Captain Pugwash first aired on British television in 1957 as a black-and-white stop-motion show, before the full colour version of the series was first broadcast from 1974-75.
The series is based on the much loved children’s comic strips and books created by Josh Ryan.
It follows Captain Horatio Pugwash as he sails the high seas in his ship, the Black Pig, ably assisted by Tom the captain boy, pirates Willy and Barnabas and Master Mate.
Along their adventures, they’re battling against his mortal enemy, Cut-Throat Jake, captain of the Flying Dustman.
The children’s animation was written, illustrated and produced by John Ryan, before Peter Hawkins voiced all the characters, bringing them to life.
Captain Pugwash originally ran from 1957 to 1966 before being revived in colour in the 70s, and again in 1997.
The synopsis teases on ITVX: “The bumbling 50s kids TV star is back on screen. Join him aboard the Black Pig & meet cabin boy Tom, pirates Willy & Barnabas, & Master Mate. Beware of the enemy Cut-Throat Jake.”
Viewers have been left reminiscing on the iconic childhood series, with one writing on Reddit : “Love Pugwash – have complete set of DVDs.”
Another said: “I can hear the theme tune in my head right now,” as a third elsewhere wrote: “Ooh wow, that brings back memories, brilliant.”
This comes as ITV has added a variety of returning and new programmes to the streaming service, with more yet to come this year.
In a press release announced earlier this year, the broadcaster shared: “ITV will ring in the new year with a raft of brand new dramas, exclusive entertainment shows, much loved juggernauts and big name reality.
“Jing Lusi, Michelle Keegan, Martin Compston, Natalie Dormer, Shaun Evans, Romala Garai, Eve Myles, Gemma Arterton, Rafe Spall, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans, David Morrissey, Douglas Booth, Sophie Rundle, Philip Glenister, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Rishi Nair, Robson Green, Aimée-Ffion Edwards, Daniel Mays, Ben Miller, John Simm, Richie Campbell and Omid Djalili are just some of the names appearing in ITV dramas over the next twelve months.”
Drama includes Michelle Keegan’s The Blame, The Party, based on the acclaimed novel by Elizabeth Day, Gemma Arterton leading a stellar cast in Secret Service, and new scandalous drama Adultery.
Elsewhere in entertainment, Graham Norton hosts a street-sized reality game, The Neighbourhood, Rob Brydon is fronting new gameshow The Floor and Gary Lineker is hosting The Box. Ben Shephard ’s The Summit has already begun, and I’m A Celebrity All Stars will return alongside Britain’s Got Talent, Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win and The 1% Club.
Stepping into Jr. Market boutique in Highland Park is like entering a 1980s time warp. Built into a refurbished shipping container, it’s filled with everything from tiny Walkman-style portables to colorful, number-flip clock radios and, naturally, boomboxes of all sizes. Few are more imposing than the TV the Searcher, a Sharp boombox from the early ‘80s that features a built-in, 5-inch color television.
“Try lifting it, it’s really heavy,” warns Spencer Richardson, the shop’s owner. Indeed, the machine is at least 15 pounds without the 10 D batteries that power the unit. He adds, “I don’t think you’re taking this to the beach so you could watch TV while you listen to music.”
An affable, hyper-knowledgeable proprietor in his early 30s, Richardson repairs and resells analog music technology from the 1980s or earlier. In bringing these rehabbed players back into circulation, he’s helping others rediscover a musical format once left for dead. While his hobby-turned-side hustle started as “a gateway to discover sounds” that he otherwise would not have heard, it now attracts curious customers willing to drop $100-plus for a vintage Technics RS-M2 or My First Sony Walkman. His customers include older baby boomers and Gen X‑ers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog in an era when everything else disappears into the digital ether.
A rare Technics RS-M2 stereo radio tape deck. “I’ve worked on a lot of tape players and this one shouts quality inside and out,” Richardson writes on Instagram.
(Spencer Richardson)
Unlike turntables, which have become increasingly high-tech thanks to the “vinyl revival” of the last 20 years, almost all cassette players in current production rely on the same, basic tape mechanism from Taiwan, Richardson explains. Though cassette culture is enjoying its own period of rediscovery — albeit on a far smaller scale — he hasn’t seen a market emerge for newly engineered tape decks. And he’s fine with that.
