Spend The Night On A Desert Island

The Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe (1964. Franco London Films)

If you’ve seen the title of today’s Perfect Night In and you’re over 35, I’ll bet you’re already humming the memorable and haunting theme music to this children’s TV classic. Introduced with a swell of timpani drums like waves breaking on the shore, the romantic overture by Robert Mellin and Gian-Pero Reverberi (the actual suite is around ten minutes long) is played in evocative three/four time and is guaranteed to set certain generations whistling and day dreaming of walking barefoot along a deserted shore line. Filmed in black & white in 1964 ,The Adventures was a faithful 13 part adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s 18th century novel which, in turn, was based on the true tale of Alexander Selkirk - whom Defoe met and interviewed at length in a Bristol dockside pub (possibly the Llandoger Trow which still stands on King Street).The Franco-London films production was a sober, even melancholic, study of loneliness and despair replaced by resourcefulness and hope and tells in flashback the trails of ill fated journeyman sailor Crusoe who must cope, seemingly on his own, after being shipwrecked on a desert island. Filmed in French on location in the Canary Islands, the series starred swoony Austrian actor Robert Hoffman as Crusoe who smouldered as he grudgingly accepted his fat. The show was dubbed into English which gave it an almost surreal edge - especially when the dialogue inevitably went out of sync. But British children’s TV audiences were more than used to the eccentricities of their entertainment. For various reasons - the entente cordial, an effort to embrace and unite the European nations after the war, the fact that Euro programmes were dirt cheap to buy in - European TV shows were common in the tea time and Saturday morning slots during the 60s and 70s. Strange foreign programmes with actors dubbed by plummy English voice artists abounded. The Singing Ringing Tree, Flashing Blade, White Horses, Belle & Sebastian, Heidi and many others introduced British kids to a different view on the world (in the case of White Horses that all gypsies are born horse thieves) which they mulled over with a mouth full of Black Jacks and realised here was a rich source of comedy at the expense of their woefully unhip European contemporaries. What European TV lacked was any discernible humour, it was po faced, slow burning and serious unlike the brash and funny US imports (The Banana Splits Show for instance) but in some cases, despite of the dubbing, it was thought provoking and emotionally charged, it was foreign TV in more ways than one and it made a deep impression. Crusoe managed to speak - albeit in a heavily dubbed fashion - to teenagers experiencing their own sense of isolation and desire to find themselves a soul mate, a Man Friday.But there’s another reason why Robinson Crusoe is so easily and fondly recalled by babyboomers of the 60s and 70s. From it’s first screening in 1965 it was on ALL the time, seemingly on a loop. In fact, during the Summer holidays it looked as if it was one of only three programmes for children the BBC actually had. Weekends appeared to be the same. You couldn’t turn on TV on a Saturday morning in the early 1970s without seeing The WhirlyBirds, Champion The Wonderhorse and Robert Hoffman arguing with himself over a coconut or hearing that dreamy theme music. Up until TISWAS and Multi Coloured Swap Shop shook up the Saturday Morning schedule and changed the face of kid’s TV inexorably the likes of Robinson Crusoe was pretty much it. Kids today, they’ve got it easy. Crusoe was eventually deserted by the BBC in 1982, distinguished as possibly the most repeated TV series in British TV history.It’s unlikely the show will ever be scheduled again. The BBC dumped all their prints in a skip and Crusoe is now almost certainly languishing in a land fill somewhere. There is only one set of English language episodes left on film, but they’re gathering dust in a French film archive. It’s sad to think of Crusoe all washed up on a desert island in an ocean of fatuous modern kids TV but at least the DVD age has afforded him some chance of a rediscovery. And if the thought of sitting through 13 episodes of existential castaway angst is a little too much like hard work rather than gentle nostalgia, you could instead seek out that brilliant soundtrack from www.silvascreen.co.uk

The food: Fashion yourself a shelter made of palms (or Yucca plants if your short of palms) erect it in your living room and enjoy a three course desert isle feast, namely; Coconut soup followed by coconut roast with a Bounty Bar for pudding.

The Drink: Coconut milk.