Devotees of British supernatural TV of the 60s and 70s have become grudgingly used to the idea that many of the shows of the time are lost to us due to the cost cutting practise of 'wiping' and the lack of a system for safely archiving. Amongst those lost to time are some 90 odd episodes of
Doctor Who, much of the first series of
Quatermass and the entire first two series of early 70s supernatural detective series 'Ace of Wands'.
Created in 1970 by Trevor Preston and Pamela Lonsdale, Ace of Wands told of the escapades of stage magician and detective 'Tarot' (
Michael Mackenzie), his pet owl Ozymandias and various assistants including antiquarian bookseller Mr Sweet (
Donald Layne-Smith) and, in the third series, a brother and sister duo by the name of Chas (
Roy Holder) and Mikki (
Petra Markham). Originally envisioned as kid friendly show about a flamboyant detective, over the three series, the show becomes progressively more concerned with the supernatural especially with the arrival in series two of writer
P.J. Hammond.
Following on from his contributions to AoW Hammond would, of course, go on to create and write
Sapphire and Steel but it is here that he first took his cop show chops (earned on shows such as
Dixon of Dock Green and
Z-Cars) and married it with a love of the odd. His third series storylines - 'The Meddlers', 'Peacock Pie' & 'Beautiful People' - show hints of what was to come but truthfully with storylines that include people being turned into dolls the whole thing has a similar vibe to what Hammond would later create in S&S. Ace of Wands walked a fine line between the ostentatious spy-fi, detective fiction of the
ITC shows and the Earth bound sci-fi of Pertwee era Doctor Who whilst also tapping into the zeitgeist and embracing the supernatural shenanigans that would characterise much of the 1970s TV we love so much here at Wyrd Britain such as 'The Stone Tape' and 'The Children of the Stones' all the while managing to just about keep things kid friendly and rocking a killer theme tune by
Andy Bown.
It is an absolute shame that so much of this series is lost to us but as the recent(ish) Doctor Who finds (of episodes from '
The Web of Fear' and '
The Enemy of the World') show there's always a chance that some of the earlier episodes will resurface but for now we have only the third series and that's certainly no bad thing.
The first episode of season three is below and the rest are in the playlist
here.
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