“Today’s science fiction so often becomes tomorrow’s science fact…”
ATV began to broadcast a new four part series called ‘Timeslip’ in 1970. It ran until 1971, & their target audience was children. But was it actually suitable for minors to watch?
As you can see in episode one below, the introduction is made by a rather sweaty looking bloke.
Series One - The Wrong End Of Time
It all starts with an autistic ‘girl’ wondering around alone near a spooky disused army barracks. She then goes missing & two teenagers, who are looking for her, fall into a time hole [climb through a gap in an invisible chainlink fence] & find themselves trapped in various periods of the 20th century. They encounter all sorts of “adventures”. At one point, early on, they batter a German naval officer who’s keeping them in a room against their will, & the girl gets shot [lots of blood but no wound to be seen] …. All good wholesome children’s entertainment.
The two lead rolls were filled by virtually unknown actors: Spencer Banks as Simon Randall, & Cheryl Burfield as Liz Skinner [the latter being clearly too old for the part].
Cheryl Burfield “improvised” at her audition by turning up dressed as a tomboy & with her hair up in pigtails. She was 18.
“She impressed the production team so much that they amended the scripts to take account of her age”
….. How very BBC of them. They also raised the age of her character from 12 years old to 15. It seems they forgot to tell the wardrobe department though. As Cheryl’s costumes often appear to include ill-fitting bras intended for an actual 12 year old.
I’m not sure what I think about an 18 year old attending an audition to play the part of someone that’s not yet reached their teens.
My Mother once told me I had to pretend I was 15, I was about 18 & really didn’t want to do it. But she got arsey with me when I tried to refuse. The order request was so we could get on a cruise ship to see my father off [he was in the band]. Apparently just one adult & a child were permitted on board, as guests of the crew, whilst the scarily massive floaty thing was sat in port being loaded up with pretentious supplies & individuals.
I remember how uncomfortable I felt in my own head at the time, pretending to be a child. Plus I was sweating like hell as, in the height of summer, I had to keep my rather thick denim jacket on so nobody could see my tattoos. It all felt highly inappropriate. Even more so when I bent over & my cig’s & ligher fell out of my pocket. Then afterwards my Mother took me for a double brandy & coke on the way home for being “a good girl”.
Anyway, back to the other Timeslip …..
Commander Charles Trayno, another main character, is played by Denis Quilley, who’s always given me the impression he’d devour himself if he were made of chocolate.
These are the four series of Timeslip:
[Cue Orwell styley ‘premonitions’]
Andrew-Mark Thompson
[Originally published as a text feature on the Carlton DVD release of Timeslip]
If you fancy a peep, all of the episodes can be found here.
If you prefer to download stuff to watch, then just pop the URL in the box at the top of this video downloader [it works for most platforms - including Pootube].
If you’d like to know more about Timeslip the official website is here.
I’d love to hear what you think. As I watched the first one, & straight away felt it wasn’t suitable for children. The first inkling was hearing the horror movie style music they’d decided to go with. I say “horror”, but it’s more like Carry On Screaming. My opinion didn’t change after the second episode, even though the title music did …. As all of a sudden the intro & backing music went from Carry on Screaming to Carry On Cleo.
The black & white “Amalgamated Television Colour Production” - for a black & white program - is a bit confusing too. Mind you, it does get a tad “Wizard of Oz” at one point. I think they must have had a few quid to use up in the budget at the end of the financial year [use it or lose it!] & threw in a bit of colour as a bit of a treat.
When I started tapping this lot out I intended to have a moan about programming children’s brains & how this series is not suitable for the under 16’s. That is still my opinion. But I now can’t stop watching the bloody thing! I’ve downloaded all 26 episodes & have sat through 8 so far. I shall be writing to my M.P though as, so far, every cast member has been white & there doesn’t seem to be single gay or lesbian in sight. Absolutely disgraceful.
18 episodes to go ….. See you in a week or so
