Show Notes
This Hong Kong-set series was one of the top-rated shows of 1990. Going out on ITV in the first quarter of the year this 13-part cop show was a big hit with audiences including an 18-year-old Andy but it passed Martin by completely. But how does it stand up some 30 years later?
Starring Bruce Payne, Ray Lonnen, Robert Taylor, Doreen Chan and Tzi Ma, Yellowthread Street was based on the successful novels by the same name by William Marshall and produced by Ranald Graham who had also created Dempsey and Makepeace.
To say Andy is dismayed by how much either his memory has cheated or how badly the series seems to have aged is something of an understatement, While Martin coming to it anew is rightly puzzled that Andy ever held it in high regard.
Watching 3 episodes, all available on YouTube, a DVD release never having materialised, Andy & Martin consider where Yorkshire Television's answer to Miami Vice went so badly wrong.
Next Time: The Zoo Gang
More from An A to Z of UK Television Drama
[Spoiler alert! This series is almost 50 years old but we will be revealing - around 90 minutes - in who spectacularly dies in the literal cliffhanger to episode 7. You have been warned!]
After a brief hiatus, Andy and Martin resume the second season of A to Z with the letter V. Admittedly cheating a little, their choice was 'Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton', the second of two autobiographical Dennis Potter plays from 1965 in The Wednesday Play strand. They also cover the first play, 'Stand Up, Nigel Barton'. Both feature Keith Barron as the title character who we follow from childhood, to university, to a reluctant attempt to stand as a Labour candidate in the General Election.
Andy and Martin travel back in time to the summer of 1965 and the adventures of HR consultant Drew Heriot and his sister-in-law Anne as they face up to the machinations of 'Undermind’: aliens who have brainwashed British citizens in order to cause national unrest ahead of their imminent invasion. Their various schemes include: spreading pirate radio misinformation; inciting youth violence in a seaside resort; influencing the works of a popular children’s author; the distribution of suicide-inducing birthday records; interference with the printing of exam papers, and most abominably of all, the assassination of Eamonn Andrews! Yes, really.
This month Andy and Martin review the highly regarded 1987 BAFTA-winning Scottish drama Tutti Frutti, written by John Byrne and starring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.
Twenty-one years after their first recorded interview on the first Survivors DVDs back in 2003, Andy catches up with Carolyn Seymour who played Abby Grant in Survivors.