This is my 300th post on this blog and it is
perhaps fitting that it pays tribute to a man that looms large in my childhood
– Gerry Anderson, who died over the Christmas period.
Most will know his work through the iconic ‘Thunderbirds’
but my link goes back further to the dimly remembered late 50s collaboration
with children’s writer, Roberta Leigh that produced the strangeness of
‘Twizzle’ and ‘Torchy the Battery Boy’, made with puppets so weird that it
doesn’t bear thinking about. Although
these shows were my initial contact with Gerry’s puppet world, it was ‘Fireball
XL5’ that really captured my imagination.
I was besotted with this programme and although the delights of
‘Stingray’, ‘Thunderbirds’ and ‘Captain Scarlet’ were to follow, XL5 remains my
first love. Even today its shiny monochrome
world of space adventure still beguiles me.
There is a definable element that pervades the work of Gerry
Anderson, from the scariness of ‘Twizzle’ via the live action ‘Space 1999’ and
‘UFO’ to the hand puppets of ‘Terrahawks’ (a million miles away from Sooty) and
that thing is integrity. Everything
Gerry touched was stamped with the motto, ‘If you are going to do it, do it
well’. All his products had a sheen of
quality, whether it was the tightly drawn scripts, the truly awe-inspiring
modelling or the cutting edge special effects.
The live action 2004 ‘Thunderbirds’ movie, which Anderson had no hand in
and from which he rightly distanced himself, didn’t have it – and it shows.
This reach for quality can be seen again in the 2005
re-imagining of Captain Scarlet, created using CGI technology. The series of 26 x 25 minute episodes cost an
astronomical £23M but the end result is worth every penny. The scripts are fast paced and the visuals as
inventive and spectacular as always. Unforgivably,
ITV refused to promote the new show and list it as a stand alone but buried it
in amongst an existing Saturday morning kids’ show which cut it into two halves
with games and adverts between them. It
sank without trace.
2 comments:
I completely believed that Thunderbirds were real when I was little, but I never saw the show enough for it to really appeal to me. My older brother had Lady Penelope's matchbox pink car, and when he had sufficiently broken it enough to be generous to pass it on to me, I used to like zooming it around the living room carpet. That was probably the closest I ever came to Thunderbirds. But the man was a genius, and not I think as respected as he should be. Jim Henson and Gerry Anderson should be spoken about on the same terms.
Hi Jayne - what a lovely comment, its almost a mini epitaph on its own! The likes of Henson and Anderson should be held up as beacons to others that you don't need to talk down to kids, they'll rise to your challenge.
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