Ghost Signals: The Shadowlands of British Analogue Television 1968 - 1995

Stephen Prince
A Year in the Country

Before the ubiquity of streaming, British television was a landscape with room for strange experiments, folk-horror nightmares, and “wyrd” transmissions. Today, many of these programmes have vanished from official channels, leaving behind only “ghost signals“: a shadowland of terrestrial TV hidden in plain sight across the unmediated and unmarketed corners of the internet.
Ghost Signals maps this territory from 1968 – the foundational “wyrd” year of acid folk and iconic folk horror – to 1995, the dawn of the digital revolution. The book delves into a unique era where public funding met social experimentation, creating a “broad diet” of television that was often as challenging as it was chilling. 

This, the latest collection of writings from Stephen Prince, the man behind the always excellent 'A Year in the Country' blog, takes us on a tour of various obscure televisual gems from '68 to '95.  For Stephen these 'Ghost Signals' provide an insight into the maybe more ephemeral of what we refer to here as Wyrd TV; programmes such as 'The Great Albert', 'Jack B Nimble', 'Lost Property', 'The Moon Stallion', programmes that have avoided the limelight, that have maintained a sense of anonymity but still provide a reflection of the concerns and the focus of their times.

Obviously, Stephen and I share a hobby / interest / obsession (delete as applicable) and so I'm familiar with many of his subjects but he always manages to tease out a morsel or two that raise an eyebrow and he's a digger extraordinaire so alongside those old favourites there are a couple of tantalising treats of programmes I had no idea existed - 'A Pattern of Roses', 'Shades', 'The Plant' - and his analysis are ever cogent, and insightful, mining details from his subjects that make for fascinating reading.

I'm a pretty sparse user of the internet, for music and movies mostly, and I'm not a great fan of reading from a screen - yes, I do appreciate the irony - but, of the few blogs I do follow, AYitC is a perennial favourite, and his books are always a welcome addition to the Wyrd Britain bookshelves.

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Featherfall

Jerry Ibbotson

There's an angel living in suburban York. He's turned his back on his old life to become a husband and father. But darkness threatens, and his old boss wants him back in the fold. Angry, jealous Gods are after him to fulfil a prophecy that would unstitch creation. There's another on his trail: an ancient guardian of this land who's hunting an angel for reasons of his own. Who will reach him first, and at what cost? The answer will come at Midsummer, in the shadow of the mighty Minster. Featherfall is coming; the future of humanity hangs in the balance. 

Jerry contacted me a little while ago about giving his book a read and I happily agreed but with the caveat that I'd probably be very slow getting around to it - my TBR pile has its own postcode - and that proved to be the case, which is a shame because it turned out to be fabulous.

Urban fantasy is a genre I dabble in on occasion, more in the past than now, as my preference is for a deep dark wood or ye olde settings of yore - which, now I think on it, does perhaps include the likes of York - but when it's done well, I'll happily go along for the ride and I settled into my seat quite quickly here.

There's an angel living in York; he's renounced his wings, gotten married, and started a family.  He still dabbles in an occasional miracle or two, but its the quiet life for him - spoiler, it's not.  Things are afoot and forces, both malign and benign, are converging on the city including an ancient, demon hunting Celt who's feeling a tad ticked off with his lot in life and wants a quiet word with this angel.

Jerry has an engaging style and he teases out his story beautifully, populating it with characters whose actions are honest and real.  There's nothing here I would change. The story has room to breathe, and the finale is expansive, consequential, and most importantly satisfying.

For a debut novel, it's a stunning achievement, and his next one will go straight to the top of the TBR mountain. 

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Stephen Thrower - Soundtracks 1970-2014

Klanggalerie

Stephen Thrower has had a storied career on the bleeding edge of the art world, having made music with, most notably, Coil (from 1984-1992), Cyclobe (with Ossian Brown) and UnicaZürn (with David Knight); appeared in several Derek Jarman films ('Caravaggio', 'The Last of England' & 'Imagining October'); wrote for the horror magazine 'Shock Xpress', as well as publishing his own magazine 'Eyeball'; has written several books of film history / criticism ('Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci', 'Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents' & 'Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco' Vols 1&2); provided commentaries, introductions and interviews for numerous special edition DVD and Blu-ray releases; and now we discover that in the surely no more than 10 minutes of spare time that he had left between all that he was also composing soundtracks.

