Cult TV shows 3

(As Robert Plant sang, "it's been a long time..." anyway, on with the show!)

Doctor Who: thanks to last year's comeback starring Christopher Eccleston, The Doctor and co. are as cool as ever. The new series with David Tennant is looking very promising too. For those not familiar with the show, it's a sci-fi series that has been running, on and off, since the 1960s when everything was in black and white. The Doctor is a Timelord who travels through space and time in a machine called the TARDIS with his assistant, to fight evil. Every now and then he "regenerates", and is played by a different actor. Each time he changes a bit (in personality as well as in looks) but still has the same powers and memories and still is the good guy (yay!). David is the 10th Doctor and is said to be staying for at least another series - hooray! I love this guy and i love this show. It's also famous for a race of alien bad guys called the Daleks. They're great if you're going to a fancy dress party on a budget, you can make your own Dalek costume at home using a kitchen plunger and lots of tinfoil...
Links:
BBC Official Doctor Who site
Outpost Gallifrey - fansite
Wikipedia definition
David Tennant fansite
Who is Doctor Who?
Dalek Links

Fun House (UK version): one of the best kids' TV shows ever! In these days of childhood obesity, maybe it would be good to bring Fun House back to motive kids to run around looking for stuff and dodging gunge. Or it might make them couch potatoes. Anyway. Fun House was a kids' game show in which you had to complete challenges to win prizes - obstacle races, searching for stuff, go-kart racing, getting gunged, etc. and in the end the winning team could search the house for tags that could be exchanged for prizes. It really did look like fun and i would have loved to play it. It has a cult following on Mega-zine.
Links:
Wikipedia definition
Vegetable Revolution forum Fun House thread
SMG TV Productions info

Look Around You: 2 series of this show were shown on BBC2. The first series spoofed the old retro science videos we were shown at school (1970s/80s i think) - it was silly, funny, and very accurate. I haven't seen much of the second series but i think it was different, sending up 1970s/80s science shows like Tomorrow's World instead. I managed to get a DVD of the first series a couple of weeks ago: it includes every "module" (episode), an "advanced double-length module" (a bonus double-length episode, about Calcium), and the full-length music video for the "Little Mouse" song from the "Music" episode. If you watched those retro videos at school (you'll know the type if you've watched them), you'll love this show.
BBC Look Around You Series One website
BBC Look Around You Series Two website
Wikipedia definition
Shiny Shelf review