Xenon's Seventh Circle

06. Best fight

The whole show is a fight! One long, glorious fight with a sword-stick. I love the sword fight in "The Terribly Happy Embalmers", where Adam is pitted against the grandson of the man who taught him to fence. "The Village Of Evil" has a lovely scene when he does pretty much have to tackle an entire village, as well as the old mill that they're holed up in. He has a heck of a fight on his hands in "Beauty Is An Ugly Word" as well, when he has to take on Sinoda's champion.

This is an insanely difficult question!

07. Favourite character moment

Any scene where Adam hurls himself, with gay abandon, into the latest bout of fisticuffs or sword swinging. He (and Gerald Harper) display such joy in those moments, and I would challenge any viewer not to smile as well.

08. Least favourite episode

Episode #3, "More Deadly Than The Sword", which is filled with crass Japanese stereotypes, and doesn't even try to have a decent storyline to make up for it.

03. Favourite regular character

Adam! Adam's great. He dashes heroically into battle with a cape and a sword-stick, and he wears the most splendid shoes. Gerald Harper plays him perfectly, with tongue just slightly in cheek, like a Boy's Own hero come to life. He's a bit ridiculous, but in all the right ways.

04. Favourite guest character

That's a tough question. John le Mesurier is as good as you'd expect as the oily Velmer in "The Terribly Happy Embalmers", and Peter Vaughan is extremely effective as crazed preacher Doctor Mort in "The Doomsday Plan". Then there's Peter Jeffrey as Sinoda, the beautiful-people-collecting nut from "Beauty Is An Ugly Word". I think I would choose Colin Jeavons, though, as fashion designer-gone-evil Roger Clair in "To Set A Deadly Fashion". He's brilliant, he really is.

TV meme, shamelessly nicked from several people on my f-list. Behind a cut, because it's me, and I can't not waffle.

( ... )

Day eight, a show everyone should watch. Didn't we cover this just the other day? Oh well, another show then. One. This is a silly meme. It keeps making me choose just one thing, when I want everybody to watch all the shows. All of them. All the things that usually only I watch. And which to choose? I could go with Sleepers, which is four episodes of perfection, and just about everything that you could want your television to give you (even though absolutely nothing blows up). Or I could choose The Cape, because it's so much fun, and the poor thing was cut short in its prime. Or likewise Paradox, which never had any chance at all; and if you're reading this BBC, Emun Elliott really ought to be on your Doctor list. If he can't be one moody and quirky scientific genius, he might as well be another.

But I'm going to go with Adam Adamant Lives!. Which is strange, because the last series I chose also had an exclamation mark in the title, but it's not like I have a fetish, honest. Adam Adamant Lives! was a BBC series from 1966, made by quite a few of the original team behind Doctor Who, and sprinkled with a fair bit of Old Who zeal. Adam Adamant (aside from having a name that's surprisingly awkward to type) is a fabulously dashing, turn-of-the-century adventurer, who gets frozen in a block of ice by his evil nemesis The Face (not Dirk Benedict, although it's quite hard not to think of him at times). I think The Face wants to keep him as a house decoration, sort of like Jabba the Hut with Han Solo in his carbonite block, but something happens, and Adam eventually turns up under a road, where he gets thawed out by some road workmen in 1966. So there he is, in the middle of Swinging London, in his cape and his dicky bow, battling modern crooks with his swordstick, and being generally spiffing. And it's great. Gerald Harper is clearly having a glorious time in the lead, playing Adam with just the right amount of swagger, pomposity and general fun. He has the legally required young woman sidekick, who's practically a carbon copy of Jo Grant (or I suppose it would be more accurate to say that Jo Grant is a carbon copy of her), and together they fight crime. Adam largely fails at being at all sixties in his attitude, and completely fails to fight female crooks at all. Every time he meets one, he insists that she cease and desist her evilling, because "Madam! You are a lady!" At which point she usually caves his skull in with an umbrella, or something similarly handy. You'd think he'd get the hint, but he never does. Anyway, it's all a bit silly, and probably very slow by modern standards, but very entertaining. And it has swords. I probably could have just said that bit, and missed out the rest.

Adam Adamant Lives!: a montage: