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Crazy paving! Crazy paving!
Yes, it’s another edition of the listings guide from Britain’s most popular and slowest loading TV website. Although we think it might have sorted itself out. Regardless, we’re still here for another week’s viewing, and don’t forget you can give us your twopenn’orth at creamguide@tvcream.co.uk.
Someone who did was Gary Brannan, who says, “Loving the Time Tunnel. I’d also like to point out that you owe me a new keyboard after my spitting a hot beverage over it at the credits from that Pops episode with the kids wigging out to Nut Rocker. I know that Pans People were choreographed by Flick Colby, but that typeface they’re using makes it look a bit rude, what with two letters basically running into each other. How did Mary Whitehouse not have a thrombo at that?” Dunno, but it is a great typeface.
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BBC1
10.50 The Lord Mayor’s Show
We always do the thing about the Saturday morning shows having to shuffle up for this, so we won’t do that this year, but instead hear more from Gary, who also said, “In true Eurovision style, I’d like to congratulate you on the night so far, it’s been really fantastic! (makes half arsed and self conscious “OK” sign) One thing struck me on the first part of the Goodbye from Southern link, other than the mighty Stilgoe. It was odd to see Christopher Robbie’s actual face, as he was the cyberleader in Revenge of the Cybermen (with Doctor Who Tom Baker), and played it with an odd mid-Atlantic accent (“Cyberbums, Duktor!”) and as such I hadn’t even thought he *had* a face, just a voice. Did any other ITV companies draft former Doctor Who monster actors for their closing night? I wish TVS had been good enough to give Cyberleader David Banks a go at presenting when they closed down, the mean sods, as it seems only fair.”
BBC2
19.30 Dad’s Army
Also in the postbag this week (and don’t worry, we will write something ourselves soon) is John Innes, who says, “I think I might be in a safe environment to vent my anger about the quality of clip footage in shows at the moment. From Have I Got News for You to History of Horror, shows at the moment are littered with crappy clips. Why? Surely the film exists somewhere! Grrrrr.” Well, HIGNFY really can’t be arsed, hence that James Blunt on Sesame Street clip last week blatantly filched from YouTube, when three months ago You Have Been Watching had a proper good quality version of it. And Blunt was a guest, so you think they’d have made the effort. As for other shows, surely you know by now that nobody ever bothers making new documentaries anymore, they just rehash old ones.
20.00 Return of the Goodies
As you can clearly see, as for their fortieth anniversary on BBC2 we just get a repeat of the show that celebrated their 35th. Still, at least they’re showing it again, and it is more or less the complete Goodies primer, but it’s perhaps most notable for the longest credit sequence we’ve ever seen, which goes on for absolutely ages. Still, at least all Bill’s musical numbers go on for about three hours to accompany it.
22.15 Solitary Man – Neil Diamond
23.15 Neil Diamond – Electric Prom
00.15 Sings Neil Diamond
Last of the Electric Proms here, which like the other two gets the full treatment. To be honest we’ve never been sure about Diamond because he always looks a bit pissed off when he’s performing, but he’s banged out the hits over the years, and not just as a singer but a writer too, as the final show will illustrate. Among the clips will be that Robert Wyatt performance which was apparently suppressed for many years due to his unsettling appearance, it says here.
ITV
19.30 Harry Hill’s TV Burp
“Black sky at night – night!” Such a shame Wagbo’s so bloody rubbish.
21.30 Take That – Look Back, Don’t Stare
“There are no Dannys in this band!” Again. So The That are back to full strength and off on tour again, so it must be time for another documentary about them. Basically it’s one huge plug for the new album, natch, hence it’s been produced by the band themselves, but they’ve always come across as affable chaps so we don’t mind hearing them talk about their whole career, it says here. “Robbie Williams ruins it, and leaves, and ruins it!”
BBC Radio 2
13.00 Pick of the Pops
We, cough, watched the football instead last week and missed this, though we hear the best moment was Tone linking into “the latest worldwide news”, which is a nice bit of old school jock-speak. 1968 and 1981 this week, though not alas including Durran Durran.
