Terry And June

Terry And June

Wednesday 24th October 1979 sees a pretty varied schedule on offer on BBC One, with 'Angels' leading into the umpteenth repeat of  'Star Trek : Metamorphosis' and 'Mastermind' covering such subjects as Benjamin Disraeli and Oliver Cromwell.

But 8.30pm sees the first of six programmes written by John Kane (Tommy in 'Planet Of The Spiders') going by the collective name of 'Terry & June'.

The DVD release claims this opening episode is called 'Long Weekend', but there's no such caption on screen or on BBC Genome.

It's a series that has a reputation for being very middle-class and middle-of-the-road, but it briefly dabbles with a darker tone when the next-door neighbours come round, talking about the odd reputation the house has.

It seems to have been previously owned by a succession of rather strange people, and when they discover a mysterious door the conclusion is reached that there must be a corpse hidden away behind it.

Actually, there's really an ancient downstairs toilet with a dangerously unstable cistern, but it was fun while it lasted.

Apart from this, there's Terry's attempt at wall-papering were what goes up, inevitably comes slowly down again and some business with sleeping bags and makeshift beds.

Tariq Yunus (from 'The Robots Of Death') gets a scene where after some confusion over the For Sale sign that is still in the garden, he concludes that Terry isn't popular with the other residents of Elm Tree Avenue. Later on it turns out he's a doctor who treats Terry's injured head, though there are still crossed wires over exactly how he sustained his injury.

Taken in isolation, perhaps this isn't ground-breaking stuff, but looking at its place in the schedule, I cannot knock it.

And George A Cooper pops up next week, which must surely score a couple of points.

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)