my favourite conspiracy theory

 

A few years ago I published an article floating a speculative notion about the existence of practitioners of occult activities working   in British children's television productions during the 1970s.

The two programmes I cited as evidence for this hooey were Children Of The Stones  (scarey shite which only falls down in its final episode when the plot chickens out and becomes science fiction rather than the supernatural) and The Moon Stallion (great music and whap bam thud drama which only falls down in its final episode by trying too hard to surpass itself with silly special effects.)

Children Of The Stones was broadcast simultaneously on RTE in Ireland and on the ITV network in Britain in January 1977.

It was a six episode series, an effortlessly unfathomably eerie story, very appealing actors, superb atmospherics, fine acting from adults and kids, and all a bit too close to the bone for me. By which I mean the evocation of the supernatural seemed uncomfortably real.

I thought then and think now that someone involved in that thing knew something about something.

I cannot be more clear.

Music perfectly tailored to the action too, let it be said.

The whole thing a work of art really.

Such an assemblage of talent, narrative, filmic skills, and (I suppose we might say) vision.

Nothing else like it has ever come out of children's television in Ireland or Britain (Or Wales to be more precise. It was HTV the Welsh branch of the ITV network who concocted the thing.)

And it was never shown again in any of our countries.

There you go.

Thoroughly excellent, too close to the bone and never shown again on British or Irish televion: That's enough for me to start suggesting occult conspiracy theories in connection with it.

Okay.

I also posited in the same article from a few years ago what I considered a more remote possibility, that there was something similarly dodgily occultish going on in the woodshed at the BBC in 1978 when The Moon Stallion was filmed and broadcast.

It too is a little bit close to the bone (in its suggestion of the supernatural) but the story is pleasant, life affirming, action filled, not scary really, and full of characterful acting and pure hokum.

I unreservedly loved the music to it and found myself willing to look the other way with regard to what in some lights might have seemed a thinly disguised endorsement of, er, esoteric doctrines.

The Beeb has rebroadcast The Moon Stallion any number of times and it has been freely available on the internet.

So as stated above, a few years ago, I published my article.

And boom.

The Moon Stallion disappeared.

Children Of The Stones is still there. (And it's still scary shite.)

The Moon Stallion is gone.

There are what look like home made amateur videos all over the internet captioned The Moon Stallion featuring private citizens film of their horses. These have nothing to do with the television series.

The Moon Stallion has vanished overnight from the internet as though it never existed.

On a voodoo wind.

No longer on the Youtube website.

No longer available to buy on the BBC Player website.

No longer possible to find the theme music anywhere.

Who wudda thunk it.

All this time I thought I'd gotten close with the Children Of The Stones.

But The Moon Stallion was the one.