JAMES LILEKS ON UFO:

I’m somewhat surprised by how good it is. The FX, the miniature work — it’s fantastic. Ed Bishop’s no-nonsense Straker is a man under unbelievable stress, when you think about it, and what seemed cold and brusque when I was a kid is now the character of a fellow who has no time for error or lassitude.

I think the thing that sealed the deal, and said this is not silly kitsch, was an early episode in which Straker’s spending the day with his son. He’s divorced. After he drops off the kid, there’s a traffic accident, and the child is seriously injured. Because the sonsuffers from a plot-induced condition, he needs a rare medicine, and Straker pulls strings to get SHADO air assets to transport it. But oh no, there’s a UFO attack! He has to decide – get the medicine to his son, or bring down the threat?

He goes with the former, and there’s a few tense moments, but the plane eventually gets the medicine to the kid, as we knew it would.

But it’s too late and his son dies and his ex-wife curses him.

That’s the thing about UFO: for a show made by people known for rictus-faced marionettes, it’s remarkably dark. That doesn’t make it good, of course. But it gives it a character that’s more shaded than the garish overlit shots suggest.

And of course it has a fantastic theme.

Gerry Anderson’s finest hour as a producer and show creator. (No actually, there were several good episodes; and the suspension of disbelief needed to watch UFO was much lower than Anderson’s next series, the crapfest that was Space: 1999.)