“I’m not one of those people that’s like, ‘Why don’t they make good new tape players?’” he says. “No one needs to make it better. You’re still better off buying a refurbished one from the time when they made them.”
That’s where he steps in.
Richardson works on a Nakamichi tape deck out of his repair studio in downtown L.A.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
It’s easy to forget that when cassettes debuted in the mid-1960s, the technology was groundbreaking. Not only were the players far more portable than turntables but unlike records, tapes were resilient to being tossed about. Even more profoundly, cassettes democratized access to the act of recording itself since cassette technology required minimal infrastructure and cost.
“I think about how incredible it must have been for people to realize they could just put whatever they wanted onto a tape, dub it, give it to a friend,” says Richardson.
Entire genres of music, especially in the developing world, became far more accessible across borders. In some countries, big records are still released on cassette. “I have a Filipino release of Kanye West’s ‘College Dropout’ on tape,” Richardson says.
The constraints of the technology guided the listening experience. Because skipping songs on a player was a hassle, most people sat with cassette albums as a track-by-track, linear journey, the antithesis to the algorithmic, shuffle-centric playlists ubiquitous on today’s streaming platforms. It’s a pace that Richardson appreciates.
“I want things to be intentional and slow,” he says. “I don’t need them to be optimized.”
He learned how to repair gear by watching YouTube videos, perusing old manuals and through trial and error.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Born in the early 1990s, Richardson grew up in Santa Monica and the Pacific Palisades, where his mother’s home was lost in the L.A. wildfires last year. He’s just old enough to remember cassettes as a child: “My mom had books on tape like ‘Winnie the Pooh,’ but I wasn’t out buying tapes.” Fast forward to the mid-2010s and he was working at the now-defunct Touch Vinyl in West L.A. “Back in 2014, we started this little in-store tape label,” he explained. “Bands would come to play, and we’d duplicate 10 tapes and give them away or sell them.” Richardson slowly began collecting cassettes but after the store closed a few years later, he realized how hard it was to find people to service his tape players.
Finally, once the pandemic hit in 2020 and everyone was stuck at home, he decided to learn how to repair his gear by watching YouTube.“I was just fascinated by the videos, absorbing soldering techniques and tools you might need,” he said. With no formal engineering background, Richardson began collecting information online, perusing old manuals, learning through trial and error. “You just need to get your hands in there and be like, ‘Oh, OK, I see how this works,’ or maybe I don’t see how this works, and I’m just going to bang my head against the wall, and then a year later, try again.” His first successful repair was for his Teac CX-311, a compact stereo cassette player/recorder that he still owns. “It has some quirks but runs well.”
A few years later, Richardson’s girlfriend, Faith, suggested he start selling his players online via an Instagram account — jrmarket.radio — originally created for a short-lived internet station. Tim Mahoney, his childhood friend and a professional photographer, shot the units against a plain white backdrop, as if for an art catalog. A community of enthusiasts quickly found his account and Richardson began selling pieces online and via pop-ups. In 2024, the owners of vintage clothing store the Bearded Beagle invited him to take over the parking lot space behind their new location on Figueroa St. Opening a brick-and-mortar store hadn’t been his ambition but Richardson accepted the opportunity: “I never envisioned opening my own physical store. It’s hard enough to have a retail space in Los Angeles to sell something that’s very niche.”
Jr. Market operates as a shop Thursday through Saturday in Highland Park.
(Spencer Richardson)
Jr. Market — whose name is inspired by Japanese convenience stores known as “junior markets” — isn’t trying to appeal to audiophiles though Richardson does stock studio-quality recording decks. He primarily looks for players with appealing visual design, most of them made in Japan where Richardson has been traveling to since graduating high school. Through those trips, he’s learned where to source pristinely-kept gear, including his best-selling Corocasse: a bright red plastic cube of a radio/tape player, introduced by National in 1983. He also keeps an eye out for the unique Sanyo MR-QF4 from 1979, an elongated boombox with four speakers, designed to play either horizontally or flipped into a vertical tower.
The store also stocks a small selection of portable record players, including a Viktor PK-2, a whimsical, plastic-bodied three-in-one turntable, tape player and AM radio that looks like something designed by a modernist artist for Fisher-Price. That went to local author and historian Sam Sweet, who visited the store with no intention of buying anything and left with the Viktor, which now sits on his writing desk. “Spencer’s part of a grand tradition of workshop tinkerers and specialty mechanics,” Sweet says. “The refurbished devices he sells are as much a reflection of his ethos and expertise as they are treasures of the past.”
