Just purchased the complete dvd series of The Lotus Eaters filmed
around ag nick in the 1970s its great fun to re-watch it again


Dave.

We've also had great fun recently watching "Who Pays the Ferryman?" set in Elounda in the late 70's. It starred Jack Hedley (of "Colditz" fame) and ran for 8 hourly episodes. It was a BBC production, but now only (I think) available as Dutch issue 3 DVD set. Soundtrack is in English with Dutch subtitles. Good for watching 70's fashions, an amazingly undeveloped Elounda and a reasonable storyline centred on a bitter Cretan vendetta!

Paul

I've had both of these for sometime now as I originally "obtained" a copy of the Lotus Eaters which had been shown on UK Gold but these have now been replaced by the official version (I know people can get touchy about these things!    but they weren't available commercially!  Honest.)

Footscapes is correct in that the Ferryman series is a Dutch version, "Wie Betaalt de Feerman", but obviously in the original English and subtitles can be removed.  I paid about £15, including post, some 18 months to 2 years ago for Ferryman off a Dutch eBayer and they are fully original.  The Lotus Eaters, which I also eBayed, are still quite pricey as they've only just been issued in the last few months.

A guy called Dave Rice runs a website dedicated to Michael Bird, who was the author of the original episodes for both series & also the sleeve notes for the Lotus Eater DVDs.  It's not a commercial site so I hope NewAdmin doesn't object to the link being posted

http://www.mjbird.org.uk/MJBTribute.html

There's a lot of background on the series & actors on there, plus what he knows of the locations.  As my holidays & now my little bit of Crete are near Ag Nik & Elounda I take a particular interest in the locality & it's fascinating to see how it looked 30 years ago.

My little contribution for Dave's site was to identify the only non Greek location in either series, at the beginning of Ferryman, which was set at Heybridge Basin near where I live in Maldon, Essex.

Pete

Hooly wrote on 06. Mar 2007 at 17:02:


Just took delivery of the "moon spinners" with  Hayley mills / Eli wallach etc. will post soon on the outcome after watching it

I still enjoy watching Zorba and trying to sort out the views of Kokkino Xorio and Stavros.

A few months ago we watched part of Zorba in a cafe in Kalyves with several Greek guys and it was interesting to have them pointing out all the places, especially in Kokkino Xorio. "That's Giorgios' kafeneio." "Manolis xxxxx lives in that house now." etc., etc. They pointed out a few places in Xania, too.

Filippos.

If you go into Zorba's kafeneion in Kokkino Chorio you will find it difficult to leave as the owner was one of the extras in the film and will press you to accept a signed (and stamped!) photocopy of a photo of him with Anthony Quinn whilst "on set" in Kokkino chorio.  He also likes you to have a photo taken with him and makes you promise to give him a copy when you have it processed (it was very difficult trying to explain that we don't print our photos anymore)

The Kafeneion wasn't open when we were there last October so I hope he's still in the land of the living.  He must be pretty old by now!

Looks like I'd better do something about buying a copy then!. Thanks for the review Dave.