All posts tagged "It&#8217;s Saturday Night"

Epilogue: Why Haven’t You Written a Series of Articles on Tuesday Night Telly?

The success of Doctor Who – with another two series already commissioned before the end of the run – and the failure...

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132. The trip of a lifetime

While ITV remained committed to the Saturday night pop talent show, the BBC was finding that dancing could be a reliable...

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131. It’s the Usual Nonsense

For the fifth year running, ITV’s major commission for winter Saturday nights in 2004 was a musical talent search with a...

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130. Saturday nights haven’t been this interesting for 10 years

As one veteran broadcaster rejoined the BBC, an equally venerable TV star was making his way out of TV Centre. Michael...

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129. I’m so pleased to be back on television

For a man so associated with Saturday night television, it’s surprising to realise that Bruce Forsyth actually didn’t appear regularly on a...

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128. Getting grief from the papers

One thing the failure of Boys and Girls proved was that there was little point in attempting to surf the zeitgeist...

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127. A name in search of a series

In the early 2000s Frank Skinner joked that, if they could get rid of Ant and Dec, David Baddiel and himself...

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126. Win the ads

After the success of Pop Idol, Ant and Dec had turned around a career with ITV that had looked like it...

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125. They lost what Popstars was all about

The identity of the programme that replaced Cilla in the prime 7pm slot in Autumn 2002 shouldn’t have come as much of...

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124. It’s about rejection now

If a Saturday night without the Generation Game seemed unusual, what about one minus Blind Date? In November 2001 it had been...

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123. King of trash, that’s me

By the start of 2002, Saturday night television had become fashionable again. One of the biggest TV audiences of the year...

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122. This Time, You Decide

After Popstars, our expectations of the TV talent show changed forever. This became evident from the next series ITV launched on a...

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121. I’m sure the tune was in there somewhere

Pop music had always played a part in Saturday night television, right back to the days of Juke Box Jury in the...

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120. I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea?

“What was that tactics truck? I mean who on earth thought that was a good idea?” This is Wayne Garvie speaking in...

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119. Better For You, Better For All Of Us

The Saturday night schedules by which all the others are judged are those of BBC1 in the 1970s. From Doctor Who to Dick...

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118. 200 black boxes are strapped to the back of a cross-section of the nation

One show that managed to complete its run on Saturday evenings was a new vehicle for now ITV-contracted Brian Conley. Like his...

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117. The penalty shoot-out is the greatest ever endgame

Come the start of the millennium, Saturday night light entertainment seemed to be a dying genre. All the formats and stars that...

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116. Don’t Get Mad, Get Even

A familiar Saturday institution finally came to an end in 1999. Gladiators had been an ITV staple since 1992, but seven years later...

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115. Waxing An Ape Is My Ambition

The script was already written. Three weeks after Noel’s House Party took its leave, a new series was to begin on Saturday...

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114. It was of a standard frankly well below what the public would want

The 1997-98 series of Noel’s House Party offered the BBC no respite from its recent run of bad form on Saturday nights. It...

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113. There’s nothing that makes people scream, ‘Did you see that?’

The 1998 summer line-up was uninspired on both channels, not helped by the World Cup interrupting proceedings for over a month. It...

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112. I award the city state of Milton Keynes 100 credits!

By the start of 1998, Saturday night television was in a state of stasis – no new hit programmes had come through...

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111. The worst programme currently on terrestrial television

Crime Traveller never clicked with the Saturday night audience. A better attempt at light-hearted drama followed in May with the...

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110. He gives us our spirit of unity; we’d all like to strangle him

Compared to ITV’s hapless attempts at finding a new hit in 1995 and 1996, the BBC was the very model...

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109. Building the excitement and tension to a crescendo

With ITV accused of broadcasting “juvenile rubbish” on Saturday nights, what would they offer up next? The hugely intellectual Man...

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108. The programme has done extremely badly and will be dropped after this series

ITV was still floundering with early Saturday evenings. The first new show of 1996 was Beadle’s Hotshots, a format which...

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107. Congratulations, you have got the fucking Gen Game

“Here I go again! I should have been a channel swimmer, I’m always going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards....

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106. Welcome to the new Saturday night

The boost the lottery had given the BBC was felt throughout the Saturday night schedule. When Noel’s House Party and Casualty...

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105. It is in the cutlery drawer

With The National Lottery Live, BBC1 was now the place to be on a Saturday night. Regardless of the merits of...

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104. A reliable tent pole for Saturday evenings

1994 saw the end of a number of Saturday night fixtures. Most notably, in June came the final episodes of...

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103. A litre of gin, ecstasy and crack cocaine

The pilot for Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush taught Chris Evans and Will Macdonald one very clear lesson: “We had a...

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102. Like a cup of cold sick

Saturday night television remains the only night of the week not to have been commandeered by a traditional soap. With...

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101. To allow such bilge on TV is an insult to the audience

Meanwhile, one of Davro’s protégés was at last making waves over on ITV. Brian Conley had appeared in a number of...

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100. The humour of Beadle comes through humiliating people!

Also joining Big Break on Saturday evenings in 1992 was a former Sunday night staple, That’s Life! Esther’s show was taking up...

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99. If this doesn’t work out, we’re both snookered!

Since winning New Faces in 1976, Jim Davidson had been a constant staple of ITV’s light entertainment output. Almost immediately after...

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98. You’re BBC, you shouldn’t be here

ITV also came up with a new Saturday night banker in 1991. Michael Barrymore had already established himself a big success...

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97. NTV brings you … empty rooms!

With a number of veteran series ending, what would take their place in the Saturday night schedules? Ironically, their initial...

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96. If there is an air of spontaneity about it, it’ll be genuine

While the BBC was pulling up the drawbridge on traditional sketch show talent, the crop of comedians at ITV weren’t...

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95. A Double Order of Talent

1991 remains a pivotal year in the history of Saturday night television. It was the last time various genres of...

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94. Oh Man, There Go All My Women Fans

In the early to mid 1980s, the US drama Knight Rider tapped into a period in which adventure series featuring high...

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93. The characters and situations are real

Given the growing success of Casualty (which by 1990 was entering its fourth year and pulling in audiences in excess...

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92. That’s the last thing I was expecting, Jim

In 1990, the BBC managed to trade in one master game show host for another. Bob Monkhouse had been presiding over...

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91. Look Straight Into My Eyes And Everything Will Be Alright, That’s A Promise

Game shows, having been slightly overshadowed in the middle and later years of the 1980s by the endless stream of...

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90. It were a right smack in the face

In 1990 Cannon and Ball found their professional career in bad shape. During their final years at LWT they had struggled...

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89. 1990 Who would employ an ex-alky with lowered self-esteem

And so into the 1990s. Almost none of the programmes that inhabited the Saturday night schedules at the beginning of the...

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88. The feel of Saturday night

Elsewhere, LWT was taking steps in the right direction, nurturing talents such as Brian Conley and Hale and Pace. While Conley’s 1989 Brian...

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87. The Sexism, The Dolly Birds, The Catchphrases

One of the significant barriers LWT had to overcome in attracting the ABC1 audience that it so craved was the belief commonly...

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86. He’s not a goody- goody hero

By 1989, Greg Dyke was getting into his stride as director of programmes at LWT, and was keen for the company to...

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85. Can you come up with a good solution for the Murder Weekend mystery?

The concepts of strip-scheduling, and reality television, not to mention the idea of having members of the public becoming immersed into...

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