TV Cream

How We Used To List

How We Used To List: 1st-7th JUNE 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
1st – 7th June 2002
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Weekend playas –
Phil Norman, Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 1st June

BBC1

09.45 Perry Mason
Ah, the World Cup, always a treat for the telly fan because a) it’s the World Cup, and b) it means the telly schedules go absolutely bonkers. Everything’s all over the place this week, and that’s before we start getting bogged down in schedule As and schedule Bs. Here’s a good example; The Saturday Show is flung on BBC2, yet could easily have been on BBC1 if they’d waited another fifteen minutes, and the gap’s filled with this and…

11.15 Quincy
… this. Be great if it got more viewers than The Saturday Show, wouldn’t it? Mind you, SMTV’s on Monday, which is even more bonkers. And This Morning in the afternoon.

23.35 Harrison: Cry of the City
Edward Woodward stars as a police officer who leaves the British mainland to investigate a murder case on a remote and mysterious island governed by arcane, unsavoury laws… Manhattan! Ha ha! Cynthia ‘Wallis Simpson’ Harris, Harvey ‘Cagney and Lacey’ Atkin and Elizabeth ‘Beyond Bedlam’ Hurley are among the small-fry support.

BBC2

15.15 A Night to Remember
The proper Titanic film, of course, in which Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Kenneth Griffith, David McCallum, Geoffrey ‘Catweazle’ Bayldon, Bee ‘are you saying ‘Ni!’ to that old woman?’ Duffell, Gerald ‘Adamant’ Harper, Andrew ‘Quatermass’ Keir, Stratford ‘Barlow’ Johns, Desmond ‘Q’ Llewelyn, Derren ‘Special Branch’ Nesbitt and Norman ‘Simon Simon’ Rossington all conspicuously fail to wear white trousers with racoon-tail keyrings on their belts, invent the moonwalk and stiffly mime pouring a drink in front of a bunch of bewildered-looking teenagers who only came to see Depeche Mode.

17.15 Hi-De-Hi!
The first ever episode, for some reason – perhaps in response to that bloke who wrote to Points of View the other week and asked to see it again, and was directed to UK Gold, which is surely not right.

20.10 Three Lions
The best bit about Match Of The World Cup was the stuff about the draw for the 1982 tournament, which included a clip of Jimmy Hill in a special set with ‘WORLD CUP DRAW 1982’ on the back of it. Anyway, here’s that promised repeat of the history of the England team from 1966, revised and updated; but not today’s instalment, which just sticks the first two hour-long parts together to take us right up to 1986.

00.45 The Last Tycoon
Pinter tries to finish what Fitzgerald started, a sort of ambling tale of an MGM studio boss in love results. De Niro, Curtis, Mitchum, Nicholson, Pleasence and Milland don the ’30s attire and make with the pauses.

ITV

13.00 Carry On Laughing
How come this has started appearing again?

CHANNEL 4

07.00 My Sister Eileen
Publisher Jack Lemmon takes note when Janet Leigh moves into Greenwich Village in a musical with a heavy Bob ‘Cabaret’ Fosse involvement. Dick ‘original Darrin’ York and Kurt ‘Fitzhugh’ Kasznar take part.

12.30 Little House On The Prairie
Well, you can always rely on this.

21.00 When Freddie Mercury Met Kenny Everett
This is the start of a new occasional series about couples, and we know there’s a When Wilfrid Brambell Met Harry H Corbett coming up soon. To kick it off, though, an intriguing-sounding documentary which is worth recommending because Cuddly Ken’s in it, and that’s always reason enough.

22.35 Killer Queen!
See, because it’s Jubilee weekend. This feature-length documentary promises to tell the story of the band, including previously unseen footage and new interviews, but do bear in mind that the last programme on C4 to promise this was produced by the group’s managers, so don’t expect muckraking. Not to say that automatically makes it a rotten programme, of course.

01.45 The Blob
“It creeps! It crawls! It eats you alive!” Steve McQueen stars in this ’50s Rowntree’s jelly-based horror of the sort that the likes of Jonathan Ross used to bore us to death with in the ’80s. But Burt Bacharach’s nifty cha-cha-cha theme tune (“Be careful of The Blob!”) and the knowledge that the belated sequel was directed by Larry Hagman will never dull.

