The recent thread relating to Mr.Wizard (my hero when growing up) and someone mentioning adult oriented shows of a similar nature made me thin of what I consider to be the greatest adult oriented science program of all time “Connections”.
For those of you who have not seen the show, I will offer a brief description. Look at your monitor (can’t help looking inless you have a braille PC reader). How many inventions did it take to make your monitor? It’s made of glass, which needed inventing, the glass had to be refined and that process neeed inventing, the glass had to be molded and the modl had to be made of something which was invented, how about the vacum in the tube? Antother invention. Thats sort of the deal with the show, it would trace a common device back to it’s own origin which had it’s origins in the components. It’s more complex than that but so damned entertaining.
Anyhow for the question portion of my segment: Does anyone know where i can get the series on tape? I would love DVD but I’m sure if it is out there it is only on VHS and I have been unable to find it at the BBC store or on TLC’s store either. Maybe I’m just not looking under the right name, but I was certain that it was called “Connections”.
I wish the damned show would come back, I bet it cost tons in research time.
Try Here… looks like they only have some of them, tho (my own connection isn’t working too well, and I’m having a hard time navagating their site! :)). Also looks like they only have it on VHS…
600 bucks for the damned series, and only ten videos at that? They must be marketing towards universities or schools at those prices. I will certainly pay more attention if they reproadcast them as I will sure as hell not pay hat kind of money (barring sudden inheiritance that is).
I have got the book of the first series somewhere. I got it as a Christmas present when I was a much smaller Tansu. I think it’s out of print now, but it’s available on Amazon zshops.
The fact that the British spend must more on publicly funded tv means that they have more PBS type shows like Connections. The fact that the USA funds most tv with commercials means we have more Baywatch type tv shows. What makes great tv depends upon whom you ask, but I think we need more public tv to help balance things out a bit.
At my house I get the following tv channels
1 partially public funded PBS
4 commercial broadcast (abc, cbs, fox, nbc)
3 subscription only (no commercial) stations (hbo, starz, encore)
4 public service non commercial (pbsu, link, cspan1, cspan2)
AND approx 100 commercial cable channels(mtv, tnn, etc)
hopefully digital broadcast tv will help out a little bit
My gripe is that I come from a country (Denmark) with two friggin’ publicly funded TV channels - and they’re both trying to compete in the Baywatch/Big Brother/Survivor/Saturday Football genre.
Where’s our Red Dwarf, Young Ones, Monty Python, Connections, Floyd (the mad cook, you know the one) or Top Gear ? Hm. I’m getting more and more annoyed with my fatherland… Guess I’ll have to move to Britain next time.
Must not forget Britain’s “Junkyard Wars”, my latest addiction. I agree that the original “Connections” was the best. Another great science series was “Life on Earth”, which came out in the late 70’s, early 80’s. David Attenborough I believe.
The BBc seems to be spending less on good programming and more on non-core activities…like we really needed another 24 hour news channel. I have digital, I’ve got at least 300 channels and it’s all total shit.
I remember seeing Connections on VHS a few years ago for about 200 bucks at a Rand McNally store, I think. I’ve also seen The Day the Universe changed as well. I know they sold Connections 2 as two shows per tape as they were only half hour shows. Connections 3, I think that was the name, seems to have never gotten finished as I saw only one or two of them.
They sometimes come on TLC and the Discovery Channel so try looking there for tapes. As for books I know of four, all of which I own. Connections, was re-releaced a few years ago, The Day the Universe Changed, The Pinball Effect, an intersting book that you can kind of read like a Choose your own Adventure, and The Axe Makers Gift. They were all pretty good.
I’ve got TDTUC on tape if you wanna come over and watch it.
If you look beneath the price you can see that it says “Public performance rights included”, so it has to be marketed towards educational institutions.
[hijack]
Does “Public performance rights included” mean that you can also broadcast the series (say on local access cable)?
[/hijack]
I think Connections is probably one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, second only to “Have I Got News For You!” from Channel 4 I think, in England. Anyway, here’s a hijack, sorry:
I remember a time when TV Denmark had Star Trek: Next Generation EVERY SINGLE NIGHT! (xept weekends :()
They also had Cheers, Frasier, Simpsons (ok, so that was TV3 ;)), Third Rock, etc.
All nightly!
Admittedly they are all American shows and are probably no longer airing (haven’t been in Europe lately), but surely these are some of the very best of the USA crop. I do agree that more British shows are needed on most channels, INCLUDING THE BRITISH ONES!
BTW, I’m not Danish, I just had a satellite dish when I lived in Iceland
— G. Raven
Not that it matters, but HIGNFY is a BBC show, not Channel 4. It started out on BBC2, but this year transferred to BBC1 as part of a new ratings war with the commercial channel ITV (where ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ started in late 1998, and has since ranged up and down the schedules beating anything the Beeb cares to put up against it).
Re the OP, there was a book made of the Connections series and I know because it’s sitting on my shelf. But it was published in 1978, so you’ll be lucky to find a copy.
