DVD
Beyond Tomorrow
Interviews with the Cast of the Tomorrow People

Starring: Nicholas Young, Peter Vaughan-Clarke, Sammie Winmill, Elizabeth Adare, Dean Lawrence, Mike Holoway and the late Philip Gilbert
Fantom Films
www.fantomfilms.co.uk

RRP: £7.99

Certificate: E
Available 04 June 2007


This is the never before seen 1997 documentary looking back at the 1970s cult classic
The Tomorrow People, with personal reflections from the original cast about the series development from its conception in 1972 to it's conclusion in 1979...

I not sure that I was ever the right person to review Beyond Tomorrow, from Fantom Films, a 1997 documentary about the children's television show The Tomorrow People, as I always thought it a particularly bad show. Poorly acted, with at best average scripts and decidedly below average special effects, the show ran for an incredible eight series between 1973 and 1979 and was subsequently remade, without the original actors, in the early '90s. The show has had a continued life as a series of audio plays from Big Finish.

The basic premise behind the show was that certain children were exhibiting powers of teleportation, telekinesis and telepathy; they had evolved into homo superior. With their great powers came limitations, they were not able to kill, only stun. Aided by their sentient computer, TIM, the Tomorrow People hid in the shadows helping others of their kind to break out into their new full potential.

The documentary is a little short of an hour long. It contains no sequences from the show, presumably for copyright reasons, so what we have here is a series of talking heads discussing their time on the show. Most of you favourites are here John (Nicholas Young), Mike (Mike Holoway), Tyso (Dean Lawrence), Stephen (Peter Vaughan-Clarke), Carol (Sammie Winmill), Liz (Elizabeth Adare), and the sadly deceased Philip Gilbert, who played the voice of TIM and was the best bit of the show. For the most part the actors come over as very personable people and their recollection of the show is often brutally frank, with many of the recollections accepting the shortcomings of the show.

It was interesting that, for the most part, the story The Blue and The Green is held up as the best story and if I'm being honest, it was the only one which deserves to be re-watched even now. Strangely no one mentions A Man for Emily which had Peter Davison and Sandra Dickinson as silver clad space cowboys, something I'm sure they would want to erase from their respective CV's.

For extras the disc contains a further four, much shorter, interviews with Philip Gilbert, Mike Holloway, Nigel Rhodes and Jackie Clarke, plus a complete audio of the Beyond Tomorrow song.

In the end you are either going to be a long standing fan of the show, warts and all or, like me, thought it should have been strangled at birth. However that should not put you off watching the documentary as it gives a good, if slightly one sided, look at the making of a television show with all its requisite back biting and sharing of blame.

Charles Packer

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cover
£7.99 (Amazon.co.uk)

All prices correct at time of going to press.