Landline, fax machine, pager, carrier pigeon.
Greetings, Ghostwatchers! It never ceases to amaze just how well GHOSTWATCH plays on the big screen. By its creators' own admission, the programme was specifically designed to squeeze the most of our boxy television sets, circa 1992. The speculative technology, as peppered throughout the narrative, (remote cameras, thermographic readouts, light pencils, and the like) was almost parodic in its clairvoyant spin on where the medium was heading in the never-ending quest for modernisation. The programme remains as perceptive today as it was then and, thanks to its fidelity in transcribing the language of Light Entertainment television of the time, remains an immensely useful yardstick in understanding the nature and evolution of the medium. Depending on your viewpoint, thirty years is either a long time or momentary flash in history, be it collective or personal. I was just seven-years-old on the night of transmission and, whilst sitting in on one of the recent screenings in Sheffield,