Telling the story AP Films (APF) and, later, Century 21 Productions, Filmed In Supermarionation offers the chance to step back to the 1960s with the people behind the likes of Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet.
While there seems to be an interesting story to tell here, this film never quite manages to find it. We start off with Parker and Lady Penelope introducing us to the story, which they are oddly reading from a book (surely watching the movie would make more sense) and, for the first half of the film at least, we cut back to them and Brains, from time to time, to move things on.
This device disappears part way through the movie though leaving what could have been quite a nice quirky aspect of the filming feeling poorly thought out, which is a thought that continually occurred across the following 120 minutes.
The general arc takes us from through the early puppet TV shows produced by Gerry Anderson and into the more famous sci-fi series that followed up to the odd live action/puppet mixed that sealed their fate. The bulk of the film consists of a mix of talking head interviews, archive interviews and what could have been some interesting segments where Anderson’s son takes some of the original puppeteers back to where the studios used to be.
Unfortunately, and not wishing to sound cruel, a lot of these segments have more of the air of an outing from an old folks home than an insightful documentary and, while all involved are charming, there is little genuine insight to be had here.
It doesn’t help that neither studio really exists anymore (one is clearly now a mechanics workshop) so its left with what often feels like people stood chatting in a car park next to a model.
The talking heads sequences aren’t much better and, aside from the rather dry Gerry Anderson talking about his dealing with TV impresario Lew Grade and Sylvia Anderson telling the bulk of the behind the scenes story, it left me feeling like I’d spent some time with a parade of old English eccentrics, more than anything else. The chap who voiced Parker, however is something of a highlight.
What Filmed In Supermarionation is most successful at is reminding me how much I used to love the likes of Stingray and Captain Scarlet, when they were revived in my youth in the late 80s and early 90s, and quite how impressive some of the work they did was considering when they were made. Stingray in particular looks a good decade ahead of its time here in terms of production quality and Captain Scarlet has some surprisingly dark and brutal touches I hadn’t previously considered.
I think the biggest problem with Filmed In Supermarionation comes with the fact that it was conceived as a feature documentary but can’t escape the TV feel, so, rather than the cinema and Blu-ray release it has had, I think it would be much more suited to a cut down run on BBC Four (or the like) as its first hour drags as we work through the earlier, less well-remembered, shows.
As expected the segment on Thunderbirds is the most in-depth and seems to be where most of the talking heads come to life most as well, possibly hinting at why this was the most successful of the shows, but again not much is revealed that hasn’t been well discussed in the past.
In an odd move, it leaves things on something of a down beat note as we find out that once Century 21 folded, most of the models were simply smashed and thrown in skips in front of the people who’d spent years working on them. This kills the warm nostalgic feeling that had been built and left me not too keen to watch the bonus disc of classic episodes of the TV shows, which is surely something of a crime.
Tommy Girard 
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