TV Cream

How We Used To List

How We Used To List: 18th-24th MAY 2002


What we were watching this week 20 years ago, as recorded in the back-issues of TV Cream’s weekly ‘e-mag’, Creamguide…

(We still send out Creamguides every week via email. If you’d like to receive it – it’s free, there are no ads, we don’t sell on your address, you can unsubscribe whenever; we’re basically soppy like that – then fill in your details below.)


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TV CREAM TIMES
18th -24th May 2002
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All the funny bits – Phil Norman, Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 18th May

BBC2

12.00 Mr Lucky
Cary Grant runs floating casino, learns to knit, reforms character. First of two Grant-funded films in BBC2’s slightly mismatched three-film matinee, followed by…

13.40 (No! No!) Notorious!
… which is also the first of several films this week related to ’80s pop hits, so in the spirit of the eagerly anticipated Creamup Top 100 Singles, we’re enlisting lyrical help for these billings. So – chauvinist FBI agent Grant enlists Ingrid Bergman into a spy ring (“Girls will keep the se-crets/So long as boys make the noise”) to uncover a plot revolving around the then hush-hush subject of uranium (“I can’t read about it/Burns the skin from your eyes”) being manufactured by Nazis in Rio (“Fools run rings to break up/Something they’ll never destroy”) led by Berg-man’s tragic ex Claude Rains (“You own the money/You control the witness/I hear you’re lone-ly/Don’t monkey with my business”) leading to a tense finale (“Grand notorious slam/Bam!/And who really gives a damn/For a flaky bandit?”)

15.20 Logan’s Run
Annual outing for the much-loved prog sci-fi panto. Michael York and Jenny Agutter escape from queasily rendered Radio 1-style age fascist society and shamble arbitrarily from set piece to set piece, ranging from the bizarre (a barrel-scraping deep freeze robot guardian) to the slightly annoying (the bathetic ‘Peter Ustinov’s mad cat recluse bloke’ ending). Of course, it’s a moral tale wrapped in an ethical conundrum – would you rather dress up in a dayglo Batman cape and spin around in mid-air until you explode, or have to sit about in some wilderness lis-tening to an avuncular old fruit quote TS Eliot at you forever? The bleakest vision of the future ever committed to celluloid.

22.00 Arena: Estonia Dreams Of Eurovision
Next week sees what must be the first ever programme made by Estonian television to appear on British screens, and to mark this acheivement, Arena (yes, it’s still going) looks at how they’re going to do it. Actually this in itself may be an Estonian TV production, and if that’s the case, ignore that first line.

ITV

13.10 Our Lips Are Sealed
To say this comedy starring frightening US twin moppets Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen is off our usual remit is putting it mildly, but we’ve got this ill-advised ’80s lyrics conceit to follow through, so bear with us. Anyway, the two annoying yet inexplicably popular girls (“We can’t stop them/Only laugh at them”) get in trouble, somehow, with the Mafia (“Dragged up from the underworld/Just like some precious pearl”) and emigrate to Australia for some bog-standard teen shenanigans (“Pay no mind to what they say/It doesn’t matter anyway”). Oh, and it features the son of Ernie Hudson, of Ghostbusters (“Can you see them/See right through them”) fame.

20.15 Family Fortunes
This isn’t actually relevant either, but we’d like to record somewhere that the episodes ITV are repeating on weekdays at twelve o’clock come from 1996! Monday’s even had a joke about Yorkshire Water in it! We couldn’t believe it! And Fifteen To One was a repeat, as well.

02.20 Malone
An ’87 vintage all-action Burt Reynolds retires from the CIA and runs up against an evil property developer in a remote town, toting a sawn-off shotgun in a manner seasoned Burt-watchers have described as “a tad unconvincing”. Still, he redeemed hiself later that same year by providing the voice of Evie Garland’s alien dad in “What was that programme..?” Cream post-bag favourite Out of This World, so we’re willing to overlook this one.