CHANNEL 5

17.10 A Goofy Movie
Disney take what used to be their only remotely funny short feature character and stick him in a dreary sub-National Lampoon’s Vacation family road trip scenario. The ever-knowledgeable Radio Times blames “computers” for the lacklustre animation, which of course is all hand-drawn. Actually, this is still an improvement on the character’s nadir, the dire 1984 Olympic tie-in Sport Goofy, which featured the grossly hypocritical song You Can Always Be Number One, containing advice (“Don’t hide your face when you miss the point/Stand up and take a bow”) which we’re sure thousands of unfit kids in the uber-competitive American school system were extremely thankful for.

19.10 From Turnip To Swede: England’s Football Managers
Recently C5 lobbied the ITC to force the Beeb and ITV to give them the rights to the first round World Cup matches they can’t show because they clash with other matches. Imagine how they would have promoted them – ‘We’ve got eight mostly irrelevant group games for you, when other channels are showing more important ones, and none of the rest of the tournament!’ Fortunately the ITC were not convinced, and so they’re producing some me-too documentaries instead, this one looking back at the careers of the last five gaffers.

00.00 American Flyers
Ropey cycling ‘n’ cancer brotherly love tearjerker with Kevin Costner, plus hair. We’re quite glad Big Brother appears to be going down the dumper this year, as it’s annoying us even more at work now it’s started – and it turns out that wrong number fiasco wasn’t the press’ fault, Endemol actually gave out our number as the BB information line, the idiots! You never got this with Unnovations.

02.00 The Bad Seed
The original ‘evil eight-year-old’ chiller adapted from the eponymous play, which has inspired Nick Cave, countless ‘dark’ comedy writers, and the MPPC to change the ending to a morally-rigid ‘crime doesn’t pay’ punchline, complete with a bizarre round of post-credits corporal punishment. Top that, Velvet Soup writers!

05.35 Sons and Daughters
Actually more appealing than the idea of Ray Stubbs at 6am, which we’re getting tomorrow.

Sunday 2nd June

BBC1

16.20 Points Of View
We like the way the interview with the producer of Spooks was trailed last week but is on this week, when everyone’s forgotten about it, seemingly because Tel must do the important bits, not his stand-ins. And we’d like to complain about the fact that BBC1 are trailing Spooks every five minutes at the moment. Is there nothing else on?

21.00 Auf Wiedershen Pet
Last in the series, unfortunately for the Beeb. Time for another One Foot In The Grave revival, maybe?

22.00 There’s Only One Paul McCartney
Let’s hope this is more successful than the George Harrison documentary that ended up not going out at Christmas. Incidentally, sorry to step on Radio Cream Times’ toes, but last week’s Pick Of The Pops was useless, because for a start the first chart was from 1960, which we don’t want to hear, and then in 1980 Dale didn’t play Coming Up, Mirror In The Bathroom or Geno, but did play Fool For Your Loving by Whitesnake. And he also played Johnny Logan at number one, and after that Richard Allinson came on and like an idiot said ‘He’s the guy who won Eurovision three times, and Ireland had to tell him to stop cos it was costing too much!’ Which is completely and utterly wrong on so many levels. OK, rant over, now Radio Cream Times can slag off a telly programme next week, if it wants.

23.45 North Dallas Forty
Cynical and raucous American football comedy with an authentically feather-cutted and droopy-tached Nick Nolte, which fortunately contains very little actual American football.

BBC2

18.15 Steptoe and Son
Not sure why there are so many sitcom repeats on this week, if it’s for a choice of non-football viewing then it doesn’t explain why they’re not on in the morning.

18.45 Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
And they all seem to be opening episodes, as well. This had better not be the start of another bloody rerun.

20.30 Three Lions
Second part of the documentary kicks off in 1990, and includes a brilliant bit with Mark Goodier interviewing the team on Top of the Pops about World In Motion, in the campest way possible. Maybe we don’t need yet another showing for That 1990 Semi-Final again, but there’s also half an hour at the end summarising what’s happened since the first screening two years ago.

