The 8.15 from Manchester

THE 8.15 FROM MANCHESTER
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1990-91

Here’s an opportunity to make a lot of cheap jokes about at least one train being on time every week - but I will resist. The 8.15 was the Saturday morning kids’ marathon shown when Going Live! was having its summer break, and it was broadcast, yes folks, from BBC Manchester. It had a theme by indie songsters The Inspiral Carpets, and was presented by a bargain-basement crew of Charlotte Hindle (veteran of the similar Get Fresh!), Ross King and Diane Oxberry. All the vital ingredients were present - competitions, guest pop/soap stars, cartoons - but there was nothing of the excitement created by switching on to Going Live!…and when they ran out of ‘fillers’, they had a tendency to raid the Rentaghostarchives. ‘Highlights’ included ‘It’s Tough at the Top’, a quiz with the requisite gunge and ‘fun’, 'The Wetter the Better', where kids threw water at their teachers, ‘Rapattack’, and the nausea-inducing ‘Photoromance’ - this was one train you’d be quite happy to be late.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.martinwhale.co.uk for the borrowed pic)

Dungeons and Dragons

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
Made by: TRS Inc/Marvel
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1983-4

With its roots in the nerdiest of nerdy pursuits, this badly-drawn American cartoon told the story of a group of kids who set off on a fairground ride called ‘Dungeons and Dragons’, and are never seen in this dimension again. I barely ever saw past the titles, because my mum didn’t approve of the programme’s content, but I actually think she saved me from wasting a few half hours of my life.

There was Hank, the blond, self-righteous leader, Eric the obligatory coward, Presto the junior magician, Diana the token black girl (wearing a fur bikini), another girl called Sheila, and then Bobby, a small boy who, for some reason, always carried a club. The girls had also managed to stumble across a miniature, painfully cute unicorn, which they imaginatively named Uni, and which always managed to get itself into unnecessary peril.

The gang were supposedly helped by the Dungeon Master, a midget with male-pattern baldness and a red cloak, who spoke in riddles and added so much more confusion that the kids were bound never to make it out of the ride. Sort of like Yoda, but talking even greater bollocks. They were surrounded by the usual round of elves and hobbits, but the chief bad guy was Venger, a Satan-esque figure with an unhealthily-pale face, a red cloak and a pair of dear antlers. He was flanked by his Shadow Demons and the Orcs, dragon-like beasts in full armour.

Let Dungeons & Dragons be a warning to anyone who tries to make a very minority, and frankly, inexplicable, interest into something exciting and accessible; it was too mainstream for the multi-sided dice owning purists, and too dorky for everyone else.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 1/10

The Dukes of Hazzard

THE DUKES OF HAZZARD
Made by: CBS
Shown on: ITV?
Years shown: 1979-84

Yee-haaa! Nothing makes for better Sunday afternoon viewing than a bunch of inbred Americans, with their short shorts, fast cars and trailer-trash sensibilities. Well, someone thought it was a good idea, and indeed it turned out to be.

With music and a theme song by Waylon Jennings, the stars of the show were cousins Bo and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat and John Schneider), one dark-haired and chunky, one cute and blond. They operated just on the right side of the law as they did their modern-day Robin Hood schtick in Hazzard County. They lived with white-bearded Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle), their foxy cousin, Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach), and they cruised around the dusty landscape in their car, the General Lee, which was orange with the Confederate flag painted on the bonnet. This car also had no operable doors, and so the ‘Good ol’ boys’ would just athletically leap in through the windows, which I have to say I thought was pretty cool.

The Dukes were so affable and easy-going that they didn’t really have enemies, but there was the local governor, the obese and cigar-smoking Boss Hogg (Sorrell Brooke.) He was always looking for ways to throw the boys in the county lock-up, and berated his pathetic deputy, Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane (James Best), whenever he failed to do so i.e. every cotton-pickin’ episode. This comedy-drama was not directly aimed at kids, but succeeded with them largely because of the high-speed car chases and stunts, which would involve the General Lee jumping a fifty foot gorge, or driving for three miles on two wheels. I also thought that baby-faced Luke was a nice slice of eye-candy. Grown men, however, were more taken with Daisy Duke, who sported figure-hugging denim hot-pants, and was inclined to drape herself over the boys’ car whenever there was an opportunity - and this was when she wasn’t seeing off sexist creeps in the watering hole where she was a waitress. But looking back, there was something a little amiss about Bo, Luke and Daisy: they were far too tactile with each other to be cousins. But then again , that kind of thing is probably legal in some southern states.

The boat was rocked when Wopat and Schneider got into pay disputes with the network, and had to be replaced. Bo and Luke supposedly left Hazzard to try their luck on the race car circuit, and in came another pair of cousins, Coy and Vance Duke (Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer.) They did their best, but CBS fought to resolve their differences with the originals, and they returned only one series later, no doubt with wads of cash jammed into the back pockets of their tight jeans. Dukes had spin-off potential, and made a brief star of Sonny Stroyer, who played dozy deputy, Enos Strate, in his own series. Wopat, Schneider and Catherine Bach reunited in 1997 for a Dukes of Hazzard TV-movie special, although there was probably less jumping through car windows, and slightly less revealing leg-wear.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

(Thanks to www.tvcrazy.net for the borrowed pic)