Sapphire and Steel: Remember Me and The Flesh and Blood Show

Two non-TV productions today, linked by both being set in a theatre on a seaside pier.

Sapphire and Steel: Remember Me

First up one of the Big Finish audio Sapphire and Steel adventures. This one is about a Time breakout in a theatre on a pier while a TV programme is being made about comedy, centred on a comedian called Eric Gurney. As so often, if you read the existing reviews online you will find ones which are a bit lukewarm, although still saying that this is certainly amongst the best of the Big Finish Sapphire and Steels, and I disagree with this estimation of this adventure completely. It is excellent, right up there with the original TV series set in the railway station and the garage, in my opinion.

To start off with, the setting is so important for Sapphire and Steel. In this case, the setting of the pier is a gift to the production, as well as being a gift to It, to use and get into people's memories. The theatre has been unused for many years, and is full of the relics of previous productions, as well as Mr Gurney's memories of his glittering career.

The adventure achieves a remarkable feat with a tiny cast of five characters of setting up an extraordinary situation in the theatre. It is just as remarkable that the characters are far more phased by the breakout of 'It' and not at all by the extraordinary things Sapphire and Steel do, which they just accept.

We see an interesting side of both Sapphire and Steel's personalities, building on the characters in the TV series where Sapphire has some human understanding but Steel doesn't really. There is a wonderful crisis point where Sapphire stops and starts offering people tea. There is another wonderful point where Steel tells Kate Lambert, the lady from the production company, that she is pregnant in characteristic manner. Of course he literally says, oh and by the way you're pregnant, yes I know you've never been more happy, now can you answer these questions. Subtle. And yet Steel does have a slightly more human side in this one. At one point in an altercation with Gurney, who refers to Steel as 'Mr Rank Charm School', Gurner says that he's the one who makes the jokes. Steel retorts that he hasn't noticed so far!

I only have one criticism, which is that Joannah Tincey, the actress who plays Kate, does an excellent job of being distraught at the strange events and finding out the Steel way that she is pregnant, verging on the hysterical at times. I'm not faulting her performance but there's perhaps a bit too much of the hysteria, and it would have been better more toned down to the confused and quiet persona she has later in the show. This is obviously a completely personal preference and other people might not even notice it.

The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)

The Flesh and Blood Show is a slasher film about a group of unemployed actors invited by an anonymous producer to appear in a play in a theatre on a pier, where they also live because it's out of season and there is nowhere for them to stay. One by one the deaths happen.

It's standard description is a slasher, and indeed a lot of deaths do happen, but my personal opinion is that it is much more than that.

For a start, I just think you can't go wrong with a theatre as a setting, and you can't go wrong with a pier as a setting, so it's a bit difficult to make a complete dud. It was filmed on two real piers - the one in Cromer for the externals and Brighton for the internals - and you automatically get this great sensation of a seaside place outside of season. Bleak is the keynote here, although it draws on the symbolism of a pier as being a holiday destination for pleasure, while also being strangely land and sea at the same time.

It's rarely commented on, but you have to see this film for the photography. This is not some standard low-budget slasher film: there is some very superior atmospheric photography going on here. The film was produced and directed by Pete Walker so we are automatically in the superior weirdness category.

Juxtaposed with the atmosphere and the arty camera walk, the film is essentially an Agatha Christie-style mystery in the vein of And Then There Were None: a number of strangers are thrown together in a closed environment at which point they start being taken out one by one.

If you want a criticism I think I would have to say that the film may attempt to squeeze too much stuff in. The characters are all thoroughly fleshed (geddit?) out so that there is the slasher plot, the detective element, and then all the human stuff going on. There is some sexy stuff going on at various points, and compared to his later films it does rather lack Walker's characteristic sure touch. Later on in his career he was better at homing in on the cannibalistic old lady, for example, and wasn't distracted by anything else.

Nonetheless both of these are excellent productions and highly recommended.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog