Happy Days!

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No, not that one. 'Happy Day' is the superficially cheery but in fact deeply weird greeting of the villagers in the Seventies kids' cult series children Children of the Stones. If you don't know it, think The Prisoner with a Gothic, time-travel twist and you're halfway there. It's about a community that no-one can leave, due to a strange (but quite well explained) connection between a 5,000 year-old stone circle and a distant black hole. It's brilliant stuff and I recommend it to anyone.

There's a very good Radio 4 documentary on the series, Happy Days: The Children of the Stones, presented by comedian Stewart Lee. And here is a glimpse of the BBC iPlayer programme notes...

  • Broadcast onBBC Radio 4, 1:30PM Sun, 9 Jun 2013
  • Available until12:00AM Thu, 1 Jan 2099

Comments

Aonghus Fallon said…
I bought the DVD a few years ago - I remember the original series scaring the pants off me and my family back in the '70's. I thought it stood up pretty well, especially the one and only 'special effect', given how simple it must have been to achieve. The ending - alas - made no more sense than it did all those years ago.....
4 July 2013 at 12:47:00 GMT
valdemar said…
Yes, I think it does stand up well, especially Iain Cuthbertson as a far-from-clichéd villain. Indeed, I think there's some sympathy for his point of view, or perhaps the writers just got into a tangle. Certainly the ending is either sublimely clever or utterly meaningless.
4 July 2013 at 17:03:00 GMT
Anonymous said…
Whatever is it about the late 1960s and 70 that saw a revival of occult and esoteric themes? Television programmes concerning the power that ancient folklore can exert in modern times were being broadcast as though Britain's pagan and Neolithic heritage was in danger of being completely obliterated by modernity. The countercultural movement is partly responsible for this. Stonehenge and other prehistoric monuments still stand today, but, with some exceptions, people have almost forgotten the power and energy latent in these standing stones. Perhaps because the one man who obsessively probed these themes died nearly ten years ago. Whoever will carry on the black torch now?
22 January 2016 at 10:55:00 GMT
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