TV Cream
Posts By TV Cream
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29.5KIt's Saturday Night72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me
Programmes come and programmes go, but in 1987, mainstream comedy continued to rule Saturday night television. In fact, on one fateful...
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29.7K4It's Saturday Night71. I was in obscurity until this series
Of course, Casualty and The Houseman’s Tale were unrepresentative of the BBC’s previous homegrown Saturday night dramatic fare. The lineage of The...
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28.8KIt's Saturday Night70. Stretchers never go up stairs
“Death is part of our business whether we like it or not, and somewhere along the line we have to compromise.” So...
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28.7K6It's Saturday Night69. The powers that be listened to Denis
ITV in 1986 was not just about straight comedy series. Another force for light entertainment was burgeoning too. With Game For A...
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8.2K4Cream over BritainCreamguide Review of the Year: 2018
And so another year has gone, and we’re all thrilled we’ve come out of it in one piece. As ever loads of...
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6.8K4RIP2018 in memoriam
Doreen Keogh (5/2/16-31/12/17), first Rovers Return barmaid Concepta Riley and Mrs Doyle’s mainland friend Mrs Dineen Denise LaSalle (16/7/39-8/1/18), soul singer and...
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28.1KIt's Saturday Night68. We Are The Funnymen
Between them it might have seemed that TVS and LWT had the monopoly on mainstream Saturday evening comedy series, yet this was not entirely...
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8.2K1The 2010s Christmas Logs2018
“Changing their lives for ever” In 2018, Christmas telly is in something of a state of flux. With the streaming services continuing...
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6.0K3Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… December 1980
Wednesday, 24th December 1980 PICK OF THE DAY 4.45pm THE ALL STAR RECORD BREAKERS, BBC1 In the great 2000+ years history of...
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6.3K3Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 24th
1977: It’s gone down in folklore that Eric Morecambe’s appearance on World Of Sport was dreamt up by him and Dickie Davies...
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28.5KIt's Saturday Night67. Well bottom’s not funny
Recognising that their best tactic was to live up to their promises, TVS invested a lot of time and money into quality drama...
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4.0K3Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 23rd
1981: Even the Community Programming Unit has to let its hair down occasionally. Grapevine, “The Self-Help Show”, is still very low-key in...
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3.2K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 22nd
1979: 21 minutes of the pre-Christmas Swap Shop are illuminated by Debbie Harry and a Super 8 camera wielding Chris Stein taking...
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2.8KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 21st
1981: Westward Television celebrated its 20th anniversary, eight months after the actual date and ten days before the franchise closed. Hey, better...
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3.1K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 20th
1971: Opportunity Knocks’ big discoveries in 1971 were Little & Large, but despite making the All Winners Show they weren’t in contention...
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4.7KCream over BritainChristmas Creamguide 2018: Week Two
For we know we should be gay Hullo again! And we’re back with the second half of your double Christmas Creamguide with...
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4.7KCream over BritainChristmas Creamguide 2018: Week One
Hullo there! And welcome to the maybe-legendary-but-it’s-not-for-us-to-say Christmas Creamguide, back for a nineteenth festive season. As in previous years, it’s so big...
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3.0K2Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 19th
1977: You’re quite right it’s Monday, Play School, and as the start of Christmas week Chloe Ashcroft and Johnny Ball are getting...
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4.0K3Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… December 2003
Wednesday, 17th December 2003 PICK OF THE DAY 9.00pm THE MILLION POUND PROPERTY EXPERIMENT, BBC2 The twilight of the TV-shows-about-housing boom sees...
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2.6KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 18th
1980: Top Of The Pops (full playlist), the last one before Christmas. Both Simon Bates and the production team are in “that”...
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14.4KWhat We Just WatchedWhat We Just Watched: Christmas Special 2018
For this Yuletide episode, Chris and Ian aren’t exchanging gifts, but fruity opinions of two festive TV specials of yore. Because...
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3.1K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 17th
1977: “He’s got a funny surname but I can’t remember it!” Our Show was what LWT, with the backing of Anglia and...
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27.4K3It's Saturday Night66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it’s corny – just don’t do that
For all its attempts at breaking new ground, Bobby Davro On The Box appealed to a relatively conservative audience. Journalist Stewart Knowles attended a...
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3.3K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 16th
1980: Um, is it alright if we all agree to skip past the imagery of the first show trailed here? Thanks. BBC1’s...