CHANNEL 4

06.05 The Clangers
Oversized models of these would be good, wouldn’t they?

14.40 Dinosaurus!
Nuclear testing in Caribbean unleashes latex T-Rex and Brontosaurus, plus bloke pretending to be caveman. “Jurassic Park it ain’t!” guffaws the Radio Times, taking a leaf out of the TV Times’ film criticism handbook.

23.05 Banzai Jubilee Special
Not, of course, including Guess How Fast The Queen Mother’s Funeral Procession Is Going, but there should be enough cracking stuff in this brand new episode to justify staying up – notably so we can find out exactly how many commemorative coins Dennis Healey can fit in his mouth.

00.05 The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert
The nearest thing we got to Live Aid in the nineties (and yes, we do remember Net Aid) gets the documentary tribute, with highlights and previously unseen footage. Of course, the TV coverage was presented by Anthony H Wilson, making a rare jaunt over to the Beeb, and Lisa I’Anson, about three years before she became “famous”.

CHANNEL 5

21.00 Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut
The Fifth Element it ain’t! Rutger Hauer draws ever closer to those sainted Guinness ads. We don’t care what anyone else says, no film with a Vangelis soundtrack can ever be called a ‘classic’. Daryl Hannah’s got lovely hair in it, though.

Monday 3rd June

BBC1

12.10 Dad’s Army
Filling in an awkward gap twixt the football and…

12.45 All You Need Is Love
This is bound to be bodged, but what the hell. The Queen sets off a mass singalong of the aforementioned song, and then David Dimbleby chats to George Martin on what’s bound to be a rockin’ show.

14.30 Blue Peter Jubilee Party
Yes! A whopping two hours of BP, and better still it’s a live roadshow from Birmingham so we’ll get to see Sir Matt Baker work the crowd and deal with technical cock-ups in his own inimitable fashion. It’s also preceded by David Dimbleby previewing the rest of the Jubilee events, and we really are hoping that he’ll have to hand over to them, because we love that sort of thing. Indeed, he may even have to do a live link-up, and interview Matt. Wouldn’t that be brilliant?

19.30 Party At The Palace
Four hours long! We’re probably not going to watch this, but we might take a peek to see what song Ozzy Osbourne does. Incidentally, worth looking up “Queen Jubilee Concert” on Google Groups, because there’s a great thread in alt.fan.genesis with someone pointing out that Phil Collins is performing, and someone replying ‘I didn’t think Phil even liked Queen’. Heh heh.

00.05 The Honorary Consul
Richard Gere kidnaps diplomat Michael Caine in a standard Grahame Greene adaptation, with Bob Hoskins and, as a British ambassador of course, Geoffrey Palmer.

BBC2

12.15 Follow Me, Boys!
Fred ‘Flubber’ MacMurray becomes a scoutmaster in this Disney mushcom. More than that we can’t tell you, so to comply with Creamguide Writer’s Union ruling we’ll just sit here and tediously pad this billing out a bit longer with whatever comes into our heads. Tum te tum… hey, you seen that Maureen Lipman’s joing Corrie? Desperate I call it… that Sunita, eh? Why did she bother? Mind you, I never watch it… that Paul Boateng, eh? In his underpants and all… is it just me or does anyone else get mixed up between the Yarls Wood detention centre and the Jorvik viking centre? Cuh… that Alastair Darling, eh? It’ll be like Blackadder all over again… right, everybody out!

14.30 The Great Gatsby
Would this be a good time to mention that this is a film we’ve never seen, of a book we tried to read once, but never got past the description of the house in the first chapter, and then move swiftly on to the next billing?

16.50 Legend
More pomp-fantasy from Scott, here with Tim Curry’s devilishly camp party piece amongst some variable sets. In keeping with Ridley’s synth-prog soundtrack furrow, it’s Tangerine Dream, Jon ‘I’ll Find My Way Home’ Anderson and, er, Bryan Ferry on vibes.

