X.1: K-9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend

In which Sarah Jane Smith does some driving, and the pilot fails to go to series.

Next up: the rarity of a story I haven’t seen before. It’s the Class of its day isn’t it? I bet [name of unfortunate Class-loving friend redacted] loves it. Anyway, the opening theme music made me feel ill so I’m going to bed.

[Time passes.]

Broadcast: December 1981

Watched: November 2020

“There hasn’t been a human sacrifice since 1891!”

Here’s a thing. It was years before I realised that this had both an episode title and a series title, it’s just that the series never got made so it seemed like a weirdly long title for a one off.

Anyway. I have no love for Sarah Jane, nor K9, nor folk horror, so am very much not the target audience. But even given all that, this is dreadful.

Firstly, the titles and theme music suggest a pace and energy entirely lacking from the literal programme. The lyrics could use some work (“K9… K9! K9… K9!”), and the lack of “company” means that we just get lots of slightly bathetic shots of Sarah running or drinking wine or driving her hilariously rubbish car. But they do suggest a sort of American-style 80s action show.

Then the actual show is just... slow. It’s weirdly realistic – characters sit around chatting, people smoke and have annoying domestic responsibilities to take care of. K9 doesn’t even appear for 13 minutes, a whole quarter of the run time. After the dark ritual that opens the programme, there’s nothing resembling action for around 20. It’s just a lot of introductions to largely interchangeable boring but mildly sinister characters.

The high point of the action is K9 messing up Aunt Lavinia’s greenhouses. The scariest bit is Brendan’s laugh.

“Wards”, as in “my young ward Brendan”, are something that only exists in fiction.

I was going to say I can tell why it didn’t go to series, but this was surprisingly popular wasn’t it? Weird.

Why was it made again? Surely JNT [producer John Nathan-Turner, the man behind it] can’t have been looking for a parachute after one season. 

[Sort of. This was actually made at the end of season 19, but broadcast before it, so by this point JNT had done two seasons. The reason he was so keen is because, despite producing a TV programme, he wasn’t technically ranked as a producer in the extremely hierarchical BBC of 1981: by creating his own show, and producing it, he’d get promoted. Also, it would likely not have happened until after the next season of Who, so he’d have done three years, a perfectly sensible tenure, unlike the nine he eventually did. Thanks to James Cooray-Smith for the explanation.]