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The swinging Sixties are back. Today marks the launch of a new streaming service called Networkonair available via watch.networkonair.com. The new service offers TV fans a unique nostalgic experience where TV meets streaming with a selection of time travel ‘Nights In’.

Networkonair, available from today, July 29th, in the UK and Ireland, enables nostalgia lovers, old and new, the opportunity to rent specially curated Nights In and collected series from ABC Television, which broadcast in the Midlands and Northern England between 1956 and 1968. Many of these programmes have not been seen since their original broadcast.

Nights In consist of 4-6 hours of exclusively curated programming, including specially recorded new linking material from David Hamilton (original ABC continuity announcer and host), clips and contemporary ads. Nights In are entirely remastered in the best possible quality. Platform viewers will enjoy a truly vintage viewing experience, it is time travel TV! These...

Carley Tauchert Sep 5, 2017

From video shops to the corner fleapit, our kids are going to miss out on some of the movie rites of passage we got to enjoy...

Just over a year and a half ago I had a baby, and my son is a beautiful bundle of joy who is growing rapidly by the day. One of the many things I look forward to as he grows up is introducing him to new and exciting experiences, and the one I actually cannot wait for is the world of film as it was such an important thing to me growing up. But we live in a different age now, and although we have a huge cinematic adventure ahead of us, there are some things I’m quite sad about that he is going to miss out on in this digital age, starting with...

Fleapit cinemas

This actually is the...

Constance Cummings: Stage and film actress ca. early 1940s. Constance Cummings on stage: From Sacha Guitry to Clifford Odets (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Flawless 'Blithe Spirit,' Supporter of Political Refugees.”) In the post-World War II years, Constance Cummings' stage reputation continued to grow on the English stage, in plays as diverse as: Stephen Powys (pseudonym for P.G. Wodehouse) and Guy Bolton's English-language adaptation of Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948), with Cummings as one of shop clerk Denholm Elliott's mistresses (the other one was Betty Marsden). “Miss Cummings and Miss Marsden act as fetchingly as they look,” commented The Spectator. Rodney Ackland's Before the Party (1949), delivering “a superb performance of controlled hysteria” according to theater director and Michael Redgrave biographer Alan Strachan, writing for The Independent at the time of Cummings' death. Clifford Odets' Winter Journey / The Country Girl (1952), as...

Actress Pauline Yates has died, aged 85.

The British star was best known for her starring role in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin from 1976 to 1979, as the title character's wife Elizabeth Perrin opposite Leonard Rossiter.

She also played the wife of comic-strip artist Dudley Rush (Robert Gillespie) in Keep It In the Family, and starred in Bachelor Father.

Yates's family have said that she "died peacefully in her sleep" yesterday (January 21) in Denville Hall nursing home in Northwood, Middlesex.

During a career that spanned six decades, Yates became a regular performer in 1960s TV series, including Armchair Theatre, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Gideon's Way, Nightingale's Boys, The Human Jungle and The Ronnie Barker Playhouse.

She returned as Elizabeth Perrin for The Legacy of Reginald Perrin in 1996, and continued to perform on stage. Her most recent roles were in Rose and Maloney and Doctors in the early 2000s.

Yates...

Out of This World: Little Lost Robot

DVD release from British Film Institute

Review by Adrian Smith

(This review pertains to the UK Region 2 DVD release)  

Alongside the recent BFI release of the BBC television series Out of the Unknown comes this oddity; the only completely surviving episode of Out of This World, a science fiction series produced in the early 1960s by independent television channel ABC. The series was created by Irene Shubick and produced by Leonard White, who would achieve lasting fame through his co-creating The Avengers. Like other anthology shows before it such as Armchair Theatre, this was conceived as an opportunity to present a variety of quality writing to mainstream audiences. It was Shubick's belief that science fiction contained some of the 'most original and philosophical ideas' in modern fiction.

Boris Karloff was employed as the presenter for the show. By this time he was...

54 years ago, ABC Television, the ITV franchise holder for the Midlands and North of England, embarked on a new drama series that stood a good chance of success. The leading man was Ian Hendry, who played David Keel, a Gp avenging the death of his wife; the producer was Sydney Newman, the creator of the acclaimed Armchair Theatre. The first episode was scripted by Brian Clemens, a young writer who had previously worked for the Danziger brothers, the B-film producers who based their masterpieces around stock footage and borrowed props. Against not inconsiderable odds, Clemens’ scripts often managed to make a Danzigers production entertaining. The Avengers would provide a higher profile showcase for his talents.

