Been researching early to mid 70s TV programmes..there seems to have been a wave of alien/pagan and apocalyptic themes running through a lot of theses programmes...some of them were produced for teenagers and offered a much more powerful and in some cases downright scary veiw of the world ....cant imagine programmes like this being made today really...after looking at TV in the early seventies for a while now and remembering the stuff I used to watch...(i was saturated with TV during this era)Ive noticed these darker themes running through popular culture even reaching primetime tv shows like Top Of the Pops ...remember the shows dance group "PANS" people?and popular rock groups like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.Books we read at school like The Owl Service by Alan Garner were sinister tales of ancient forces breaking into this world.The resurgence of Folk music which harked back to the old times of a pre christian world.The good old BBCs sound department :the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were producing "Haunted"soundtracks for various shows lie Dr Who creating weird sound scapes consisting of electronic bleeps and unearthly sounds creating a much more alien atmosphere than the Dr Who we have today with its really "normal" cheesey soundtrack.Ive been thinking about the reasons behind this cultural trend towards darker themes in popular culture and in my opinion may have had a lot to do with the late sixties Hippy era and the ingestion of LSD by a huge proportion of the younger generation of that time,hippies wanted to return to the "garden" an innocent ,free vision of the world,as this vision came crumbling down towards the end of late sixties... the trip was over and a darker element crept in as the new decade began this conciousness pervaded film making and Tv production and reached all areas of popular culture from writing to "light" entertainment...I could expand on this theme further but for now heres a few examples to illustrate my point :
Children of The Stones made by our local TV company HTV West ...this scared the shit out of me!
The Changes a BBC show aimed at Teenagers about an apocalyptic situation where humanity is driven by a unknown force to destroy technology and return to a pre industrial age.
Ace Of Wands 1970
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