CHANNEL 4

05.55 Bagpuss
They’ve stopped showing The Galloping Gourmet on Saturday Kitchen, worse luck, so this is the best thing on all morning.

19.20 Carry On Up the Khyber
“Mad! They’re all stark staring mad!” “Why have I been interrupted mid-tiffin?” “Rank stupidi-ty!” “Fakir! Off!” Somewhere in the top five ‘Ons, without doubt – a shade above Cleo, clearly better written than Camping, but not as much fun as Screaming (and we’ll refrain from bang-ing on about Cabby just this once). Extra-curricular turns from Roy Castle, Angela ‘Digby’ Doug-las, Cardew ‘The Cad’ Robinson, Johnny Briggs, John ‘Mallens’ Hallam, Wanda ‘UFO’ Ventham, Valerie ‘It Might as Well be String’ Leon, plus a narration from good old Patrick ‘Air attack warning’ Allen.

21.00 The 100 Greatest World Cup Moments
Of course we’re not crazy about the 100 Greatest strand, but this one’s made by Chrysalis Sport so they may actually know what they’re talking about. We’re hoping for a) Des dying on his arse before England vs Cameroon in 1990; b) Martin O’Neill interviewing Robbie Williams; c) a montage of Greavsie’s T-shirt slogans from 1990; d) Matthew Lorenzo’s Dallas Brunch; e) the BBC 1994 World Cup Doo-wop and f) a burst of Aztec Lightning, which is our favourite ever World Cup theme.

CHANNEL 5

01.40 You’re a Big Boy Now
Naive young librarian rejects wholesome advances of Karen ‘Easy Rider’ Black for kinky domi-natrix Elizabeth ‘Mrs. Brisby off of The Secret of NIMH’ Hartman. Surely that bit of casting’s the wrong way round? Rip ‘Artie’ Torn co-stars in very probably the closest Francis Ford Coppo-la has ever got to making a version of that episode of Sorry! where Ronnie Corbett runs away from home and shacks up with unconvincing squatter Cathy ‘House of Elliott’ Murphy. You know – “Hi, I’m Sharon – ‘Shaz’.” “I’m Timothy – ‘Tiz’.” That one.

05.35 Sons and Daughters
This’d be better twelve hours earlier, wouldn’t it?

Sunday 19th May

BBC1

13.35 Zulu Dawn
First of two needless sequels to big pictures on the Beeb today. Here Burt Lancaster, Denholm Elliott, Peter Vaughan, Christopher Cazenove, Bob Hoskins, Phil Daniels, Peter O’Toole, Ronald Pickup, Ronald Lacey, John Mills and Freddie Jones take up where Michael Caine left off.

17.15 Points Of View
A viewer congratulates this series after last week’s episode was almost entirely devoted to scheduling, but unfortunately this was just hijacked by Buffy fans moaning it had been taken off for the snooker, as if we’d not heard them every single time that’s happened for the past three years. And loads of people moaning about them taking off 24, including one letter which made it sound like the writer had turned on the telly at ten o’clock and sat there for an hour waiting for it to start, and those kind of people deserve no sympathy. Buy the Radio Times, for Christ’s sake!

21.00 Auf Wiedershen Pet
Our complaint that nobody can spell the name of this programme correctly was rather under-mined last week when we spelt the name of this programme incorrectly. Bah.

22.55 Jaws 2
Schneider is back! Back! Back! As is yer fish. Quite a neatly-turned sequel as it goes, but who wants a sequel to Jaws in the first place? Wake us up when Michael Caine’s entry gets an air-ing. Er, so to speak. Sorry, this isn’t a very good billing.

BBC2

11.20/12.10 Star Trek
As ever, the first episode of this double bill is not on up north. Dunno why they don’t bother with a Pops 2 omnibus here, actually.

ITV

15.05 Arabesque
Egyptologst Gregory Peck gets enlisted to foil an Arab political assassination, with the help and hindrance of Sophia Loren. Borderline camp, follow-that-car spy fun, like last week’s Charade, but with uber-’60s fashions and camerawork.

