
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sandbagger: sometimes TV from the 70s holds up - smacktoward
http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/08/27/tinker-tailor-soldier-sandbagger-sometimes-tv-70s-holds/
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cerealbad
The Prisoner (1967-1968) is mesmerising.

Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902 (link provided) holds up after
115 years. Don't be so surprised! Timeless storytelling and design transcends
it's delivery medium.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk)

To the people questioning whether good television is still being made, yes of
course it is, it might just take you a few years to find it. True Detective,
Fargo, Utopia are all great. A la carte streaming (eg select any 10 shows, 10
movies, $10/month) is the future for media consumption. Which platform will
deliver this first only time will tell. At the moment original content is the
model and there are some evident growth pains.

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triplesec
Is there a place here for Blake's Seven, (esp the early episodes) and of
course Tom Baker's Dr Who incarnation? Incidentally, for those who didn't
know, Douglas Adams wrote some classic episodes and was script editor (head
writer) on Dr Who for at least a season or so.

And I think Dad's Army remains a classic, about the Home Guard in WWII, with
some of the finest comic actors.

There's even a case to be made for The Sweeney and the Professionals which
dealt with grittier more modern reality stories, darker sides of law and
intelligence enforcement which is often glossed over in the modern glitzier
procedurals.

Aha, and though maybe it was largely in the 80s, how about Minder?

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stevekemp
I feel compelled to add "Yes Minister" to your list, if only because of the
excellent writing and characterisation of Sir Humphrey & Jim Hacker.

(There was a recent remake; it is not worth watching.)

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triplesec
That's a great point. I have no idea why I also didn't mention Fawlty Towers,
possibly the greatest sitcom ever made.

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jimjimjim
Maybe it's just that people only remember the good tv shows/films/music/things
from those years and ignore the boring chaff.

Maybe there are just as many good tv shows these days.

but in my opinion the vast majority of current tv shows/films/music/webcontent
is utter undiluted mind numbing banal drivel and there isn't a circle of hell
worthy enough to hold those responsible.

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falsedan
> _Maybe there are just as many good tv shows these days._

Check out _Top of the Lake_ , it's well-written, well-acted, & doesn't
overstay its welcome. Season two just came out!

I think modern shows are dominated by 'must-see' spectacles or sensationalist
attention-grabbers, because people watch them in droves and advertises will
pay for slots. Weirdly, the modern BBC only makes shows like this, even though
they don't rely on advertising.

Part of the charm of _The Sandbaggers_ is that they clearly made it for
pennies, so they had to make the characters and dialogue interesting to fill
in for car chases + stunts + exotic locations + top-shelf actors (i.e. the
complement of Bond films).

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jimjimjim
yep top of the lake is good, thanks.

i suspect my comments were a wee bit too strong but it was after cycling
through every channel twice and finding nothing.

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thenomad
Honestly, it does feel like the current crop of TV is somewhat weaker than it
has been for a while. (I'd argue that Top Of The Lake, which is 4 years old
now, doesn't fit in "current crop".)

That might just be a taste thing on my part, or it might be a response to the
tremendous commercial pressures that were forcing execs to look anywhere,
everywhere for a story a couple of years ago.

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bazzargh
There's a second series of Top of The Lake, it finished airing in the UK last
week, it's definitely current. Apparently coming to the states next month.

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thenomad
Oh, didn't know that. Cool. Added to my to-watch list :)

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falsedan
I mentioned it 5 comments up…

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Jun8
I had never heard of this show, but speaking about wacky British 70s series
that still hold up, I think The Avengers should be up there, for similar
reasons: great acting, out of this world plots, mixed with a quaint British
attitude.

The Emma Peel era was the best, you can check out all the episodes here:
[http://theavengers.tv/forever/peel.htm](http://theavengers.tv/forever/peel.htm).
Almost all episodes are gold, but my favorites are The Cybernauts and Honey
for the Prince.

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flukus
Thanks for the link, I've tried searching for torrents of the show before but
only ever found those other avengers.

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shirro
I love older uk shows and finding legitimate streaming content is endlessly
frustrating. It might be a niche market but the promise of the Internet was it
was supposed to address the long tail. So much is sitting on the shelves due
to lazy rights holders or only has limited geographical distribution.

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timthorn
That presupposes the originals still exist, which in too many cases isn't true
- the BBC erased many tapes to reuse, not expecting ever to retransmit.

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Emore
The Sandbaggers is amazing; I found it to be more memorable and "realistic"
(not that I could know) than le Carré.

Also, all episodes are on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKg_t-
Prhqk&list=PLmRu2axUu2...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKg_t-
Prhqk&list=PLmRu2axUu2LELJvHzRdnNbEZpZ-ApzpgX)

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salimmadjd
I love Smiley's People as well as the BBC version of the Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy. It's one of the smartest spy genre movies ever. I'd definitely
think about watching this. But, maybe:

 _" This makes me want to quit watching. I’m not sure I have the stomach to
know a storyline and its characters are going to be abandoned. That’s one of
the two main problems with TV as a medium: that it might end too soon or that
it might go on for too long."_

BTW, I really liked how this article was written.