18.15 Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Clearly more fun than the *quadruple bill* of Hollyoaks opposite.

22.00 The Day Today
Ah, these things aren’t just flung on, because this is the one with Alan’s Soccer Meter in it. Which we just saw Graham Miller seemingly reviving on the ITV News.

22.30 Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
We’ve had the slightly underrated, knockabout one, and the slightly overrated, controversial one, now here’s the one you thought was great when you saw it on video round your mate’s house at the age of fourteen, but now realise is a bit crap, really. If this is intended as some “antidote to the jubilee” subversion, they could have shown that Python episode with the
undertaker’s sketch (“HM the Queen still watching The Virginian” etc.) instead. Or the Pantomime Princess Margaret episode.

ITV

15.10 Firefox
Clint steals Russian plane! Plane plugs into Clint’s brain! Plane looks extremely unconvincing in flight. But note how many British actors are roped in to play Soviets – Warren ‘Dim’ Clarke, Ronald ‘baby-eating bishop of Bath and Wells’ Lacey, Nigel ‘Appleby’ Hawthorne, Clive ‘revamped Tomorrow People’ Merrison and Hugh ‘Edge of Darkness’ Fraser all don the sub-Kruszchev growl.

18.00 Star Lives
Dunno what’s happened to the soap-based episodes, and of course now they give away who it’s going to be anyway, so where’s the fun in that? Oh, and it’s Derek Fowlds.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

23.10 Top Ten Football Songs
Yes! This is exactly what they should be doing in Top Ten, because this could include a ten-minute feature on the Anfield Rap, and that’s what we want. We’re also hoping for Ole Ola, which Andy Cameron rather unfairly slammed on Match Of The World Cup the other night, we felt, and the majestic (“Yabba-dabba-doo, we support the boys in blue, and it’s…”) Easy Easy. Honestly, this could be truly brilliant.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
We’d like to cpmplain about Alison Graham in the Radio Times use this programme as lazy comedy short-hand for crap telly, because that’s our job.

14.00 Giant
The word “sweeping” could have been invented for this generation-spanning Texan cattle ‘n’ oil saga, with Liz Taylor and Rock Hudson at the centre of events, Dennis Hopper on the periphery, and James Dean, as the improbably named Jet Rink, drilling for Texas tea, going grey and collapsing over a table. Other things happen, of course, but then, with three and a half hours to go, they ought to, really. Still, if you can shore up an afternoon to watch it, it’s top entertainment of its kind. Little more than a classier, less silly version of Dallas or Dynasty maybe, but here the characters don’t look like they should come free with a Nat West children’s savings account and have a little slot in the tops of their heads for money.

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=WALL of FACT=

Welcome to “Wall of Fact” episode two! Over the summer we’re bringing you five facts from your TV week manu*fact*ured into capsule form. And this week we’ve got a fact-packed fact-pack of fact for you to enjoy. But first here’s Jeremy Beadle with his “One Day On This Day”.

“It’s the day today (May 31) but in 1927 and the production of a very special car ceases. Can you guess what car it was? Yes, it was the Ford Model T!”

Great stuff as ever, Jeremy. I certainly didn’t know that, did you? Now, let’s look at the facts from this week’s telly.

1) The head of rock band Queen’s fanclub, Jackie Gunn, used to occasionally host a consumer report on pop fanclubs for Going Live! Queen are featured in KILLER QUEEN on Channel 4, Saturday at 22.35.

2) Bob Holness is more inclined to reply to postal requests for an autograph if you send him “a very polite (and legible!) letter, a self-addressed envelope with stamp, and a spare piece of card ‘just in case’.” Bob can be seen hosting CALL MY BLUFF on BBC1, Sunday at 08.30. (Factxtra: Both Bob and Michael Aspel, one of today’s guests, have hosted the big board game BLOCKBUSTERS!)

3) Bill Oddie was estranged from his mother from the age of two until he joined THE GOODIES. Upon being reunited with her she told him “Television? It’s dead people and cardboard”! Bill can be seen in BILL ODDIE GOES WILD, BBC2, Monday at 19.30.

