Something very Strange

Way back in 2002, the fledgling pixie became quite obsessed with a television series called "Strange". A sort of cross between the X-Files and Buffy, it featured the adventures of a defrocked priest (played by Coupling's Richard Coyle) and a nurse (Samantha Janus) against a plethora of nasty demons. It also featured the late, great Ian Richardson as a sinister Canon and a very young Andrew Lee-Potts (whom lovers of bad sci-fi will know from Primeval, which is one of my guilty pleasures I must say. Oh and I do have to name-drop here and say I've met him at a horror movie convetion and he's a thoroughly nice guy). Sadly scheduling cock-ups (including not re-showing the pilot so that new viewers were utterly baffled by the continuing plot) and typically awful BBC CGI meant its viewing figures were shockingly low and the BBC axed it after one seven-episode season and although it's been shipped off to other channels overseas, it's never been reshown or released on dvd. It's a shame, since there was some really promising things there: interesting characters with murky backstoies, cameos from fabulous people like Anna Massey and Tom Baker, and some really great expressionistic pictures supposedly from ancient texts, images that remained seared on my teenaged mind at the time.

Well thankfully some kindly souls have uploaded the entire series to youtube, which is why I'm up at two in the morning. It stands the test of time reasonably well, although the special effects are still pretty awful and some of the fashions have changed, although I was thrilled to see that Samantha Janus wears the same watch I used to have. If like me you remember it airing and would like to see it again, check out this youtube playlist that has the whole series lined up for you. It really is a lot of fun.