This fabulous new collection from the good folks at Klanggalerie features music from a Pakistani horror ('Hell's Ground'), a Ben Wheatley gangster movie ('Down Terrace') three Super-8 gay erotica shorts ('Fire Island Kids', 'Encounter' & 'Brown Study') and a documentary about their director ('Peter De Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn').  In the music he's created, you can, unsurprisingly, hear elements of each of his core musical identities, although perhaps slightly less apocalyptic than his Coil recordings and a tad less earthy than Cyclobe and with just a pinch of John Carpenter thrown in early on ('Psilo-Plutonian') and some sinuous sleaze on 'Fire Island Kids'. It's a mesmerising collection, deliriously psychedelic, delicately melodic and deliciously strange, and it's left me craving more.

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Witch!

Made by the current affairs programme, 'Wales Today', and originally shown on 23rd June 1964 this is an engaging, ultimately quite superficial, but surprisingly even-handed look at the practice of witchcraft in Wales.  

Essentially consisting of a number of talking heads - a vicar with an interest in the subject, a coy hedge witch and a coven high priestess - it explores both anthropological manifestations of folk magic and the then more tabloid foddery form of Gardnerian Wicca, all knives and nudity.

Truthfully, you're not going to learn much from this and I'd have loved it if the film-makers had managed to find some rural practitioners to interview, but as a historical artefact it's fascinating.

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I Hear A New World

Alan Moore
Bloomsbury

The second 'Long London' novel kicks of 10 years after the first with our hapless protagonist 'Dennis Knuckleyard' now a purveyor of improbable pornographic escapades, and free - he hopes - of any and all obligations towards that terrifying other place, 'The Great When', that other London hidden beyond, behind and within the one he inhabits, except, well, there is that key that 'Slenderhorse' gave him but he's palmed that off on some sucker at a party and unless she asks for it back he's now free of all that scary bollocks.  Unfortunately, his best laid plans fall apart entirely when someone Dennis cares deeply about is drawn in in his stead and so he's soon pulled back into the middle of everything strange and weird and terrifying, and guess who wants her key back.

The stakes are a lot higher this time round but our, and indeed Dennis', familiarity with the vagaries of 'The Great When' means the strange feels a lot more commonplace.  The various oddballs Moore populates his / our London with are as fun as before but pop producer Joe Meek, as eccentric as he was, is always going to be a poor substitute for Austin Osman Spare whose absence leaves a bit of a gap at the heart of the story.

It is though an enthusiastic romp through the streets, both physical and meta, of the capital and it's great fun but I'm hoping volume three has a personality at it's centre that can fill the AOS shaped hole.

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It's Too Late Now

This terrific little one(ish)-hander stars Rachel Kempson as 'Sarah', a neglected, long-suffering wife who, on a whim, locks her author husband (Kenneth Keeling) in his windowless study with the intention of teaching him a lesson, a long, long lesson.

Written for the short lived ITV series 'Tales of Unease' by Andrea Newman ('Bouquet of Barbed Wire') it's a perfect encapsulation of the series' aim to present stories that unsettle rather than scare.  Kempson is fantastic initially blooming in her new found sense of freedom and power but slowly degenerating as her husband rants, begs pleads and cajoles from behind his locked door.  

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The Island

'Captain Simmonds' (John Hurt), on leave from the battlefields of France, arrives on the island home of 'Mrs Santander' (Jenny Runacre), with whom he's been conducting an affair, where he encounters the butler (Graham Crowden) and, unexpectedly, 'Mr Santander' (Charles Grey). 

'The Island' is an adaptation of the 1924 L.P. Hartley short story of the same name made for the TV series 'Classics Dark and Dangerous' and soon after combined with two other episodes, 'Mrs Amworth' and 'The Mannikin', into the movie, 'Three Dangerous Ladies'.  Hartley had a penchant for the supernatural but this is perhaps more in the field of the macabre, of the type that Roald Dahl would later popularise with his 'Tales of the Unexpected'.  