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hcayless
Sandbaggers was a great show. Watched it on PBS as a kid. The ending is
absolutely gutting. I hadn't realized it was supposed to be a cliffhanger.
Emotionally, it works very well.

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rgacote
There's also an episode where they get back the lead's (Marston's) love
interest from East Germany. Without providing any spoiler's, the ending of
that episode left younger me in shock for days. Still one of the most powerful
(fiction) TV moments I've ever seen. I think it was "Special Relationship"
season ending in Series 1. But don't watch just that one. Watch them all.

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radley
Strange nobody is mentioning "Life on Mars" (2006).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZOzsIhCPgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZOzsIhCPgs)

Modern Brit officer has an accident and goes back in time(?) to being a cop in
the 70s. There was a US remake that didn't quite get it.

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ZenoArrow
It amazes me that someone could see Darkplace and think it was set in anything
other than the 80s...

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-ZGP68-3w](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-
ZGP68-3w)

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JdeBP
... especially as they prefixed it with a station ident for a channel that
_did not exist in the 1970s_.

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_CIEYUF9Rg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_CIEYUF9Rg)

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pmiller2
Plenty of shows from the 1970s still hold up today: MASH, Hogan's Heroes,
Columbo, The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica, Sesame Street, Monty
Python's Flying Circus, Roots, etc. It was a great decade for TV, especially
if you consider shows like All In The Family (which doesn't really hold up
anymore, but is basically Married With Children for the 70s), Good Times, Mork
and Mindy, etc.

~~~
criddell
I still think about The Six Million Dollar Man. For the past decade I've been
working out how a new season could be written for that show (and the book,
Cyborg) and I think there's a ton of potential there. The story arc about a
destroyed man, the struggle to rebuild and recover, and the protagonist's
dealing with being a literal tool of the military.

First though, the surgery budget would need to be increased. These days, a six
million dollar man is a person that's had a kidney transplant.

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WorldMaker
There was a Bionic Woman reboot in the oughts that failed to do justice to the
concept, so it will probably be another decade before we see it tried again.

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criddell
I've been watching for news and there have been a bunch of projects started
but none have gone the distance. Mark Wahlberg is supposed to play Steve
Austin, but the project has been delayed a bunch of times (it was supposed to
come out this year and has been pushed into next year).

Before that, there was going to be a comedy version (like the Starsky and
Hutch reboot a few years ago). I'm so glad that never made it.

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CM30
A lot of classic British TV shows from the 70s and 80s hold up really well
today. After all, Fawlty Towers was a 1975 and 1979 series, with other greats
from the era including Dad's Army (1968-1977) and Steptoe and Son (1968-1972).
Blackadder and Only Fools and Horses were good in the next decade as well, and
that's only counting some of the comedy ones.

As for whether TV now is better or worse... well, probably the same to be
honest. Sturgeon's Law reigns supreme where any fiction is concerned, so every
generation will have about 90% utterly forgettable crap and 10% amazing
classics. The crap just gets filtered out over time as people choose to
preserve the stuff that truly matters.

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaFilter](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaFilter)

Either way, there's really not any one era where 'no TV shows' or 'all TV
shows' hold up well.

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DanBC
I'd really like to see a Sapphire and Steel reboot.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDGmv6zRM84](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDGmv6zRM84)

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sbmassey
Some of Sapphire and Steel was amazingly terrifying, given how low budget it
was. But I suspect modern film makers would not be able to avoid ruining the
ambiguous feeling of the series by trying to depict what is going on in the
larger scale.

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TravelTechGuy
I watched The Sandbaggers twice now. While the sets, props and circumstances
are dated, the main ideas and principles still hold, imho.

For a more up-to-date take, read Greg Rucka's excellent Queen and Country
comics (the main, and mini series). Not only is it "inspired" by Sandbaggers,
but it sometimes borrows actual plots and plays them out. I had fun time at a
comics convention talking to Rucka about it, and he is a Sandbaggers fan :).

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zeristor
Slartibartfast.

Just a heads up that Richard Vernon plays Slartibartfast in Hitch Hikers Guide
to the Galaxy.

I hope one day to have a machine that can speak with the voice of Richard
Vernon (as Slartibartfast "My name is unimportant."), or of course Peter Jones
who was the voice of The Book in HHGTTG.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jones_(actor)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jones_\(actor\))

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niffy
I love the sandbaggers. People say how great the recent adaption of "The Night
Manager" is, but for me this and Alec Guinness George Smiley rank as all time
great British espionage shows.

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gwbas1c
Uhhhh, what does this have to do with Hacker News?