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BBC1
16.35 Points of View
A double outing for Head of the BBC Journalism College Jonathan Baker last weekend, because as well as showing up here to answer a dull complaint about sloppy English by reporters, he was also one of the managers working as a stand-in reporter during the strike on Friday. In fact David Bridgman says, “Oh joy of joys, there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned journalist’s strike to warm up an autumn evening – or morning come to that. It was cheering to see the telly equivalent of a supply teacher gamely presenting Breakfast in an eerily empty studio. Even better, BBC London appeared to wheel out someone’s mum to read the local news. She was still battling away on the late bulletin, ending it with a curious head-butting motion towards the camera. Also worthy of a mention is the BBC’s Head of the Political Unit (another bod who had that knackered school teacher look about him) filling in for Nick Robinson et al plus a bloke called Jonathan who parked himself next to Chris “Newsround” Rogers and read something from a sheet of paper. Full marks too to Radio 4 for broadcasting Larry Adler’s Swedish Rhapsody and Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell at 5.15pm.” Indeed it did make for intriguing viewing but we were staggered by the comments left on the Media Guardian website of all place, almost 100% of which were banging on about the telly tax and how they all be sacked, presumably the BBC Have Your Say site must have been closed so all the nutters had to find somewhere else to congregate. The BBC going on strike is always a disaster and we should take no pleasure from seeing it on its knees!
BBC2
23.30 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
If you’re reading this the minute it’s published (if we finish writing it in time) you’ll be able to see the first showing of this, which we didn’t bill last week because they swapped the episodes round at the last minute. It’s hard to warm to this show at the moment, given all Fielding and Jupitus – Phill Judas-tus, we call him – have been doing in recent months is slagging off Simon Amstell and saying how awful he was, when any idiot can see that Simon was brilliant and since he went this has been a terribly clapped-out affair with hosts who can’t deliver a joke, Fielding doing his usual tiresome shtick and Jupitus doing, well, whatever the hell he does, and it’s clearly weeks away from the axe. But the reason we’re billing it this week is because the host is Lord Terence of Woganshire, and if anyone can rescue it, it’s got to be him. Or Simon, but he won’t be coming back now, so thanks for that, Jupitus.
BBC4
21.00 Mark Lawson Talks To Sir Tom Jones
22.00 Tom Jones At The BBC
Just the other day we were in HMV pondering whether to but a Tom Jones Greatest Hits CD as part of the two for a tenner promotion, and only because it featured the fantastic Trevor Horn-produced If I Only Knew. We didn’t buy it in the end, because we couldn’t find another CD to pair up with it, but let’s hope it features in the compilation, along with the usual gubbins, presumably including that Beat Room appearance where he performs Chills And Fever, the most repetitive song ever written (basically it’s just the words “Chills And Fever” over and over again), with a guitarist who looks like Leslie Crowther.
BBC Radio 2
11.00 Weekend Wogan
More Wogannage, this time because it’s Children In Need week, and the traditional auction has moved with Tel to the Sunday morning slot. It’s not originally Tel’s concept, though, as when it started, it was during Tel’s hiatus on the telly, and every show took it turns to do it during the week, even Nightride at 1am, though Lord alone knows how many eccentric millionaires were listening at that time. Then after it is something of a warm-up for the Music Marathon later in the week as Walker and O’Grady are going to be playing requests all afternoon, which has the happy side-effect of getting rid of Elaine Paige’s show. |
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BBC1
09.15 Rewind The 60s
BBC1 daytime is getting a revamp under orders of the BBC Trust, mostly by getting rid of the never-ending Diagnosis Murder, but we’ve mentioned before the worst thing is the non-stop episodes of The Weakest Link, every single day, all year round. We don’t mean they have to axe it, but do we really have to have repeats as well? Anyway, away from that they’ve done some interesting experiments in daytime recently, and a new sixties-set drama this week is being accompanied by this daily show with guests and sundry clippage, a bit like – yes! – I Love The Sixties, but sadly it’s introduced by Lulu, who’s awful. At least she’s stopped pretending to be a modern act and releasing awful new records, we suppose.
