49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

 

Also:  It's Saturday Night 2. An autograph before you go 3. A new kind of game show 4. A rising exasperation with the quantity of dirt 5. The whole thing suddenly fell apart 6. Synthetic propensity 7. It was destined to be an anti-climax 8. This is your show now 9. The awesome scale of our wastefulness 10. Hands up those who couldn't care less 11. Together We’ll Be Ok 12. Decide the shape of ITV in the 1980s 13. Alan is too commercial 14. It worked like a dream 15. Older men, doing school boy tricks 16. Killing the Golden Goose 17. People love us to be sexy 18. The manure is worth more than the cattle 19. They were big in the States and we noted that 20. I’m still aggressive and I’m still handing out the insults 21. A new style of lunatic humour 22. The Habitat-bean-bag-hessian-wallpaper brigade 23. Thoroughly sinful 24. All carrots should be scraped, sliced and cooked 25. Back then it was radical stuff 26. Whatever they do, we can do it better 27. You'll have to take us as you find us 28. Entertainment that keeps on the move 29. It's the public that has to pay 30. The last we saw of either of them was their sad faces 31. Just shoot the bastard 32. Britain could clearly be facing its darkest hour 33. Any enthusiasm we may have had for continuing discussions is waning 34. It was considered by LWT and then put in a bottom drawer 35. Watch the redoubtable Terry take off 36. I thought it might be terrible and I wouldn’t enjoy it at all 37. Kamikaze Mastermind 38. We haven’t moved into luxury 39. We are investing in people 40. Delivered impeccably 41. He has to allow you to do your bit 42. All the anticipation of the great emotive point 43. If you want Russ Abbot to do it, then you have to accept me and my ideas 44. Let’s get straight into this 45. Unedifying Greed 46. We’ve got the fucking lot! 47. Scope for humour and danger 48. Pure Megablast 49. There’s lots of killing, but not much else 50. I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous 51. Oh dear – Auntie’s playing bingo! 52. A Shrivelled Little Thing 53. I shouldn’t have accepted it 54. We would be the spoilsports 55. The Most Sexless Person In Television 56. They’d have strung me up if I hadn’t chosen him 57. Is there some way to play with the internal constituent parts? 58. The most important entertainment programme of my time 59. The plumply pretty female duo 60. The audience just sort of started to freeze on him 61. More pilots than British Airways 62. There's going to come a time when you'll have to go to the BBC 63. A slightly pretentious manifesto 64. Things Look Very Precarious 65. It’s no good doing all the same old people all the time 66. That’s just not funny Bobby, it's corny - just don’t do that 67. Well bottom’s not funny 68. We Are The Funnymen 69. The powers that be listened to Denis 70. Stretchers never go up stairs 71. I was in obscurity until this series 72. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me 73. There’s such a passion for nostalgia right now 74. I Heard A Seat In The Stalls Go ‘Gerdonk!' 75. This is your show, folks, and I do mean you 76. There’s good news for perplexed fans of 3-2-1! 77. Taking on Blind Date would be a real challenge 78. You wanna bet on it? 79. The yarns worked their tried and tested magic 80. The Charge-And-Shout Brigade 81. I sat for a moment in silence, then turned in my chair and left the stage 82. We just weren't allowed into UK terrestrial television 83. Beadle’s A Prick 84. The interviewer always has to know when it's best to keep his or her mouth shut 85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery? 86. He's not a goody- goody hero 87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases 88. The feel of Saturday night 89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem 90. It were a right smack in the face 91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That's A Promise 92. That's the last thing I was expecting, Jim 93. The characters and situations are real 94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans 95. A Double Order of Talent 96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine 97. NTV brings you ... empty rooms! 98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here 99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered! 100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people! 101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience 102. Like a cup of cold sick 103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine 104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings 105. It is in the cutlery drawer 106. Welcome to the new Saturday night 107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game 108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series 109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo 110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him 111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television 112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits! 113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’ 114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want 115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition 116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even 117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame 118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation 119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us 120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea? 121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere 122. This Time, You Decide 123. King of trash, that’s me 124. It’s about rejection now 125. They lost what Popstars was all about 126. Win the ads 127. A name in search of a series 128. Getting grief from the papers 129. I’m so pleased to be back on television 130. Saturday nights haven't been this interesting for 10 years 131. It’s the Usual Nonsense 132. The trip of a lifetime Epilogue: Why Haven't You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?

