NumptyB

Well said loza-1! A series which gets far too little attention, considering its quality. You need only compare an episode like "A Bad Night" with the BBC's more recent glossy attempt to 'tech-up' Raffles (with Nigel Havers) to see that you can't win over simply respecting E W Hornung's source material. The studio-bound nature of this series just did not hold it back. If, please the muse of good storytelling, A J Raffles and Bunny ever make it to the cinema screen again, as they should, a full orchestral rendering of Anthony Isaac's theme is a must have. This Yorkshire Television production is worth seeing to hear that theme alone. The fact that the programme itself is finely scripted and the lead performed with charm and subtlety, that rare combination, are just amazing bonuses. You can see here that British Television spoilt its audience in the 1970s. Having but a tiny edge over "Cribb", YTV's "Raffles" was only trumped in this field by the more costly Granada Sherlock Holmes adaptations of the next decade.

I watched this drama on television and was numb afterwards. You hear of flat-Earthers and 'lunar landings were fake' conspiracy theorists and just say to yourself "well - they pays their money... that's their beliefs and they're entitled to them..." Then 'Never Forget' shows you, through drama, the lengths the stuck minds and morally blind will go to to deafen themselves and others to the truth. We have our own paranoid denialists in Northern Ireland, who only see the wrong done them never the wrong they've done. They spout the kindred of the poison Mel Mermelstein had to put up with. A good portrait of a man driven by his convictions: Leonard Nimoy certainly deserves praise for telling Mel Mermelstein's story, let alone turning in a fine performance in the lead. Despite any dramatic licence taken I'd set this TV movie as course text for history at Ordinary Level: it is quite clearly still needed.

I'm seriously surprised to learn that 'ManDog' aired in the US! It was one of those quintessentially British children's dramas very like the output of the Children's Film Foundation. I remember its original and repeat screenings on the BBC in the seventies and have fond memories. Its star was a cute black and white Border Collie (some relative of 'Blue Peter's' Shep?) A family pet is, accidentally, the first to encounter a injured refugee from a totalitarian future whose only means of survival is to store his mind in the nearest living thing. The man-dog then strikes up a telepathic relationship with his boy owner to the latter's delight, as the two seek means to repair the traveller's time-ship which materialised in a junkyard (now where have I heard of a time-ship in a junkyard before, 'Doctor Who' fans?). The time machine looked like a changing room locker, I think - very tall and narrow. Definitely a curio I'd like to see again to find out how good my memory is, if nothing else.