King of the Castle (1977)

There are some TV programmes from my childhood which I thought I'd only imagined even though I fondly remembered important parts of them. On the other hand, there are quite a few which I wish really did only exist in my imagination because watching them as an adult makes me cringe. HTV's "King of the Castle" has a foot in both camps because, having spent a few hours today rewatching it, it's not something that I ever want to see again.

If you've never heard of "King of the Castle", here's the blurb from Amazon:

Macabre, fantastical and a benchmark production for children's television in the 1970s, King of the Castle was created by Doctor Who stalwarts Bob Baker and Dave Martin as one of the run of outstanding children's dramas HTV produced in that decade. Featuring strong direction and a script which expertly melds fantasy and reality, the series boasts solid performances from genre stalwarts Fulton Mackay, Milton Johns and Talfryn Thomas as well as Philip Da Costa as the series' hero, Roland. One of the most memorable television series of the '70s is available here, for the very first time in any video format. Episode three no longer exists in the archive in any format and the version included on this set is taken from an off-air VHS.

I'm not sure what I was looking for on YouTube when I discovered that the whole "King of the Castle' series had been uploaded by several people, but I was in one of those moods where I randomly click on the recommended videos until I end up watching some very strange channels indeed. Before I found "King of the Castle", I'd been watching highly embarrassing episodes of "Grange Hill", "Chocky" and "The Tomorrow People" and feeling dirty about doing so. If there's anyone of a similar age to me who didn't see at least one of those when they were originally shown then they probably didn't have a television.

Since I didn't recognise the title of "King of the Castle", all I remembered from the series to identify it was that the kid who got beaten up by bullies had a model kit of Frankenstein's monster, and somehow he ended up in a dungeon ruled by some ratty-looking guy who told him to always go up if he wanted to escape. What I'd forgotten was how the story was filled with clever socio-political subtext and commentary which I'm ashamed to say that I still don't quite understand even as an adult.

The big messages of the fantasy part of "King of the Castle" are apparently that work is pointless, comfort and ignorance is bliss, and there's too much bureaucracy in the world. There's a lot of Oedipal stuff going on too whereby the hero, Roland, has to take his father's role by force and has a crush of some kind on his stepmother. The latter doesn't surprise me in the slightest since Angela Richards, who plays the dual role of June and the Lady, is absolutely gorgeous.

Very recognisable faces include Fulton Mackay (the prison officer from "Porridge") as a Frankenstein-style scientist, Milton Johns as his monster, creepy Talfryn Thomas as the ratty-looking caretaker, and Jamie Foreman (who now plays Derek Branning in "Eastenders") as Ripper the bully. Bizarrely, I didn't recognise the lead, Philip Da Costa, as being the same guy who went on to play Jackson in "Scum" (1979).

In spite of the badly-timed, obviously stagey acting, and cheap sets which look better than the cardboard and curtains that they are really made of, "King of the Castle" isn't a bad piece of kids' entertainment for the time. Unfortunately, as a grown-up, I can see that it's really just a slightly darker, and very British, rip-off of "The Wizard of Oz" with the genders of the protagonists changed. Both nostos stories go back to Homer's "The Odyssey" anyway, but let's not get too highbrow about them.

One thing which really irritated me, perhaps because I've been away from Britain for so long, was the choirboy singing the "I'm the king of the castle, and you're a dirty rascal" theme tune which is full of the mispronounced "Estuary English" which I despise. It sounds like "I'm the king of the CARsul, and you're a dirty RARscul". Ugh. I hate that and "BARth" instead of "bath", "GLARss" instead of "glass", and the "someFINK" instead of "something" which even Gordon Ramsay has fallen prey too. I've always noticed it, but maybe it doesn't show up so much when you are constantly surrounded by it or you're a bit thick.

I don't recommend "King of the Castle" although I've embedded it as a playlist at the top of this post. It's not an accurate reflection of life in Britain in the late 1970s or anything, and it's certainly not scary for anyone over 7 years old. If you are into nostalgia, it's interesting to see a "Hammer Horror" magazine and a "Howard the Duck" comic at one point, but that's about it really.

Isn't it funny what you can find on YouTube when you are looking for something else? If only I could remember the name of that weird poltergeist story with a load of cushions flying around a room which I caught the last five minutes of. Whatever it was that left the image of someone tied to a chair with a washing line and a bottle of Sarson's malt vinegar stuck in their mouth is another matter.

Marchlands (2011)

"A supernatural drama telling the story of three different families living in the same house in 1968, 1987 and the present day, linked by the spirit of the young daughter of the 1960s family, who drowned in mysterious circumstances."

I know I'm late to the party with this ITV miniseries (based on the pilot episode of "The Oaks" which never got picked up), but I didn't really know of its existence until I started watching "The Secret of Crickley Hall". Just by browsing online for details, there were so many people noticing the similarities that I just had to spend all my waking hours on Sunday watching the whole thing.

Incidentally, I was right about the conflated ending of "The Secret of Crickley Hall" being changed from that of the novel and going out with more of a whimper than a bang. They almost got away with not having an "uzzz" in it until the very end though.

I still don't know why the setting was changed for "The Secret of Crickley Hall" to the North of England (i.e. just outside Leeds in West Yorkshire), but I've noticed that it's just one of those British TV conventions which has been going on for years. Right back to the later "Ghost Stories for Christmas", there were attempts to Northernise M.R. James. I assume that it has something to do with "otherness" and the imaginary "North-South divide" which makes the North of England seem to be a barren and uncivilised place full of superstition compared to the South, but you know they do have indoor toilets, television and the internet up there too now. It's been over 25 years since I last set foot in Leeds or York myself (and I never want to go back), but they didn't seem to be that backward. Admittedly, I couldn't understand a lot of what came out of their mouths, but that's another story.

Anyway, "Marchlands" is yet another ghost drama based just outside Leeds in some village that doesn't really exist. It's full of people saying "uzzz" a lot, using "were" instead of "was", leaving out the word "the" from their sentences ("I'll put kettle on."), and mispronouncing the name of the house as "Marchlunds". It does have that pretty girl (Jodie Whittaker) from "Attack the Block" (2011) in it though.

Years ago, the big joke in England used to be that Australia only had half a dozen actors because the same faces were in everything. What goes around comes around because the same thing has been happening with British television lately too. In "Marchlands", not only are we treated to Alex Kingston from "Doctor Who" but also Nicholas Sidi playing a priest before he did the same again for "The Secret of Crickley Hall".

Other familiar faces include Denis Lawson (from "Star Wars"), Tessa Peake-Jones (from "Only Fools and Horses") and Shelley Conn (from "Mistresses"). I'm not going to go through the entire cast, but rest assured that they've all been in lots of British TV shows in bit parts or lead roles even though I've never watched half of them. Sooner or later every British actor ends up in one of the two dozen or more soap operas, comedies, crime serials or "Doctor Who" so it's getting as boring to mention them as it is to keep on seeing them.

"Marchlands" is uber boring as a ghost story too. There aren't any scares and the "mystery" which adds the "stickiness" factor is predictable from the first episode. The only reason I stuck with it was to prove myself right at the end although lusting over Jodie Whittaker eased the pain considerably.

I did think that the three time periods were dressed really well. The '60s and '80s look right and, of course, the house in the 2000s is all minimalist and painted rather than wallpapered because that's the thing nowadays. "Changing Rooms" has a lot to answer for.

The dialogue isn't so hot throughout, but what do you expect from an American writer? David Schulner did his best, but you have to have been there to know what those periods were like and be British to add the right colloquialisms. I don't know who was hired as a researcher, but they really should have chosen someone who wasn't just out of college to do it. You can't find out everything just by surfing the net, you know.

Overall, I didn't completely hate "Marchlands" even though it's dragged out for two episodes more than it needs to tell the story. With a few trims, it would have made a nice little film rather than a miniseries. I just felt that it was all a bit bland and too much of a soap opera rather than a horror series.