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2.4K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 15th
1987: We haven’t included a lot of adverts in this Advent Calendar so far because there’s great vats of them on YouTube...
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2.5K2Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 14th
1976: Post-Grundy, the Sex Pistols found promoters and local councils weren’t as amenable to putting on their UK tour as they had...
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2.0KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 13th
1970: “The work to rule is over!” And unfortunately so is the online presence of the full Bob-fronted Golden Shot that was...
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2.2KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 12th
1981: Some of the bits between the programmes on BBC2. “It’s really sodding cold” is the news lead, including a rare namecheck...
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4.4K5Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… December 1982
Wednesday, 15th December 1982 PICK OF THE DAY 7.00pm TOP SECRET, BBC1 Our enduring affection for this teatime parlour show lies –...
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2.7KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 11th
1980: Tributes to John Lennon were still having to be made, Top Of The Pops finding a dark corner of the studio...
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2.8K2Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 10th
1981: One of the great pop years, where the rise of the synths, punk’s fallout, the soul revival, rock’n’roll revivalism, weird European...
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26.1KIt's Saturday Night65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time
On Saturday 4 January 1986, ITV’s evening schedule included an oddity – 60 minutes of extreme alternative comedy in the shape of...
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3.1K2Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 9th
1980: John Lennon was declared dead at 3.50am UK time, which means it’s very likely this Midday News report would have been...
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3.2K2Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 8th
1979: The first Star Trek film was released the previous day in the US and on the 15th here. The BBC children’s...
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3.4K4Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 7th
1984: “Lumberjack? Steeplejack? Oh, Uncle Jack?” The Chas & Dave theme and presence of Stu Francis can only mean Crackerjack was on...
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2.9KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 6th
1973: Everyone was into oil fields in the mid-70s, and a discovery near the Shetlands led John Craven’s Newsround. Craven himself had...
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3.3K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 5th
1982: As trailed by the natural face of experimental broadcasting, Arthur Mullard, although The Saturday Show found an ideal front”person” for the...
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4.0K3Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… December 1988
Wednesday, 7th December 1988 PICK OF THE DAY 7.35pm DOCTOR WHO, BBC1 “We have none of this jazz whereof you speak, Doctor,...
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2.9KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 4th
1974: The Irish border problem used to mean something entirely different. Nationwide traversed the divide in the company of Bernard Falk, who...
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3.0KCream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 3rd
1980: Peter Davison had been named as the Fifth Doctor a month earlier and was three and a half months away from...
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26.0KIt's Saturday Night64. Things Look Very Precarious
With the arrival of Casualty, Saturday evenings had taken on a surprisingly grim aspect, yet the real world could also violate the...
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9.0K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 2nd
1981: Southern was on the way out at the end of the year which would inevitably mean an end to Houseparty, the...
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5.4K1Cream over BritainAdvent Calendar: December 1st
Hello there! Why Don’t YouTube? here, popping in from next door where all year we’ve been collating and contextualising clips over at...
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8.0KTV: C is for...Cut Price Comedy Show, The
VERY FIRST comedy sketch show to appear on the new network
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4.3K2Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… November 1967
Wednesday, 29th November 1967 PICK OF THE DAY 8pm MAN IN A SUITCASE, ITV Evans-nabbed reverb-drenched piano and Ipcress File-riffing graphics of...
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25.7K3It's Saturday Night63. A slightly pretentious manifesto
It would be up to other dramas to make their mark on Saturday nights. Jeremy Brock – then script editing Juliet Bravo was...
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4.2K2Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… November 1998
Wednesday, 18th November 1998 PICK OF THE DAY 10pm WAR AND PISTE, BBC1 As the docu-soap reaches its apex year (Lakesiders debuted...
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25.2K1It's Saturday Night62. There’s going to come a time when you’ll have to go to the BBC
Come 1986 and, as per usual, ITV (now operating with the strap-line “It’s worth coming home to … ”) was playing...
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5.3K8Your Wednesday Night In...Your Wednesday Night In… November 1979
Wednesday, 14th November 1979 PICK OF THE DAY 9pm QUATERMASS, ITV It’s near sacrilege to say so, but those black and white...
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25.1K4It's Saturday Night61. More pilots than British Airways
While LWT was busy furnishing British entertainment with new, alternative comedians, the station’s dedication towards mainstream acts remained undimmed, and as if...
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