4) Jan Francis has smoked in at least two of her roles. In The Fenn Street Gang (1973) she looked “quite comfortable with her cigarette” and in Secret Army (1977) she smoked in some of the early episodes appearing “quite experienced”. (Comments from http://smokingsides.com). Jan can be seen in JUST GOOD FRIENDS on BBC1, Wednesday and Thursday, 14.55.

5) When Dr Who novelist Paul Cornell went on FIFTEEN TO ONE he was disappointed to discover that C4 wouldn’t be transmitting all of the episodes he was in because one of them also featured a convicted felon. The programme sent him some chocolates by way of an apology. You can catch FIFTEEN TO ONE on Channel 4, weekdays, 15.45.

That’s all the facts for this week. We hope you enjoyed them. We’ll see you next week for more TV truths.
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Tuesday 4th June

BBC1

09.25 The State Procession
Jubilee action all the way on BBC1 today, which we don’t intend to go into much detail about, but this does serve as a useful reminder that on Friday afternoon you’ll be receiving the Creamguide Jubilee Fair, a bumper bundle of, er, stuff, with a Jubilee sort of vibe. Which should be funnier than this billing.

23.30 Billion Dollar Brain
Michael Caine finds there’s more than weak lemon drink in his flask in this ditzy sequel to The Ipcress File, directed with the usual “bravura”, “gusto” and “verve” by Ken Russell – no wait, it’s actually all right, this one, if only for fantastic cartoon credits from Maurice ‘Bond titles’ Binder, and a great reel-to-reel set for the titular computer (“a mere abacus, mention it not!”), so we’d like to correct our earlier dismissal of this film in our Funeral in Berlin billing last year as ‘cobblers’, as, even though it’s fairly on the money, it’s the sort of term the Sun used to dismiss Blackeyes, which isn’t really ‘us’, we’re sure you’ll agree (even though that usage was also fairly on the money). So, for one week only, Ken Russell – Creamguide salutes you (albeit only for working with some good title and production designers in this one particular instance, and next time Altered States, or better yet, one of your interminable classical biopics comes on we’ll be back to haughtily reminding everyone how you’re now reduced to making unreleasable, semi-pornographic short films in your back garden with a few mates and a camcorder, because we can be insufferably pompous, too).

BBC2

11.15 Blue Peter Jubilee Party
See, if Billy Bragg had his way, we wouldn’t get this, and that’s why he’s completely wrong. An hour-long edit of yesterday’s show, and we’d suggest that the first bit to go is the performance by S Club Juniors, if they sung live like they did on Top Of The Pops the other week, which is the best advert ever for compulsary miming on that programme.

14.30 Black Beauty
What’s the Creamian link between this Euro production of the old equestrian chestnut and Charles Crichton’s well-loved TV series The Adventures of…, made just a year later? It’s the great John ‘Sir Arnold off of Yes, Minister” Nettleton of course, who’s in both, but playing different parts, and most likely not giving lessons on how to avoid cuts in the civil service pay claim in either one. Mark ‘Oliver!’ Lester and Patrick ‘Special Branch’ Mower also star.

16.10 Star Trek: The Motion Picture
This is our favourite ‘Trek film for two reasons – it pisses off Trekkies almost as much as the term “Trekkies”, and it must be the slowest-paced blockbuster ever, especially during the notorious ‘warp factor nine’ sequence.

18.25 TOTP2
Maybe it would have been better to put the Jubilee special here? Ah well, it was still fun anyway, if only for Neil Innes’ whimsical Jubilee ditty. Back to normal today, with The Bluebells and China Crisis promised.

22.00 The Falklands Play
An analogue outing for the new production of the play, as seen on BBC4 the other week, and which Creamguide found a bit boring, actually. We feel they really needed captions on the screen to explain who everyone was when they came on. And we’ve got Politics A-level too, so we know these things.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout
Oh, and we were completely wrong about Bob Wilson last week, he is still there, fronting two of the prestigious 7.30am matches this week, and later in the tournament he’ll be “bringing his experience to the channel” by fronting those rotten irrelevant last group games on ITV2. Given that he left the Beeb cos he was sick of playing second fiddle to Des, what’s keeping him at this channel?

