TV Episodes You Have Just Watched

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The Next Scream You Hear, (alternative title Not Guilty)


Yet another 'Thriller' episode from 1974. This one's a terrible convoluted murder mystery, solved by probably the most annoying fictional private detective of all time. Brian Clemens, who wrote the scripts for this series, was a bit of a cult figure for his association in the 1960s with The Avengers, one of those 'cool' or 'quintessentially iconic' and somewhat overrated series from that decade ('The Prisoner' was another), but he certainly wrote his fair share of rubbish, of which this episode is a good example.

I've watched over twenty of these now, and I'm still only halfway through the box set...

Real Time With Bill Maher.
The Flash.

Ted Lasso. Season 2 episode 4

Courage the Cowardly Dog

The Thing About Pam.

True story about an innocent husband and father wrongly convicted for the murder of his wife, and how the dead woman's friend, Pam Hupp, had been inserting herself into the investigation and trial in order to make sure that he got convicted. That's because Pam is actually a narcissistic manipulator and murderer with every reason in the world to have killed her friend.
Very good production purposely with the look of a TV crime documentary, with gallows humor and infuriating plot twists.

Life on Mars

Series 1 episode 4

Screamer

Another 1974 episode from 'Thriller'. Pamela Franklin plays a young woman who is apparently raped and thereafter stalked by her attacker. This could never be made today: in the first few minutes, an elderly woman states that it'd be a compliment to her if anyone wanted to rape her. Oh Dear. And at the end it's revealed that Franklin's character has imagined the incident, and has committed a couple of murders herself in the interim.

Even so, this is a pretty good episode by the standards of the series. Pamela Franklin had a starring role in the 1968 film The Pride Of Miss Jean Brodie , but her career didn't exactly take off from there - she appeared in a few mediocre low-budget horror films, and TV dramas in the 1970s, but that was just about it. She always reminds me a bit of Lynne Frederick, the controversial second wife of Peter Sellers.

The Walking Dead.

All or Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs

Re my previous post, it should of course have referred to 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. I hate making mistakes like that.

Nurse Will Make It Better

Yes, it's another episode from ITV's long-running 'Thriller' series, this time from 1975. A 'nurse', who is in reality an agent of Satan played by Diana Dors, wreaks havoc on a family living somewhere in the English countryside. It bears some astonishing resemblances to the film The Omen, though these must surely be coincidental, as the latter was released at least a year later. For example, Patrick Troughton is cast in the role of an alcoholic, tormented priest very similar to his character in the movie, and Diana Dors could well be Mrs Baylock. There's even an American ambassador to the UK here as well! It's pretty decent stuff on the whole, and not difficult to follow (unlike some other episodes), but it's let down a bit by a rather daft ending.

Cowboy Bebop
Squidbillies

The Thing About Pam.
Superman And Lois.

Night Is The Time For Killing

Episode of Thriller from 1975. This is a strange one. The first few minutes resemble a rather derivative version of 'Callan', a late-1960s British spy series, but the rest of the proceedings take place on an overnight sleeper train, and seem to be from a completely different episode. This part can test your patience to its limits, with its strange mix of high drama and scripted comedy, and it's difficult to work out what's going on most of the time. It's kind of redeemed in the last two or three minutes, when suddenly everything makes sense. This features Judy Geeson, who made a big impact in British cinema in the late 1960s (though her career faded somewhat thereafter) as our unlikely heroine along with the aid of a fellow passenger.

I had a lot of fun relating members of the cast to contemporary people to whom they bore a striking resemblance, eg the train's chief steward looks a lot like the Prime Minister of the time, Harold Wilson, the inept security agent is a ringer for Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, and the ex-Foreign Office man is a cross between Labour Cabinet Minister Tony Benn and comedian Ronnie Barker. You probably have to be a baby boomer or at least Generation X to 'get' a lot of this!




"Harold Wilson"




"Leonid Brezhnev"




"Tony Benn/Ronnie Barker"