3 hours ago, Stretford Ender said:

Blake's Seven. All four series.

I remember that back in the day, think it had a cult following too.

21 minutes ago, Strider6003 said:

I remember that back in the day, think it had a cult following too.

It was a great programme, despite the dodgy sets. The characters made it: Avon, Blake, Vila, Gan, Jenna, Cally, Servalan, and Travis. I plan to do a bit of binge-watching this weekend.

Just seen Spurs lose to Coventry in the FA Cup final, keep more like that coming and I won't complain .............. for a while at least.

On 22/05/2020 at 16:22, Stretford Ender said:

Blake's Seven. All four series.

Loved that programme, brilliant in its day. The British star trek... 

2 hours ago, dkw said:

Loved that programme, brilliant in its day. The British star trek... 

Without the moralizing crap too. I will never forgive the BBC for that ending though.

On 22/05/2020 at 16:22, Stretford Ender said:

Blake's Seven. All four series.

A great programme. I'll have to watch them again. One of the best British sci-fi programmes.

If you can find it I recommend the TV series Quatermass and the Pit. It was made in the late fifties and repeated on the BBC about two or three years ago. I've watched the film version a few times and thought it was good but found the TV series better.

A great TV series of the mid-seventies was Survivors. Watched the first two episodes recently and found them uncannily similar to what is currently happening with the coronavirus.

3 minutes ago, Boyne said:

A great programme. I'll have to watch them again. One of the best British sci-fi programmes.

If you can find it I recommend the TV series Quatermass and the Pit. It was made in the late fifties and repeated on the BBC about two or three years ago. I've watched the film version a few times and thought it was good but found the TV series better.

A great TV series of the mid-seventies was Survivors. Watched the first two episodes recently and found them uncannily similar to what is currently happening with the coronavirus.

Quatermass was terrific. I saw the big-screen version about the Martians in the tube station. I think Hammer produced it. I remember Survivors from the 1970s and the opening credits with a Boeing 747 - fairly new at the time - coming in to land. I thought of that programme too when all this kicked off. We used to do some pretty good sci-fi back in the day but the latest offerings are pretty poor in comparison. The original Dr. Who with William Hartnell was quite scary for its time, especially the Daleks when they first appeared.

Did you ever watch any of the old ITC stuff like Department S (brilliant) and Man in a Suitcase? One of our teachers carried his papers in an old leather carrier and was known as McGill ever after. Danger Man and The Prisoner, of course, are the standouts.

 

14 hours ago, Stretford Ender said:

Without the moralizing crap too. I will never forgive the BBC for that ending though.

Yeah how dare they kill the ship... 

There was a rumour of a remake a while ago. 

12 hours ago, Stretford Ender said:

Quatermass was terrific. I saw the big-screen version about the Martians in the tube station. I think Hammer produced it. I remember Survivors from the 1970s and the opening credits with a Boeing 747 - fairly new at the time - coming in to land. I thought of that programme too when all this kicked off. We used to do some pretty good sci-fi back in the day but the latest offerings are pretty poor in comparison. The original Dr. Who with William Hartnell was quite scary for its time, especially the Daleks when they first appeared.

Did you ever watch any of the old ITC stuff like Department S (brilliant) and Man in a Suitcase? One of our teachers carried his papers in an old leather carrier and was known as McGill ever after. Danger Man and The Prisoner, of course, are the standouts.

 

Yes, the film version of Quatermass and the Pit was made by Hammer, In 1967. I remember watching Dangerman and the Prisoner as a kid. I think the Prisoner was repeated a few years ago.

Agree, we made some great sci-fi back in the day. When I watched the first two episodes of Survivors the other day I think it was the first time I'd watched since the seventies. A brilliant series. I watched the remake (about ten years ago?) and felt it wasn't as good as the original. 

