July 13, 2012
Posted by Danny
The Boy From Space! THE. BOY. FROM. SPACE…!!
Last month, I turned 38 years old – and that’s enough about that. ANYWAY. For many, many years now, I have been haunted by the dim memory of a TV show that I watched when I was a boy. Ever hovering on the edge of remembrance, only two details fuelled its continuing presence in my mind. One: there was a boy with silver hair and who was on the run. Two, and most pertinently: it scared the absolute, goddamned, motherfucking shit out of me.
Really, I had given up all hope of ever finding out just what the hell this show was – and maybe it didn’t exist? The mystery was finally solved after 32 years (!!) while flipping through the latest edition of ShortList, a free weekly magazine for Men that’s given out in central London. Inside, there was a featured called “Scarred For Life”, presenting a list of the top 20 fictional characters that terrified us in our youth. I scanned and saw some Usual Suspects: Pennywise The Clown from It (1990), General Woundwardt from Watership Down (1978), The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Star Wars’ Darth Vader (1977) – but, at no.2, I literally gasped when I laid eyes upon … The Tall, Thin Man from Look And Read: The Boy From Space (1980).
Yes. YES. YES…!!!!!!
The Tall, Thin Man was the source of that primal, creeping dread… and his ruthlessly-pursued quarry was the similarly silver-haird boy from space!! (Cue a flood of memory and excited Wikipedia research.). Meanwhile, courtesy of YouTube, here’s the malevolent bastard in question:
Now, granted, to a viewer in 2012, the above clip probably looks the holiday video of an Icelandic paedophile, but, for my generation of 70′s kids, this guy was Fear personified and the source of a lot of sleepless nights…
The Boy From Space was a feature of the BBC’s Look and Read series for primary schools, which began in 1967 (ultimately running for nearly 40 years) and was aimed at improving children’s literacy skills. The weekly programme presented fictional stories with an educational slant in a serial format typically running over a couple of months. Half the programme would be an instalment of the story, the other half would be an array of follow-on learning activities, hosted by Wordy, a camp typewriter ball with arms, who lived on his Wordlab space station orbiting the Earth with his tracksuited male companion, Colin (Yeah, yeah, I know…).
The Boy From Space, like all the other Look and Read serials, was pretty simple – an alien boy gets stranded on Earth and is helped by a brother and sister to evade a adult alien – and was almost laughably low-budget (note the Doctor Who-esque use of a quarry), but it efficiently tapped into then SF-rich zeitgeist (remember, Star Wars would only have been out for two years) and displayed a nice line in cliffhangers. Astonishingly, given that this aired in early 1980, I would not even have been six years old when I saw this. It might look utterly shonky to modern eyes, but this was pretty intense stuff and you simply cannot imagine material like this put out today for an equivalent-age audience. Different times.
Well, thanks for that, ShortList! Nostalgia Mystery solved! And, now… back to advancing middle age.
“Space goes on… foreveeeeerrrrr….”
11 Comments
September 15, 2012
very funny account mate. This terrified me for years, I’m 32 and a Heavy Weight boxer, and it still chills me to watch it ‘cos I remember the way it scared me when I was around 6 years old!! Lol
October 23, 2012
Your account of the trauma you have suffered as a result of this terrifying program is identical to mine!I was frozen with fear this morning when I stumbled across a photo of the Space Boy on line and realised that I hadn’t imagined it all!Then I almost stopped breathing when I saw the Thin Man! This must be one of my earliest memories as I am 35 next month so would have been 3 when I saw it!What were our parents thinking? Lol
October 27, 2012
This is hilarious- just as well i see it this way now and don’t become a quiverring psychologically imbalanced wreck after seeing the silver boy again!!!
I’m so glad that I’m not the only person in their late 30′s with vague memories of the silver one from space. It’s quite traumatic having flashbacks from 70′s infants school. I’d totally forgotten about wordy- but just again had another flashback. WTF were we brainwashed with?!
December 2, 2012
Lets go back a bit further to The black and white version when I was 8 years old (1972)long before Wordy and we had the accompanying book for The Original Series also it came on at about 10 am (Schools and colleges)do any of you remember the black and white countdown clock to the start of the program or the pie countdown version lets surprise you all with the fact that i am now 40 years old Colin Mayes who played The Boy from space carried on to do other television prgrammes in the 70s
December 2, 2012
Sorry I should have said that I am 48 years old
December 28, 2012
This programme gave me nightmares for weeks. I remember watching this in the school hall, must have been about 1980-ish(maybe a bit later), that face of the skinny man still shits me up.
December 28, 2012
This is hilarious, thank you for your account, it’s exactly the same as mine. Utterly terrifying!!
January 8, 2013
Yes, another 30 something who sat with fear watching this show in the 80s. Many a sleepless night were acheived from watching this programme – I’m sure no positive education was gained.
Seeing the images again does make me wince – what were they thinking ?!??!?
January 17, 2013
I remember being terrified by this program when I was little (I’m 38 now) and never remembering what this was called. I was in the pub at Christmas talking to another mum from my kids school describing this and the skinny bloke was her grandad! Freaky. Anyway, I just found this because she told me what it was called.
January 28, 2013
Thanks for solving the mystery! It finally occurred to me to google ‘tall, thin man childhood programme’ and here he is! God, what an impression it made. I’m sure the kid was also in some of the public information films, too (equally horrific!)
February 12, 2013
I’m 39 now and remember being really spooked by the whole series but oddly enough it was my favourite of all the Look & Read programmes. Our teacher used to wheel the huge TV into one of the classrooms every Tuesday for us to watch this. Looking back and watching that clip is hilarious, and pretty creepy too!!
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