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Nostalgic 70's Children's TV

wulbert

wulbert

pfm Member
This topic has probably been discussed here before, but I came across a great web-site article when trying to locate a creepy kid's TV show I remembered from the 1970's (turned out it was Escape Into the Night) and found the answer in this article.

hauntedgeneration.co.uk

1970s TV – The Haunted Generation

Posts about 1970s TV written by Bob Fischer
hauntedgeneration.co.uk hauntedgeneration.co.uk

In fact the whole web-site looks intriguing. Just thought I'd share, for some idle nostalgic Christmas browsing.
 
Hi Wulbert hnw to you.

I was meaning to add to this thread, if only to exorcise a thing in my head. There was alot of creepy kids stuff back then, for example remember the open water kids mucking about/ govt warning ad? Let alone creepy presenters.

Well if you do remember this, there was another govt kids warning advert, which was so creepy it beggars belief. It was far far worse & really seriously shocking, so much so that I -think- it was likely pulled soon after broadcast. As a result of it's brief appearance, I never knew if I had dreamt it up entirely or had I indeed seen it-?

It involved two teams of kids, playing a sort of 'It's a knockout' game.. on a railway line. That's bad enough as a premise, but add a tunnel, maimed children in PE kit emerging from it, & ambulance men collecting broken children's bodies from the track... I surely must have been on a morphine hit from a childhood ailment for this to be in my head. Surely so. I mean this couldn't have actually been on tv, during the daytime. So I lodged it in my head as a 'lucid nightmare' I occasionally recalled, well with some fear tbh.

About ten years ago, I did an exhaustive youtube search determined to rid the possibility of it actually existing. And I found it. My god I actually found it. As creepy as I remember too. I can't put a link to it, as it's too awful. But my search & determination did exorcise a little demon in my head, if only to replace it with a 'real' one that I didn't concoct.

A strange time the 70's..

Capt
 
The Captain said:
This article today prompted me to pick up your thread you see.

(Yes bring it back.. but leave out at least one 'brutal public information film' at least, for goodness sake).
www.theguardian.com

Britain is plagued by bland, box-ticking television. Bring back weird TV | Rob Young

Programmes of the 1970s and 80s broke moulds and scarred minds. Better that than endless reality shows and Downton-esque drama, says Rob Young, author of The Magic Box
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Capt
Click to expand...
Yes indeed, the early 70’s were my era. In from school, telly straight on, Animal Magic, Jackanory, Crackerjack, Blue Peter with John Noakes, and the more streetwise Magpie. I know I risk sounding like a boring old fart, but I think back to some of the extraordinary children’s tv of the period; The Changes, a sort of post-apocalypse scenario when the adults went mad and destroyed all the machinery. The Owl Service, Children Of The Stones, all those wierd, creepy Public Information films, my favourite was the Cleveland Way. A time when children’s writers took their audience seriously and who were given the time, space and money to make it happen.

I haven’t kept up with kids tv since Teletubbies so I could be wrong, but I just can’t imagine programmes of the type described above being commissioned now. A truly golden age of TV.

 
I remember a scary episode from some programme, broadcast on children's TV I guess sometime between 1966 and 1970. It involved some kids exploring a tunnel which contained Romain remains. From what I can recall, the story had a supernatural aspect, or at least I was convinced it did, and was scared witless. But despite trawling the internet I have never figured out what the programme was. Any suggestions?
 
If you were a kid in the 1970s living in or near Hamilton, Ontario you know the Hilarious House of Frightenstein only too well. It was like a variety show for kids, with some goofy skits between bits of education.

Some grammar instruction


Some music with a trippy LDS background


Some science by a real physics professor, too

It's all making sense now.

Joe
 
ciderglider said:
I remember a scary episode from some programme, broadcast on children's TV I guess sometime between 1966 and 1970. It involved some kids exploring a tunnel which contained Romain remains. From what I can recall, the story had a supernatural aspect, or at least I was convinced it did, and was scared witless. But despite trawling the internet I have never figured out what the programme was. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Raven? -featuring a very young Phil Daniels.

Raven (1977 TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
1970s, remembered through a haze;

Timeslip, Catweazle, Calimero, Blue Peter vs. Magpie, Crackerjack, Jackanory. The foreign black n white series with the dubbed dialogue. The Magic Roundabout. Tom and Jerry in the 5 mins before the news. Boss Cat/Top Cat, Follyfoot, The Double Deckers

After the news; Nationwide w. Reporting Scotland for us northerners. Star Trek at 6.50pm. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Virginian, High Chapparal, The Champions, Bonanza, Alias Smith & Jones, Cagney & Lacey, It's a Knockout, The Generation Game, Morecambe & Wise ...

Who remembers the BBC2 test transmissions? Guiseppina, the lonely Italian girl watching the cars pass by her small village. Science info film about waste water treatment. Others that made less of an impression....
 
Tumeni Notes said:
Boss Cat/Top Cat,
Click to expand...
I seem to remember something about a Top Cat brand of cat food on sale in the U.K. at the time of the original transmission. The BBC changed the title from the original Top Cat to Boss Cat to avoid any accusations of advertising. Same with ‘sticky backed plastic’ and blanking out the Kelloggs logo when Val Singleton was making a model of The Colosseum out of old cereal boxes.
 
Battle of the planets, catch candy, Fantastic journey, Gemini man, king of the castle, tomorrow people had some very dark storylines.
 
Tumeni Notes said:
Who remembers the BBC2 test transmissions? Guiseppina, the lonely Italian girl watching the cars pass by her small village. Science info film about waste water treatment. Others that made less of an impression....
Click to expand...
The tantalising thing about those test transmissions was that they didn't appear in the listings, they just turned up at random. I remember spending days off school with a cold waiting for a test transmission to appear. Why?!
 
Play Away was important too, providing a gig to young actors - Jeremy Irons in this show from 75 (I'd grown out of it by then and only knew b&w), with Toni Arthur and Brian Cant. That would be around the time we got our first colour telly! Tony Robinson was a regular in the early 80s with Anita Dobson and a few more who became famous names.

 
ciderglider said:
I remember a scary episode from some programme, broadcast on children's TV I guess sometime between 1966 and 1970. It involved some kids exploring a tunnel which contained Romain remains. From what I can recall, the story had a supernatural aspect, or at least I was convinced it did, and was scared witless. But despite trawling the internet I have never figured out what the programme was. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
I think the programme you're remembering was mentioned upthread. I also remember it, though the name I remembered was 'Hartsease'. I think the series was called The Changes (of which Hartsease was one book). Written by Peter Dickinson, the premise was that mining or quarrying had disturbed a long dormant 'Merlin' who was trying to reset the world to an era he knew and understood. It was genuinely scary for a young teen like me, not unlike Dr Who.

en.wikipedia.org

The Changes (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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