There is nothing wrong with your television set...

… just this programme

A super-evolved David McCallum in the Outer Limits episode The Sixth Finger.
 If he's so smart, he'll know not to waste his time watching it, then...

Friday, 28^th March 1980

At the age of 19, stopping up till 12.45am should have been no big deal, but somehow it still felt that way. I’d been up at some ludicrous hour of the morning to catch the first of several trains that would take me to college (I’d stupidly decided to commute from home to Coventry), but the next day was Saturday, so what the hell. The reason for my burning the midnight oil was simple: BBC2 were starting a repeat run of The Outer Limits, the US science fiction/horror anthology TV series from 1963-5. Looking back, it seems extraordinary now to realise that the series was a mere fifteen years old, for it already had the look of an artefact from a much earlier era. What’s fifteen years ago now? 2002. I don’t think any film or TV series made then could possibly look as much of a period piece as The Outer Limits looked in 1980.

To be pedantic for a moment, the BBC2 run wasn’t technically a repeat, as the network had never shown the series before. In fact, its only British airing had been on a limited number of ITV regions in the mid 60s. My first encounter with The Outer Limits came a decade later, when a magazine (possibly the short-lived World of Horror) featured a colour spread of gum cards produced to tie in with the series (albeit in the very loosest sense – the text accompanying the pictures was unrelated to the content of the TV episodes). Shortly afterwards, the series was featured in Starburst magazine, and an episode guide appeared in a publication called Fantastic Television. By this time, I’d seen enough to know that The Outer Limits, with its weekly doses of insane monsters, looked like essential viewing. The gum cards included some memorable entries, such as the ‘Man With Super Sight’ (an unrecognisable Warren Oates with eyes like fried eggs in the episode The Mutant) and David McCallum as a super-evolved human.

At the time these articles appeared, there was no prospect of ever getting to see The Outer Limits; and yet, within five years, here it was on BBC2, albeit in a time slot even later than the usual late night favourite Sergeant Bilko (which I also began watching later that same year – having seemingly discovered a taste for late-night televisual nostalgia).

ITV’s run had been incomplete, and limited to a couple of regional networks. So the late night 1980 broadcasts were to be The Outer Limits’ first (and only) networked run in the UK. The episode order was something else entirely. I already knew (from Fantastic Television) that there had been two seasons of The Outer Limits, beginning in 1963 with the pilot episode Galaxy Being. Yet it was a second season episode, Demon With a Glass Hand, that was chosen for the series’ BBC2 debut. Clearly, someone involved in the scheduling of programmes was a science fiction buff, and Demon... had been chosen as a series opener for its credentials: winner of two major awards, and penned by Harlan Ellison, a name that would be familiar to every Star Trek fan.

As an example of The Outer Limits, Demon With a Glass Hand isn’t exactly typical. There is, for instance, no ‘bear’ (the name given by the production team to the weekly monsters that were a regular feature of the first season), and its claustrophobic setting within the stairwells of Los Angeles’ Bradbury Building (later a location for Blade Runner) gave the episode a unique look and feel that set it apart – quite far apart, in fact – from the rest of the series. The next episode was another series two entry, but much more typical in that it featured a supposedly scary monster. Keeper of the Purple Twilight also – unfortunately – typified the drab, grey interiors seen in much of the series, not to mention some drab, grey acting and writing. For week three, the BBC delved back into series one for the episode Moonstone, notable only for some imaginatively-realised alien beings. It was back to series two and Harlan Ellison again for week four, and the episode Soldier (later, famously, the subject of a law suit between Ellison and Terminator writer/director James Cameron).

I kept note of all these episodes in my diary, giving special mention to any that struck me as particularly noteworthy. I wrote up a brief synopsis for Demon With a Glass Hand, and also noted the fact that week five’s episode The Premonition was a good story (a test pilot and his wife, suspended in a moment of time, have to work out how to save their toddler from being run over by a truck). It’s fair to say that I greeted the return (or arrival) of the series with enthusiasm. But it’s equally true that, by the ninth or tenth week, my loyalty was being sorely tested with stinkers like The Invisibles and Counterweight.

When the Outer Limits was at its best – episodes like The Man With the Power or The Sixth Finger – it could be imaginative, well written and stylishly directed, and there was often a name guest star worth watching (Martin Landau, Robert Culp and David McCallum amongst others). At its worst, it could be dull, pedestrian and badly acted, with a cast of unknowns who looked to have been drafted in from daytime soaps. There was, indeed, more than a hint of soap about episodes like The Mutant and Moonstone, both of which included needless and incredibly dull romantic sub-plots, and came across like Peyton Place in space.

