This three-episode story was from what turned out to be the last series for the show before it was cancelled in late 1972 after running for three series.
It must have just caught me at the time when I was starting to both listen to music and watch TV and movies. I'm pretty sure it was the catchy theme tune by Andrew Bown (even if he did sound like he was singing "Tarot Banana-man" in the chorus) which first caught my attention and then ended up really liking the programme too.
I would describe it as being something like a junior-version of "Jonathan Creek" with Michael McKenzie playing the role of stage magician and more, Tarot, who with his two young friends, Pippa and Chas, gets drawn into adventures which touch on the vaguely supernatural.
This one didn't strike me as one of the best, concerning as it does a strange old woman with a mania for collecting dolls, which she is now apparently ready to take to the next level by kidnapping real people and converting them somehow into for, want of a better phrase, living dolls.
It's all rather silly as she ends up kidnapping and drugging Mr Sweet and Mikki to be participants in a strange tea party at her doll shop / museum, but with a little bit of Tarot's new skill of psychometry (no I didn't know what it was either), he traces the woman and her idiot helper to their lair and with a bit of spoon-hypnosis, saves the day.
Considering the budget of the programme, it's still quite watchable and even if the acting is a little bit stiff and wooden at times and the special effects seemingly wholly reliant on stop-start photography, I'm not going to give this programme any hate 50 years or so after I first watched it.
It must have just caught me at the time when I was starting to both listen to music and watch TV and movies. I'm pretty sure it was the catchy theme tune by Andrew Bown (even if he did sound like he was singing "Tarot Banana-man" in the chorus) which first caught my attention and then ended up really liking the programme too.
I would describe it as being something like a junior-version of "Jonathan Creek" with Michael McKenzie playing the role of stage magician and more, Tarot, who with his two young friends, Pippa and Chas, gets drawn into adventures which touch on the vaguely supernatural.
This one didn't strike me as one of the best, concerning as it does a strange old woman with a mania for collecting dolls, which she is now apparently ready to take to the next level by kidnapping real people and converting them somehow into for, want of a better phrase, living dolls.
It's all rather silly as she ends up kidnapping and drugging Mr Sweet and Mikki to be participants in a strange tea party at her doll shop / museum, but with a little bit of Tarot's new skill of psychometry (no I didn't know what it was either), he traces the woman and her idiot helper to their lair and with a bit of spoon-hypnosis, saves the day.
Considering the budget of the programme, it's still quite watchable and even if the acting is a little bit stiff and wooden at times and the special effects seemingly wholly reliant on stop-start photography, I'm not going to give this programme any hate 50 years or so after I first watched it.