16.30 Blue Peter
A great item last week, which continues today, as Joel’s been challenged to take the first part of appeal Christmas cards from TV Centre to Tesco in Hull, in 24 hours, by bike. The first part was tremendous fun, as Joel had to do it overnight, in torrential rain, but his good humour won out, even when they managed to get spectacularly lost in Peterborough, despite the efforts of his “support team”. In fact, while Ewan Mcgregor had umpteen lorries of technical equipment following him on his journeys, the thrifty BP appeared to have a van containing two people with an atlas and one with a megaphone to shout at Joel to keep going.
ITV
22.35 When Playboys Ruled The World
This documentary is going to compare and contrast between the tabloid hand-wringing regarding today’s sports stars and the bedhopping, boozing exploits of James Hunt and Barry Sheene, who did it all with such charm that the nation expected nothing less. Indeed, James Hunt regularly swore and libelled people during his Beeb motor racing commentaries, if he turned up for them, and nobody cared, while Barry had a crack at Saturday night light entertainment, although sadly he was rubbish on Just Amazing! We don’t know if we’ll see any clips of that, but it’ll be nice to as it was a big show in its day, managing to get eleven million viewers for its Christmas show in 1983 despite being on at half past two in the afternoon.
BBC4
20.30 Only Connect
More letters. Carl Pfieffer, who we’ll hear more from in a minute, takes issue with our suggestion that Grand Prix fans complaining about their recordings not coming out should have got up earlier, by saying, “Bit unfair on the F1 comment! It was on at 5am… most of us were having well-deserved lie-ins and sleeping off hangovers, ready to switch it on the Sky+ when we woke up. Didn’t require fingers-in-ears or anything.” We thought it started at seven o’clock? We’ll never understand the appeal of Formula One anyway, so it’s a mystery to us why anyone watches it, let alone how they watch it.
CBBC
17.15 The Sarah Jane Adventures
Today and tomorrow – and on Wednesday and Thursday on BBC1 – the last two of this series which once again has got way more viewers than anything else on this channel, and indeed with just under a million it’s actually beating Neighbours on Channel Five. Though how many of that million are actually kids is, as ever, a moot point.
BBC Radio 2
22.00 Guy Garvey’s Rainy City
We don’t know where that joke about it always raining in Manchester came from. Certainly it’s been around for ages – it’s in one of the Tiswas annuals – but we can’t understand why that combination of city and weather condition came together. You don’t hear jokes about Bristol or Leeds, do you? Still, here’s Guy to examine how the city’s seemingly grim image has been represented in popular culture in the past, sadly scheduled directly opposite one of the city’s most famous sons, Steve Coogan, on the telly in The Trip, a series we’re really enjoying. In America it’s being edited into a film, of course, though we fear the sequence involving Rob’s Ken Bruce impression will be the first on the cutting room floor.
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Well, we’re very much enjoying how the new parameters for the Cream Era – 1967 to 1997, lest we forget – are sparking so much discussion, and here’s a member of the TV Cream cabinet who helped make the decision, TJ Worthington, to give his saide of the story. He says, “1967 may seem like an early start for the Cream Era, but let’s face it, the parameters of the original definition had been broken so wildly by virtue of constant reference to the BBC Schools Diamond, Dr Who Patrick Troughton and what have you, not to mention a good 70% of TVC Films’ celluloid recommendations, that it was only fair to give such iconographic (and, let’s face it, word-count-expanding) TVC hallmarks ‘legit’ status. Readers can rest assured, however, that this doesn’t mean TV Cream will start banging on about the correlation between Macmillan-era trade labour relations and that public information film with Ken Dodd crossing the road. Or indeed that this will allow a load of hippies in through the back door. Unless they’re wielding ‘angry’ flutes of course. Or are Hippies the sitcom. I’ll stop now.”