17.00 Ghostbusters II
We’ll admit, we once ‘went off’ the first Ghostbusters film. “It’s not up to much really, is it?” we reckoned, foolishly, after a screening on ITV. Then we saw this one the following week, and our faith in the original was restored when we realised how markedly inferior this belated, rubbish sequel remains in every department, particularly the theme tune. “Too hot to handle! Too cold to hold!” Put a sock in it, Bobby!

05.55 The Clangers

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

14.20 Murder at the Gallop
Yes! This succulent slice of Margaret Rutherford-not-playing-Miss-Marple eccentrica was one of the many films suggested in Creamguide’s Come On, Channel Five! campaign back in March, which may be a complete coincidence, but we like to think it’s the tip of a direct action iceberg leading up to an Alf’s Button Afloat Night later this year. Real life husband Stringer Davis and Robert ‘Bricks’ Morley supply the back-up. Remember, our campaign to get Channel Five to show some decent films is ongoing – make suggestions via Ask The Family (http://tv.cream.org and click on Long Shots) or direct to Channel Five http://www.channel5.co.uk/channel5/contact/contact_form.php ) and don’t forget the bumper sticker of broadcast battle http://tv.cream.org/images/alfcamp.png ).

Wednesday 5th June

BBC1

14.55 Just Good Friends
The afternoons have been a bit dreary since Doctors finished, and they still haven’t shown those missing episodes of Shoestring. So it’s a welcome return to the archive comedy spot, although with the World Cup here and Wmbldn coming up, expect this to take several months to complete.

17.00 Blue Peter Goes Gross
Obviously the team are all a bit knackered after Monday’s antics, so here’s a pre-recorded edition which focuses on the disgusting. Let’s hope for Liz talking about farting again. And there’s no signed repeat tomorrow morning, either, so make sure you catch it live.

22.45 God Save The Queen
This could be good – a documentary looking at the state of music 25 years ago, with comments from David Soul, Lynsey de Paul and members of The Damned and The Buzzcocks. And also members of the Pistols, which is presumably Glen Matlock because he always does these things, and it’s OK if it’s not the hugely tiresome John Lydon. Don’t forget tickets for Clear Channel Presents The Sex Pistols In Association With Carling are available from Ticketmaster for £32.50 plus booking fee. Wow, anarchy!

23.25 The Eiger Sanction
Clint’s powerfully silly mountaineering spyfest, with that signifier of semi-intentional ’70s farce, George Kennedy, to the fore.

BBC2

18.20 TOTP2
A World Cup special which is scheduled to include Aneka, and thus we also deduce The Vapors on that ticket. Plus England’s Irie by Black Grape, which we really loved in June 1996 and have never listened to since.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
After all those Bank Holidays, today’s a bit of a letdown, isn’t it? Not even any Bewitched!

22.00 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
“My name is King Lou!” “Mine is Capital Q!” Robert Englund dispatches more teenage bags of mostly water in his Dennis the Menace jersey. We hope he will also, like Dennis, spearhead a campaign to get kids interested in gardening, as he’s pretty well-suited to that pastime really, isn’t he, when you think about it? We mean his Cyril Fletcher hat, of course.

Thursday 6th June

BBC1

14.55 Just Good Friends
And the One O’Clock News on BBC2, which is always fun. Course, in Euro 2004 we’ll get matches kicking off at 10pm, which could see the schedules go all over the place.

20.25 The Italian Job
More Caine, more big old computers, but now on peak-time BBC1! Of course, this is being remade with Marky ‘You Gotta Believe’ Mark in the lead, and we hear Dr Dre’s a shoo-in for Mr Bridger, although he had coveted the part of Professor Peach which finally went to Dane Bowers. Sources moot Enrique Iglesias for Camp Freddie, while any or all of N’Sync are pencilled in for the challenging role of Simon Dee’s shirtmaker cameo.

BBC2

01.50 What Have The Eighties Ever Done For Us?
More of the OU’s Rock’n’Science Years.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout
Maybe Rise’s viewing figures will increase given that Joe Royle’s co-commentating on BBC1.