Last year, Imma Almourzaeva, an Echo Park art director, came to the store and purchased a massive 1979 Sony “Zilba’p” boombox, which is nearly 2 feet wide and over a foot tall, with wood veneer panels to boot. Almourzaeva, who grew up in Russia in the ‘90s, wanted a player that offered “the tactile feel of my childhood and bringing it back into my daily routine, something familiar, something warm.” The Zilba’p is the largest boombox Richardson has carried and Almourzaeva said, “It’s aesthetically a showstopper. Maybe I have a Napoleon complex because I’m pretty small too. It’s like ‘go big or go home’ for me.” She shared that she recently bought a Soviet-era boombox from Richardson for her brother for Christmas. “It turned out my mom grew up using the same brand of stereo,” Almourzaeva says. Richardson had told her that Soviet boomboxes are “very DIY, more funky and finicky.”
Refurbishment is one of Richardson’s specialties, including repairing customer units, each of them a puzzle he enjoys solving. No matter if a player is sparse or feature-packed, the simple act of playing a cassette creates a sense of calm and focus for him. “You’re not distracted, because it doesn’t do anything else,” he says. In a time where every “smart” device is marketed with dizzying arrays of features, that simplicity can feel downright revolutionary.
An “addictive” musical set more than 70 years ago is now free to watch at the click of a button.
‘Timeless classic’ hailed as the ‘best musical of all time’ now streaming(Image: GETTY)
Musical fanatics can now stream a film that’s been dubbed “absolutely amazing”, and it’s not the beloved Dirty Dancing.
The charismatic 1980s romantic comedy, Dirty Dancing, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, will be broadcast tonight, Sunday, February 8, at 6.55pm on ITV2.
But if you’ve had your fill of Baby and her watermelon, there’s another classic musical available to stream for free.
This 1950s-set musical has been hailed as a “true classic”, with one fan declaring it as “one of those films that I can watch over and over – and I do.”
Another concurred: “An absolute classic. The songs are addicting- hate they don’t make movies like this anymore”, while a third enthused: “This film will always remain as one of my all time favourites!”
The iconic 1978 film Grease tells the tale of high school sweethearts, bad boy Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and wholesome Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John), who fall head over heels during a summer romance.
However, their love story hits a snag when they realise they attend the same school and face social pressures from the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies.
With unforgettable tunes like You’re the One That I Want, Hopelessly Devoted To You, Summer Nights and Grease Lightnin’, it’s no surprise that the original soundtrack is one of the best-selling albums of all time, shifting more than 30 million copies worldwide.
The iconic film Grease, starring Saturday Night Fever’s John Travolta as Danny and the late Australian star of Xanadu, Olivia Newton-John, is now available to stream for free on ITVX.
Fans have been effusive in their praise for the classic movie. One viewer took to IMDb to gush: “Absolutely amazing.”
They continued: “It’s no wonder that the Grease soundtrack is the best selling musical soundtrack ever. (It sure is brilliant.) Grease really is the word. It’s fantastic. 10/10.”
Another fan agreed, stating: “Grease, of course, is based on the Broadway play and is a superb film version”.
A third viewer hailed the cast as “superb”, while another enthused: “Grease is a timeless classic that will have you singing and dancing by the end of the movie.”
Díaz, who signed a three-year, $69-million contract in December as the most sough-after reliever in free agency, pitched for Puerto Rico in the 2023 WBC but sufferd a right patellar tendon tear while celebrating a win over the Dominican Republic that pushed the team into the quarterfinals. He missed the entire 2023 MLB season as a result.
His announcement comes days after it was revealed Dodgers teammate Shohei Ohtani will not pitch in the WBC in order to focus on ramping up to pitch during the season without restrictions. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will pitch for Team Japan and catcher Will Smith and recently-retired left-hander Clayton Kershaw will be on the Team USA roster.
The 2023 World Baseball Classic ended with a matchup between then-Angels teammates, Shohei Ohtani on the mound against Mike Trout. In a showdown between two MVPs, Ohtani struck out Trout on a 3-2 slider, giving Japan its third WBC championship.
There will not be similar dramatics for this edition. During DodgersFest on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts cleared up one key question heading into spring training and the tournament.
