Underplayed Gems

Churchill's People (1974)

Churchill's People poster
Genre
anthology series, historical drama, drama television series
Country
United Kingdom
Length
1 season, 26 episodes
Rating
5.0 of 10 from 2 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

This 1970s BBC series presents 26 episodes on British history, each covering a different era based on Winston Churchill's book. The episodes were studio-bound and used a rotating cast of actors, but poor ratings caused the show to be moved to a late-night slot.

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What happens

Churchill's People is a series of 26 historical dramas produced by the BBC, based on Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. They were first broadcast on BBC1 in 1974 and 1975. It was produced to mark the centenary of Churchill's birth. The series was considered misconceived for multiple reasons, such as the studio-bound production which offered little in the way of realism and the lack of available funding. Each episode dealt with a particular period in British history, and the quality was consequently variable. Much of the acting was criticised, despite the involvement of Richard Johnson, Robert Hardy, Alan Howard, Colin Blakely, Anna Massey, Gemma Jones, and Edward Fox, amongst others. The series was reviewed at some length in the programme TV Hell, which revealed that viewing figures had plummeted from 2 million at the series' launch to less than half a million by the fifth episode. The programme was swiftly buried in a later time-slot for the remainder of its run. Nancy Banks-Smith in The Guardian described it as having "little to offer us but blood, horsehair and history. Though a hell of a lot of each." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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