05.55 The Clangers
This channel isn’t half ragged in half term.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

20.00 Argy Bargy
Would you liike another documentary about the football encounters between England and Argentina? Well, we hope you enjoyed your six months hibernation. That said, this could be better than the rotten one on C4 the other week, because it’s produced by Chrysalis Sport who actually know what they’re doing. Apart from deciding to sell this show to Channel Five, of course.

Friday 7th June

BBC1

21.30 Blackadder The Third
Never Blackadder III, RT. For some reason we always felt this was slightly weaker than the second and fourth incarnations, but the first episode is up to standard, thanks partly to the appearance of Vincent Hanna. And it undoubtedly has the best closing music of the whole dynasty.

01.25 The Lottery
“Of course, this TV movie doesn’t actually contain any tips on how to win the lottery – it is in fact a rather chilling tale of conformity gone mad.”

ITV

22.00 TV’s Naughtiest Blunders
Presented by Steve Penk, yes, but in fact this series has always been fairly good fun because Penk’s not in it for very long (although his links are as dreadful as those on his other shows) and there’s just non-stop, unbleeped out-takes from all over the place, some of them from Creamy TV shows. This is the place to look for those Bullseye cock-ups (“You’ve been on the game all night… oh, I can’t say that”) and the last show had a clip from Hardwicke House as well. To hell with it, we like this series, and we don’t mind saying it. We promise you will laugh at loud at least once, even if you normally hate these things. “Are you ready, Bobby?”

CHANNEL 4

03.00 The Mission
Now, not only have we never seen this film, we’ve actually taken steps to avoid seeing it at least twice, so you really does pay your money and takes your choice in this case, as we’ve only got vague memories of the trailer and the poster that used to be on the door of the local video shop to go on. Apparently there’s a waterfall in it. And a choir. And a beard.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
Even Gabby Logan’s more fun than this.

02.55 The Foreman Went to France
Factory foreman Clifford ‘ Stryker of the Yard’ Evans and soldiers Tommy Trinder and Gordon ‘Professionals’ Jackson liberate specialist machinery, children and nuns from occupied France, with Robert ‘Worries’ Morley, Anthony ‘Master’ Ainley and Thora Hird.

05.10 Sons and Daughters
Come on, Channel Five! Put Skyways on here!

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE

BBC CHOICE
Saturday, 21.00, Tuesday, 23.00
There’s Only One Kylie – Swift repeat for last week’s BBC1 documentary, which is good fun apart from a) revealing that Finer Feelings isn’t really that much cop, and b) everyone slagging off Did It Again and Some Kind Of Bliss, which are great records, and that is true. Loads of great clips here anyway, and some great anecdotes from Sir Peter Waterman, all of which involve him coming up with song titles from ridiculous situations (“I’d bought a birthday card for my dad, and it said on it ‘Especially For You’, and I thought….”).

BBC4
Monday-Thursday, 19.00
Reading The Decades – Another quick repeat of a programme that’s just been on analogue. Next week we’ll just replace Digi-Creamguide with a set of billings from six weeks ago. Anyway, this OU-produced series looks at the best selling books of each decade and then tries to make some sort of connection between A Brief History Of Time and Black Monday.

Thursday, 01.30
Timewatch: Jubilee Day – And another showing for the brilliant documentary about 1977, only this time with sign language. And please don’t watch it before reading tomorrow’s Creamguide Jubilee Fair or you’ll see where we nicked all the jokes from.

E4
Friday, 22.00
Takeover TV – We neglected to mention this had started last week, although it’s an easy mistake to make when it’s opposite the Big Brother eviction, which is surely th worst slot on E4 by a long chalk, and there’s no repeat, by the looks of things. Anyway, in its original run this series was fairly dire, and yes, that is including Norman Sphincter (it was The Pepsi Chart’s Eddy Temple-Morris, y’know). The only good things to come out of it were, of course, Adam and Joe, and it’s just as well they’re hosting this series so there’s something vaguely entertaining in it. Course last time round it was “Presented by Adam Buxton, with Joe Cornish”.