CHANNEL 4

06.15 The Magic Roundabout
Also this morning, Hollyoaks at 8.30am! Well, it is a children’s programme anyway.

CHANNEL 5

17.25 The Neverending Story
Deeply unlikeable child Bastian escapes into an old storybook (“Reach the stars/Fly a fantasy”) to a mythical land and saves the obligatory princess (“Show no fear/For she may fade away”) before realising the book itelf was actually a tiresome metaphor for life all along (“Written on the pages/Is the answer to a neverending storeeeee/Woah-oh, woah-oh, woah-oh”). Inspired two repetitive sequels (Neverending storeeee/Woah-oh, woah-oh, woah-oh/Storeeeeeeee/Woah-oh, woah-oh, woah-oh”).

Monday 20th May

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
A great episode on Monday when Konnie was dispatched to Hollywood to learn how to be a hairdresser, an item which could easily have been done in Shepherd’s Bush. Anyway, today the gang start preparing their Golden Jubilee party, as indeed are we in the Creamguide Office. But that’s another story, which you can read about soon.

BBC2

07.20 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show
We hear the CBBC channel is ‘not performing as well as expected’, not surprising if they’ve got Lolly presenting and programmes like this. On every day at this time, too.

13.10 Till the Clouds Roll By
Mammoth biog of Jerome Kern, liberally peppered with songs from his shows. A preg-a-nant Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra in a Marty Hopkirk suit, Angela Lansbury singing How’d Ya Like To Spoon With Me? and a completely OTT “stairway to heaven” set make up two hours plus of tuneful wallowing.

18.20 Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
This was on last week too, but we, er, forgot to bill it. Oops.

21.00 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
This programme is still funny! And it’s a Eurovision special, so the regulars are joined by Sonia, Cheryl Baker, Johnny Logan and – yes! – Wogan. We’re really looking forward to seeing if he does the lyrics round too.

22.00 The Day Today
Not sure what’s more annoying, people referring to this as ‘Chris Morris’s The Day Today’ or people referring to this as ‘Steve Coogan’s The Day Today’. There’s a full cast and crew behind this, and they’re all great – well, except for Patrick Marber, of course.

ITV

17.05 Never Had It So Good
We saw bits of this last week, although we turned off Friday’s in disgust when billed panellist Stuart Maconie didn’t appear. We saw it again on Tuesday, when he did appear (introduced as “Radio 2’s youngest DJ”, fact fans) and he answered, more or less, every single question. Un-like Rowland Rivron who, of course, just sits there not being funny, much like he’s done on eve-ry programme he’s ever done. We dunno who the guests are at all this week, so you’ll have to take your chances.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched
Last day of the Test Match today, and presumably C4 don’t expect it to be a close one because coverage is scheduled to end at 16.30 for the Brookie omnibus, which is very odd scheduling indeed. If it’s already over, there’s a Countdown repeat at 15.45, but as we predicted it’s a 45-minute one, and also…

12.30 The Fortune Cookie
Cameraman Jack Lemmon gets run over by a footballer. Crooked lawyer brother-in-law Walter Matthau seeks to capitalise on his minor injuries for a CBS-sueing fortune. Comic moral di-lemma since rehashed in just about every American sitcom ever, from The Simpsons to Silver Spoons.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
Even if you hate cricket, and there’s something about Mark Nicholas we really don’t like – not the thing about him being the spit of Bob Mills – it’s still better than this.

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After four months of good great memories, the TVCHW department is shutting down. Back at the start of this year we took over the office space left by the old Challenge TV section (re-member that? What were they on?!) but – well – the plug’s being pulled. The Creamguide Ed is said to be angry at the funny looking name he’s obliged to bill at the start of each edition carry-ing the section, and plus nowadays he’s looking for something more “list-based” to include in the guide. Preferably something that starts with a proposition, and then just lists loads of names to whom this proposition could apply (the pilot version we saw was entitled “People Who Are Presenters On TV That We Have Seen On TV”).

