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Moondial
From time to time I ask people if they were a BBC kid or an ITV kid. I’m sure that it can sometimes come across as an affectation, perhaps an attempt to turn the conversation onto children’s TV so we...
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The Clifton House Mystery
The haunted house… where to begin? Two seconds ago you read the words ‘haunted house’ and already your brain has processed the thousands of cultural references to haunted houses you’ve absorbed in...
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The Boy From Space
The Boy From Space is not a supernatural drama, so technically does not fall within my own hastily defined remit. However due to it’s exemplary record of scaring the living daylights out of three...
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Earthfasts
Children’s TV is often overrated. Tangled up as it is with nostalgia and associations with a more innocent time it can be disappointing when revisited. Typically produced with lower budgets than...
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The Watch House
Revisiting the Watch House was supposed to provide some form of catharsis for me. On the 7th December 1988 I watched the original broadcast of the first episode and about twenty minutes in became so...
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The Haunting of Cassie Palmer
Cassie isn’t allowed out to the disco on a Friday night, or to listen to her radio, she has to sit in her room quietly and do her French homework. This is the main drawback of having an aging medium...
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Come Back Lucy
Where would children’s supernatural drama be without posh girls with dead parents sent away to live with relatives they’ve never met, eh? I’m fairly sure there must have been at some point a small...
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Filming the Owl Service #1
I’d consciously put off writing about the Owl Service because I really didn’t know where to begin. If you’re interested in the supernatural, mythological and metaphysical in children’s television...
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The Children of Green Knowe
“I wondered whose face it would be out of all the faces I’ve known…they always come back.” So says Mrs Oldknow on first clapping eyes on young master Toseland, who is henceforth known as Tolly to...
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Penelope Lively
I’ve not watched a whole bunch of kids TV lately. You hear yourself telling some confused inebriate at a party you’re interested in the supernatural, mythological and metaphysical in children’s...
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The Moon Stallion
Girls and horses, eh? What’s that all about? No doubt there’s some disturbing Freudian interpretation that would explain it all, but perhaps we’ll save that one for another day and just accept in a...
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Century Falls
Do you hear that? That faint chiming sound in the distance, just detectable over the howl of the wind? Kind of melancholy… ethereal… vaguely threatening? Yeah, don’t worry about that, it’s just the...
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