TV Cream

TV: S is for...

Sixty Minutes

59 AND a half minutes too long, more like. The only saving grace of this lamentable replacement for NATIONWIDE were the opening titles, or rather the opening music, as the titles looked shit and involved a giant moving letter S that looked like a petulant snake. Everything else was a complete misfire, from po-faced DESMOND WILCOX as main presenter to badly-chosen boring features to Special Correspondents including SANDI TOKSVIG to the inevitable involvement of SARAH KENNEDY. Chased off air and slaughtered after nine months.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Lee James Turnock

    May 5, 2010 at 5:33 pm

    Spoofed by the Steam Video Company as “Nationwide with the furniture rearranged”.

  2. Glenn A

    April 9, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    Most notable for technical failures, quite often it would start and the theme music would break down or the graphics would seize up. Also everyone who liked Nationwide hated it because it was inept and lacking in charm, thank goodness for Border Lookaround.

  3. Michael S

    August 21, 2011 at 8:19 pm

    TV Cream are right about the music- I remember liking it too.

    Just as with Emmerdale Farm (that cor anglais theme was a minor masterpiece), I can’t remember ever watching the programme itself. Though to be fair I was about 8 at the time….

  4. Applemask

    May 22, 2013 at 1:45 pm

    Complete failure on the graphic designers’ part to make the letter S look like the number 60.

    • David Smith

      March 17, 2017 at 5:46 am

      Reminds me of a Rubik’s Snake.

  5. Glenn A

    March 16, 2017 at 8:41 pm

    I think this show probably cost Alan Hart his job as controller of BBC1, as it seemed to be the last of a long list of mishaps during his short reign, which seemed to feature destroying the once invincible Saturday night schedule by moving Doctor Who to weekdays, losing people like Parky and Mike Yarwood to ITV, and thinking Russell Harty was the next Parkinson. Yet for all the experiment of showing live football on Friday nights six times a season didn’t really work at the time( people wanted entertainment and football was seen as a yobs game at the time), he was ahead of his time in this respect and live football on television slowly gained ground after Hart was sacked.

  6. Richard16378

    October 25, 2017 at 1:28 pm

    I found the theme online recently, very of it’s time & probably played on a Fairlight keyboard going by the synthesized pan pipes.

    Jeff Wayne made good use of them on the Good Morning Britain theme.

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