Nevertheless we have to mention (or face losing our severance pay) that “TV Cream Heroes” continues in Radio Cream Times. This unofficial derivation of the TVCHW format will continue to catalogue the cream of radio stars broadcasting that week.

LET’S REMEMBER TV CREAM HEROES WEEKLY THIS WAY
#15 LYSETTE ANTHONY as seen on NIGHT AND DAY, Thursday 23.00, ITV1

If our dad was writing this, of course, he’d pointedly refer to NIGHT AND DAY as “NIGHTANDAY” and then probably go onto muse that “pointedly” is a useful word. And it’s due to conceits such as our dad’s possible rendition of this section that TVCHW is now coming to a close. Nevertheless we’re really excited to be ushering Lysette Anthony through our doors for this final edition, and then sitting her down to ask her how come she wasn’t invited to the AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET revival.

Our first memory of Lysette (and the assumption that you’re more interested in us than our actual subject each week probably hasn’t helped matters either) is of course in THREE UP TWO DOWN which imdb.com describes as “comedy series”. But our dad used to like it, which was sort of when he was going through a phase of liking BREAD and HOWARD’S WAY too. With KRULL being hot stuff in video rental terms in the ’80s (alongside THE TERMINATOR, THE HITCHER and BEAST MASTER, natch) our next Lysette memory comes from there. “They said I was an amateur. My voice was dubbed when there was nothing wrong with it”, she’s said in reference to the film. “I did a BBC TV adaptation of Dombey and Son just after wrapping KRULL, and my voice was fine in that. People were so thoughtless and horribly unkind to me over KRULL. In one year, I went from being a promising newcomer to being thrown out with the garbage because people thought I couldn’t cut it.”

Lysette spent the latter part of the ’80s in THE LADY AND THE HIGHWAYMAN, JACK THE RIP-PER and the revival of DARK SHADOWS but came back to prominence (in our house) in 1991 when she appeared as Ms Scarlet in CLUEDO (memo: must remember to ask Lysette if she has any funny stories from the series involving Tom Baker). In 1998 she was in a rubbish Depeche Mode video but she’s back on the telly regularly now with NIGHT AND DAY… only our dad doesn’t watch that. Welcome, Lysette to the last weekly intake of TV Cream Heroes. Close the doors behind you.

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THE BEST OF BRITTON
And by way of a last committment, we can now reveal the special TV Cream wall-paper build around Jill Phythian (that’s “fifth-ian”) award-winning “Ferna Lisa” portrait. Go here: http://tv.cream.org/fernalisa.jpg.
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Tuesday 21st May

BBC1

14.10 Doctors
Today starring one Andrew Collins (probably not that one, though) and one Mark Curry (could be that one, actually).

REGIONALIA!
23.05 TV’s Finest Failures (Scotland only)
Everyone else got to see this Phill Jupitus-fronted clip show last October, but Scots only get it now, well over a year since it was actually made. It’s hardly been worth the wait, as well, as while a compilation of failed pilots could have made a brilliant programme, this isn’t, because of a piss-poor script and badly-chosen clips. However it does include clips from the *pilot* of Calendar Countdown – not the brown-setted regional experiment they normally show, but the pilot of *that* – which are worth seeing, if only because the rounds last 45 seconds, which is all wrong.

BBC2

18.20 TOTP2
So last Tuesday, Wright had to provide a link between Department S from 1981 and Ce Ce Pe-niston from 1992. Simple enough, you may think. So what does Wright come up with? “Just one year later, here’s Ce Ce Peniston!” For Christ’s sake. Wright appears to have some sort of mental block which renders him unable to tell the difference between the 1980s and the 1990s (actually, given his act, maybe that’s not a surprise), which may not be that big a deal but a) he still gets a ‘written by’ credit, b) this programme isn’t live, so somebody must notice these things, and he does it two or three times a show, and c) about a million other people would kill to do this job. In between cocking up the simplest of introductions, Wright introduces Jesus Jones, Dollar and – at last! – Whistle.

