Catweazle

I caught (the excellent) Stuart Maconie talking about Catweazle on the Freak Zone last weekend (about 40 minutes in, and easy to lose during the discussions of H R Pufnstuff: I wasn’t listening carefully but it sounded as if they hadn’t yet heard of Jack Wild’s demise!. They also discuss the Bugaloos which must have been created on some sort of drug, even if HR Pufnstuff wasn’t). I waited a long time to watch Catweazle, which was semi-forbidden when I was a kid (we were allowed to watch the commerical channel, but only if we were willing to put up with the merciless ridicule to which my mother would subject us). When we recently lived in Oxford the public library had a single video cassette with 3 episodes from series 1, and my daughter, then 5, was captivated. I mentioned this to a couple of her friends’ mothers, both of whom sighed and said “that must be lovely to watch”. After numerous delays it finally came out on DVD last year sometime. And series 1 really is lovely; Geoffrey Bayldon is quite believable as a 900 year old magician who is completely nuts, and the gags, although predictable, work every time. The light is just slightly dim, suggesting something sinister which never actually happens; and there’s wonderful chemistry between Bayldon and the young Robin Davies. Series 2 is fine; if you watch 1 you’ll want to watch 2. Before the DVD arrived I asked my daughter if she remembered it; her response was a withering ‘Dad, it doesn’t matter how long it is, you don’t forget TV that’s that good’. Which is about right.