If any readers have been disappointed or annoyed by the lack of photos to accompany these posts, I’ve got great news. The fab site Archive TV Musings has been writing about Adam Adamant Lives! with screencaps. So pop over there and enjoy his much longer posts and tell ’em that we sent you!
Well, after 13 consecutive episodes, we’ve had to skip one of the twelve that the BBC destroyed. “Ticket to Terror” is the only story missing from the show’s first series, and it’s the one that everybody who was around in the sixties remembers. It guest starred Max Adrian and had the burned-in-the-memory scene with a London Underground train with several hundred skeletons arriving in a station.
So that brings us to “The Village of Evil,” in which Adam is so outraged by discovering that a Satanic coven is operating in a small and quaint little town that actor Gerald Harper tries to outdo Adam West’s Batman in righteous, overacting fury. To be fair, Harper is always a little arch in the role – it calls for it – but man, does he ever go over the top this time.
Amazingly, this is the first episode where Adam and Simms succeed in keeping Georgie out of trouble and completely ignorant that he’s investigating anything. Unfortunately for Simms, he mainly accomplishes this by losing £6 to her in darts and cards, resulting in another of his cheeky limericks as he bemoans his bad luck. Speaking of sixties Batman, Adam gets trapped in a memorable coulda-been-a-cliffhanger moment with a combine harvester, and the whole shebang is done with flair and lots of wit that had our son cheering with the fights. The main bad guy’s comeuppance is telegraphed from space, but I’m fairly sure nobody saw the femme fatale’s grisly end coming.
(Note: I can play them, but I’m not presently able to get screencaps from Region 4 DVDs, so many of these entries will just have a photo of the set to illustrate it. Click the link to purchase it from Amazon UK.)
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 