It's 1980. Upstairs, watching TV on the second set, in me mum and dad's bedroom. Forget your fancy 14" flatscreen HD, wall-mounted, IKEA friendly viewing experiences of today. This was, of course, the old telly from downstairs. It was black and white, mono sound (they all were back then, fools) and, best of all, you had to change channels by turning a big silver dial. Every time you switched frequency the set went CHANK in a tremendously exciting way. That TV is responsible for a lot of this blog, to be quite honest; I used to wonder, what if you kept it halfway between signals? What would you see? What freaky alien ghost channel could you tune in to?
The answer, sadly, was Tyne Tees Television, and then only if the aerial was halfway out of the window and it wasn't cloudy. Hey, David Cronenberg thought the same as me when he was a kid. He made Videodrome based on the memory. He may be more successful, but which of us is truly happier?*
In all honesty, I didn't have to mess around to find freak signals because that set was used by me for one purpose alone. That was the set we watched Sapphire and Steel on.
I'm not going to rant on about Sapphire and Steel. If you were there at the time, it was unforgettable. If you watch it now, you will be immediately put off by the shot-on-video, oddly lit, cheap sets and special effects that often consist of shaking a camera about a lot. And that's a shame, because the script and performances were sublime. David McCallum and Joanna Lumley, for god's sake, with David Collins turning up every now and again. I loved it because it was brutal, both to the characters and the viewers. We never knew who this eponymous couple were; we never knew what they were either. Annoyingly, the writer (the awesome PJ Hammond) clearly does, but refuses to comment to this day. There are lots of odd bits of dialogue designed to suggest a whole world and lifestyle we never get to see. It's as if Doctor Who never explained the TARDIS or showed us inside it. The main difference between the two series being that the Doctor never killed the people he was trying to save, listened to their agonised dying screams and then did a little happy dance. No, really. Second story on Sapphire and Steel? That's how it finishes.
There's tons of material for horrid childhood bad dreams in this show. Nursery rhymes that kill you if you say them. Zombie Roundheads coming up the stairs to hang you. Evil mum and dad. A monster that was made (both in the storyline and in special effects terms) out of a big pile of animal guts. The house with no doors. The time Joanna Lumley's face turned into a mass of rotting meat at 7:15 on a weeknight. And the last episode, which is downright inexplicable, even by this show's standards. It involves a motorway cafe that doesn't exist, a chess set, a travelling carny called "Johnny Jack" and the most depressingly unsettling conclusion since Blake's 7.
There was, however, one special moment. Allow me to unleash some mild spoilers for this thirty year-old masterpiece.
Storyline: S&S have arrived, for reasons which, as usual, are utterly unexplained, in a junk shop, a grim, depressing, tatty, underlit piece of genius set design. Upstairs is the empty flat where the landlord lived, until he vanished one dark day. Across the hallway, we meet his lodger who's getting ready to go to work (at night), wearing loads of makeup and a wig, in a 'club' - yep, like I said, 7:00 on a weeknight, but those were innocent times. I thought she must work behind the bar or something. There's also lots of Victorian child ghosts who we only catch glimpses of, playing games, running quickly between dark shelves and whispering "Can we hurt them? Oh, let's hurt them!"
Lord, it's a depressing place. There's no cutesy antiquary here. It's all so dirty and grim and drab and boring. And lonely. That's the big theme. All these lonely broken people, except that they've all been vanishing here one by one. Oh, and there's a new landlord. He's just taken over, but no-one knows where he is or what is name is. He's waiting at the bottom of the stairs, looking up, eavesdropping on our 'heroes'. The camera slowly pans up his neat suit and we see -
That's right, beasts. It's episode 2 of the people with NO FACE collection! Meet...The Shape.
Remember, I was watching this in a dark Victorian terrace, which, despite the best attentions of my mum and dad, was falling to bits. It was winter time. You had to turn the lights off to see the black and white screen properly. My parents' bedroom was at the top of the stairs. The long, dark, winding staircase. I was seven. Now, try and calculate; how much do you think I believed I was going to see Mr Shape at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with his big wide…skin?
Unlike Quiet as a Nun, there's no easy way out, no masks, no solutions. The monster does horrible things in this story; there's a sequence involving a burning photograph that will haunt you for a while afterwards (it screams horrifically for a very long time, and then you work out where the vanishing people have been going). There's that overall aura of endless, depressing, unbearable dark lives; these characters don't need to be tormented by metaphysical horrors, the script seems to say. Their own everyday existences are much, much worse. Oh, they get the bad Shape eventually. All dealt with. Oh, by the way, says, McCallum, to the only survivor, our broken down bar girl. If you you don't find and burn every photo of yourself that was ever taken, The Shape will come back and kill you horribly. Nice. Bye, now. Enjoy your evening.
So, there he isn't. The appalling Mr Shape, subject of childhood nightmares everywhere. Get in touch, if you had those bad dreams. I bet he didn't do much in them, did he? Just stood there looking at you, without any eyes. I'd love to know how many of you were traumatised by this, but what I'm really keen to find out is this; how many people have freaked out in a Magritte exhibition since then?
By the way, Mr Shape's power was that he's in every photo ever taken.
Including the ones of you.
Hang on, though. Isn't TV a succession of still images, effectively? What…what did we let loose? MY GOD, WHAT HAVE WE WROUGHT?
 |
| If you want to get anywhere with 'er mate, you want to try making eyes at her. Or a mouth. |
Pleasant screams.
*Mr Cronenberg's legal team have asked me to point out that he is happier than me.
No comments:
Post a Comment