Meanwhile, Carl Pfieffer wrote in this week to say, “Fab CG as usual. Although looking forward to Time Tunnel getting to some more interesting years.” They’re all interesting years, that’s why they’re in the Cream Era! But this one is particularly interesting, because it’s from the eighties, which are always the best.
FA CUP WINNERS: Spurs
CHRISTMAS NUMBER ONE: Renee and Renato – Save Your Love
UK EUROVISION ENTRY: Bardo – One Step Further
BLUE PETER TEAM: Si, Saz and Pete
DOCTOR WHO: Dr Who Peter DaviDson
RADIO 1 BREAKFAST SHOW JOCK: Mike Read
BIG CHRISTMAS DAY FILM ON BBC1: Death On The Nile
New thrill!
COUNTDOWN (1982-)
“Richard Whiteley desperately wanted to be the first person on Channel Five, and begged Dawn Airey so much, she announced that not only would he not launch the station, he would also never appear on it, which seems rather harsh as surely Night Fever could have done with a better class of panellist. So Dick only launched one channel, but he did it in style. You forget how staid Countdown was not only at the start, but also for many years after it, even in the early nineties it was still quite formal and not the irreverent, anarchic affair it became in its pomp – Richard was still introduced by a caption in 1995! Richard said that he was very excited watching the channel start in the YTV offices, although at 4.40 the screen went to black and he was absolutely terrified that it wasn’t going to happen. The early days of the ‘down were slightly iffy, with reckless overmanning (including Dr Linda Barrett, who nobody remembers) and ratings invariably plummeting on day two, so early on Richard was sent off on a jolly to France with producer John Meade so he could get him drunk and sack him (Richard had alreayd spotted a memo saying “New presenter?” and immediately tried to find Carol a new job) but while he was there the ratings shot up and he was reprieved. The golden years were the late nineties, we reckon, with the move to 45 minutes in 2001 rather overegging it, and then Richard’s death bringing on an amazing unstable period with much bitching and backstabbing. But as someone here once said, it’s hard to stay mad with Countdown for too long.
Old thrill!
PARKINSON (1971-82)
In April 1982 the Beeb announced that Mike was making “positively his last appearance on this channel”, with the Saturday night institution calling it a day after eleven years, and twice a week for the last three (although that was a compromise after the planned daily series was vetoed by the governers), as Parky was going to float into TV-am on a cloud of bullshit. Regular guests like Kenneth Williams, Jimmy Tarbuck and, natch, Bily Connolly showed up for a highly self-indulgent affair, although there was much to celebrate, as apart from Mike’s number one target Sinatra he’d interviewed almost everyone worth speaking to, and it had also completely trounced ITV’s attempt at opposition by showing Johnny Carson opposite him (although that was only on in London anyway). Of course, as we know, TV-am turned out to be a complete disaster and Mike bailed out in early 1984, never returning from holiday, so he ligged around ITV for a while – including presenting Parkinson One To One, another chat show in the same slot – before being tempted back in 1998. As we all know, though, Parky’s a bastard, and we’ve said it before, but we would like it if for once Parky might be prepared to even say one word in appreciation of the now dead man responsible for the most repeated moment in the history of this show. But he won’t, because he’s too important.
Everyone’s talking about…
CHANNEL 4! Natch, as we did just up there. In its first few months it was Channel Bore and Channel Swore, and some of the early stuff was truly awful, but the likes of The Tube and The Comic Strip illustrated that this was a very different kind of TV channel.
S4C! The big news in Wales was that the Welsh language programmes were taken off BBC1 and ITV, much to everyone’s relief, and moved to a new channel where they could be seen in primetime. The rest of the output was made up of C4 shows, of course, and viewers on the fringes of Wales used to enjoy catching Brookie at ten if they missed it earlier, or Sgorio on Monday nights.