On 27^th June, the BBC showed the episode It Crawled Out of the Woodwork, widely acknowledged as perhaps the nadir of The Outer Limits. I certainly thought so: ‘very bad episode’, my diary records, ‘probably the worst yet.’ By 18^th of July when the first run of episodes ended, I was describing it as ‘last crappy Outer Limits.’

It was off air for only a month (presumably the person responsible for scheduling it on was on holiday and didn’t want to miss an episode) and when it returned it was with the iconic ‘bugs with human heads’ episode The Zanti Misfits. I’d seen these somewhat risible creations pictured in books and magazines and had long wondered about the episode: but now, presented with the opportunity to see it at last, I passed. I didn’t even tape it (we wouldn’t have a VHS machine in our house until later that same year) but a friend of mine did. He brought the tape round the following week when my diary records that I ‘watched a bit of it.’ Which says it all, frankly. Indeed, I didn’t see the complete episode until many years later when the complete series came out on DVD.

The trouble was, The Outer Limits had cried wolf (or, rather, bear) once too often, and by the time of The Zanti Misfits, I knew enough to realise that, if the stills looked crap, the actual episode wouldn’t be any better. From then on, I made less of an effort to keep up with the repeats, and despite the occasional decent episode such as the comedic Controlled Experiment, I didn’t think I was missing out on the weeks when I chose not to watch.

With a few short breaks, the BBC repeats continued until July 1981, and despite the chaotic running order, every available episode was screened. The late Friday night slot was retained throughout, with episodes typically starting at any time between 11.30pm and midnight. I was often out on Friday nights, and caught the tail end of a handful of episodes when I got in: ZZZZ was a risible story about a queen bee who takes on human form, while Cry of Silence, in which a couple are menaced by tumbleweeds, has to be one of the least worthwhile hours ever committed to celluloid.

Despite its many disappointments, I was prepared to give The Outer Limits a second chance. As mentioned previously, I’d kept no recordings of episodes, aside from a couple of tape to tape dupes, so when the chance came to buy both series on DVD, and at a fairly reasonable price, I caved in. That was over ten years ago. To date, I still haven’t sat through every episode. Now and then I’ll dig out the box set and give it another chance. But every time, I run up against the same old problems: rubbish acting, poorly realised science fiction settings (a typical Outer Limits space survey team look to have been outfitted by the quartermaster from Fort Baxter), muddled scripts (topped and tailed by some heavily moralising and patronising voice-overs) and a surfeit of men in rubber suits pretending to be monsters.

I’m well aware that there are still many hardcore fans of The Outer Limits – mostly, it would appear, of the white American geeky fraternity – but even devotees of the show acknowledge its variability in quality. With Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano on board as series one producer, one might have expected something a little better. Part of the problem, I think, lies in the anthology nature of the series: with no ongoing cast members, viewers have to invest their time each week in a new crop of characters, often sketchily realised and indifferently acted. Compare this with Star Trek, which managed to do anthology-style stories within a superbly-cast, solid series format. Actually, don’t. There is no comparison.

As the ‘control voice’ at the start of each week’s episode assured viewers, ‘there is nothing wrong with your television set’. Indeed. Nothing that can't be cured by changing channel...

We now return control of your computer to you…

Aspirations… Colour TV in Nordic Drift...

Sunday, 5t April, 1970…

Roll neck ahoy… Francis Matthews as Paul Temple.

I can still remember the first television programme I saw in colour. It was a Sunday in April 1970, and the programme was Paul Temple. Francis Durbridge’s character had been a mainstay of BBC radio since the 1930s, but his television incarnation was brand new, one of the first BBC drama series to be produced – and screened – entirely in colour. A 13-part series running from November 1969 to January 1970 was followed quickly by a second, beginning in April of the same year. The first episode went out on Sunday, April 5th… and I was watching.

We didn’t have a colour television in our house, and there was a very good reason for that: cost. A typical set in 1970 would have set you back £300 – the equivalent of around £4,500 today – and with colour broadcasts having only begun on BBC1 and ITV the previous autumn, a colour television was still an expensive luxury, unaffordable to families on an average income. On that day in 1970, we were in a household with an above average income, a good deal of which fell into the category of disposable. My aunt and uncle enjoyed the kind of lifestyle depicted in the Sunday colour supplements – G-plan furniture, groovy wallpaper, a white Jensen Interceptor (boasting the first personalised numberplate I ever saw). He was an estate agent. Clearly, this was the way to afford gracious living…

They'd started their married life in a flat, but since 1968 or 69 had been living in an extraordinary house, designed along Scandinavian lines. Although no more than a modestly-proportioned semi on an estate of identical dwellings, it was unlike any home I’d ever seen. A small side porch opened into a room of impressive proportions, boasting a full height sloping ceiling, open-tread staircase and a floor-to-ceiling window. This room served as a kind of communal central area to the house, intended for use as a dining area, with a small kitchen leading off at the front of the house. The very idea of a kitchen at the front seemed to me like an innovation.

