Yvette Fielding has discovered the existence of life after death, in her career if nowhere else. The former Blue Peter presenter currently enjoys fresh popularity thanks to Living TV’s spookfest Most Haunted.
In Most Haunted, Yvette and other hardy souls enter supposedly haunted houses and go in search of ghosts, all the time filmed through an eerie night-vision lens that turns their skin green and pupils luminous white. Paranormal activity is invariably signalled by a noise off-camera accompanied by Yvette screaming “Oh my God, what was that?!”
The dead have done wonders for Living TV’s ratings, a point made in BBC4’s hugely enjoyable Ghosts in the Machine, which celebrated the unholy alliance of spectre and screen in drama, documentary and the twilight zone between the two.
Robert Hardy was a highly appropriate choice for narrator, not just for his resonant tones but as a veteran of several BBC’s spine chillers from the eighties. MR James’ atmospheric short stories frequently provided the inspiration, with Whistle and I Will Come To You remembered as the all-time classic. Mark Gatiss recalled how the first ten minutes consisted of Michael Hordern’s disarming comedy mumblings before the piece shifted up several gears into pure terror. The film’s director, Jonathan Miller, went on to explain how he gave nightmares to the nation by filming a wet sheet dangling on a wire at twice normal speed.
I’m glad to say that the original Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) got an honourable mention for its wit and imagination, with Reeves and Mortimer’s appalling remake mercifully forgotten. Then there was Halloween hoax Ghostwatch, from 1992, an exercise in faux-reality TV that left millions of viewers convinced that they had witnessed authentic poltergeist activity. The subsequent furore meant it could never be repeated, robbing us all of a splendidly naturalistic performance from Michael Parkinson, as the studio host.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, Ghosts In The Machine rounded off with Most Haunted and the recent proliferation of performing psychics who found fame through television. Illusionist Derren Brown, an avowed sceptic, was on hand to dismiss their supernatural insights as variations upon ‘hot reading’, when the psychic already has information about the audience, and ‘cold reading’ when facts are extracted through suggestion.
Personally, I’m with Derren on this. But in the interests of balance shouldn’t the BBC have contacted the ghost of Doris Stokes for a rebuttal?
JAMES MAY’S TOY STORIES sent the Top Gear presenter off on a mission to revive interest in the forgotten toys of his boyhood.
First up was plastic model making. Airfix is still in business, but its market is staunchly male, middle-aged and stagnant. May wanted to introduce the joys of moulded plastic, glue, Humbrol paints and decal transfers to a brand new generation.
He recruited students from a Telford secondary school, all of whom looked genuinely bored, and fought a losing battle to enthuse them. They found the scale models too fiddly, too frustrating and too irritating. May’s solution was to have them build a full size Spitfire based upon the original Airfix kit.
The programme required quite a bit of padding to fill its hour, and the full size plastic Spitfire required metal wing supports, but both eventually emerged solid and well constructed.
I only hope the aircraft hangar doors were kept open as the kids applied all that glue. Forget getting them hooked on modelling, without ventilation May could have inadvertently introduced them to industrial-sized solvent abuse.
Details:
Ghosts in the Machine, BBC4, Wednesday October 28, 12.15am
James May’s Toy Stories, BBC2, Tuesday October 27, 8pm
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