Television was very much in its infancy during the early fifties with just the One Channel – the BBC of course.

Nevertheless this early Television service gave us some memorable moments – some scary, some funny but mostly welcome and entertaining. After all, we would watch anything then as it was all so new – and it all seemed good.

The Coronation proved a major landmark for TV with live coverage including cameras inside Westminster Abbey which in those days was some feat in view of the big and somewhat clumsy and immobile cameras and also the sheer scale of what was required to give us the outside coverage.

I have before featured that wonderful Technicolor film ‘John and Julie’ made a couple of years later when a two young children decide to run away from home and travel to London to see The Queen being crowned. They have many adventures along the way and we see lovely colour footage of the crowds in London that day.

There was also a film made of the Coronation in colour so that cinema audiences could later view it.

Another film made the same year – The Conquest of Everest

Back to TV and who could forget having being scared by The Quatermass Experiment. I remember my Dad would not let my brother and I watch the last episode as he thought it too frightening and he knew that we had been watching the earlier episodes which had clearly alarmed us.

Without doubt the most disturbing serial over 6 weeks this Science Fiction production was written by Nigel Kneale

Then another one – later in the fifties was a very good Detective type series ‘ No Hiding Place‘

Here we see Raymond Francis and Eric Lander in action in a scene.

I saw Raymond Francis in an old episode of Miss Marple with Joan Hickson the other day – and I do remember Eric Lander appearing on This is Your Life when the subject was Richard Todd in 1988.

He had appeared with Richard in that long running thriller ‘The Business of Murder’ which ran for years at the Mayfair Theatre

On ITV we have ‘The Invisible Man’

The 26 half-hour episodes of the science fiction series “The Invisible Man” were originally broadcast on British ATV during the 1958-1959 season.

It  was very well written,  the special effects were good for  that period, and we got inclusion of some top class British character actors.

I have to say that these comments are from other people as I don’t think I ever saw it.

Although we had a Television very early in the 50s we didn’t get ITV until mush later than other people for some reason.

I remember you had to have a box fitted to the television set with a switch that changed over to ITV – which we didn’t get.