GRANADA PLUS
Saturday, 16.30, 23.30, Monday-Friday, 23.00
Bullseye – Will you stop messing around with this schedule, G+! Some of us have got listings guides to compile here. Unfortunately we now lose the peak time outings, but it should make amusing bedtime viewing in any case.

Saturday, 17.00, 00.00
The Kenny Everett Video Show – And this has been moved out of peaktime too, but the awkward new slot is at least supplanted by a just-as-awkward repeat.

PARAMOUNT
Sunday, 00.25, Sunday, 23.55
A Bit Of Fry and Laurie – “I think the Queen does a ruddy marvellous job. Ruddy marvellous. I opened Parliament myself a couple of times in the seventies, and believe you me, it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Monday-Thursday, 23.30
The Kenny Everett Television Show – Bit of a Kenny overload this week, with these four showings plus G+’s two and C4’s documentary. And we’re going to miss every single one of them.

Monday-Thursday, 00.05
Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Oh, you know.

SKY ONE
Sunday, 20.00
Pop Years – Hooray, 1987, although it includes rather familiar-sounding features on The Beastie Boys and Dick Spatsley; and we bet that one won’t feature Dick being interviewed on North West Tonight by John Mundy like Top Ten Of 1987 did.

UK GOLD
Monday-Friday, 20.20
The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin – Daily screenings of Officially The Best Comedy Series Of The Seventies, but again it’s the bloody first series, which BBC2 showed two years ago, and then never bothered with the other two. Yet The Good Life runs on a continuous loop. Much like this channel, really.

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All times correct at writing, though expect a looser approach to time keeping than usual. And they refer to England, as we always say, for some reason.
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ROYAROO FAMIREE… SO EXCITING REAREE
Well, you join us here in the Creamguide Office putting up the paper chains and putting the Creamguide dancers through their paces while we prepare for The Creamguide Jubilee Fair. This extra edition will arrive in your inboxes tomorrow and will, we hope, help while away those tricky few hours before the Bank Holiday weekend. It’ll feature a soupcon of topical comedy (well, topical in 1977) and the traditional load of lists and charts, all to mark the Silver Jubilee Of The Silver Jubilee. If you have any cakes you’d like us to judge, then send them to Ask The Family, the TV Cream majestic message board, at http://tv.cream.org
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A toast, folks, to – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers (who also compiles Armchair Football, the Cream-style look at the week’s football on telly, which you can subscribe to at http://www.btinternet.com/~upforgrabsnow and is really good, y’know. Not just cos of the, er, familiar names in the credits.)

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Andrew Barton

    June 3, 2022 at 11:57 pm

    Fifteen to One had their share of drama didn’t it?

    Episodes dropped, and of course the famous Trevor Montague one, unknown to William G Stewart until Challenge repeated 15-to-1.

  2. Glenn Aylett

    June 4, 2022 at 12:57 pm

    Notice how varied the schedules were 20 years ago. Nowadays, you switch on ITV and it’s the same boring programmes every day for years on end. At least in 2002 there was some variety and the slot now occupied by The Chase could feature the ill fated Crossroads revival, a chat show or You’ve Been Framed to amuse the kids.

  3. Richardpd

    June 4, 2022 at 9:48 pm

    I remember hearing about Trevor Montague but didn’t remember his name.

    Come Dine With Me has lost some sets of episodes due to contestants having dodgy pasts, & the family of one contestant asking for some to be removed from the repeats after they died.

  4. THX 1139

    June 6, 2022 at 5:09 pm

    That Kenny and Freddie doc was horrible, raking over their most private moments for the sake of cheap and lurid gossip.

    Bad time to reprise the Vangelis opinion!

    Funeral in Berlin is excellent, just really, really complicated.

    • Sidney Balmoral James

      June 9, 2022 at 9:16 pm

      Glad it’s not just me who finds Funeral in Berlin a bit hard to follow (Billion Dollar Brain is no better either); the Kremlin Letter is even worse.

  5. Applemask

    August 25, 2022 at 4:50 pm

    “We all know what Graham did next.”

    Oh don’t we just.

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