“[Ohtani’s] not gonna pitch in the WBC, but he will be ramping up his arm to get ready for the season,” he said, adding that the player made the call.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Roberts said. “I can’t even say I was relieved. Understanding what he did last year, understanding what he had to go through, to then how best to prepare himself for ’26 to do both, it just seemed like the right decision.”
Ohtani said in November he would participate in the WBC but did not signal at the time whether he would pitch. When Team Japan’s roster was announced Monday, manager Hirokazu Ibata did not say if Ohtani would pitch, only saying they would get a better sense in spring training.
While speaking with reporters before Roberts, Ohtani said he wasn’t sure if he would pitch during the tournament.
“In terms of the World Baseball Classic, I just have to see how my body feels, continue to feel the progression and see what happens so I’m gonna be fully prepared as a DH,” he said.
The expectation going into the season had been he would be able to pitch without restrictions from the start for the Dodgers.
“I’m not going to manage him differently as far as each outing,” Roberts said. “There’s certainly going to be extra time, it’s not a five-day, six-day rotation. So there’s going to be rest in between. But outside of that, it’s not going to be the two-inning, three-inning [start], he’s just going to be used as a normal pitcher.”
In the 2023 WBC, Ohtani won tournament most valuable player with a .435 batting average and 1.86 ERA, helping Japan to the title. Five months later, Ohtani was pulled from a start at Angel Stadium against the Cincinnati Reds for what ultimately was revealed to be a torn UCL.
During his first year on the mound for the Dodgers, Ohtani finished the regular season with a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings. In the playoffs, Ohtani posted a 4.43 earned run average in 20.1 innings over four starts — including one in Game 4 of the NLCS in which he struck out 10 batters while hitting three home runs, a performance Roberts called “probably the greatest postseason performance of all time” and earned him the series MVP.
MLB players like Ohtani and Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto are expected to join Team Japan for exhibition games on March 2. Japan will open WBC play on March 6 against Taiwan.
Dodgers right-hander Roki Sasaki, who will be returning to the starting rotation after missing most of last year’s regular season because of a shoulder injury, said on Saturday that the Dodgers made him unavailable for the WBC. Sasaki was on Team Japan in 2023, starting two games — including a dramatic semifinal win over Mexico.
The 2023 film follows childhood friends coming to terms with a devastating loss
The touching 2023 drama is now streaming for free on BBC iPlayer(Image: Haymarket Films )
A touching drama that kept viewers glued to their screens has landed on BBC iPlayer just in time for your midweek viewing.
First hitting screens in 2023, Kindling marked writer-director Connor O’Hara’s feature film debut.
Though he was a fresh face in the industry, O’Hara worked with an impressive cast including Sex Education’s George Somner and fellow Netflix actress Mia McKenna-Bruce (Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials).
The heartfelt drama follows a group of young men who return to their hometown for one last summer with their terminally ill friend, Sid (Somner).
Coming to terms with his mortality, Sid creates a plan to make the summer unforgettable. He gathers his friends and tasks each of them with finding an item that connects their group to either love, home, friends, family or location.
As a science nerd, Sid plans on burning every beloved item to immortalise his memory in the form of particles lingering in the atmosphere.
As you can expect, the film dives into heavy themes including grief and terminal illness. But it also explores uplifting topics such as the importance of friendship.
Although Kindling didn’t capture much attention upon its debut, fans who caught it were completely captivated.
Taking to Rotten Tomatoes, one viewer praised: “Very touching film with some fantastic performances by such a young cast! The filmmakers did a great job of handling such complex subject matter without it feeling heavy-handed. I hope more people see this film!”
Meanwhile an IMDb user dubbed it as “a classic in every way,” before adding: “Kindling kept me glued to the screen in a trance.”
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A third viewer shared their own glowing review: “Overall, Kindling is a touching and beautifully made film that will leave you feeling grateful for the people in your life. It is a celebration of life and friendship, and a reminder to cherish every moment we have. Highly recommended.”
While a Letterboxd user enthused: “One of those deeper films about real friendship, love and loss. This in many ways is about how loss affects the individuals, the friends, family members and an outsider. Thought provoking, sad, happy and very real. A film which needs to be watched more than once.”
However, someone else warned: “Be prepared to cry if you’re gonna watch this.”
