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Your Wednesday Night In...

Your Wednesday Night In… April 1982


Wednesday, 21st April 1982

PICK OF THE DAY

7pm WHERE THERE’S LIFE…, ITV
Weekday evenings in the early 1980s were a haven for multi-presenter studio factual shows – usually made by Yorkshire Television.  There had been Don’t Ask Me and Fun and Games, but then came the altogether more long-living Where There’s Life…, which deployed Jean Michel Jarre’s finest tune to maximum effect, and – at one point – out-neoned Doctor Who in the logo stakes.  Presented by Miriam Stoppard and the rather sharp-faced Rob Buckman. Perhaps in spite of the latter, this was still agreeable pre-Coronation Street fare.

ALSO SHOWING:

7.30pm CORONATION STREET, ITV
What seems like a most unlikely plotline: namely, Jack Duckworth finds himself at the centre of a tug-of-love storyline between Vera and Bet Lynch.  What this reminds us, of course, is that many of the Street’s larger than life archetypes started out as rather more ordinary – and perhaps more interesting – characters.  Yes, Bet was to become a Corrie matriarchal juggernaut, but maybe, just maybe with that transition she became a less interesting character.

10.40pm PARTY POLITICAL BROADCAST – CONSERVATIVE PARTY, BBC2
Creeping into the late evening schedule comes Cecil Parkinson, presumably on his way back from somewhere.  In this five-minute broadcast he seeks to reassure the country that he hasn’t stopped by to bang on about the Falklands, but to prove that the Tories care about people.  Mass unemployment is blamed not on government policies, but on the world economy, and – who knows? – maybe there’ll be some chat about “prices”.

 

 

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    April 18, 2018 at 4:31 pm

    I feel Dr Miriam Stoppard should have been to the 80s what Malcolm Muggeridge was to the 70s, but it doesn’t seem to have played out that way.

    • THX 1139

      April 23, 2018 at 3:07 pm

      I notice Miriam hasn’t been the draw that Pip was re: page views, so maybe she is the 80s equivalent of Malcolm after all.

  2. Glenn Aylett

    April 19, 2018 at 8:05 pm

    The Conservative PPB couldn’t have come at a better time. A month earlier they were quite far behind in the polls and it looked like the SDP could win the election, with the Tories battling with a divided Labour Party for second place, but with the Falklands War on, Maggie started to enjoy a huge poll lead that would last until the 1983 election landslide.
    Also I do recall Labour’s PPBs of the time being very amateurish and featuring Colin Welland a lot, possibly as he was one of their few celebrity backers at the time.

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