Adapted and directed by Robert Fuest, the man behind such Wyrd Britain gems as the two 'Dr. Phibes' movies, the Michael Moorcock 'Jerry Cornelius' adaptation 'The Final Programme' - also starring Runacre - and the Brian Clemens, Terry Nation thriller 'And Soon The Darkness', 'The Island' is a minor entry in his canon that he's tried to make the best of by bulking out the runtime with lots of tension building silence, but there's not much there there and the final payoff is underwhelming and a tad obvious but it's great to see the three leads playing off each other.

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The Hymn of Pan

From the forests and highlands

We come, we come;

From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings.

The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme,

The birds on the myrtle bushes,

The cicale above in the lime,

And the lizards below in the grass,

Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,

Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,

And all dark Tempe lay

In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing

The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings.

The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,

To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves,

And all that did then attend and follow,

Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,

With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the daedal Earth,

And of Heaven, and the giant wars,

And Love, and Death, and Birth—

And then I chang'd my pipings,

Singing how down the vale of Maenalus

I pursu'd a maiden and clasp'd a reed.

Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed.

All weptĺl, as I think both ye now would,

If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Snap

Like one, that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows, a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The Rime of The Ancient Mariner”

Bookended by Tom Baker's recitation of the above extract from Coleridge's masterpiece this fifth series episode of the ITV series 'Dramarama' with it's folk horror aura would have been well at home in it's seminal 'Spooky' series.

Young Peter Ibbotson is dropped off for the day on Romney Marsh - the setting for Russell Thorndike's 'Doctor Syn' books and numerous E.F. Benson stories - where he roams the area taking Polaroid photos while, all the time, being followed by a hooded figure.

Written by Richard Cooper, who also gave us 'Knights of God', and directed by Michael Kerrigan (Knights of God', 'Spine Chillers', 'Doctor Who') it's an atmospheric and effective little chiller enhanced by some great use of it's eerie setting and some fantastic avant garde soundwork from Christopher Gunning ('The Day of the Triffids', 'The Last Train', 'Knights of God').

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Moviedrome: Welcome to the Cult

'Moviedrome' ran, intermittently, on BBC2 from May 1988 to June 2000.  The format was simple, hosts Alex Cox (series 1-7) and Mark Cousins (series 8-12) introduced a 'cult movie', or two, of the sort that were almost never shown on British TV and, in those halcyon years, long before the arrival of the internet, were often unheard of by those of us growing up in more remote parts of the country, with little or no access to any sort of 'arts' cinema, and it quickly became a Sunday night staple for my circle of friends, with each film taped and dissected over the following week.

I never really saw much of Cousins' run on the series but to this day many of the films I number amongst my favourites were first introduced to me by Cox in that treasured Sunday night slot - Night of the Comet, Psychomania, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The California Dolls, Witchfinder General, Dead of Night, Wise Blood, An American Werewolf in London, Carnival of Souls, Excalibur, The People Under the Stairs - and I've sung it's praises on Wyrd Britain before - here.

The film below is an affectionate celebration of the series made in 2025 by the BFI and featuring contributions from Cox, series creator Nick Freand Jones and fans Samira Ahmed and Stewart Lee.  

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The Eye

The final episode of series 2 of the children's spooky anthology show Shadows, written by Ewart Alexander - who also wrote episodes in series one, 'After School', and three, 'Eleven O'Clock' - is a bit of a strange one.

George (Julia Lewis) is obsessed with the historical figures she's postered her room with and lost in the mosaic she's creating in the garage, while her brother Steve is freaked out by the grecian urn at the bottom of the stairs that has seemingly taken on a life of it's own, is hearing voices, being attacked by pictures of Napoleon and generally struggling to cope with life.

There's a real Sapphire and Steel vibe to the whole thing and a fabulous hissing, burbling, throbbing soundtrack.  It's fantastically odd, makes very little sense and is all the better for it.

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Boards of Canada - Inferno

Some 13 years after releasing 'Tomorrow's Harvest' Boards of Canada return with an album that reflects our times whilst retaining the distinct sense of otherness that has characterised their work.