CENTRAL, TVS AND TSW! TSW had actually started taken over from Westward the previous year but continued under the old name until their official start as Television Simply Wonderful on New Year’s Day, along with their new neighbours in the Midlands and South, both of whom would go on to make a massive contribution to ITV. In addition, LWT now took over from Thames at 5.15 on Fridays , leading to the invention of The Six O’Clock Show, and the invention of Danny Baker.
THE FALKLANDS WAR! Although there was barely any of it on television in the early days with footage taking an age to reach British screens, while Peter Snow got accused of treason in the pages of The Sun.
SIN ON SATURDAY! “I love to look at ladies who take their clothes off! I don’t give a jot if men want to take their clothes off and jump on top of them!” The editor of Sin On Saturday referred to it as “dinner party television”, the type of idea you come up with during boozy chats and think is brilliant, only to realise it’s less sensational without copious amounts of alcohol to make it work, although Ollie had a good try. Abandoned after three shows, back in the day when that never happened.
TISWAS AND SWAP SHOP ENDING! The former way past its best, of course, while the latter was still in fairly good shape, though while the Beeb replaced it with something more or less exactly the same, ITV pissed away their advantage with the first in a succession of bland and boring programmes.
3DTV! Sky reckon this is a new thing, hence them plugging it every five minutes, but pop science series The Real World experimented with free glasses in the TV Times and a screening of shitty Western Fort Ti, which wouldn’t have been interesting if you’d been on the set. Still, more fun than Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old in three dimensions.
RIP
Four comedy giants left us this year, Arthur Askey, Marty Feldman, Harry H Corbett and Arthur Lowe, the latter particularly shocking as he’d been on Pebble Mill At One just hours before he died. Other comedy stars from a pre-TV era dying in 1982 were Sandy Powell and Chesney Allen. Eric Thompson was a huge loss, while Corbet Woodall, the newsreader who later appeared in a million episodes of The Goodies, passed away, having suffered from crippling arthritis for many years. The Sensational Alex Harvey also died, and in politics Reb Butler and Leonid Brezhnev went, but the most notorious passing of the year was the actor Vic Morrow, killed on the set of the Twilight Zone film when a stunt went spectacularly and horrifyingly wrong.
Show of the year
LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE
It had started nearly a decade before, but it’s perhaps appropriate for such a slow-moving series that it took until now to reach the zenith of its popularity. By the time it ended Summer Wine was the acme of unchallenging comedy but it’s easy to forget that when it began it was really quite new, with its scenes of not very much happening at all a breath of fresh air, and probably owing more to the likes of The Royle Family than any of its suburban contemporaries. Indeed in 1982 it was still going out in a post-watershed slot. By this point the trio of Compo, Clegg and Foggy were cemented in their parts and, after their first Christmas Day outing in 1981, their series this year was a phenomenon, topping the ratings and receiving huge critical acclaim. It was the following year that it first found itself on Sunday teatimes and, from then, the sort of never-changing unchallenging fare that gave it such a bad name, never mind the million cast changes. But in 1982, it was very easy to stand up and say that Summer Wine was one of the funniest and most intelligent shows on TV. And not a bathtub in sight.
Let’s go there now!
More or less everything from 1982 worth seeing we’ve already shown you, but here’s that fantastic clip with the start of Wmbln, the end of World Cup Report and some royal hat-doffing. Here’s some bits from Christmas Day, and here’s two days later. We’ve also got most of a Pops from December (caution: contains Simon Bates), though sadly we’ve only got some of the second show of Christmas 82, as the first part has been removed, and it’s got Bardo in it! But we’ve got the Belle Stars in this bit, so that’s alright.
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BBC1
16.30 Blue Peter
Not much else happened on this show last week, so we’ll instead throw the floor open to Jonathan Haw, who says, “Further to your mention last week of Michael Fish doing the weather on BBC London, another legend of the golden age of weatherman, John Kettley, now does the weather on BBC Radio Lincolnshire.” And there’s no arguing with that.