DVD Review: Out of the Unknown

7-disc Region 2 DVD box set from the BFI

By Adrian Smith

Famously, or rather, infamously, the BBC took a rather cavalier approach to the preservation of its television output in the 1950s and 1960s. Due to the cost of videotape, once pre-recorded programmes had been broadcast,the tape was wiped and used again. For programmes to be kept for repeat use or to be sold to other territories around the world, the episode would be transferred to film, and it this process we have to thank that any television from this period has survived at all.

Out of the Unknown was an attempt to present serious, adult science fiction on television, adapting well-known and important authors like John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, J.G. Ballard and E.M. Forster. The single play was a tradition by this point, with popular series such as Armchair Theatre...

The Englishman’s long but sporadic career included an Oscar and BAFTA nomination for his art direction and set decoration on 1981’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Assheton Gorton’s daughter told local paper the Shropshire Star that he died in his sleep September 14 at his home near the England-Wales border. He was 84. Gorton also worked on such well-known films as Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow-Up (1966) — scoring his first BAFTA nom — Ridley Scott’s Tom Cruise starrer Legend (1985) and Disney’s live-action 101 Dalmatians (1996) and sequel 102 Dalmatians (2000), both starring Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil. Gorton worked on fewer than 20 films during his four-decade career, including The Magic Christian (1969), Get Carter (1971), For the Boys (1991), Rob Roy (1995) and Shadow of the Vampire (2000). He also worked on a handful of television programs including ITV’s Armchair Theatre and 1980 NBC miniseries The Martian Chronicles.

Two of Britain's brightest and most inventive comedy brains are back. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton return to BBC Two this week with Inside No 9 - a new series of one-off darkly comic vignettes that the pair are pitching as a contemporary counterpart to classic anthology shows like Armchair Theatre and Nigel Kneale's Beasts.

"I think it is a hard sell for people," Shearsmith says of the format. "There's this idea that you don't build an audience with an anthology - every week, you've got to start again and if you don't like the first one [you see] you might not watch again. That's the fear! But I think the appeal is the absolute excitement of not knowing what you're going to get."

Join Digital Spy as we head inside Inside No 9 and find out what the latest project from the men behind The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville has to offer.

We have a small golden circle of writers who do everything, in effect closing the door on Britain's rich diversity of talent

A meeting I attended this week, chaired by the culture minister Ed Vaizey in the House of Commons, was in many ways a ground-breaking event. For the first time, representatives from film, television and the performing arts came together to acknowledge that representation among black, Asian and ethnic minorities across the television and film industry – most significantly behind the camera – has fallen from 7.4% in 2009 to 5.4% in 2012, and is continuing to decrease, and that it is not an acceptable state of affairs in a vibrant democracy which boasts a rich diversity of cultures. Most important, we recognise it is our job collectively to reverse this trend by ensuring that the inequalities faced by ethnic minority talent become a thing of the past.

Many options and possibilities for changing the...

Stars: Amy Joyce Hastings, Luke de Lacey, Kate Braithwaite, Tom Sawyer, Jodie Jameson | Written and Directed by Sean Hogan, Simon Rumley, Andrew Parkinson

The anthology has a rich history in British film, from TV dramas such as Armchair Theatre and Hammer’s House of Horror to the classic Amicus anthologies such as Tales From the Crypt and From Beyond the Grave, in more recent years America has become home to the anthology greats (think Creepshow, The ABCs of Death and the excellent Trick r Treat). But now the UK are striking back with the portmanteau film Little Deaths.

A three part anthology directed by three of the UK’s most promising filmmakers – Andrew Parkinson (I, Zombie), Sean Hogan (Isle of Dogs) and Simon Rumley (Red White & Blue), Little Deaths tells three stories of sex and death, pushing the envelope of what “love” means in modern society…

The film opens with...

My friend the actor John Forrest, who has died aged 80, combined a distinguished film career with work as a stage magician. He had his first success as a child actor, in David Lean's classic movie Great Expectations (1946), as the "pale young gentleman" – the young Herbert Pocket.

Known later for his many supporting roles playing very "British" characters such as Grassy Green in Very Important Person (1961), he was in fact born in the Us, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His English mother, an artist, had married an American lawyer, and when the marriage broke up after a few years, she brought John and his sister to England where they lived in the village of Cookham, Berkshire. Their neighbours were the painter Stanley Spencer and his equally eccentric brother, Horace, who taught John magic.

Following his early film success, John acted alongside such distinguished actors as David Niven, in Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), Richard Attenborough,...

