Yes, I know some here think I’m TV mad, but… let’s talk Classic TV series and movies which is more a side hobby and very rewarding entertainment IMO.
I’m currently enjoying old British humour with the late Sir Roger Moore (was an early James Bond), in The Saint from the 1960’s and The Persuaders (also with the late Tony Curtis) from the early 1970’s.
Not easy to find more than a few episodes of The Saint (and note that most were in black & white), ownership keeps changing hands and there’s attempts to “re-copyright”. What do you think of that, fair, or are they just too old and being classics should maybe be for everyone by now?
Anyway, did find some sites that work well enough with a VPN (Windscribe), but out of some degree of respect for the industry will only share the URLs and instructions privately - send me a message. (If I’m around.)
My uncle had a massive VHS collection when I was growing up in Soweto, and The Saint was actually one of them. I remember watching Roger Moore with this effortlessly cool charm and thinking “who on earth dresses like that?” But the show aged beautifully in a way that so much modern television just doesn’t.
The Persuaders I only discovered properly on YouTube a few years ago, and that Moore and Curtis chemistry is genuinely funny, real wit rather than the forced banter you get in today’s buddy dramas. If you enjoy that era, I’d really recommend catching some episodes of Department S or Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), both from roughly the same period and with a similar British charm.
On the copyright question, it’s a genuinely frustrating situation. These shows are pushing 60 years old in some cases and the original creators, cast and crew are largely gone. When ownership keeps changing hands it starts to feel less like protecting anyone’s creative work and more like a revenue stream being guarded for its own sake. The public domain exists for a reason and in many other countries The Saint would already be free for everyone.
The “re-copyright” attempts are particularly cynical because colourisation or a new transfer shouldn’t reset the clock on content that old. It’s the kind of thing that keeps classic culture locked away from people who genuinely love it.
That said, there are some good sources around if you dig. The Internet Archive has a few episodes floating around and some of the black and white ones have surfaced on YouTube over the years before they get pulled. Worth checking periodically.
My dad used to catch bits of The Saint on SABC when we were small, so Roger Moore’s face is very familiar even if I never followed the show properly back then. Now with load shedding I’ve actually started downloading older series to watch on the laptop during outages, and honestly this thread has me thinking The Persuaders should be next on my list. That kind of easy, charming humour is exactly what you need after a long day
The copyright point really does frustrate me too. When the original creators and cast are gone and it’s just a company sitting on the rights, it stops feeling like protection and starts feeling like hoarding. So many of our kids will never discover these classics simply because access is too difficult or too expensive, and that’s such a loss.
Classic television feels sometimes more rewarding to me because episodes were often written as complete stories with memorable dialogue, rather than being designed mainly for binge-watching algorithms.
