I won a copy of Penny Estelle’s Billy Cooper’s Awesome Nightmare when she was guesting on Kat Holmes’s blog last week. I’m really looking forward to reading it, as Billy gets to meet one of my childhood TV heroes, William Tell. Some of the history-themed shows I enjoyed back then are now on DVD, and one of these days, I’m going to treat myself to one or more of them. They include: William Tell, with Conrad Phillips, The Adventures of The Scarlet Pimpernel, with Marius Goring, The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, with William Russell, Sir Francis Drake with Terence Morgan, The Buccaneers, with Robert Shaw, Zorro, with Guy Williams, and Daniel Boone with Fess Parker.
The above should be available in most viewing regions, but I think Zorro is only viewable in North America, and Sir Francis Drake, and a more recent TV series that I like, The Roman Mysteries (based on the books by Caroline Lawrence), by UK, European, Australian, and New Zealand dwellers. Unless, of course, you have a multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player. (I do, and it’s great to be able to run DVDS in both formats.)
Tales Of The Vikings, with Jerome Courtland, and my childhood favourite, Richard, The Lionheart, with Dermot Walsh, (outrageously inaccurate as to the dedication and benevolence of the real monarch though it was), do not appear to be on DVD anywhere yet. Most of the shows based on real people weren’t historically accurate, but kids don’t care about that! They can still get the feel of an era from them, and might, like me, be inspired to make a more-depth study of such people and their times later on. Even if learning about the real Drake and Lionheart did leave me feeling somewhat disillusioned for a while!
