The Rural Dreamscapes, Reimagined Mythical Folklore and Shadowed Undergrowth of Film and Television

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Author/artwork: Stephen Prince. 347 pages.
Paperback and Ebook.

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A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray And Celluloid Hinterlands undertakes in-depth studies of films, television programmes and documentaries and wanders amongst depictions of rural areas where normality, reality and conventions fall away and the landscape becomes deeply imbued with hidden, layered and at times dreamlike stories, taking in modern-day reinterpretations of traditional myth and folklore and work that has become semi-obscured from view through being unofficially available or otherwise having become partly hidden away.

It explores film and documentary hinterlands including, amongst others, the embracing of the ‘old ways’ in The Wicker Man; John Boorman’s creation of an otherworldly Arthurian dreamscape in Excalibur; the alternate retelling of folk legend in Robin and Marian; the unreally vivid seeming snapshots of folk rituals in Oss Oss Wee Oss; the slipstream explorations of The Creeping Gardenand stories from the ‘haunted borderlands’ in Gone to Earth and The Wild Heart.

The book also investigates the hauntological spectral and ‘wyrd’ undergrowth of television, including, alongside other programmes, the unearthing of mystical buried powers in Raven; the utopian meeting of starships, pedlars and morris dancers in Stargazy on Zummerdown; teatime Cold War intrigues amongst bucolic isolation in Codename Icarus; the layering of time and myth in anthology drama series Shadows; Frankenstein-like meddling away from the mainland in The Nightmare Man; the magical activation of stone circles’ ancient defence mechanisms in The Mind Beyondepisode ‘Stones’; and the ‘Albion in the overgrowth’ recalibrating of mainstream television in Mackenzie Crook’s Worzel Gummidge.

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The full chapter list is below:

Preface: A Definition of Hauntology, its Recurring Themes and Intertwining with Otherly Folk and the Creation of a Rural and Urban Wyrd Cultural Landscape

1. The Wicker Man: Casting Aside Convention on Summerisle

2. Paul Wright’s Arcadia: Views from a Not Always Arcadian Idyll

3. Excalibur: John Boorman’s Creation of an Otherworldly Arthurian Dream

4. Play for Today and ‘Rainy Day Women’: Village Mob Rule and the Spectres of Archival Television

5. Bagpuss: Portal Views Into a Magical Never-Never Land

6. Takashi Doscher’s Still: Explorations of Southern Gothic, Wyrd Americana and Eternal Cycles

7. Gone to Earth, The Wild Heart and Talking Pictures TV: Stories from the Haunted Borderlands, Conflicts Between the Old Ways and the New and Preserving the Fading Shadows of Film and Television History

8. Strange Invaders, Robert Fuest’s Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush, Oklahoma Crude and Twilight Time: A Time Warp Small Town Invasion, Passion Amongst a Downbeat Landscape, Untamed Frontiers and a Media Sunset

9. The Mind Beyond and ‘Stones’: Activating Ancient Preternatural Defence Mechanisms and a Sidestep into the Pioneering Work of Irene Shubik, Verity Lambert and Delia Derbyshire

10. Oss Oss Wee Oss: Joining the Dance Far Away from the City

11. The Straight Story: Road Movie Quests and a Gently Lynchian View of Journeying Through a Near-Mythical Landscape

12. Shadows: The Layering of Time, Folklore and Myth

13. Codename Icarus: Teatime Cold War Intrigues Hidden Amongst the Bucolia

14. The Creeping Garden: The Slipstream Explorations of a Science/Science Fiction Fantasia

15. E4’s ‘Wicker Man’ Ident: An Edge of the Field View of a World Unto Itself

16. Raven: Unearthing Hidden Buried Power and Battles to Safeguard the Future

17. Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker: Seeking Answers in the Forbidden Zone

18. Radio On and Fords on Water: Escape and Exploring the State of the Nation in British Road Movies

19. Whistle Down the Wind: Adventures in a Time Capsule Landscape

20. Hell Drivers and The Bargee: Searching for Freedom and Autonomy in an Overlooked Corner of the Landscape and During the End of an Era

21. Stargazy on Zummerdown: Starships, Peddlars and Morris Dancers Meet in Utopia

22. Robin and Marian: The Return and Reimagining of a Living Legend

23. The Nightmare Man: Frankenstein-Like Meddling Away from the Mainland

24. Worzel Gummidge: Mackenzie Crook’s ‘Albion in the Overgrowth’ Recalibrating of Mainstream Family Television

Appendix: The ‘Good Housekeeping’ Wiping of Television Archives

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As with the A Year In The Country project as a whole, which it is released as part of, the book's structure is inspired by the cycle of the year and the passing of time: as with hours in the day, it is split into 24 chapters, and as in days in the non-leap years of February, it focuses on 28 main films, television programmes and documentaries.

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“Stephen Prince has dug hard to uncover these gems... A fine, thoughtful and thoroughly researched book… an invaluable guide.” Cathi Unsworth, Fortean Times

"Revisits defining work like The Wicker Man, but also more obscure TV plays and serials like Rainy Day Women, Stargazy on Zummerdown and Codename Icarus... Stephen Prince's accessible yet forensic style is always highly readable... one of our most authorative and tireless guides." Ben Graham, Shindig!

"Stephen Prince's excellent new book is his third anthology of thoughtful and exhaustively researched essays on the 'wyrd' as depicted in popular culture... From big hitters like The Wicker Man and Bagpuss, to relative obscurities such as 1951 documentary Oss Oss Wee Oss... it's a collection obsessed with the minutiae of deliciously pastoral disquiet." Bob Fischer, Electronic Sound