ITV

20.00 Soap Star Lives
We never worked out why this had to change its name from Stars And Their Lives to just Star Lives, unless Granada threatened Will Hanrahan with legal action. In any case, this is just The Carol Vorderman Chat Show, and the new soap-only series (er, hence the name) kicks off with Kevin Kennedy.

22.20 The Unforgettable Joan Sims
Presumably the millions of pounds they lost in ITV Digital would originally have been spent on the Tuesday night schedules. We find these clip shows fairly unsatisfying, to be honest, but we liked Joan Sims and thus this could be good fun.

23.30 England’s World Cup Showdowns
“Do you back him to score? Quickly, yes or no?” We didn’t think this deserved a 22.20 slot in any case, although it’s been worth catching the start of each edition to see the full-length ITV title sequence from each tournament – last week’s 1990 edition even included the ‘ITV Sport in association with National Power’ caption. And tonight we should get to see again the “Is that really a window?” virtual studio from 1998. They recorded three hours of traffic to superim-pose on the back of the set, y’know.

01.00 Something Wild
Uptight businessman Jeff Daniels (“Sometimes I don’t even move a muscle, baby”) hooks up with “wild” good-time girl Melanie Griffith (“You know, sometimes I don’t think right”) com-mits a few petty thefts (“I went out and stole a new pair of shoes”) smashes a few shop win-dows (“There’s a hole where the wind blows through/And some curtains too”) and visits her parents, to the consternation of her ex-convict dad (“A hungry wolf/An angry child/Something wild”) to a soundtrack of David Byrne (“Searching for the meek and mild”), New Order (“I hear voices in the hall”) and, er, UB40 (“I wake up and it’s nothing at all”). Oh, it’s an Iggy Pop song, in case you’re wondering.

03.20 The Big Match Replayed
Don’t forget to set the tape for this, because it’s truly brilliant. Although last time Brian gave away the result of the final match, because at the start of the show he announced there were seventeen goals in the programme, so you knew that the final match would end 4-3. Tch.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

22.00 Sex On TV
A fine episode last week which included First AIDS, which we remember only managing to last five minutes of (halfway through the couple sitting on the sofa making ill-informed pronouce-ments about AIDS) before asking our parents to turn the telly off, because we were scared that the Mike Smith who we knew that talked about pop records had been replaced by one talking about anal sex. So interesting to actually see some of it this time round. We’d like to correct the programme’s boast that Sex With Paula was being shown for the first time though; while it gathered dust on C4’s shelves for a decade after it was made, they did actually screen an hour-long compilation of it in December 1995. This week’s is about the nineties, though, and in-cludes depressing clips from The Word and The Girlie Show.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

14.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
What did we say about this being the new PM @ 1? Today Jack Jones guests.

15.40 The Lady from Yesterday
Wayne ‘Trapper John MD’ Rogers fathers kid in Vietnam, said kid comes back to haunt him, usual TV movie angst is run through. Channel Five watches two more hours sail inexpensively past, goes out for curry with the savings while Family Affairs is on.

21.00 The Terminator
And to add to the Sorry! revelations above, Creamguide (Films) was accused of being a Fresh Fields fan on Ask The Family’s all-new no riff-raff Core Cream forum this week, and by coinci-dence we have actually been “catching up with the antics of Hester and William as they go off in search of those… Fresh Fields” on Granada Plus in recent weeks. Well, the titles at any rate, mainly for *that* textbook sitcom theme tune (see http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/features/tvthemes1.htm for details) and to wryly comment on just how long it takes that silhouette of Julia MacKenzie to toss one bloody pancake.

Wednesday 22nd May

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Matt tells the story of ABBA, which has got to involve some dressing up, hasn’t it? And Matt and Simon will be Frida and Agnetha, and Konnie and Liz will be Bjorn and Benny. We know this show too well, don’t we?

