VISION ON SOUND

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI goes WITHIN THESE WALLS.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on October 11th 2026.This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back, and he’s been following up on a topic we’ve chatted about a few times on VISION ON SOUND over the years, the TV prison drama.Or, more specifically, the women’s prison drama. PAUL has watched several of these over the years, from PRISONER (or, if you prefer PRISONER CELL BLOCK H) to WENTWORTH and BAD GIRLS, amongst others, and it’s a genre that he returns to and which he finds altogether fascinating, and not for the reasons some of you might suspect.Anyway, this time he’s been watching WITHIN THESE WALLS, created by DAVID BUTLER, which was a highly successful ITV drama series made by LONDON WEEKEND TELEVISION in the mid-to-late-1970s, which ran for 72 episodes across five seasons from January 1974 to April 1978.Set in the fictional HMP STONE PARK, it’s a series that I have always associated with the name GOOGIE WITHERS who played FAYE BOSWELL, the first prison governor on the series, for its first three years, with her replacements being played by KATHERINE BLAKE and SARAH LAWSON in the last two years of its stretch.Known for its hard-hitting, bleak storylines, WITHIN THESE WALLS featured a whole host of familiar faces in its guest cast, and, as you’ll hear from PAUL himself, it’s definitely proved intriguing enough to make him keep on watching.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

THE SHY YETI looks out for LOOK-IN!First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 27th 2026.This week, PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself is back and he’s been on a bit of a spending spree, tracking down for his collection some early copies of a comic / magazine that was something of a cornerstone of our TV appreciation for kids like me in the 1970s.LOOK-IN, the self-styled “JUNIOR TV TIMES” that, with its articles on popular TV, pop stars, football and the like, cast its popularity net far and wide amongst the pop culture seekers of that particular decade and, to a far lesser extent, into the eighties and beyond.Glossy in finish, and featuring great photos and articles, as well as some gorgeous cover art, how could we not be tempted by this fine example of a magazine specifically (and very successfully) aimed so precisely at our age group, no matter what our interests might have been?Despite the articles on the popular chart bands of the time, and the bigger movies of the era including JAMES BOND and STAR WARS, perhaps inevitably it was the telly stuff that drew kids like me in, especially with the beautifully rendered comic strip art that extended the adventures of our favourite TV adventure series, and really were a big part of the draw for those of us who bought LOOK-IN each and every week.THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, THE BIONIC WOMAN, THE TOMORROW PEOPLE and SPACE: 1999 might have been some of my favourite comic strip adventures of that era, and occasionally might have been more exciting than the shows that spawned them, but other shows such as FOLLYFOOT, TIMESLIP, DICK TURPIN, and HOW THE WEST WAS WON were also featured, as well as comic greats such as… BENNY HILL.PAUL has been tracking down some of the rarer early issues, and that was the starting point for this week’s conversation, so I hope you’ll enjoy thi rather nostalgic hour as we talk about all things LOOK-IN PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

VISION ON SOUND takes part in WHOOVERVILLE 17.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on September 13th 2026.VoS 295 is a slightly shorter episode than is usual (which hopefully partially explains my extended intro blurb) of which a large part was recorded on stage in the METRO CINEMA at QUAD, DERBY ob SEPTEMBER 5th 2026.STEVE HATCHER joins me on stage to chat with JASON HAIGH-ELLERY about BIG FINISH PRODUCTIONS and (amongst other topics) their adaptations of classic TV shows for audio. It is a DOCTOR WHO event, so there's a fair amount of chat about that show, obviously, but I hope we entertained our audience on the day with some interesting insights into the wider world of archive TV, and I hope that listeners to VISION ON SOUND will enjoy the results too.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

LISA PARKER on YOU RANG, M'LORD?First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 28th 2026.This week, LISA PARKER, one of the regular contributors to VISION ON SOUND who hasn’t been on the show for far too long returns to tell me all about one of her favourite sitcoms, YOU RANG, M’LORD?Created and written by the legendary television writing duo JIMMY PERRY and DAVID CROFT with twenty-six fifty minute episodes being broadcast across four series between 1988 and 1993, this popular series took three of the lead actors from another of their hit series HI-DE-HI, PAUL SHANE, SU POLLARD and JEFFREY HOLLAND, alongside many other actors who had appeared their other series, and placed them in a similar situation to that of the hit drama UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS almost two decades earlier.PAUL SHANE plays ALF STOKES, the scheming butler to the MELDRUM family, SU POLLARD plays his daughter, the maid IVY TEASDALE, with JEFFREY HOLLAND playing the pompous footman JAMES TWELVETREES. They are all in the service of LORD MELDRUM and his younger brother TEDDY as played by the familiar duo from IT AIN”T HALF HOT MUM, DONALD HEWLETT and MICHAEL KNOWLES. Other familiar faces included BILL PERTWEE, FRANK WILLIAMS, BARBARA NEW, MAVIS PUGH, and JOHN HORSLEY, and there’s a memorable theme song featuring none other than BOB MONKHOUSE.Despite its high production values, and a longer running time that meant it slotted very nicely into the traditional Sunday evening viewing schedule, it wasn’t exactly seen as a roaring success at the time it was made, and was seldom repeated on the main BBC channels. It remains, therefore, one of PERRY and CROFT’S lesser-known works, although, rather surprisingly, it has recently been revived as a radio series more than thirty years after it ended its TV run, which probably shows that it may have been more enduring than people might have thought.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