'Inferno' is suffused with religious imagery.  Beyond it's opening triumphant fanfare, it's first half is bathed in the acid-soaked hallucinatory rapture of the apocalyptic evangelist, it's one moment of light coming in the form of a mutated Hari Krishna chant - the slightly heavy-handed 'Naraka - that hints at the more transcendent moments to come.

In it's latter half the duo offer a more melancholic perspective, the tension softened by a hopeful optimism that seems to find almost Blakean visions of salvation as 'All Reason Departs' and 'You Retreat In Time and Space'. 

After so long away it was always gong to be take a bold move by the brothers to land their return and that move proved to be to hold on to the vision that has always defined them, of occult conjurings from an oneiric otherwhere cluttered with the unreliable debris of memory, a psychedelic soundworld aswirl with the colours of a 1970s UK council estate childhood and a Lynchian penchant for sinister whimsy.

It's good to have them back. 

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NEWS: Tartarus Press release 'The Sanctuary And Other Strange Stories' by R.B. Russell

Out now from the folks at Tartarus Press is a stunning new collection of 28 short stories from co-publisher R.B. Russell, 'The Sanctuary And Other Strange Stories'.

From the release notes...

Gathering together lost souls on the Sussex Downs, houses demolished and rediscovered, and half-remembered dreams, The Sanctuary and Other Strange Stories collects uncanny fiction written by R.B. Russell over two decades. Many stories are rooted in moments of real life, but are transformed into something disquieting, from the enigmatic commune of ‘The Sanctuary’ to the ex libris of a lost artist, these stories drift between memory, history and imagination.

Inspired by writers as varied as Mark Valentine and Ian Fleming, Robert Aickman, and Reggie Oliver, and shaped by influences, from forgotten cults and stamp collecting, Russell’s tales explore the boundaries between the ordinary and the otherworldly. Love, death, music and off-beat literary researches intertwine, giving rise to stories that feel both intimate and unsettling.

I was lucky enough to get an early look at this and, a few stories in, am loving it. As it says in the press release, there are shades of Mark Valentine, Robert Aickman, and Reggie Oliver, but Ray's own voice shines through and this combination makes for graceful and compulsive excursion into the uncanny.

Released in Tartarus' signature, beautifully crafted hardback edition and limited to 350 signed copies it's available from the publisher at...

http://tartaruspress.com/russell-the-sanctuary.html

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Meet the Shrivelwoods

KEK-W
Bicameral Press

Sinister secrets, maple syrup and dark, unrequited desire.
Meet the Shrivelwoods - Vermont's strangest, most eccentric denizens! A once-powerful dynasty that grew wealthy and decadent through their control of the state maple syrup monopoly.
Now their freakish inbred descendants have retreated to Shrivelwood House, a crumbling Gothic mansion where chaos and bedlam hold court.
Contains two darkly humorous yarns for fans of Gothic Romance, The Addams Family, Dark Shadows and Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry at Rawlingson End. 

Here's another of 2000AD writer KEK-W's fun little chapbooks. The first one I read explored the stranger territories of weird fiction whereas this one wanders off into distinctly gothic territories with two fabulously silly gothic romance pastiches - the first the more successful - about the deeply, profoundly, exceedingly, homicidally eccentric maple syrup dynasty, The Shrivelwoods.

Two tales, the first of which I would have loved to have been much longer and more fully realised giving a more immersive visit into the world of the Shrivelwoods, which share a kinship with Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse's 'The Bojeffries Saga', but truthfully at only 34 pages this book doesn't hang around long enough for comparison but while it lasts it's good, daft fun.

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The Other Window

In 'The Other Window' was the final episode of the first series of the supernatural anthology series 'Shadows' scientist father John Woodvine ('Knights of God', 'Enys Men') brings home a fresnel lens to amuse his three children, Elizabeth (Gwyneth Strong), Mark (Roy Jacobs) & Jan (Sophie Ward).  After taping it to the window the children begin to see figures from the past through it, visions from their family's history that begin to take on a sinister aspect.

Written by husband and wife, J.B. Priestley ('An Inspector Calls') and Jacquetta Hawkes ('The Lonely Shore'), it's a pretty insubstantial affair slowed down by an over long explanatory section in the middle that takes valuable time that could have been better used in the finale and there's some frightfully shrill drama school performances from the children but in it's naivety it has some charm.

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