Cult TV highlights of 2020

Looking back over the past year I’d have to say that it hasn’t been a bad one for me in terms of cult television. I’ve made a couple of notable discoveries - series I’d either vaguely heard of but never seen or eve series that I hadn’t even heard of. These were my most interesting discoveries:

Orson Welles Great Mysteries (1973), a British mystery/horror anthology series which turned out to be surprisingly very good indeed and at times nicely creepy.

Harry O (1974), a delightfully quirky series which quickly established itself as one of my all-time favourite private eye series.

Voyagers! (1982), an American kids’ time travel science fiction series which is much more fun than I expected.

The Human Jungle (1963), an all-but-forgotten British series about a psychiatrist. Insanely melodramatic and often ludicrously far-fetched (and not a crime series as one might have expected) but it does star Herbert Lom which is always a bonus.

I’ve also revisited some old favourites, such as The Invaders (which made me realise that I’d never actually seen the second season).

And Return of the Saint (1978-79), which I think is one of the more successful attempts to revive a classic series, keeping a surprising amount of the feel of the original.

The most popular posts of 2020 with readers of this blog have been:

Sheena Queen of the Jungle (1955), a very lightweight good-natured jungle girl adventure series.

The Saint in Europe, and on TV, a review of both the Leslie Charteris collection of short stories and the 1960s TV episodes adapted from those stories.

The Green Hornet (1966-67), somewhat in the Batman mode but less zany and much darker.