ADAM HENLEY on A VERY BRITISH COUP.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on June 14th 2026.This week a very ADAM HENLEY wanted to come back and talk about a very TV mini-series that is very important to him, A VERY BRITISH COUP. This was a three-part political drama about the attacks upon a very left-wing socialist government by the establishment, a film very much directed by MICK JACKSON, very much written by ALAN PLATER, based very loosely upon a book by CHRIS MULLEN, and which was very first broadcast on Channel Four in 1988.Starring RAY McANALLY in one of his very finest later roles as HARRY PERKINS a radical socialist Prime Minister who gets nobbled by the left, the right, and just about everyone in between as he tries to implement an agenda that almost nobody in the corridors of power seems to think very highly of.A very powerful political drama that takes a very no-holds-barred stance on the very devious machinations and abuses of power that serve to keep the United Kingdom such a very docile place politically, and what can happen when those very powerful people get to do very much what they want to do in order to keep their own version of the world the very same as they have always had it.It’s one of ADAM’s very favourite television programmes, so do join us as we head back into the very alternative future, somewhere in the very early 1990s.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

WARREN CUMMINGS on archive television found and lost.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 31st 2026.I realised recently that, whilst everyone else in the Archive television community has been talking a lot about such things, here on VISION ON SOUND, we haven’t really addressed the hot topic of this year so far, namely the discovery of some exciting missing episodes of television series that had been thought lost forever.So I contacted WARREN CUMMINGS and we decided to spend this week’s edition trying, in our usual unique VISION ON SOUND way, to try and rectify this. Naturally, whilst we will, of course, mention the resurrection of two exciting episodes of THE DALEKS’ MASTER PLAN in the course of the next hour, this isn’t really an episode about that.Instead, whilst we do talk about some found television, and some lost television, we also talk a little about the type of television that was more likely to become lost television, and whether the different types of attempts to fill the gaps in the archive - via recreation, or animation, or other means - have been successful or not, and, in the end, if it’s the original programmes themselves that are the most important versions to have, and whether they can ever live up - or down - to their reputations if and when we do finally manage to actually see them.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

WARREN CUMMINGS presents a right load of Sherlocks.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 17th 2026.SHERLOCK HOLMES on television is a topic that we tend to return to time and again on VISION ON SOUND, and for very good reasons. Not only is the character a television staple that runs through pretty much the whole of television history, and in several countries, across the decades of television production, but it is often used as a mark of distinction and generally brings out the very best that television is capable of being.Earlier on this year TYLER ADAMS came on to talk about THE MASTER BLACKMAILER in Granada Television’s prestigious series THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, but this week WARREN CUMMINGS is back, and he promised me a right load of Sherlocks, so how could I resist?So do join us as we meander around various iterations of SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’s most famous creation, and transport us back to, well, several different multiverses offering up many alternative interpretations of crime-fighting, Victorian style…PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI lloks at THE LUCY SHOW and HERE'S LUCY.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on May 3rd 2026.As a lot of you may already know from one or two of his previous appearances on VISION ON SOUND, our friend PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself, is a big fan of the kind of archive television that features women in prominent roles, holding their own against the prevailing masculine dominance that featured in most of the television of the time. PAUL has come on to the show to talk about the more female-oriented dramas and comedies that were being made at the time, featuring women who were far more than just the sidekicks, housewives and mothers that society often demanded that they portray, and somehow managed to break the moulds, constraints and expectations that America and the world insisted women should meekly conform to.One of the many names that he has enjoyed talking about is LUCILLE BALL, who was something of a powerhouse in American television not least because of her six-year stint on the sitcom I LOVE LUCY in the 1950s. Such was her star power that she became a legendary television producer with DESILU PRODUCTIONS which went on to produce three of the most iconic drama series of the 1960s, THE UNTOUCHABLES, STAR TREK and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, two of which are still proving to be just as popular today as they were back in the 1960s.PAUL has recently been watching two of LUCILLE BALL’s later sitcom successes and wanted to discuss what he had seen of them with me today. These were the ground-breaking THE LUCY SHOW from the mid-1960s, and HERE’S LUCY which followed it. Both of these shows ran for six seasons, and were just as popular when she chose to end them as they always had been, with the latter holding its own alongside other iconic series such as THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW and BEWITCHED in the cauldron of female emancipation that brewed in the early 1970s.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