Director who blended sophistication and sickness in the horror film The Abominable Dr Phibes

With its mix of pop art, sophisticated humour, pulp science fiction and English eccentricity, the television series The Avengers was among the most influential and significant products of "swinging London" in the 1960s. Robert Fuest, who has died aged 84, cut his teeth on the series under the aegis of the writer-producer Brian Clemens, initially as a production designer when the show was produced "as live" in the studio in black and white and co-starred Honor Blackman with Patrick MacNee, then as director when the series had moved on to colour, film and Linda Thorson.

As designer and director, Fuest learned how to achieve style on a budget – making a great deal of the show's famously minimalist aesthetic – and he carried this over into his best-known works as a film director, the two Dr Phibes horror movies of the early 1970s,...

Actor who became a prolific TV director

Peter Hammond, who has died aged 87, moved from acting to become a prolific TV director, contributing to series including The Avengers, Granada's Sherlock Holmes series and Inspector Morse. It was with The Avengers in 1961 that he first made his mark. Hammond and his colleague Don Leaver directed 19 of the opening 26 episodes of the series between them and were largely responsible for creating its distinctive look in its pre-film days.

Hammond established himself as a quick worker who still managed to bring flair to his episodes. He developed a trademark style in which the confines of the small studio spaces would be enlivened by "foreground interest" and scenes would be distorted or heightened by being shot through glass or caught in the reflection of a mirror. This distinctive visual effect would reappear in productions as diverse as the studio-bound Three Musketeers (1966) and Dark Angel,...

Actor turned teacher, he quit the screen at the height of his fame

There are some actors who, having disappeared from the public gaze early in their careers, always prompt the question, "Whatever happened to ... ?" The answer, in the case of Paul Massie, who has died of lung cancer aged 78, is that, at the height of his fame on films and television, he gave it up at the age of 40 to teach drama at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

The son of a Baptist minister, Massie was born Arthur Massé in the city of St Catharines, in the Niagara region of Ontario. Although he was brought up in Canada, almost his entire 16-year acting career was in Britain. In fact, the only film he made in Canada was his first, Philip Leacock's High Tide at Noon (1957), a Rank Organisation melodrama shot in Nova Scotia. Although it was a bit part,...

British-born director known for Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots

The film and television director Charles Jarrott, who has died of cancer aged 83, began his career during a golden period of British TV drama, working on Armchair Theatre and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s alongside writers and directors such as Ken Loach, Dennis Potter and David Mercer. Both series were presided over by the Canadian producer Sydney Newman, who encouraged original work – what he called "agitational contemporaneity" – and had an astonishing impact. But in 1969 Jarrott's career took a different turn when he left for Hollywood, thereby increasing his income a hundredfold, while having to contend with far less adventurous material. His best films were his first, two Elizabethan costume dramas, Anne of the Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots, enlivened by the Oscar-nominated performances of Richard Burton (Henry VIII), Geneviève Bujold (Anne Boleyn) and...

Little Deaths

Stars: Amy Joyce Hastings, Luke de Lacey, Kate Braithwaite, Tom Sawyer, Jodie Jameson | Written and Directed by Sean Hogan, Simon Rumley, Andrew Parkinson

The anthology has a rich history in British film, from TV dramas such as Armchair Theatre and Hammer’s House of Horror to the classic Amicus anthologies such as Tales From the Crypt and From Beyond the Grave, in more recent years America has become home to the anthology greats (think Creepshow and the recent Trick r Treat). But now the UK are striking back with the portmanteau film Little Deaths.

A three part anthology directed by three of the UK’s most promising filmmakers – Andrew Parkinson (I, Zombie), Sean Hogan (Isle of Dogs) and Simon Rumley (Red White & Blue), Little Deaths tells three stories of sex and death, pushing the envelope of what “love” means in modern society…

The film opens with House & Home...

Unmistakably quirky and stylish, The Avengers was a series truly ahead of its time.

Now you can enjoy the seven DVD box set of Series 4 with this competition from HeyUGuys.

You can follow the adventures of the most dapper man in living memory, Patrick Macnee’s John Stead and the becatsuited Diana Rigg as the original Hit Girl Emma Peel.

The entire fourth series is out now and you can win a copy on DVD by answering the following question in the form below,

Who played Steed and Peel in the 90s big screen movie adaptation of The Avengers?

[contact-form]

The small print:

This competition is open to the UK only Only one entry per household will be counted The competition will close Friday 9th July at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received

The usual T&Cs can be found here. Good Luck!

Here are the...

