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====== Flipside of Dominick Hide ======

{{ :dominickhide:beach08.jpg?400 |}}


The Flipside of Dominick Hide was a wonderful BBC Play for Today from the early 1980s, and possibly the best SF ever done by the BBC. Although it now appears to have sunk from sight it was so well received at the time that the BBC commissioned a sequel (unique for Play for Today?) called Another Flip for Dominick. The plot is a fairly standard time-traveller-goes-back-in-time-and-gets-tangled-up-in-his-own-timeline but it is so well done as to be an almost perfect piece of SF. Dominick was played by Peter Firth, but it wasn't really a big name production. One key ingredient in the whole thing was also the theme song - "Are There Somewhere Island" by US band Meal Ticket, which just fits the tone of the whole thing perfectly.

My own history with it was quite a journey. I saw it when first broadcast and loved it instantly. Then whilst at Uni in London I discovered that the American actor across the road from us was going to star in the sequel, so watching that had added interest. It then just lingered in the memory as something wonderful, but in those days there weren't too many BBC VHS releases, and we hadn't had a machine to record it ourselves. But I didn't give up hope of seeing it again and in the mid 80s on Exercise in Cyprus I was browsing the Base's video store  - which was full of pirated stuff to keep the military community happy - when I found a pirate copy of both episodes. I then bored the rest of the Squadron by showing it at a film night (they knew I was pretty mad anyway!) but more importantly borrowed another VHS machine so I could make a copy and take it home.

For the next few years my grotty VHS copy was it. When I met Deborah I was delighted that she also had fond memories of the series and we watched the VHS copy multiple times, and I kept scanning the BBC lists for a formal release, and I'm sure wrote to them after it too. Then in the late 80s they finally issued it and I picked a copy up from the BBC shop in Belfast where I was serving. Then some time in the 90s the released the DVD copy and it was solidly out there - although still not widely talked about or mentioned. This micro-site is to try and address that and encourage more people to watch this beautiful piece of British TV SF.

  * [[The Story]]
  * [[The Music]]
  * [[The Video]]
  * [[Life in 2130]]
  * [[Glossary]]
  * [[Cast]]
  * [[Crew]]
  * [[Quotes]]
  * [[Links]]
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