BBC3
20.00 Children in Need – 50 Greatest Moments
We don’t know, by the way, if this is including much in-studio bits of business other than the various musical performances, but we’re guessing the Children of Courage and Achievement doesn’t make it into the chart, despite the fact they used to re-edit that bit and show it again on Good Friday afternoon because it was so popular. We used to like it anyway, but that might be simply because it was the only night of the year we were allowed to stay up late. |
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BBC2
23.20 The Secret Life of the National Grid
If you missed any of this series when it was on BBC4, then of course you’ve got the iPlayer, let alone the million repeats, but it’s also being stripped on BBC2 from Monday to Wednesday. We’re only billing it today, though, not just because it’s the Creamiest of the lot with its talk of the three day week, but also because, as you can see, there’s nothing else on. |
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BBC1
21.30 Reggie Perrin
Last one of this, presumably ever, because the ratings haven’t been very good at all. We’ve stuck with it – and caught up since last week – but despite the winning performances and the usual sprinkling of funny Simon Nye lines, we’ve not really laughed that much and Reggie just hasn’t seemed pissed off enough for anything to ring true, so we won’t be desperately broken-hearted if he doesn’t come back from the beach this time. |
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BBC1
19.00 Children in Need
And here’s the big night itself. We’ve mentioned before but the event’s bumper viewing figures and profile in recent years continues to stagger us, as about fifteen or twenty years ago, apart from when they did Dimensions In Time in it, nobody ever seemed to notice it, ITV used to show all their big guns against it and clean up and it didn’t always get a Radio Times cover. Now the stars are queuing up to be on it and it’s one of the highest rated shows of the year. Though getting rid of the terrible regional bits (except in the nations, natch) probably helped. Highlights this year include the usual Who clip, ‘stEnders vs Corrie and, hooray, Helen off Blue Peter doing Dirty Dancing, but that’s obviously all secondary to Tel floating away on a cloud of whimsy all night. Ooh, and it’s the thirtieth anniversary, too, and if you can make it to one o’clock, there’ll be more clips apparently. Preferably with Peter Powell falling arse over tit on the stairs, natch.
BBC2
22.00 Mastermind
And while the news is on, for the second year we’ve got a celebrity edition here, replacing the normal show which isn’t on because of the rugby. How this differs from the usual celebrity version, we don’t know, other than the fact the celebs give their fees to CiN instead of another charity, and we don’t know who the celebs are either, but it’s always a bit of fun, and they bring back the chat with John for them too, which is nice to see.
BBC4
21.00 Bird on a Wire
22.45 Leonard Cohen – Songs For The Road
And if you can’t be doing with all that forced jollity on the other side, BBC4 are running a Leonard Cohen night. So that’s a documentary made up of recently discovered footage from his 1972 tour, then another documentary made up of recently filmed footage from his 2009 tour. Essential viewing for Tanita Tikaram, obviously.
BBC Radio 2
06.30 Chris Evans
The other bit of Children in Need is, obviously, the Music Marathon here on Radio 2, which used to run for 24 hours and all the specialist jocks got involved but now only happens for twelve. It always make for entertaining listening, though, and the doubly good news is that Steve Wright is on holiday, although he is replaced by Richard Allinson, who always gets cited as the ultimate radio professional and there were those stories last year about him replacing Evans for a week and being more popular, though frankly we find his style so slick and unemotional that we can only listen to him for ten minutes before he starts to set our teeth on edge. Though he beats Wright and Tim Smith spending vital minutes the other day pondering why the Piccadilly Line was slow the previous night. Not only do you not discuss something like that on national radio, as most of the audience does not care, you also don’t discuss it on radio full stop because it’s so inconsequential! |
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That’s in addition to their talky bit the other week about what was AV1 on their respective tellies. For heaven’s sake. Anyway, as we listen to our friends Pigbag and their big record, we’ll leave you for this week. To subscribe, click here
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