FANTASY SIXTIES
Saturday 16 April 2005 8.20pm-9pm; 1.45am-2.45am
The launch of the first Soviet Sputnik satellite in the 1950s captured the public's imagination and prompted TV writers in the Sixties to experiment with fantastical storylines.
James Chapman - author Brian Clemens - scriptwriter, The Avengers Gerald Harper - star of Adam Adamant Lives! Cathy Johnson - author Roger Langley - from The Prisoner Appreciation Society: Six of One Kim Newman - TV critic
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Kate Broome
Time Shift Series Editor
The radical thinking and cultural change of the Sixties spawned a new type of adventure television. Storylines moved further from reality and led to a golden age of fantasy television.
A new and groundbreaking science fiction series hit British TV screens in 1961: A for Andromeda. Destined to become a classic, only a few clips of the series survive. Similarly adventurous programmes followed, including Adam Adamant Lives! Doctor Who, The Avengers and The Prisoner - the latter taking fantasy television to a place which surprised, and at times enraged, the audience.
The Avengers ended with Steed and Tara King blasting off into space in a rocket. Not far behind them was the real Apollo 11 mission. On 20 July 1969 both BBC and ITV were broadcasting the same drama; the world watched men walking on the moon and sat through a real life cliff-hanger about getting the crew back to earth alive. Setting a story somewhere in space was never going to be pure fantasy ever again.
