Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 500 of our fabulous podcast! Who saw this coming? Not us!
This week: bad beginnings; off-mike; sacred numbers; Malcolm and Me; delicious irony; soft talker; it’s like a heat wave; who’s to blame; better stay alert; uncooperative frog; bad mascot; fuck you, cicadas; problem songs; Chick Talk™; too soon; air-conditioned entertainment; bathroom difficulties; mythical chicken; mythical mealworms; disappointing travel; wind swept cheese sandwiches; $5.00 coins are unlikely; a guy at the window; international vegetables; fruit vandal; murder room; when you’re a warrior, you’re a warrior all the way; hobbyist strippers; centenaries memories; the fast and the furry-ous; difficult compliments; Venn diagram of weirdos; get back to let it be; Ian’s wish comes true; exciting stamps; Dork Shadows – Not Fade Away; lorewolf; save the last byte for me; perspiring and inspiring; dangerously hilarious; we will deliver boredom; wrong Avengers; the smells of the ’80s; podcast pitch; and, finally, have a nice year.
Question of the week: Is there an obscure TV show – preferably limited run – that you’d like us to discuss in some detail?
Department of Hearing:
Here is “Love Mechanic” – the song Louise wrote for a bunch of weirdos.
And the lyrics:
If your heart is broken, girl, don’t panic!
This fix-it man is handy and romantic.
I repair the broken-hearted.
I get your love life jump-started.
Hire me, I am the love mechanic!
Love mechanic! (He’s got the right tools!)
Love mechanic! (Forget those other fools!)
Tow your troubles to me, girl,
Before your engine cools!
Department of Seeing
Here is Nina’s Mad-style fold-in and the painful truth!
Mick Elliott sent us this new endorsement! It sounds *gulp* great! (Mick, you’ll have to pass along that complete list of 500 flavours!)
And Ed Draganski sent along this drawing full of wonderful show references and a cute dragon!
Thank you all for your wonderful drawings!
And, what the heck, let’s finish off with Chris Roberts’ song “When Dragons Fly”, which was written for our 300th episode. It’s lovely!
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Hi Guys,
Would you like to discuss SPACED (1999-2001) (UK) in detail?
Not terribly obscure – to the right sort of person – but a lot to dig into.
Plus, I need an excuse to watch it again 🙂
Jonathon Bampton, 2 time winner etc.
Another fine fold-in from Nina and great graphics from Mick and Ed! I’m looking forward to more installments of Tile Tale. My sister installed her own kitchen sink backsplash with her friend’s help, so I predict Dave will get the job done too.
It’s not an obscure TV series and maybe this is a subject for a Fansplainer episode, but I was wondering about what you thought about Luca, the latest Pixar film and Vespa product placement extravaganza. I thought it had a worthy message that people shouldn’t have to hide who they really are and people shouldn’t fear difference. I thought it was a bit odd to set a movie about accepting diversity in 1950s Italy where the human faces ranged from pale to well-tanned! More importantly, although the sea monster metaphor could apply to anyone who feels like an outsider or an underdog, it seemed clearly queer coded to me. Do you think Pixar and Disney are helping or hurting the cause by not coming out and saying, yes, you can interpret this film as being about orientation and gender identity?
It’s not a limited run, but I found out about this British mystery show that sounds like something Ian would make up: a semi-retired police detective, Henry Crabbe, loves food and just wants to run a meat pie shop but keeps getting called to solve mysteries. It’s called “Pie in the Sky.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_in_the_Sky_(TV_series)
Hey Ian and David,
Congrats on reaching ep 501. Love this week’s question. Here are some limited run series from my childhood that I would love a deep dive into.
The Man from Atlantis – (Yes, deep dive, ha ha!) As a kid I was fascinated by this late 70s series about an underwater superhero with webbed hands and feet. I remember my brothers and I copying his swimming style in our backyard pool. It basically involved kicking your legs in unison. Probably lucky we didn’t drown.
Automan – I LOVED this early 80s show about a computer generated superhero. I used to watch it just for the effect of Automan’s glowing blue outfit and wonder how they did it. Turns out it was mostly a practical effect.
Police Squad – Can’t believe that only 6 episodes were made of this satirical cop show. Leslie Neilson was the master of deadpan. It did spawn a fab movie (and 2 not great sequels) and admittedly Neilson made a late career out of playing the same type of character as Frank Drebben.
Sledgehammer – I think only one series was made of this late 80’s cop show satire. It shares a lot of similarities with Police Squad. I remember my friends and I loving it, though I suspect that it might not have aged well.
V – this 1983 miniseries about an alien invasion was SO huge in its day. I remember being in grade 5 and EVERYONE talking about the scene where Diana eats a rat. It was a wonderfully cheesy practical effect. This really was event TV.
That is all. I await your obscure side casts.
Mick
YES! Police Squad was way ahead of its time, I remember looking forward to where the police car would go at the beginning of each episode…or was that the movie? I’d be up for watching these if Sneaky Dragon did a retrospective of the short run series, Leslie Nielsen was perfectly cast. Remember the tall cop he’s talk to in the office? We never saw his head he was so tall.
I also remember Sledgehammer but you’re right, might be painful to watch.
Trying to remember Automan, I had to YouTube the show’s intro from 1983. YIKES! Grade D Tron-like television effects, mixed up with hot actresses with big boobies and throw in Desi Arnaz Jr. just for the hell of it. You gotta love 1983.
Hi,
Nice 500 episode. A bit stressful at the beginning with the mike situation. Thought maybe being in the same room you were applying strict social distancing rules, and wanted people to hear it, I don’t know maybe to avoid social media backlash… Or maybe you wanted to enforce the silly idea that your neither professionals nor podcasters nor the two together. Which we all know is not true, your better than just that.
Oh! And no fireworks?
Anyway, saw Jonathan message about Spaced, didn’t know it, just watched the first episode: great! I like the formal tricks, montage, titling (some years before Sherlock), no canned laughter… priceless, and its english social satire. By the way should we thanks Margaret Thatcher for it?
Speaking of which, I was, myself, thinking of the opposite team, the Rik Mayal and Adrian Edmondson one, with Bottom. I don’t know for the english speaking part of the world but in France nobody knows it. So It checked, at least for me, the obscurity..
Didn’t have watched The Young Ones, watched The New Stateman, but still prefer Bottom particularly the first 2 seasons and the first Bottom! Live. Love the slapstick, over the edge humour. Goes well with the definitely definitive defying and deafening definition for defining humour : “politeness of despair”.
In the first team, the Martin Freeman, Simon Peg, Bill bailey… one, there is Black Books too. I really like Dylan Moran and his neurotic, sociopathic, smart ass personality.
I’m quite drawn to this type of characters, which are cool in fiction but a bit more difficult to live with.
I mean the high functioning sociopaths like Sherlock, Doc Martin, Columbo on one side and the likes of Richie Rich and Edward Hitler or Bernard Black, on the other, less functional, side.
And as the podcaster Half A Dollar would have put it “be pro or podcast tryin’”.
PS: Thanks Ian for the appreciation, I’m working hard to become the greatest obscure comment writer of all time… or at least on the sneaky dragon website.
Does anyone remember a 1998 UPN TV show called “Seven Days”? The premise was centered around an ex CIA agent named Frank Parker (Jonathan LaPaglia) who travels back in time for the NSA. He must travel back in time to prevent present-day catastrophes – but he has only seven days to do it. Frank goes back in time using a time machine that the U.S. government built by reverse engineering alien technology. I tried watching it again recently and it belongs in a hole along with much of other shows from the 90’s, hammy acting, plot holes and cheap production. I’d consider it for a re-watch but at the same time do not wish to be hated by the Sneaky Dragon audience for it.
The weird thing about this show was that it ended only four months before 9/11 happened. The way “Seven Days” presented catastrophes that Frank Parker had to cancel by using time travel were very much like what happened on 9/11. I remember thinking about “Seven Days” on 9/11 as if it were a plot from the show, it was still fresh in my recent memory then. I’d probably had forgotten about the show entirely if not for that connection.
How about “Sliders”? Another forgettable 90’s sci-fi show, I think it was guilty of a slow death. Science whiz Jerry O’Connell discovers how to travel to parallel dimensions using a handheld device and portal. Along with his Professor, girlfriend and an entertainer called The Cryin’ Man, they are forever lost traveling from dimension to dimension, never to return to their own. I also read that the first two seasons were shot in Vancouver! This one is bad too, I guess these shows are obscure and forgotten for good reason.
