With the exception of Game For A Laugh, television producers struggled to come up with any major Saturday night hits during 1981....
Sid Roberson (15/03/1937 – 22/12/2016, reported January), award winning advert director, also directed the Sweeney and Fast Show Larry Steinbachek (06/50/1960 –...
Friday, 26th December 1980 PICK OF THE DAY 6.45pm BLANKETY BLANK, BBC1 From start to finish, it was a brilliant Boxing Night...
“He faces his past to decide his future” It always happens at Christmas – you end up seeing people you haven’t for...
It’ll Be Alright on the Night producer Paul Smith took the decision to introduce the format to American television, and while in the United...
Friday, 24th December 1982 PICK OF THE DAY 8.40pm CHRISTMAS WITH TERRY AND JUNE, BBC1 Featuring our heroes on baubles in the...
Hullo again! And we’re back with the second half of your Christmas Creamguide. Actually, such is the way the dates fall this...
Call The Midwife? By all means Call The Midwife. Open All Hours? Okay. But what about all the other deserving shows over...
Merry Christmas! And welcome to, heavens, the eighteenth annual Christmas Creamguide where once again we collate all that’s worth watching and listening...
Yes, it’s that time again – when everyone starts going on about the big-hitting Christmas specials of yesteryear. That episode where your...
This Christmas, we join Ian and Graham, who despite rejecting (and, in at least one case, being instrumental in having banned) the...
The massive popularity of LWT’s It’ll Be Alright on the Night can’t have provided much encouragement to old school directors like Richard...
What might a perfect Christmas Day’s viewing look like? Well, we found an old VHS which contains that very info. Hence the...
Friday, 18th December 1987 PICK OF THE DAY 9pm VICTORIA WOOD: AS SEEN ON TV SPECIAL, BBC2 “This special is a temporary...
Our final festive furlong, and we’ve thrown everything in here. Lots of different comics and mags from the Cream era. Merry Christmas,...
The Cream era Dandy covers, charting Korky’s falling stock, the demise of Nutty and Hoot, and Dan’s preference for cow pies. TOMORROW:...
We’ll leave it to you to imagine the back covers that resolved many of the incidents depicted here… TOMORROW: THE DANDY!
Following the sad news of Keith Chegwin permanently ‘checking out’, we revisit the highs and lows of his career on camera. OPEN...
Onward, and this time it’s a look at new Eagle. Acknowledgements, meanwhile, to Comic Vine website, from where these sprung. Scroll down...
“I’m sick and tired of those same old prizes,” bemoans Peter Holmans. “We’ve got to think of something new”. Self-criticism and angst...
Time for the shutters to arise at our Christmas-only newsagents. And we begin this year’s run of festive frontages by looking at...
Friday, 12th December 1986 PICK OF THE DAY 5.35pm MASTERTEAM, BBC1 Let’s play! It’s the quarter-finals of the teatime pub quiz-team Olympiad,...
“The nation talked about it,” says Boyd of Game For A Laugh. “’Did you see that daft story?’” “We did three series, then...
Friday, 4th December 1992 PICK OF THE DAY 7pm DOCTOR WHO, BBC2 Back in the 1990s, you had to get your Who...
“Nothing on television so exercises the critics as the game shows,” wrote Laurie Taylor and Bob Mullan in their book Uninvited Guests: Intimate Secrets...
Friday, 24th November 1963 PICK OF THE DAY 9pm THE PRISONER, ITV With Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons also lording it over...
It’s arguably an association that wouldn’t have pleased James Anthony Coburn, but he will always be connected to Doctor Who. Fifty-four years...
“Those of us who watched (Game For A Laugh) for the first time, did so in slightly gob-smacked admiration,” says David Docherty,...
Diamond and Williams (and Kibble-White) have been assigned. Yes our very own triumverate of transuranic heavy elements who may not be amused...
Friday, 19th November 1993 PICK OF THE DAY 9pm DEMOB, ITV Hyped up as the next big hit comedy drama that wasn’t...
Hello again! This is part two of our chat with Richard Marson, former editor of Blue Peter, whose new book, The Blue...
Hello! From ‘doable barkers’ to Liz Barker! Richard Marson – he of the ‘Totally Tasteless’ John Nathan-Turner biography – has a new book...
In the history of Saturday night television few programmes have dominated quite like The Generation Game during the 1970s. Even the departure of...
In which TVC lays out the ground rules for an entertaining and informative night of special programming, and why when all are...
Friday, 15th November 1985 PICK OF THE DAY 7pm WOGAN, BBC1 According to Radio Times, the most appropriate way to promote this...
While the acts breaking through to British television in 1980 were, in the main, well established live performers, their ascension to the...
Friday, 5th November 1976 PICK OF THE DAY 7pm LUCKY FELLER, ITV Sitcom antics in the form of this fondly-remembered yet little...
It’s the third and final part of our Halloween portmanteau, and this time one of the Simons from Simon and Simon is...
Yorkshire Television did its own bit for new comic talent on Saturday nights with the creation, in June 1980 of Rock With Laughter....
Friday, 24th October 1980 PICK OF THE DAY 7.55pm ANGELS, BBC1 Perhaps one of the greatest BBC drama title sequences of all...
It’s the second commentary in our Halloween triple-bill, and this time our trio of horror fiends alight upon Amicus’ portmanteau masterpiece. It’s...
Creamguide (Films) is back for Halloween with a triple bill of films hand-picked by Craig and Chris to put the right shiters up...
Hughie Green is a troubling figure in British television history. Born on 2 February, 1920 in London, but raised in Canada, Green became...
Friday, 15th October 1993 PICK OF THE DAY 7.15pm THE LIVING SOAP, BBC2 Billed as following on Sylvania Waters, but really an...
The failure of Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night was a major blip for ITV, but not an outright disaster. On the plus side, Michael...
Friday, 12th October 1979 PICK OF THE DAY 11.30pm FRIDAY NIGHT… SATURDAY MORNING, BBC2 For such a comparatively short-lived series, FN…SM has...
Although a disaster for Forsyth, Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night eventually came up trumps for Cannon and Ball who, on the strength of their...
Friday, 5th October 1973 PICK OF THE DAY 4.20pm ACE OF WANDS, ITV Although the theme music to Ace of Wands is...
A weekend television audience differs from a weekday one in both composition and expectation, so that the principles and practice of programming...
When Radio 1 decided to do a calendar picturing the DJs with their heroes, John Peel insisted on posing with a competition-winning...
Recent Comments