn't commit to spending time there as he had commitments/ambitions for theatre work in the UK, so the whole project was axed.
[ He was a distinguished theatre director and actor, serious and big-time]
It would be easy to dismiss it as a standard glossy crime/adventure series, but it has some quite gritty storylines (racism, nationalism).
The supporting cast features some really outstanding people in quite small roles. John Challis was a one-line extra, a couple of episodes back, and Sally Geeson bravely staggered through despite being lumbered with a dreadful American accent. Doreen Mantle (Mrs Worboys) made her mark, with one scene as a concerned neighbour.
Groovy theme tune, too. Some very striking colour schemes in the set design. Definitely recommended.
Anneke Wills, as usual, has very little to do. Anthony Quayle is solid and dependable. Kaz Garas as the preposterously named Hamlyn Gynt is gorgeous. I wonder what happened to him?!