CFZ ON TV - Go Max!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Max Blake, once described by you know who as "the one redeeming feature of the CFZ" is on BBC 1 tonight at 7:00 as a guest on the One Show. He will be talking about mystery cats in the UK...

Check it out

Possibly the most professional and respectful TV tribute to an incredibly rare stranded whale

RICHARD F. FOUND THIS OLD BORIS KARLOFF SERIES FEATURING A YETI

Colonel March of Scotland Yard is a 1950s British television series based on author John Dickson Carr's (a.k.a. Carter Dickson) fictional detective Colonel March from his book The Department of Queer Complaints (1940). Carr was a mystery author who specialized in locked-room whodunnits and other 'impossible' crimes; murder mysteries that seemed to defy possibility. The stories of the television series followed in the same vein with Detective March solving cases that baffle Scotland Yard and the British police. The series was made at Southall Studios in Middlesex, England, and was produced by Fountain Films for ITV. The series premiered in 1955 with a total of 26 episodes. The show starred Boris Karloff as the urbane, eye-patched sleuth (no reason was ever given for the loss of his eye). Other regulars included Ewan Roberts as Inspector Ames of Scotland Yard and Eric Pohlmann as Inspector Goron of the Paris Sûreté.

Boris Karloff - born William Henry Pratt, November 23rd 1887 - passed away February 2nd 1969 (age 81).


Tonight's Story The Abominable Snowman

Cast
Boris Karloff ... Col. Perceval March
Ewan Roberts ... Inspector Ames
Doris Nolan ... Mary Gray
Ivan Craig ... Osborne
Olaf Pooley ... Carlmeddy
Alec Mango ... Narbu
Peter Bathurst ... Major Brian Forbes-Williams

Directed By Bernard Knowles
Screenplay Written By Leslie Slote
Story Written By John Dickson Carr
Produced By Hannah Weinstein
Cinematography By Lionel Banes
Film Editing By Thelma Connell
Assistant Director George Mills
Original Music By Edwin Astley
Art Direction By Cedric Dawe

P.S. Edwin Astley was Pete Townshend's father-in-law

Details
Original Air Date: March 7, 1956 (UK)
Season 1, Episode 2
Filming Locations: Southall Studios, Southall, Middlesex, England, UK
Production Co: Fountain Films, Independent Television (ITV), Panda Productions Inc.

OLL LEWIS: TV Series review: Primeval

Surprise! After umming and ah-ing over the cost of the third series and ITV cancelling the show, Primeval is back on our screens. However, after international investment they have reconsidered and a reboot of sorts has taken place. For those not aware, Primeval started off a few years back as ITV's answer to the popularity of Doctor Who on the BBC. Of course, because it would be difficult to compete with the Doctor head on you need a new idea that will appeal instantly to a family audience and they went for dinosaurs. To ensure quality, the team behind the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs was used, including a certain consultant who happens to be a well known member of CFZ amongst other things. The gamble paid off, and then some, for the first two series producing consistently very good episodes each week, series three saw the departure of the man who up until then had been the main character and with him, but the show still retained its audience.

Series four is, after two episodes, looking fantastic and might well be the best series yet. So far the only returning characters from the first three series have been Abby (she out of S-Club7) Conner (the excitable student comic relief in the first series who has since grown into a much more rounded character) and James Lester (the civil servant head of the Arc played by the brilliant Ben Miller). This is a good thing as they were the best characters from the first three series and they are joined by an intriguing new mix of characters; one of them at least, it is hinted from a clandestine-looking meeting in episode two, is hiding a secret. The first episode is an entertaining but on the rails affair where Conner and Abby seek to open up a time anomaly to get back to the present from the Cretaceous period. It picks up considerably in the second episode where Conner, now sacked from the Arc, meets up with an old university chum that after an encounter with dodos in series one is now a fully paid up member of the tinfoil hat brigade and they are soon on the run from a dinosaur in a container yard. It's great stuff and certainly back to form. I highly recommend you watch.



EDITOR'S NOTE: This review has been kicking around my files for several weeks, so - not being a TV watcher - I suspect that the series will be far later in its run by now, if it hasn't finished. However, you can let Oll's enthusing tempt you towards buying the DVD box when it appears.

HARRIET WADHAM: On TV...Oh yes, and the Weird Weekend

Donning the guise of the hardbitten newshound so familiar from a dozen 1950s movies (we are even looking into getting her a trilby hat with a card saying 'Press') she will boldly go where no other girl reporters dare tread....


On Thursday 29th July, I was filmed for a TV programme on CBBC along with my friend Luke. We were assigned to do lots of strange tasks, such as doing impressions of animals any way we wanted to and more. Another funny thing we did was due to the fact Luke brought over his Nintendo Wii remote; therefore I pretended to be a Mii playing tennis.


