5: Why was 14 year old me so obsessed with dubbing?

More from the archive- I was a very odd teenager.

Ah, dubbing. That mainstay of late 1960s- early 1970s fantasy television, a feature as integral as 2-D characterisations, wobbly sets and the bit-part actor. To many a fan of this period it will strike as much feel into one's heart as the phrase 'Steven Moffat Script' will to one of today's hip young Who fans. Personally, I cannot stand it. An single case of badly done dubbing can create a cancer that completely ruins the remainder of the episode. In some scenarios it becomes so over-used that it drags down the rest of the series and puts you off a perfectly decent drama.

Take, for example, an early episode of seventies crime thriller, “The Professionals”, called 'Long Shot'. It's a perfectly serviceable, if formulaic, story in which our heroes are charged with protecting a high-up USA official only to discover that their boss is the real target of the threat. This is the sort of story “The Professionals” became famous for: a high octane and action-packed thriller stuffed full of witty dialogue.

Why, then, did the production company feel the need to ruin it with dubbing? Practically the entire cast is dubbed, from the smallest extra to those with their names in the credits. Some of it is understandable- Trigger from “Only Fools and Horses” playing a middle-eastern hitman isn't the most convincing casting in the world and so one can understand the need for a more appropriate voice. However when this extends to the principal cast re-dubbing their lines in post-production you start to wish they'd found a less windy location or scrapped the story altogether.

The voices rarely match up with the lips they're speaking from, resulting in the feeling of the audio track being separated from the action, as if it were trapped half a second in the past. This can take you right out of a story and back into your living room, where things are considerably more disappointing. We watch these shows for escapism, and to have that ruined by some dodgy dubbing feels like a cop out by the production team.

In addition to this some of the voices are so inappropriate to the actor that the sound editor appears to have had a blackout during the choosing of their voice artists. As I was writing this article I was watching an episode of “The Champions”, with their famous cold openings to explain to the viewer what was actually going on. A small boy called for his mother- and quite convincingly, too, at least in terms of movement.

The only problem was that when he spoke what came out was the shrill tones of an posh young girl. Maybe just a little too high and too refined for a young boy playing on the street, even before his voice has broken? 'Just a little' is an underestimation. It's so inappropriate and once again has the effect of total disillusion, another jerk out of the story and all within the first five minutes. I have to wonder why television production companies thought that it was much easier to incur extra expenses in dubbing artists instead of hiring appropriate actors. I suppose Miriam Margolyes did well out of it.

ITC, Granada, Thames Television: names that have passed into geek folklore. These are the people that produced “The Prisoner”, “The Tomorrow People”, “Thunderbirds” and so on, classics still being shown at film festivals and on big screens throughout the world. I love all these programmes. I can overlook their sexism, their racism, their poor plotting and grey sets- because they are products of their times.

Unfortunately, dubbing is not, and I cannot overlook it. This is for one simple reason: they could have easily done it so much better.

Luckily the days of the dubbing artists speed dial are over- but if this article is filmed... Well.

Keep Miriam Margolyes at the end of the phone.