How about some more tomato talk? I’m a huge tomato eater like David mentioned, with just salt and pepper added. I’ll eat them on anything, hot dogs aren’t the same without some tomato on them! For the record, my wife was born in Jacksonville, Texas…The Tomato Capital of the World! The soil is so acidic there you can grow anything and the tomatoes are the best you’ve ever had. Farmers sell every variety of tomato out of the back of their trucks all over Jacksonville, we never come home empty handed.
Hi,
Seven Days pitch sounds a lot like what I remember from Time Tunnel. No ?
About tomato and tomato salad, like dry sausage you must cut the slices very thin like cigarette paper. It helps oxidation and reveals the taste.
Just add salt, olive oil and pepper, let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes, so the salt will bring some water out of tomato which will mix with oil adding the acid element to the sauce.
You can add thin (always thin) slices of mozzarella… perfect fresh salad for the summer. It goes very well with BBQed sausages too.
About (beware ! : shameless auto promotion ahead) thin slices and tomato (in french) with photos there https://www.facebook.com/pornalim/posts/254902668618833
With added sausages here : https://www.instagram.com/p/CEeFqeKDDr9/
Hi guys,
Just wanted to pop in and say congratulations on 500 (now 501) episodes! What an unfathomable number, truly an accomplishment. Love hearing your voices and (sometimes repeated) stories every week, as well as listener comments even when I forget to comment ????
I think Ian was talking about how orange juice from Spain tastes so much better, that a
got me thinking about the bread I ate in France, just impeccable. I never understood why people would said that American bread tastes like cake, until I went there. It was like I never ate bread before that moment. And don’t get me started on the cheese!
Anyway any show you decide to talk about I’ll listen to with great intent, love hearing about dark shadows. It’s like how people would listen to radio stories before television.
Hi Dave, Ian, and everyone. Episode 500 was a tremendous success and so much fun to listen to. Good job, guys!
Ian, you asked about my husband’s opinion on watching Dark Shadows. He watched the show with up for the “Beginning” episodes because he wanted to get to the part, as he put it, “where the vampire shows up.” He lost interest after that. I typically watch on the weekends when he’s outside working on the farm. It is a great show to watch while folding laundry or completing household chores. It’s not that he doesn’t like Dark Shadows– when we were dating, I made him watch the short lived reboot in the late 80s/early 90s (and he enjoyed it) and he loves the Tim Burton movie. He just thinks the show drags the plot out too long (as does every soap opera).
My ears perked up when you mentioned air fryer. I love cooking with my air fryer. I’ve successfully made southern cornbread, blackberry cobbler, deep fried Oreos, and all sorts of delicious foods. I’ve also had some disasters, too. Toothpicks really do help keep light breads off the cooking element.
Question of the week: Is there an obscure TV show – preferably limited run – that you’d like us to discuss in some detail?
There are a lot of great shows that didn’t make it past the first season or people have forgotten about in the light of a creator’s even bigger successes.
Night Gallery was a great show, but most people are more familiar with Rod Serling’s other show, The Twilight Zone.
Voyagers! was a family-friendly time travel show in the early 1980s. It is pretty dated, but still fun. My husband are slowing watching our way through it. The show’s star, Jon Erik Hexum, might have become a huge celebrity had he not died tragically on the set of another show, Cover-Up. Voyagers! was fun, but it was “up against” 60 Minutes and lost the ratings battle.
Miracles was another show that didn’t make it past the first season. It was created by Richard Hatem who later had a hit with Supernatural. Miracles focused on an agency that investigated the supernatural. It starred Angus Macfadyen and Skeet Ulrich. It kept getting preempted for Iraq war coverage. Inspired by Firefly fans, there was huge fan-based movement to save the show. I donated to the fund to place a full page ad in an entertainment industry publication… it didn’t work. I didn’t get to see the final six episodes until it the show came out on DVD a few years later.
I’d love listening to any show you choose to talk about. I would even particularly enjoy reviews on the Avengers. LOVED LOVED LOVED the Avengers as a child. I would rush home from school to watch old episodes on A&E.
Have a wonderful week!