20.00 Only Fools and Horses
The Jolly Boys’ Outing, last shown, we think, in September. In no way are Wednesdays becom-ing a dead night for the Beeb, oh no.

21.30 Not Another Eurovision
Another Angus-fronted clip show, which are normally but not always written by the Bake. We’re convinced that this will contain clips that are a cut above your normal lazy Eurovision compilation, and thus are giving this one our brand new patented Creamguide One To Watch shiny trophy.

BBC2

18.20 TOTP2
We were so pissed off yesterday we neglected to point out that this now seems to be prerma-nently on at twenty past six, but neither the programme nor the BBC2 announcer bothered to mention it either. Not a bad line-up today, either, with Tom Robinson, Morrissey, Secret Affair (once described by someone here as ‘the new wave equivalent of Shed Seven’) and the reason why the new Auf Wiedershen Pet series isn’t as good as the others, Joe Fagin. Although it’s all spoilt by Wright being a completely incompetent wanker, but then you knew that.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
In fact Wednesday appears to be a dead day on all channels.

Thursday 23rd May

BBC1

20.30 This Is Your Life
Bloody hell, Heggessey, this is the sixth consecutive episode that’s on a different time than the last one, which is just ludicrous! Although the subjects have been more or less entirely boring, so maybe she knows exactly what she’s doing.

BBC2

01.50 What Have The Seventies Ever Done For Us?
Now your only chance to catch Joy Manners on the telly.

ITV

22.30 Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned
Even less point than usual on this show last week when almost the whole of the first part was devoted to discussing how David lies in bed. Which is what we want.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

05.50 Bagpuss
There’s no need to mention this in the Core Cream section, thanks.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

Friday 24th May

BBC1

21.30 Blackadder II
Oh, and the other complaint we had about Points Of View was when people moaned that this didn’t start when it was scheduled – as if it hasn’t been on three times in the last four years, and isn’t one of the best-selling videos in Britain, and indeed the whole thing’s on UK Gold on Saturday, like it is every other week – and Tel gave us a clip of Blackadder to make up for it, on-ly it came from Back And Forth. If you didn’t see that, imagine the bit in The Simpsons when Homer travels back in time with a toaster, only extended from five minutes to forty minutes, and with no jokes.

01.25 The Blood Beast Terror
It’s Tigon, a company better known for the rather good Witchfinder General, who dish up the low-budget horror this week. Robert ‘Compact’ Flemyng injects human foestuses with rare Af-rican moth serum in order to produce a bloodsucking giant moth-girl, who in civvies looks re-markably like Wanda ‘UFO’ Ventham. Peter Cushing turns up to investigate these goings on, and for some reason an interminable crap stage version of Frankenstein is mounted halfway through.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

02.10 Room at the Top
Upwardly-mobile northener Laurence Harvey can’t choose between boss’s daughter Heather Sears and Simone Signoret, so decides to have them both. A first-rate drama with a bulging cast list as a bonus, including Ian ‘Don Quick’ Hendry, Wendy ‘Nanny’ Craig, Miriam ‘Rag Trade’ Karlin, Ruth ‘Hope and Keen’ Kettlewell and Prunella ‘oh, I knooow’ Scales.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

21.00 Payback
OK, so technically this should be called Rapp Payback or The Payback Mix to fit into our tire-some little ’80s ruse, but what the hey. A comeback trailing Mary Tyler Moore (“I don’t care what she does/She’ll be doin’ just like she was”) and old TV partner Ed ‘Lou Grant’ Asner (“I can do wheelin’, I can do dealin'”) witness police brutality (“I don’t know karate/But I know ker-razy!”) and find themselves in danger when they blow the whistle (“Tryin’ to make a deal/She wants to squeal/But I had my boys on her heels”) and are subjected to abuse, police harrass-ment and worse (“Get ready, you mother/For the big payback!/The big payback!”)

