A new channel, ITV Retro, has quietly appeared on YouTube, containing episodes of Thunderbirds, The Raccoons and more.
With little fanfare, ITV has launched a new YouTube channel providing a somewhat random selection of vintage television programmes. Called ITV Retro, it launched in February and currently contains episodes of Thunderbirds, animated children’s show The Raccoons, and the fantastical adventure series Sapphire And Steel.
It’s presumably early days for the channel, given there are only 11 videos to choose from at the time of writing. Thunderbirds, Gerry Anderson’s sci-fi Supermarionation series, ran for a total of 32 episodes between 1965 and 1966; at present, only the first five episodes are on ITV Retro. Hopefully more will be uploaded in the coming weeks.
Sapphire And Steel is another cult genre show from yesteryear; starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, it first aired in 1979 and ran for 34 episodes. ITV Retro currently hosts the first six episodes of series one – a story arc dubbed Escape Through A Crack In Time.
The Raccoons’ inclusion, meanwhile, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Unlike the other two offerings on the channel, it hails from Canada rather than the UK, and it’s a quintessentially 1980s kid-friendly, animated show. It has talking animals, a catchy theme tune and a moral message about greed or ecology or… something. To be honest, we’d completely forgotten about it until we saw the thumbnails on ITV Retro and a faint sense of horror crept in.
There are currently four episodes on ITV’s channel; The Raccoons ran for a total of 60 episodes (plus four specials) according to our extensive research. ITV Retro could be awash with talking critters by the end of the year.
If you’re looking for other free things to watch on YouTube, Mosfilm has an archive of its output – including such Soviet-era classics as Andrei Rubliev and Solaris – on the same platform.