I have vague memories of William Hartnell but the first Doctor Who I can fully remember was Patrick Troughton. He is still my favourite Doctor probably followed by John Pertwee. The effects and costumes weren't brilliant but the story lines were good. I find the latest versions of Doctor Who heavy going and the plots can be difficult to follow. John Pertwee served in the Royal Navy in WW2 and was a crew member on HMS Hood. He was taken off the Hood to do officer training and therefore missed it's fateful sinking on this date in 1941.

A bit off subject but some of those people who did the effects for stuff like Thunderbirds and Stingray went on to work on James Bond and Star Wars films.

Last night I watched Code Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes. The programme was first broadcast in 2011 and has been repeated a few times since then.

The programme concentrated on the work of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers. The former was a brilliant mathematician who worked on breaking Germany's Lorenz coding machine. The British called the Lorenz Tunny. Tutte had never seen the machine but by drawing up tables on paper was able to produce an image of the machine. He was ably assisted by people like Newman and Tiltman. The Lorenz was far more complex than Enigma and was used to transmit messages between German High Command in Berlin and senior officers in the field.

Flowers was a brilliant GPO (now BT) engineer who designed and built a machine called Colossus to speed up the process of breaking the Lorenz codes.

Due to a Government edict the work at Bletchley Park remained secret for many years and it was only in the seventies and eighties that information about what happened at Bletchley Park in WW2.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016ltm0/timewatch-codebreakers-bletchley-parks-lost-heroes

Bletchley Park is a brilliant place to visit.

https://bletchleypark.org.uk/

@erskblue and @Stretford Ender One for you to watch if you haven't seen it before.

Edited May 26, 20206 yr by Boyne

New series of What we Do in the Shadows is on soon, I loved the first series so looking forward to this one.

sky witness sets uk premiere date for How to Get Away with Murder season 6

Can't wait for this, Viola Davis is the best actress around.

Edited May 26, 20206 yr by Argo

Watching 'Shadow of the Noose' again for the first time in a few years. An excellent dramatization of the notable cases of Edward Marshall Hall, one of the great courtroom orators of his day. It only ran for eight episodes so many of his triumphs are left out. The episode about Crippen was very good and shed light on the legal chicanery that surrounded that case, and the way in which Crippen was essentially betrayed by his solicitor.

Got up to the final series of Spooks, but it all gets a bit samey from then on in, so I've given up on it now. Started watching Line of Duty and if it can keep up the high level of quality that I've seen in the first 4 episodes it'll be a good un. Years and Years, a BBC drama around an ordinary Manchester family sounds a bit dull I know, but if you get to the end of the first episode you'll probably keep watching, no spoilers from me, but it's an very dramatic ending, now I'm going to see if the rest of it is as good.

I've also become a bit of a lockdown theatre buff, the National Theatre is showing a performance of a play every Thursday evening, via YouTube, from 7pm, so far I've seen Antony and Cleopatra and A streetcar named Desire that stars Gillian Anderson hamming it up spectacularly, well worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUDq1XzCY0NIOYVJvEMQjqw

A few weeks back the Guardian published a 50 programme lockdown list, Game of Thrones and Line of Duty are the only ones I knew, but I'm gonna work my way through as many as I can before I go back to work.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/dec/02/50-best-tv-shows-2019

 

Ooh, ooh, just remembered another one that I've watched recently, State of happiness, a Norwegian/US drama based around the town of Stavanger in the late 60s early 70s and centring around the early days of the North Sea oil and gas boom, not as dull as it sounds, and a few gorgeous Norwegian ladies as a bonus. 

Edited May 26, 20206 yr by MKBlue

8 hours ago, Boyne said:

Last night I watched Code Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes. The programme was first broadcast in 2011 and has been repeated a few times since then.

The programme concentrated on the work of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers. The former was a brilliant mathematician who worked on breaking Germany's Lorenz coding machine. The British called the Lorenz Tunny. Tutte had never seen the machine but by drawing up tables on paper was able to produce an image of the machine. He was ably assisted by people like Newman and Tiltman. The Lorenz was far more complex than Enigma and was used to transmit messages between German High Command in Berlin and senior officers in the field.