00.45 Stand and Deliver
Based-on-true-story tale in which a bunch of Puerto Rican LA hard nuts led by a preening Lou Diamond Philips (“The clumsy boots/Peek-a-boo roots/That people think so dashing”) are taught to swap their gangland ways for academia (“Try to use a mirror/Not a bullet or a knife”) to the accompaniment of a Mr Mister soundtrack (“The Devil take your stereo and your record collection”) by paternal tutor Edward James ‘Miami Vice’ Olmos (“The way you look you’ll qual-ify for next year’s old age pension!”)

05.10 Sons and Daughters
As ever ensuring the listings end on a slightly anti-climactic note.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
There’s more to digital telly than Big Brother! Er, we think.

2W
Monday, 20.30
Great TV – This channel is now showing Human Remains, seemingly because it’s got a Welsh person in it. This is worth the bandwidth, isn’t it? Anyway, tonight’s episode is subtitled Before They Were Famous, and while Caroline Wright will probably not be involved, there may be something interesting in it.

CHALLENGE TV
Some time or other
Telly Addicts – “Challenge TV? Is that still going?” Indeed, but since the Creamguide Office’s Challenge TV department was laid off at Christmas, we’re unable to come up with any actual listings. But we do know that they’ve started showing the 1990 series again, and by our calcu-lations it means the Collins family appears either tomorrow (ie, Friday 17th) or on Monday. Or maybe Saturday if it’s on at the weekends. Look, this was never our job, alright?

E4
Sunday, 23.30
Brass Eye Special – We’re not entirely sure what the point is of E4 showing repeats of more or less the same programmes that C4 are repeating at the same time, but there’s bound to be a few “massive, massive Chris Morris fans” who haven’t got round to watching this yet. Here’s your chance, Noble and Silver!

GRANADA PLUS
Saturday, Sunday, 23.30, Monday-Friday, 19.30, 23.00
Bullseye – Judging by this scheduling you’d think G+ were really going places, but then you’ve got…

Saturday, 00.00
The Kenny Everett Video Show – Creamguide’s kiss of death has seen this show relegated to the middle of the night, to make way for In Suspicious Circumstances of all things. Grr.

PARAMOUNT
Saturday, 23.55
The Frank Skinner Christmas Show – It’s as if Paramount just found this episode in the vaults the other week and have decided to repeat it the same number of times as all the other epi-sodes to make it tidy. It’s from 1998, and includes Aled Jones and Mel C, along with a load of jokes that’ll sound great in May.

Sunday, 00.25, Friday, 00.10
A Bit Of Fry and Laurie – “I’ve got nothing against where we live now. It’s just a bit detached.”

Monday-Thursday, 23.00
The Kenny Everett Television Show – At least Paramount keep the flag flying for Cuddly Ken, although you’ve got to sit through Drop The Dead Donkey before it.

Monday-Thursday, 00.05
Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Oh, this again. Last time we knew nothing about which episodes they were showing and how they were shown, and we know even less this time around, so we’ll just have to guess that it’s series one and that the fact the title is down as simply ‘Monty Python’ means the Radio Times is trying to save space rather than confirmation it’s series four.

SKY ONE
Saturday, 23.30, Sunday, 21.00
Pop Years – Repeat of 1990 on Saturday, which was so-so, featuring Wilson, Waterman (whose entire contribution to the Happy Mondays bit was to cry “I’m twisting my melons!” with his hands in the air), Boo, Lindy Layton and Collins, but also D**e B*w**s (“yeah, that was defi-nitely the year of MC Hammer”) and BBMak, who, while everyone else was in front of a blue screen, were seated in a rehearsal area behind a drumkit. We suspect they were trying to prove something. Then on Sunday, what else but, er, 1983?

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Ah, you know – correct at time of writing, refer to England, blah blah.
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IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE AN ESSAY
If you’ve got something to say that’s actually about telly, may we recommend the new Core Cream section on Ask The Family, the TV Cream message board, where you can post observa-tions and ideas, and we’ll, er, read them. And there’s a scoring system which we’re not sure about. You can also post about other stuff as well, including stuff about Creamguide. Com-plaints are welcome – they weren’t always, but nobody’s posted anything in our section for ag-es and we’re getting a bit depressed. Oh, and the TV Cream Update’s there too – http://tv.cream.org
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The Real Cool Dudes – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    May 19, 2022 at 11:40 am

    The TV Cream Message Board has been quite the saga, and more proof that the average man in the street’s ideas about television are insane. Mind you, I couldn’t be trusted to run a TV station myself.

    I believe Peter Cushing said The Blood Beast Terror was the worst film he was ever in. I don’t know if he counted No Secrets as a film.

  2. Andrew Barton

    May 25, 2022 at 10:28 pm

    Logan’s Run featured the late Richard Jordan, who had to replace Edward Woodward briefly on The Equalizer when the latter suffered a heart attack during production, and CBS\Universal Television had to work around it.

  3. Sidney Balmoral James

    June 4, 2022 at 8:44 am

    Crumbs – ‘the worst film Peter Cushing was in’ – it must be dreadful: was there ever such an urbane (and talented) actor who appeared in such unmitigated rubbish? In terms of the inverse relationship between acting ability and the quality of his films, only Klaus Kinski beats him (and Kinski was an awful person, almost universally disliked, and not perhaps completely sane, unlike the much-loved Cushing). For every Hamlet (in which he is superb, and you can see Olivier trying not to laugh), and Star Wars, there are literally dozens of crappy horror films. Look at his filmography from 1967 and try to find one good film other than Star Wars (perhaps just his segment of Torture Garden, and I have a sneaking fondness for Nothing But the Night although it’s no classic).

  4. Richardpd

    June 4, 2022 at 10:05 pm

    Peter Cushing was so nice off the set in Star Wars that Carrie Fisher found it hard to find him villainous. It didn’t help that he was wearing slippers most of the time because the boots of his Imperial uniform hurt his feet!

    Some actors seem to take any work offered to them late in their career, fellow horror star Vincent Price did lots of bizarre ads & endorsed craft kits in his later years, though he was from a wealthy background & collected art so it was probably a case of doing less demanding work as he got old.

    Klaus Kinski is the hunchbacked bandit in For A Few Dollars More, & almost unhinged as the ringleader.

    • Droogie

      June 4, 2022 at 11:12 pm

      Peter Cushing & Vincent Price both appeared in some questionable movies , but were beloved talented professionals and decent blokes with a sense of humor and prepared to send themselves up. Klaus Kinski was none of these things! A narcissistic psychopath that terrified anyone who had the misfortune to work with him. He actually scared Ollie Reed when they made the film Venom together. Co-star Sarah Miles asked Ollie to give Kinski a slap as he was being a nightmare to all the cast and crew but Reed declined saying he wasn’t that bloody mad!

  5. Sidney Balmoral James

    June 5, 2022 at 9:37 am

    His films for Herzog aside, Kinski was never really in projects worthy of his talents. For sheer unmitigated rubbish, with very occasional class assignments, his filmography is hard to beat. It has been said that when they made Fitzcarraldo, the locals who were working as extras were so horrified by this ranting maniac that they seriously offered to do away with him, but Herzog (having already lost his first leading man, Jason Robards), said this was not necessary. Since his death, his daughter has revealed years of sexual abuse by Kinski, which was the last nail in the coffin of his reputation as a man, but I presume it’s still in order to admire him as an actor? I don’t think Kinski appeared in any film with Peter Cushing, but he was in Circus of Fear with Christopher Lee.

    • Droogie

      June 5, 2022 at 6:55 pm

      @Sidney Balmoral James
      Kinski definitely delivers in the Herzog movies playing intense sociopaths and is never boring to watch. His autobiography is a gobsmacking read too and half explains why he became a psychotic humourless egomaniac. ( Being drafted into the German army as a kid at the end of WW2 couldn’t have helped.) There also unsavoury recollections of incestuous feelings for his sister when they used to share a bed together as kids which acts as a warning sign for his later issues with his daughters.

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