I was already planning on not doing much today, and general exhaustion and tiredness didn’t help. So, I curled up on the sofa, and split my time between reading The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross (for a book review – and thank god I’d read the previous ones, as it’s fun, but it is in danger of getting overcomplicated…), and bathing in the sheer joy and pulp lunacy that is Adam Adamant Lives! The absolute definition of cult viewing, it’s a creaky yet hugely entertaining 1966 comedy adventure that was partly aimed as the BBC’s answer to The Avengers, and stars Gerald Harper as a Edwardian swashbuckling adventurer who’s unexpectedly frozen for decades, and when defrosted finds himself in Swinging Sixties London, where there are plenty of criminals, gangsters and evil-doers to battle. In many ways it’s utterly cliched, dated and ludicrous, and yet it’s also packed full of genuine charm, with Harper being an impossibly gentlemanly leading man, and some of the most outrageous camp humour imaginable, as well as plenty of entertaingly awful fight sequences. The kind of show it’s easy to laugh at, and yet you can’t help but embrace for all its joys and faults, Adam Adamant Lives certainly cheered me up this afternoon (especially in the moment where I got to the end of one particularly offbeat and stylish episode, dealing with a deadly group of charitable ladies who were bumping off politicians using mind control, and was somewhat amazed to discover that it had been directed by a youthful Ridley Scott…). So, here for your delectation is the hilarious Bond-style theme tune (sung by Kathy Kirby), accompanied by the equally hilarious title sequence (which couldn’t be more Sixties if it tried) and a somewhat random collection of clips. All together now: “BOLD… as a knight in white ARMOUR….”