Kinvig
Entry updated 7 March 2017. Tagged: TV.
UK tv series (1981). London Weekend Television. Created and written by Nigel Kneale. Produced and directed by Les Chatfield. Cast includes Prunella Gee, Tony Haygarth, Colin Jeavons and Patsy Rowlands. Seven 25-minute episodes. Colour.
This most recent of Kneale's many sf plays and series for television was a sitcom, fuelled apparently by a certain animus against sf Fandom, about two lunatic fans living seedy urban lives, one of whom (Haygarth) has a fat wife (Rowlands) and a fat dog, and is entranced by an Alien from Mercury (Gee) in the guise of a beautiful customer at his electrical repair shop. He has adventures with her (she wearing a variety of sexy catsuits) and helps ward off an Invasion of Earth by the alien Xux. The scripts lacked the precision required for decent farce, and the invasive canned laughter did not help. Kneale's belief that sf fans are typologically identical with UFO cultists, and that both have an obsessive need for alien glamour to lighten their ghastly lives, was offensive to some viewers. [PN]
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