Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. Network have finally confirmed what we’ve been hoping for (and they’ve been hinting at) for ages. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s groundbreaking underwater series Stingray is being remastered in high definition for a release on Blu-ray Disc in 2022! Anyway, the series is a delight for newcomers and nostalgia fans alike. I can only imagine the amount of 1960s kids who must have spent ages playing with Stingray submarines at bath time. And the 75-second home movie footage of behind-the-scenes work is great, despite the sound of the projector drowning things out. Not that there’s any dialogue, but we didn’t need a deafening projector sound either.

The fullscreen, 1.37:1 color transfers for Stingray: The Complete Series -- 50th Anniversary Edition look pretty good, with solid-enough color (maybe some fading here and there), a sharpish image, and some occasional screen imperfections, like dirt and scratches. Audio Recording - presented here is the cleanest version of Jerry Riopelle's tune "Hi Gear", taken from the remastered film. (6 min). For decades Stingray has been that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Supermarionation series usually mentioned after Thunderbirds (the gold standard by which all such series were judged). But Team Anderson couldn’t have got to one without the other, and watching it again after all these years, it’s amazing to see how much of a beta test Stingray was for Thunderbirds. If nothing else, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Stingray should be celebrated for inspiring Team America: World Police, the gonzo marionettes-on-the-make political satire from South Park agitators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. If their 2004 farce was designed to provoke just about everybody, Stingray was also pretty out there, albeit in a trippy, Summer of Love kind of way. An aquatic puppet show swimming in psychedelic color, languid pacing, and underwater scenes apparently filmed inside a lava lamp, Stingray reflected the inveterate stoner’s mindset better than anything in Yellow Submarine. The entire series has just been released in an extravagant five disc box set from Network, Stingray: The Complete Series Deluxe Edition, and the high definition imagery is not just surreal, it’s hyper-real—a single frame is as vivid as any View-Master reel. Anderson and his colleagues were always far better as technical wizards rather than tellers of compelling tales. And when the eponymous sub unleashed hell via its torpedo tubes, the result is explosive in more ways than one.

Edwardsville Slideshow - a collection of archival production and promotional stills featuring key locations from Edwardsville, Illinois, where Stingray was shot. With music. (10 min). Blessed with one of the most exciting opening themes and titles in TV history, not to mention that dreamy closing titles ballad, Stingray is far from sub-standard entertainment. Sorry/not sorry.

On the Set of Set Sail for Adventure: From the estate of Stingray contributor Alan Fennell, we present some previously unseen home movie footage taken by Alan whilst filming Set Sail For Adventure English television titan Lew Grade (he produced everything from The Prisoner to The Muppet Show) was so impressed by the Anderson’s success he bought out their company, and it was Grade who made the call to produce their next series, Stingray, in color—but just for U.S. markets, the color version didn’t appear in the U.K. till 1969. They dubbed the chromatic upgrade “Videcolor” and the Anderson’s trademark style—string-operated manikins bobbing and weaving through intricately detailed sets—was given a fancy moniker too: Supermarionation (perhaps a sneaky tribute to Dynamation, Ray Harryhausen’s space age brand for his own animation technique.) Key player is Troy Tempest, who looks like a constipated James Garner. (An excellent making of documentary on the latest Blu-ray set reveals that Garner was used as a shorthand guide for the model makers). There’s an out-of-nowhere dream sequence in that episode that is in fact a harbinger of things to come: Sylvia often used the character’s dream lives to explore both their fears and desires (in the Loch Ness episode, Sheridan dreams he’s a top-notch bagpiper). The Cool Caveman ponders Tempest’s dreams about undersea cavemen, and Raptures of the Deep plays up Tempest’s autocratic yearnings with his late night reveries of ruling the world. For the head man of WASP, Tempest seems to have a multitude of issues—in Tom Thumb Tempest, he’s the victim of a mysterious plot to shrink him. Tempest is so terrified he wakes up in a sweat… yes, the Anderson’s puppets actually sweat. The high standard of Network’s Anderson releases has been maintained here, and with a tranche of lovely bits of themed paraphernalia (including a Stingray pilot licence, and a book all about the show), this really is one set where the last thing you want to do is stand by with inaction.Interview with Les Lannom - in this exclusive new video interview, co-star Les Lannom recalls his involvement with Stingray, how a few key action sequences were shot, and some risky choices he made while the camera was rolling. In English, not subtitled. (6 min). When you have an iconic show like Stingray, rejigging the episodes to form something allegedly more epic is understandable. Interview with Bert Hinchman - in this exclusive new video interview, co-star Bert Hinchman recalls what it was like working with Richard Taylor and the rest of the principal actors in Stingray. In English, not subtitled. (6 min).