Back when I was still going to school there was no Sky TV, no satellite and no cable. There was no internet. Few of us even had computers, and if we did they were non-networked, massive slabs of metal that would take two men to lift, ran at about 10 MHz (NOT Giga, Mega!) and had the princely amount of possibly --- if you were lucky --- 20 megs of RAM. Again, I say megs not gigs. So the television we had was basically about four channels or so, with the odd extra one here and there. The best of these was probably ITV, who brought various English networks under one umbrella, so that one show might be made by Anglia Television while another could be Tyne-Tees, or Thames.
But the channel (or station, as we had it back then) that usually caused the most controversy was one called HTV. It stood for Harlech TV, which was I think Welsh, but most of the time we dubbed it Horror TV. Not that the shows it presented were horror shows --- although they might have been, but back then we were too young to watch such things --- but even the children’s programmes it carried were generally of a more unsettling and darker nature. They famously broadcast “Robin of Sherwood”, probably the darkest retelling of the Robin Hood legend ever seen --- and soon to be featured in my companion journal, “The Couch Potato” --- as well as shows like … like … well, I can’t remember the names, it was a long time ago. But I know that nine times out of ten, when you saw the HTV logo come up, chances were it was going to be something dark and quite possibly scary.
"Children of the stones" --- HTV West Studios, 1977
But if there was one programme that epitomised what HTV was all about it was “Children of the stones”. Quite rightly still called “the scariest programme ever made for children”, it told the story of a father (Gareth Thomas, later to find cult sci-fi fame as hero and eponymous leader of Terry Nation’s similarly dark “Blake’s 7”) and his son, who come to a weird village which is built in the middle of an ancient stone circle. Right away something seems amiss and strange things begin to happen. I won’t give away the plot for anyone who wants to watch it (also see disclaimer at the end of this article) but suffice to say it was a layered, complex storyline that must have baffled most children --- certainly confused me at that time --- and helped it stand head and shoulders above the other kid’s fare being toted around the TV screens then.
But the thing that made it so scary, in my opinion, and still does, was the music. Not so much the incidental music --- that was disquieting enough --- but the juxtapositioning of eerie, discordant wailing and moaning that tied in with sudden closeup shots of the standing stones in the circle, so that, certainly to a kid of my tender years --- about fourteen/fifteen --- it looked like the stones were moaning and coming for you! Weeping angels? You wanna see this mate if you want
real scares!
The show has gone down as the favourite of many adults, and quite a few will testify to being scared out of their wits by it. It regularly crops up in shows like “The 100 best children’s dramas”, “Scary shows from your childhood” and so on, and rather surprisingly in this age of digital rebirth and reimagining has never been repeated nor updated so far. Perhaps it would be considered too strange for today’s audiences? Seriously, if you took the best elements of a good Hardy Boys and spliced in a large helping of Quatermass, let some really old and scary Doctor Who leak in and topped it all off with the scariest moments from “Space: 1999” and “Armchair Thriller” combined, you’d still not have a show as unsettling and frightening as this.
And it showed during the early evening! Imagine how much more scary it would have been at night! If it’s possible to imagine this show more scary than it already was.
Disclaimer: I lied above. It’s not that I can’t remember, but I am literally still too terrified to watch the damn thing! I tried a while back, having found the above clip, but didn’t get past the HTV ident before the old fear kicked in and cold sweat stood out on my palms, and I had to hit stop. Wimp you say? Well then, you try looking at it!
Brrr! Still gives me shivers!