So Luke stood there maniacally waving his remote about and I had to run around and bat an invisible tennis ball back to the invisible opposition. Now we don’t have proper tennis rackets at home so I had to make do with a plastic yellow one. The cameraman was called Justin and his associate was called Alex. We had to look at Alex during filming and she told us to "forget about the camera; just pretend it’s not there!" They were both really kind to us if we got a bit nervous and during the first interview Luke started being really funny and random, which definitely depicted his personality. When I had to do animal impressions I re-enacted what I TRULY thought of the badger (ie: ‘*snuffle snuffle* Ha! I am the BADGER, and I will destroy EVERYTHING! I will destroy your fence; I will destroy your door, and everything you OWN!! Wa har har! Mwa ha ha ha! *snuffle snuffle SQUEAK*’) and the horse. My horse impression largely consisted of looking blank, jumping, running and trotting obliviously off.


Now for the Weird Weekend! What, you didn’t think I’d forget THAT, did you? Anyway, I have been assigned by Jon to be the official reporter for the WW 2010 and I’m going to write up my summary of each day in my new official CFZ notepad and my new official CFZ shirt. Here is a picture of me with my notepad. I don’t have the shirt on because Mum just thought of taking the picture at the last minute and I didn’t want to have to trudge upstairs, get changed and trudge back downstairs again. So here is my picture.

I can’t wait to get to the Weird Weekend and start listening to all those talks! They all sound really interesting; I looked them up on the [CFZ] website and I want to attend ALL of them! We’ve got a nice blue tent to sleep in and I will be sure to take my lovely thick sleeping bag, which (I hope) will not fail to keep me warm if it’s cold!!! So if any of you readers are going to be at the Weird Weekend...


See you there!

VINTAGE KARL

RICHARD FREEMAN: 'Flipper committed suicide'

Most of our older readers will remember the 1960s kids show Flipper. It features the adventures of a friendly dolphin. Much like a watery Lassie, Flipper would rescue children and thwart baddies to the delight of viewers.


Now her trainer reveals what a miserable existence she had in captivity and how it ultimately led to her death. Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer now activist against keeping the creatures in captivity, is convinced she committed suicide.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=62024

LIZ CLANCY: Crypto cookery

Planet Cook is a children's TV programme on Channel 4 at some ridiculously early hour of the morning. I happened to find this out because my nephew wakes up ridiculously early and I am now living with him and his mother, my sister Katt.

It's a peculiar programme, it has to be said. It's called Planet Cook but the action takes place on an island - an island in the shape of a yeti's footprint (according to the makers, at least). It's presented by the geordie chef who used to do BBC2's Can't Cook Won't Cook (I forget his name) and children's TV favourite Dave Benson-Philips who portrays the pipe-playing 'yeti', and I only use the word 'yeti' because that is how he is described in the programme despite the fact that he is an unusual shade of peachy orange; has mint-green feet, hands and face; and has odd-looking ears that sort of stick out a bit like antennae.

The episode in question that I saw showed the cook and two young child actors making a 'monster hand' out of cabbage and fish as the 'yeti' looked on....

Oh, and Ruby Wax voiced a cliff called Roxy. The mind boggles!

RICHARD FREEMAN: The Worst Loch Ness "documentary" ever!

Neil Arnold recently sent me some DVDs of cryptozoological documentories. Amongst these was a 1976 film called 'The Legend of Loch Ness'. It was produced by Richard Martin and narrated by Auther Franz.

The list of errors and downright lies in this programe beggers belief. There are numerous shots of a yellow submarine (not the famous Viperfish) and divers whom we are told are on an expedition diving in Loch Ness. The waters are crystal clear, not peat-soaked like the waters of the Loch. On top of this there are marine fish, sea urchins, and giant kelp found only in the Pacific Ocean.

We are shown film of a blue shark and told it is a bull shark. The narrator cheefuly tells us that bull sharks have a snake-like head and long thin body. Actualy they have a broad head and squat body. He then goes on to tell us that they grow to 25 feet long. In fact the biggest bull shark ever recirded was about 11 feet long. The reson for all this?

...The Loch Ness Monster might be a shark!

Later we are show film of brown bears eating salmon, and told that the monster might hibernate like a bear. The narrator goes on to tell us that the last bear in Scotland was killed in the 1800s! Bears were hunted out in the UK around 800 years ago.

Finally, they boast that their diving crew got exclusive film of the monster swimming past their cameras. We see the close up of a fishes eye then an extreme close-up of what looks like an ordinary-sized eel swimming very close to the camera.

Once again this is in clear water.

It's not so much the zoological inacuracies that get my back up, but the barefaced lies - like claiming to have filmed in the Loch when the footage comes from the Pacific coast of North America, and claiming they have filmed the monster when all they have is a close up of a marine eel.