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Your Friday Night In...

Your Friday Night In… October 1993


Friday, 15th October 1993

PICK OF THE DAY

7.15pm THE LIVING SOAP, BBC2
Billed as following on Sylvania Waters, but really an attempt to ape MTV’s The Real World, we are – nevertheless – saying this is where the modern era of reality TV began.  No one really remembers Simon, Matt, Spider, Karen and … uh (we’re struggling here, we know there were six to start with) – Dan? However, the series was great fun at the time, attracting a Cheggers wake-up on The Big Breakfast and excellent scandal when it transpired that Karen might have once dated a member of Take That.

ALSO SHOWING:

6pm CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS, BBC2
It’s startling now to think that this kind of programming was considered an effective way to get mainstream teenagers in front of their TV screens of a Friday evening. In fact, this was an age when retro telly was considered both kitsch and cool.  These days we are still waiting for the era of “geek culture” to fuck off.

8pm BRUCE FORSYTH’S GENERATION GAME, BBC1
The passing of Brucie has left us to ponder at what point exactly he stopped looking like a satanic character from a Dennis Wheatley novel.  It was possibly with the growth of that moustache in the late 1970s (1978)? By the time he returned to The Gen Game he appeared positively benign

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. David Smith

    October 20, 2017 at 10:27 am

    Pretty much all I can remember of The Living Soap – although I did watch it – are a “post-modern” (or something) narration by Brian Cant, and er…something about a goldfish being flushed down the loo.

  2. Richard16378

    October 20, 2017 at 2:34 pm

    I used to like the classic repeats on a Friday evening on BBC2 around this time.

    From the TV50 repeats until sometime past the Millennium there was a real boom of older TV, but now there’s hardly any on the main channels since the BBC2 afternoon screenings ended.

    At least box sets are as cheap as they have ever been & Netflix has plenty of oldies on it.

  3. Droogie

    October 20, 2017 at 3:52 pm

    I really liked the Living Soap when it started. My main memory is the house being attacked when some local yobs chose to throw a breeze block through the bedroom window of Spider. This made some of the terrified housemates move out, and the replacements gotten in were nowhere near as likeable. One new housemate who was a drama student was especially irritating and I stopped watching after that.

    • Glenn A

      October 22, 2017 at 4:19 pm

      Didn’t Spider get some racist abuse as well? I did watch The Living Soap off and on and do recall it was moved to a late night slot as ratings were very low due to being opposite Coronation St. Also had a very contemporary soundtrack by M People.

  4. Glenn A

    October 21, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    The Living Soap featured a fitness instructor from Keswick who became a local celebrity for a few months. I can’t remember her name as I only saw the show a few times as it was scheduled against a much bigger real soap on ITV. Also recall some death metal musician who was in the house.

  5. Droogie

    October 24, 2017 at 8:29 pm

    My memories are fuzzy, but I don’t recall Spider getting racist abuse in the house. She got the breeze block through her window, but I’m guessing the local Manc yobs that did it didn’t know which bedroom she was in and just randomly attacked the nearest window from the street.,The death metal bloke was unintentionally hilarious, especially when he tried to get his band play at the student union by playing a demo cassette to an unimpressed bloke used to booking bands like The Fall and Suede.

    • Glenn A

      October 24, 2017 at 9:16 pm

      I think Spider might have been shouted at in the street, certainly not in the house.
      Death metal fan was a bit of an outsider, clearly he wasn’t part of the recently passed Madchester era and had little time for the dance music the other housemates liked, but I sort of appreciated him as he was an unpretentious kid from a Manchester council estate who wanted to better himself.

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