Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

In this special Christmas edition, writer Stephen O'Brien joins Tim on a a trip back to 1984 for a look at how the BBC's acclaimed adaptation of The Box Of Delights was received at the time by its target audience - long before it started to find itself recognised as a 'Television Classic', and when in many ways it was just another children's programme. There are plenty of tales about the unexpected resonance that The Box Of Delights has taken on since then, taking in adventures in hunting down television tie-in paperbacks in somewhat less than upmarket bookshops, searching for the The Box Of Delights theme single and then in turn the album that the theme single was extracted from in even more bizarre surroundings, trying to impress dates with your intricate knowledge of John Masefield's more arcane historical references, and attempting to wrestle the soundtrack of an episode from a video cassette onto an audio cassette in the days when the chances of actually owning a copy of The Box Of Delights in any form seemed as remote as Arnold Of Todi's island hideaway. There's also room for discussion of many similar serials that the BBC broadcast in a similar timeslot around the same time including Aliens In The Family, The Moon Stallion, The Children Of Green Knowe and - uh-oh - Billy's Christmas Angels...

You can find more editions of Looks Unfamiliar at http://timworthington.org/.

If you enjoy Looks Unfamiliar, you can help to support the show by buying us a coffee here. Not a bloody 'posset', thank you very much.