ITV’s own Saturday night dalliance into the realm of telefantasy was more successful, although it too would suffer from an early demise. Running in an early evening slot from 28 April 1984, for only five weeks, Goldcrest and HTV’s Robin of Sherwoodwas an expensive, but popular addition to ITV’s spring schedule. Written by Richard Carpenter (who created the popular children’s series Catweazle and Dick Turpin), Robin of Sherwood was a fantastical reinterpretation of the classic story. “This is the only English legend that doesn’t have any magic,” observed Carpenter, “so I put some in.” The series’ pagan allusions (including references to the pre-Christian Herne the Hunter) and political subtexts provoked complaints from media pressure group, the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, but came about as a result of Carpenter’s distaste for the violence and simplicity of the original Robin Hood ballads. “They’re really just knockabout farce, with pathetic little stories, but they are also very cruel and callous tales. The characters hit each other over the head a great deal, and there’s lots of killing, but not much else … But Robin is a character who captures everybody’s imagination. Perhaps because we’re all anarchists at heart, and we like that idea of somebody putting one over on the law”.

Although the storylines addressed some relatively complex political and religious issues, Robin of Sherwood’s production values played a significant part in assuring viewers that the series was to be serious in its examination of the Robin Hood mythos. Beautiful locations and superb acting, plus an evocative BAFTA-winning soundtrack (provided by Irish band Clannad) resulted in a British television drama with a lustre that was unfamiliar to most Saturday evening viewers. The series benefited too, from an emerging school of post-modern revisionism that would – in the next few years – see an array of cultural icons and fictional characters taken back to their roots. Four days before the first episode of Robin of Sherwood, ITV transmitted the first of Granada Television’s similarly definitive interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, while the BBC was embarking upon a run of equally authentic dramatisations of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple adventures. In the same year, cinema would provide us with a back-to-basics version of the story Tarzan (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes) and in subsequent years both Batman and Dracula would receive similar treatments on the big screen.

Robin of Sherwood attracted significant publicity, including a feature on a 1983 edition of the Grampian Television Arts programme The Electric Theatre Show. This regional series chose to treat Robin of Sherwood with a great deal of respect, signifying that the drama (although broadcast in an early evening slot and containing elements of fantasy) was not for children. The first series achieved credible ratings (higher than those achieved by The Tripods) with the final episode attracting 10.6 million viewers. A second series followed in 1985, culminating in the death of Robin (Michael Praed). While the actor had decided to seek his fortune on the stage, the series continued, and Jason Connery assumed the title role for the third and final run.

Elongated and with new scriptwriters to support Richard Carpenter, the third series is generally regarded as inferior to the first two. Many cite Connery’s performance as wooden and less charismatic then Praed’s. In addition, the new writers (including Anthony Horowitz who some years later would create his own Saturday night television show) were said to be unsympathetic to the series “archetypal content”. With declining audiences, Goldcrest decided to withdraw their funding. Unable to finance such an expensive production by themselves, HTV was forced to pull the plug late in the day, leaving Carpenter with no time to write a suitably conclusive episode to bring down the curtain on season three and Robin of Sherwood as a whole.

Like many cult programmes, rumours have surfaced on a regular basis of a revival. In 1991 Praed, along with Nickolas Grace (who played the sheriff of Nottingham) appeared on TV-am to discuss a mooted new production. The intention was to film a mini-series in the summer of 1992, presumably for broadcast some time during the next year. Once again Richard Carpenter would have written the scripts, and the programme’s original producer, Paul Knight, would be at the helm. All the new production required, in the words of Praed, was “for the money men to do whatever money men do”. However the money men didn’t and the mini-series fell through. To date the series’ fans remain without closure. In a later interview though, Praed still expressed affection for the HTV production: “It was 20 years ago since I did Robin of Sherwood,” he reflected, “and when people do mention it they mention it favourably. I look back and think ‘that was pretty good’”.

Next Monday: I wanted to make sure it was going to be disastrous