Just Ask For South By South East And You Shall Receive

Over three years ago, I first wrote about the long-missing 1991 CITV Diamond Brothers series, and its total obscurity to the point I voiced a theory I had held for many years before starting this blog: the series never actually existed and was actually some sort of elaborate hoax.

Since then, I've managed to establish its existence with pages from the Radio Times, a thorough second-hand account from someone who watched it, a promotional poster, and the sleeve for a Spanish VHS release. But even the briefest of actual footage from the production has escaped us.

Until now.

Some immediate thoughts:

• The show's official title is "The Diamond Brothers: South by South East"; even that we weren't sure of before. Were they perhaps hopeful of doing more later on?
• Great opening theme and use of clips (including taking full advantage of the location filming), which immediately sets it apart from the 1988 movie which had a rather more light-hearted opening. There can't be many other childrens' TV shows that so prominently feature a gun in the title sequence... What we can see of the show looks dramatic and well-directed; on the evidence of this, it really is a surprise Horowitz has never gone behind the camera since.
• We now know the music was composed by Michael Storey, who has lately done the music for Still Open All Hours; apart from a 1980 serial called The Latchkey Children, this seems to have been a rare foray into children's TV for him.
• The production designer, Steve Hardie, also filled that role on Horowitz's original childrens' drama serial The Gift (also long-missing, although unlike SbSE Horowitz has expressed a desire for it to resurface), as well as the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a few years later.
• Interesting (and helpful) to see so many members of the production crew prominently credited here, rather than in the end credits. The editor Michael Pike, for his part, has worked on everything from Time Team and other documentaries to the 90s remake of The Tomorrow People.
• The lighting cameraman, Steven Bernstein, has gone on to have an enormously successful career as director of photography for several major movies.
• That snogging scene isn't in the book; given the book is fairly short and they got six 25-minute episodes out of it, they must have considerably expanded things.
• The opening sequence ending on the bomb is a very striking visual, and a lovely bit of foreshadowing.

It's a high-values sequence overall; if I didn't know, I'd be hard pressed to tell this was shown at 4.30pm on CITV. It's great that the tribute to Dursley McLinden in It's a Sin has helped to play a part in this finally resurfacing.

As I mentioned earlier, I have spoken with the person responsible for uploading this, and I *may* be able to see more at some point in the future, but we'll see how things pan out.