Playwright and author of TV dramas including The Beiderbecke Affair and Fortunes of War

Alan Plater, whose TV credits in a writing career spanning 50 years included The Beiderbecke Affair, Fortunes of War and the screenplay for A Very British Coup, has died, his agent confirmed to the BBC today.

Plater, 75, wrote novels and for film and theatre, but will be best remembered for a profilic body of television drama spanning six decades, starting with TV play The Referees for BBC North in 1961.

His final TV drama, Joe Maddison's War, starring Kevin Whately and Robson Green and set on the eve of the second world war in the north-east, where Plater was born, is currently in post-production for ITV.

Plater was born in Jarrow in 1935 and moved with his family as a young child to Hull, where he grew up.

He studied architecture at Newcastle University and worked for a short...

Actor best known for his role in The Sweeney

For decades a versatile figure in regional theatre, both behind and in front of the footlights, the actor Garfield Morgan, who has died aged 78, achieved national recognition as Frank Haskins in the mould-breaking action series The Sweeney (Thames, 1975-78), having spent years playing police officers on screen. He brought narrow eyes and a habitually rueful expression to the role of Haskins, who was continually beset by ulcers and colds and whose somewhat puritanical nature distanced him from his charges, played by John Thaw and Dennis Waterman.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Morgan was initially apprenticed to a dental mechanic. His professional debut was in July 1953, in Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham, as part of the Arena Theatre Company, for the city's sixth summer theatre festival. Also in the company was the future director Clifford Williams.

The following month, Morgan was a founder member of the Marlowe Players,...

British actor Edward Woodward starred as the ill-fated Sgt. Howie, a repressed and religious police officer, in Anthony Shaffer’s occult thriller The Wicker Man in 1973. Sent to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle to search for a missing girl, he becomes enmeshed in an arcane pagan ritual that results in his own sacrifice in a burning wicker effigy to ensure a bountiful harvest. Christopher Lee co-starred as Lord Summerisle, and Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento, and Ingrid Pitt were featured as enticing pagan ladies.

Woodward was born in Croydon, England, on June 1, 1930. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and made his professional stage debut in 1946. A Shakespearean stage actor, he also appeared frequently in films and television from the early 1960s. He was featured in episodes of The Saint, The Baron, Mystery and Imagination, and Sherlock Holmes, and was Auguste Dupin in a 1968 production of Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Popular actor known for his roles in Callan, The Equalizer and The Wicker Man

Edward Woodward, who has died aged 79, was an actor with possibly far more potential than was ever realised on screen, but he became a popular television star in Callan and The Equalizer and enjoyed cult success with the film The Wicker Man. For many years, he was part of the comfortable community of jobbing actors, directors and producers which could be called the "Teddington set" – those who worked for the BBC, ABC and Thames TV studios in west London in their heyday – and so found it comparatively easy to get parts which were financially rewarding but not too stretching.

Presentable, but sombre in appearance, he played loners on the edges of society, and even sanity, who were in their different ways concerned with justice – either sympathetically or not. He was a man who, like many of his most memorable roles,...

Actor had been suffering from pneumonia

Blog: the best clips featuring Edward Woodward

Edward Woodward, the versatile actor who starred in The Wicker Man and television dramas Callan and The Equalizer, has died at the age of 79.

He had been suffering from various illnesses, including pneumonia, and died in hospital, his agent said. Janet Glass issued a statement praising his "brave spirit and wonderful humour".

It said: "Universally loved and admired through his unforgettable roles in classic productions such as Breaker Morant, The Wicker Man, Callan, The Equalizer and many more, he was equally fine and courageous in real life, never losing his brave spirit and wonderful humour throughout his illness."

Woodward began his career on the stage at the Castle theatre, Farnham, in 1946. After graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he worked extensively in repertory companies as a Shakespearean actor throughout England and Scotland, making his London...

South African actor who helped break the taboos of apartheid

On a steamy evening in a rundown Johannesburg club in September 1961, two actors premiered The Blood Knot, a play about brothers with different fathers, both men black but one light enough to enter white society. For each of them, the black actor Zakes Mokae, who has died aged 75, and the white playwright Athol Fugard, the night launched their careers. Fugard's play toured South Africa for six months, and although he travelled first-class on the train while Mokae travelled third, the two had broken a taboo by being the first black and white actors to appear on a public stage in apartheid South Africa. The success of The Blood Knot brought Fugard to international attention and kickstarted Mokae's long and varied career in theatre, film and television.

Mokae was born and grew up in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, the son of a policeman and a housemaid.