STEVE HATCHER on OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH (part one of two).First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 19th 2026.OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH was an epic drama series produced by the BBC in 1996. Written by PETER FLANNERY and based upon his own stage play, it consisted of nine 63 to 75 minute episodes, each of which charted events in a particular year in the lives of four friends from Tyneside as they survived the ups and downs of their complex, interconnected, and political experiences across three turbulent decades from 1964 to 1995.Often heart-breaking, but also occasionally life-affirming, it’s been argued that this series does a lot to confirm some suspicions that it’s grim up north, but it starred (and arguably made stars of) CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON, GINA McKEE, MARK STRONG and DANIEL CRAIG as NICKY, MARY, TOSKER and GEORDIE respectively, and weaved tales of corruption in local government and the police force, as well as documenting the effects of civil turmoil and several destructive political choices, and how they affected the lives of these four particular northern friends as they grew older. Also featuring a host of notable actors, and featuring star turns from PETER VAUGHN and FREDA DOWIE as NICKY’S troubled parents, this production cost £8 MILLION to make which famously consumed half of the entire drama budget of BBC2 for the year.Earlier this year STEVE HATCHER had been eagerly devouring this series and posting his thoughts about it on FACEBOOK, and offered to talk about the series with me for VISION ON SOUND. Naturally, this gave us a lot to talk about, and we over-ran somewhat, so this week we’ll be talking about the first half of the story, and next week we’ll come back and do it all again to cover the second part, as well as the radio remake from 2022 which attempted to bring the story up to date.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

PAUL CHANDLER, THE SHY YETI himself talks about his memories of watching TOP OF THE POPSFirst broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on April 5th 2026.PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

MICHAEL HERBERT joins me to talk about TIMESLIPFirst broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 22nd 2026.TIMESLIP was a children’s science fiction series made by ATV for the ITV network back in the early nineteen-seventies. It starred CHERYL BURFIELD as Liz Skinner and SPENCER BANKS as Simon Randall, two teenage actors who manage to hold their own playing against some of the finest television character actors working at that time, including DENNIS QUILLEY, JOHN BARRON, DEREK BENFIELD, IRIS RUSSELL, DAVID GRAHAM and IAIN FAIRBAIRN.Running across twenty-four episodes made in full colour (most of which now only survive in black & white), and consisting of four serials of thought-provoking, philosophical, and time-jumping adventures (THE WRONG END OF TIME, THE TIME OF THE ICE BOX, THE YEAR OF THE BURN UP and THE DAY OF THE CLONE), the series ran from September 1970 through to March 1971, and is fondly remembered by the generation that sat down after school to enjoy it and found that it somehow managed to sear itself into their memories and stimulate their imagination.This week an old friend of the show, MICHAEL HERBERT, got in touch to tell me that he’d been watching TIMESLIP, and wondered if I might want to talk about it. Naturally I’m always happy when someone suggests a topic for VISION ON SOUND, and today’s edition is the result of the conversation we had which, whilst prompted by TIMESLIP did take us off in other directions to discuss other television series that had a similar style. As ever, when your chat involves a certain amount of spontaneity, and you’re working without copious notes, sometimes facts and memories can get a little confused. So I apologise in advance if any of the details got a little fuzzy, but the enthusiasm for what the show was about does, I hope, still shine through, and we’ll put the rest down to interference via the fourth dimension.Incidentally, the TIMESLIP event that I mentioned is on APRIL the 18th at the QUAD in Derby, if you want to find out more just head over to their website derbyquad.co.uk/eventsPLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.

STEVE HATCHER on remakes of classic cop shows.First broadcast on FAB RADIO INTERNATIONAL at 19:00 on March 8th 2026.There’s been a tendency in recent years for modern television makers to take a long, hard look at the archives and realise that some older television series were actually once quite popular, and think to themselves that they quite fancy a bit of that kind of success and brand recognition, and so they decide to remake, repackage, reimagine, or reboot some of those brilliant old ideas for more modern television audiences, and perhaps one of the more popular genres for drawing this kind of attention had been the crime or police drama series. For example, even as I was writing this intro, ITV announced that a new version of DALZIEL AND PASCOE was in the works, to add to a growing list suggesting that everything old is new again.I suppose this isn’t really all that surprising, considering just how many cop shows have filled the schedules over the long history of television, but sometimes it does start to seem as if there really are very few new ideas out there, or that the viewers these days, like with their supermarket shopping only really trust something that is wearing a familiar brand name. So, whilst new variations on the police drama, often involving quirky detectives living on houseboats, or crossword compilers and little old ladies helping the police with their enquiries, are popping up all the time these days, many of the new shows somehow seem more than a little bit familiar…PLEASE NOTE - For Copyright reasons, musical content sometimes has to be removed for the podcast edition. All the spoken word content remains (mostly) as it was in the broadcast version. Hopefully this won't spoil your enjoyment of the show.