Flowers was a brilliant GPO (now BT) engineer who designed and built a machine called Colossus to speed up the process of breaking the Lorenz codes.

Due to a Government edict the work at Bletchley Park remained secret for many years and it was only in the seventies and eighties that information about what happened at Bletchley Park in WW2.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016ltm0/timewatch-codebreakers-bletchley-parks-lost-heroes

Bletchley Park is a brilliant place to visit.

https://bletchleypark.org.uk/

@erskblue and @Stretford Ender One for you to watch if you haven't seen it before.

My local tourist attraction Boyne, and having paid a visit or two in the past 30 years or so would thoroughly recommend it to anybody with an interest in WW2 matters.

34 minutes ago, MKBlue said:

My local tourist attraction Boyne, and having paid a visit or two in the past 30 years or so would thoroughly recommend it to anybody with an interest in WW2 matters.

@MKBlue Have been there a few times over the years and have also attended a few lectures and seen some of the documents which are held in BP's Archives. Every time I visit BP I never cease to be amazed by the work done there. And not just at BP but also the work at the listening stations dotted around the country and around the world and by the dispatch riders who took messages to Station X during WW2.

About two miles from where I live is a building which goes back to Tudor times and was used as a listening station in WW2 and was staffed by American personnel. 

https://www.hallplace.org.uk/history/

I spent a couple of years working in the Admiralty Building in London. It was there in WW1 that Naval Intelligence (known as Toom 40) was based and it was that team which intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram which was one of the reasons for the U.S.A. to enter the war. Some of those who worked in Naval Intelligence and also Military Intelligence went on to work at BP in WW2.

3 hours ago, Boyne said:

I spent a couple of years working in the Admiralty Building in London. It was there in WW1 that Naval Intelligence (known as Toom 40) was based and it was that team which intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram which was one of the reasons for the U.S.A. to enter the war. Some of those who worked in Naval Intelligence and also Military Intelligence went on to work at BP in WW2.

We were a bit lucky with the Zimmerman Telegram. The Americans might easily have broken off diplomatic relations with us over that because we were essentially spying on our erstwhile allies. Its publication certainly angered the American public, especially when it was proved to be genuine, but I'm not sure it alone pushed the Americans over the edge. They were well on their way by that time and the main effect was to allow Woodrow Wilson to isolate the anti-interventionist lobby in Congress. I've even heard it said the the Zimmerman Telegram was the opening sentence to the Treaty of Versailles.

4 hours ago, MKBlue said:

Got up to the final series of Spooks, but it all gets a bit samey from then on in, so I've given up on it now. 

I get this feeling pretty quickly these days, like the Killing Eve series thought it was new and well produced and ended nicely with her death. 

Shocked when they did a second series and just could not watch it as I could continually see the till ringing.

13 minutes ago, Stretford Ender said:

We were a bit lucky with the Zimmerman Telegram. The Americans might easily have broken off diplomatic relations with us over that because we were essentially spying on our erstwhile allies. Its publication certainly angered the American public, especially when it was proved to be genuine, but I'm not sure it alone pushed the Americans over the edge. They were well on their way by that time and the main effect was to allow Woodrow Wilson to isolate the anti-interventionist lobby in Congress. I've even heard it said the the Zimmerman Telegram was the opening sentence to the Treaty of Versailles.

You sure you have that right, it might easily be better interpreted as spying on the Germans and looking out for the US.

On 30/04/2020 at 14:39, Gol15 said:

The Last Dance on Netflix...The 80's and 90's look so amazing now in hindsight, it's like a documentary about the Chicago Bulls basketball team (the best team in the history of the NBA).

Well just a small update on this, I finished the whole documentary it has 10 episodes and hands down it's the best sport documentary I've seen. It has so much things due to the very different types of people that are involved, the coach of that team Phil Jackson is such a great coach.

I didn't know much about Michael Jordan but now I'm convinved that he's the best sportman that ever lived and to me Jonah Lomu is now a close second.

13 hours ago, Stretford Ender said:

We were a bit lucky with the Zimmerman Telegram. The Americans might easily have broken off diplomatic relations with us over that because we were essentially spying on our erstwhile allies. Its publication certainly angered the American public, especially when it was proved to be genuine, but I'm not sure it alone pushed the Americans over the edge. They were well on their way by that time and the main effect was to allow Woodrow Wilson to isolate the anti-interventionist lobby in Congress. I've even heard it said the the Zimmerman Telegram was the opening sentence to the Treaty of Versailles.

Yes, it could have turned nasty. The trick that British Naval Intelligence played was to make the Americans believe that their diplomats had picked up the message. Reginald Hall who was the head of Room 40 was fortunate in having an ally in the US Embassy in London and supported him in getting the Zimmerman telegram to the proper authorities in the States. Hall was criticised by some in the U.K. for overstepping the mark when it came to his role with the Zimmerman telegram.

Britain was helped in monitoring traffic which used telecommunications cables and it controlled most of them. A lot of those it didn't had been cut by the Royal Navy early in WW1 and thus forcing Germany and its allies to use British cables.

Here's a book worth reading. It's about the work of Room 40.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Codebreakers-secret-intelligence-changed-course-ebook/dp/B00T5H3XQW/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Room+40&qid=1590571311&sr=8-2

I watched the last episode of Giri/Haji on Netflix last night, about a Japanese cop who comes to London to hunt down his Yakuza brother. I found the series a bit far-fetched and illogical at times but still enjoyed it a lot.

7 hours ago, Boyne said:

Yes, it could have turned nasty. The trick that British Naval Intelligence played was to make the Americans believe that their diplomats had picked up the message. Reginald Hall who was the head of Room 40 was fortunate in having an ally in the US Embassy in London and supported him in getting the Zimmerman telegram to the proper authorities in the States. Hall was criticised by some in the U.K. for overstepping the mark when it came to his role with the Zimmerman telegram.

I believe Hall sat on the telegram for a few weeks while he concocted a story for the Americans. When he did hand the telegram over, Woodrow Wilson sat on it too before releasing it in the middle of a Congressional debate where it served to "freeze out" the anti-intervention faction. At the time, there was a possibility that America would remain neutral but not much of one as the path to joining the British and the French had already been embarked upon.

16 hours ago, Stretford Ender said:

I believe Hall sat on the telegram for a few weeks while he concocted a story for the Americans. When he did hand the telegram over, Woodrow Wilson sat on it too before releasing it in the middle of a Congressional debate where it served to "freeze out" the anti-intervention faction. At the time, there was a possibility that America would remain neutral but not much of one as the path to joining the British and the French had already been embarked upon.

Yes, Hall sat on the telegram for about six weeks i.e. from mid-January to late February 1917. Just after that the contents of the telegram were on the front pages of papers in the States. 

One of the key elements of the telegram was about handing Southern States back to Mexico. Given the tensions between the States and Mexico a few years earlier that must have made Wilson's task easier to persuade Congress and the American population to join WW1. 

What if the USA hadn't entered WW1? A different Treaty of Versailles? No League of Nations? The ifs and buts of history. One of the reasons I like history i.e. what might have been if things had been done differently.

On 28/05/2020 at 05:22, Boyne said:

What if the USA hadn't entered WW1? A different Treaty of Versailles? No League of Nations? The ifs and buts of history. One of the reasons I like history i.e. what might have been if things had been done differently.

You might like Philip K. Dick's book 'The Man in the High Castle' or Ward Moore's 'Bring The Jubilee'. The former was, I believe, the inspiration behind Len Deighton's 'SS-GB.'