It's alway's surprised me that this series never took off during it's originally transmission. It was (and is) incredibly, dark, menacing and atmospheric and it's budget allowed it to look brilliant. It was ahead of it's time and should have been one of the most popular adult science fiction series of the era. But it wasn't! However now it has become a cult and is recognised as one of the finest sci-fi series ever made. And so it should be! The images of Alien's are horrific (even today) and the writing and choice of cast were just spot on. The late Ed Bishop was just phenomenal really, a truly marvellous actor who played Ed Straker to perfection. George Sewell and later Wanda Ventham were also wonderful. It also has to be one of the scariest science fiction series of the 1970's just look at The Long Sleep - now that really is a scary episode, and it's also damn good! Confined to peoples memories for over 15 years the series was finally brought to us in 1986 (if you miss out Precision Video's release of the confusingly edited Invasion: UFO) when Channel 5 video released many unedited episodes of the series (including Invasion: UFO). From this point the show's popularity suddenly rose and an ITV repeat followed later in the year running into 1987. Interestingly even a 'UFO' convention was held in London in 1988 because of the show's increased popularity in the 1980's. UFO was again repeated this time on BBC2 in 1996, but it took them 3 years to show the entire series! The BBC have never been very good at scheduling. Nowadays the show's popularity is still thriving what with recent DVD and Video releases still available. The series was in short superb and I think grossly underrated. UFO didn't even appear in the 2001 Channel 4 programme 'Top Ten Sci-fi' but Space: 1999 did. Space: 1999 is a great series but sometimes the writing and UFO is just better! Getting back to UFO, it is a popular cult which will stay in peoples memories for many years to come.
Review of UFO