In fact, it was hard to tell which was the front and which the back of this Scandinavian-inspired home: the frontages presented a somewhat drab appearance, lacking in what would now be called ‘kerb appeal’, with a tarmaced yard taking the place of a garden, and the overall impression was akin to that of a service area behind a row of shops. At the back, tiny lawns opened onto a tree-lined communal walkway. It was certainly different, and it was modern, two qualities I had already learned to appreciate.

Scandinavian living… from a Rightmove listing, and reversed, this interior is identical to my uncle and aunt's home of the early 1970s. The side window extended to a sloping ceiling, but all you could see through it was a car parking space and the side of the house next door.

I saw a lot more than just colour television on that bright, spring Sunday. I saw the future. This was the kind of lifestyle I could imagine for myself: the modern, clean-lined furniture, the colour telly, the Scandinavian interior (an aspiration reflected in the the tiny cul-de-sac’s name of Nordic Drift). This, I was sure, must be the shape of things to come.

Meanwhile, there was Paul Temple: I’m not sure if I’d seen this series before, but I was certainly taken with that evening’s episode, which introduced the soon-to-be regular character of Sammy Carson, a rogue with a heart of gold, memorably portrayed by George Sewell. I was also impressed by Paul Temple’s Rolls Royce – the kind of car I could imagine myself driving, as part of my imaginary Nordic/ G-Plan lifestyle. With his roll-neck sweater and slacks, Paul Temple would have felt right at home in Nordic Drift.

Over on ITV, an advert break was in progress: I was interested to see that some of the ads were in colour, while others were still in drab old black and white. In the latter category was the original, pre-robots commercial for Smash instant mashed potato, a simple idea that presented an unpeeled spud as a ‘rival’ for Smash. ‘It’ll never catch on,’ the voice-over assured us...

* * *

I’m fairly certain you can still buy Smash in any supermarket, but as for the rest of the impressions that Sunday left on my nine-year-old imagination, the future has been less than kind. Paul Temple, for instance: junked en masse by the BBC, a mere 16 out of 52 episodes survive in the archive. I’m fairly certain that the episode we would have seen on that Sunday evening is not among them. And what of that lifestyle? It’s fair to say that Nordic Drift left an indelible impression on me, and forever after I’ve been drawn to houses that are in some way quirky or unconventional. But if I imagined that the values of 1970 would survive into my own adult life, I was sadly mistaken. Like so much I saw on TV during those years, my dream of the future was an illusion. Sure, you can still buy retro-styled G-plan chairs in any branch of John Lewis, but the likes of bean bags and lava lamps have acquired a patina of ironic kitsch. Nobody bought such items ironically in 1970. 

The aspirational young people who colonised the bright, new estates of the late 1960s are now reaching the ends of their lives. They’ve moved on, and their values have become those of the so-called ‘metropolitan elite’, none of whom would be seen dead living in a 1960s semi, open tread staircase or not.

Those old estates haven’t aged well. My aunt and uncle wisely moved out in the mid ’70s, exchanging Scandinavian cool for a solid 60s detached on a highly desirable tree-lined avenue. The innovative modern dwellings of Nordic Drift and its surroundings had done their job in attracting the bright, young, Observer colour supplement crowd, but by the mid ’70s the tide of fashion was on the turn. No one wanted radical modernism any more. By 1975, Laura Ashley and Habitat were the new watchwords, and aspirational house hunters were turning their backs on homes that had been in vogue less than five years earlier. You only have to look at any mid-’70s housing development to see the change, bay windows and neo-Georgian stylings replacing the avant-garde brutalism of developments like Nordic Drift. These days, those once-cool Scandinavian houses change hands for around £125,000. In property terms, that’s peanuts: whereas the solid ’60s detached my aunt and uncle bought for £10,000 is now valued at close to a million.

Most of us have moved on. But some of us have minds like cement. My ideas of style, cool, and aspirational living were poured into a mould and set on that day in April 1970. They’ve never changed. But the world they belong to is getting harder and harder to find. I’ll have to face facts: I never will drive that Jensen Interceptor. There was one simple lesson that I failed to take away from that Sunday: if you want a flash lifestyle, get a job that will pay for it.

I should have become an estate agent...