Top of the Pops 4 April 1991

 Words: Chris Arnsby

 Gary Davies: “Hello. Very good evening to you. We are all live tonight from Television Centre. We’re in stereo on Radio 1FM. In the studio we’ve got The Mock Turtles, Fergeal Sharkey, and N-joi, but first we start off with a song at number thirty in the charts. It’s called Caravan, Inspiral Carpets.”

 [30] INSPIRAL CARPETS: CARAVAN. There’s an odd detail on the VT Countdown clock at the start of this episode, a note that reads “P AS B” which stands for Programme AS Broadcast. I’m probably teaching everyone who reads this to suck eggs* but this note is there because this is a live edition. No time for edits. Cross your fingers and hope everyone behaves themselves.

Crookhaven review

This new series, showing on BBC and on the iPlayer,  adapted by Justin Young based on books by JJ Arcanjo and aimed at a family audience initially comes across as something of a cross between Alex Ryder and MI High. Yet it proves to be somewhat more complicated than the former and less comedic than the latter, dialling up conspiracies and double crosses aplenty. Its been a while since there’s been a drama for any audience with quite so many plot twists and turns. Neither does the series linger on its mysteries, for the most part answering them in an episode or two before moving on. The results are a strangely addictive show that benefits from bingeing if only to keep track of where the tangled plot is heading.

 

Robin and Marian (1976)

 There have been many versions of the Robin Hood story on both cinema and television all of which have essentially kept within the familiar timespan. Richard Leser’s 1976 film however takes up the story twenty years after those events introducing us to older versions of the characters. I suppose it’s a sequel to all of those versions that had gone before and after. The concept is definitely an intriguing one with the potential to explore a hero after their heroics are over, facing middle age and different problems. As it turns out, this is not quite that film but it makes a bold attempt to be different from the Robin Hood story we know.