Happy day!

 4.40PM Monday January 10th, 1977​

I throw myself into the sofa after a grueling day at junior school. Turning to ITV, I realise with satisfaction that Batman is on at 5.15. Just one more programme to get through. Children of the Stones. Never heard of it. It begins. The music is odd, like people moaning. The pictures are unsettling – I’m looking up at huge grey stones. They loom with menace. A man and a boy in a red car. “There’s the hill.”

25 minutes later and I’d forgotten about Batman. What did I just watch?

A father and son move to small village, surrounded by standing stones. They soon realise the villagers are not, well, ‘normal’. And they seem to be led (controlled?) by a lord of the manor named Hendrick. But how? Can our heroes escape with their minds intact? It was exciting and fun and easy to follow but it was also ambiguous enough to have us discussing what Children of the Stones was actually about over forty years later. A critique of Christianity? A study in non-conformity and alienation?*

(*There are plenty of interesting theories out there. Some good ones can be found at Bampotty, St James Evening Post, Tom Cox, Spooky Isles and Opuszine.)

For me, and many others, Children of the Stones was a landmark TV series in lots of ways. It was Folk Horror before there was Folk Horror. It was, what Mark Fisher thirty years later would call popular modernism – it met the viewer half way, but only half way. It would lead me to Sapphire and Steel, MR James, Nigel Kneale, Alan Garner and much more British weirdness.

And now there is renewed popular interest in Children of the Stones. A compelling sequel by Jeremy Burnham. And, as I write, the story has just been reimagined by BBC Sounds. I didn’t particularly enjoy the adaptation but I do like the renewed interest. The story deserves it.

This site is my own contribution to Children of the Stones, my favourite TV show since January 10th, 1977. Happy day.