Star Maidens

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Like most film series shown on Britain's ITV stations in the 60s and 70s, the airings of Star Maidens were rather haphazard and of a non-network nature and almost exclusively outside of primetime. Contrary to popular belief the series did air in the bulk of the country however, albeit in a staggered pattern over a year. Goodness knows what the prints must have looked like by the time they reached Grampian in Autumn 77!

Note that a pretty much full and correct set of UK transmission info, which I researched more recently, now appears in the DVD booklet - so if you want the full record, please buy that! I'm leaving the gaps here for now but will update in due course.

Scottish Wednesdays 6.30pm 1/9/76 - 1/12/76
STV premiered episode 1 seven days ahead of Tyne Tees. No episode was broadcast on 13/10/76, with the show dropped for live football coverage of Czechoslovakia v Scotland. This meant that now episodes 7-13 were shown the same days in Scottish and Tyne Tees regions although not actually networked in the same time slot.

Tyne Tees Wednesdays 5.15pm 8/9/76 - 1/12/76
London (LWT) ep.1 tx Saturday 1/1/77 9.30am then Sundays 11.00am from 9/1/77-27/3/77. Note that most London transmissions of Star Maidens were edited to fit the timeslot and so lost a couple of minutes from each episode.
Anglia Tuesdays 5.15pm 4/1/77 - 29/3/77. Repeat run weekday (school holiday) mornings Summer 1978 - note that the film of one episode broke on repeat transmission but was fixed and soon came back on air!
Border Saturdays 5.45pm from Jan 1977 (ahead of Doctor Who at 6.20pm on BBC1)
HTV (Wales and West) Mondays 5.15pm (directly after The Tomorrow People) Spring 1977
Ulster Wednesdays 5.15pm Spring 77
Yorkshire Tuesdays 5.15pm from late May 1977
Grampian Wednesdays 6.10pm from c.Aug 77
Granada definitely showed the series at some time before the end of 1978 (I say that because that's where I watched it). Martyn Stansfield and Mark Finnigan both wrote to suggest that they remember it going out in Granada on Sundays late morning, early lunchtime (11-12.30ish) pre- or post- Weekend World, the political show with Brian Walden - Sundays sounds right to me, the same day as Space:1999 season 1 was transmitted in Granada ... Thomas Grayson recalls watching on sunny lunchtimes in the Summer of 1977, so from all this evidence Sundays, c.11-12.30, Summer 1977 seems likely.

I haven't found any listings for the Westward region nor Southern Television!

Huge thanks to Ros Connors, longtime fan of the series, who was glued to the screens in the South of England and used to audiotape the series! She has provided the detailed info for London and Anglia screenings given above (Kevin Birnie also wrote to say that he watched Sunday mornings in LWT). Ros was able to watch both stations in her area, watching each episode twice weekly on Sundays and Tuesdays. She also reckons that ATV Midlands failed to screen it - this makes perfect political sense as ATV were the major producer of action film series to the ITV network and so probably reckoned they could do without encouraging the competition? As for Southern, Ros reckoned Southern may well not have shown it - Caroline Martin wrote to suggest that she remembers Southern virtually taking all LWT at the weekends and thought they took the LWT Sunday screenings of Maidens but recent listings research by myself disproves this

If you know of any local transmission details for ATV, Southern, Westward or Channel, even vaguely, do get in touch.

Outside of the UK, Peter Storm wrote to tell me that Holland showed the series in 1977/8 and Keith Grant watched in Australia sometime in the late 70s. Hector P. Feria supplied detailed info for New York syndication screenings - he recalls the series airing in Autumn (Fall) 1978 on local New York City independent station WNEW-TV Channel 5, Saturday evenings around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. The channel later changed its call sign to WNYW-TV and aired the movie edit (but not the individual episodes) in the 1980s.