Wednesday, 16th January 1991
PICK OF THE DAY
8pm WATERFRONT BEAT, BBC1
Third episode in the second (and final) series of Phil Redmond’s answer to the cultural elites of Sun Hill nick. Failing to deliver on promises of more action this time around – in part thanks to an involved storyline about who’s sitting where in the new office set-up – tonight’s instalment, titled ‘Repossession’, features 1991’s most-1991-ever visualisation of computer hacking, as the ‘West Lancs Bank’ suffers a serious cyber-breach.
Writing duties for this run were shared between Redmond (who’d handled the entirety of the previous year) and regular Brookside scripter Andy Lynch. Omnipresent synth mire soundtrack courtesy, of course, of Steve Wright. Alas, the show would subsequently only be remembered for Brian McCardie playing a character called ‘Ronnie Barker’, because in real life, someone might be called Ronnie Barker. “A New Media Age Production for BBCtv.”
ALSO SHOWING:
8pm VAN DER VALK, ITV
Back, back, back! Fourteen years after wrapping, Barry Foster returns as the Dutch detective for a short-lived series of Morse-alike two-hour episodes. Now a little older and wiser, the character is head of Amsterdam’s CID, and leading an investigation into the murders of three people who were at school together. With Tom Bell, Judy Cornwell and ‘Eye Level’.
6pm STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, BBC2
Stardate 41365.9. The continuing voyages of the beige-interior Enterprise on its debut screening in the UK, taken from an unbelievably soft US print. This episode – 11001001 – comes from the first series, and thus finds the crew in wrong uniforms, and Riker beardless and yet to fully develop his penchant for popping one foot up onto a thing, or addressing himself to a chair as if about to straddle an untamed horse. Anyway, this is the story where ‘Number One’ gets off with a computer woman, Minuet, in the holodeck. Coo, Black Mirror, right pals?
6.30pm TONIGHT WITH JONATHAN ROSS, Channel 4
Retreating from the relative late-night failure of One Hour With Jonathan Ross, the demands of thrice-weekly chat bite hard, as Jonathan breaks bread with Danny Sugerman, the post-Morrison manager of The Doors, and Susie Carter, editor of a lonely hearts magazine for men trying to attract wives. In Alaska.
THX 1139
January 17, 2018 at 12:14 pm
Barry Morse was Professor Victor Bergman on Space: 1999. Barry Foster was Van Der Valk. Or Van Der Valk’s gran, according to that photo above.
TV Cream
January 17, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Oh, yes. Silly mistake. Now fixed. Thanks!
Richard16378
January 17, 2018 at 1:52 pm
I remember Waterfront Beat tried a bit too hard to be The Bill, but was enjoyable.
The long running hunt for the “corpse chopper” lasted almost all the time it was on air.
Glenn A
January 20, 2018 at 1:39 pm
Laugh now at the primitive computer graphics in Waterfront Beat, but quite effective for 1991 when green screen PCs predominated and Windows and the internet were a few years away.
Also using a synth theme by Steve Brookside Not Radio 1 Wright was very contemporary as computers thanks to the rave music of the time were taking over the charts and making guitars redundant.
Applemask
January 20, 2018 at 11:16 pm
Waterfront Beat. Right on the list with South of the Border, Rockliffe’s Babies and The Paradise Club as a Checkland-era drama that’s now an almost complete blank for anyone who doesn’t work at Network DVD. It even used the same split-screen titles gimmick as Brookside, only worse (with the title displayed throughout in an uninspiring font on a blurry, poorly resized, black and white photo of the Mersey in which almost anything could have been happening).
Glenn A
January 28, 2018 at 11:03 am
There seemed to be a trend for BBC dramas in the early and mid nineties to come and go with little comment. I do remember a particularly violent drama called Civvies about former Paras adjusting to civilian life, which was quite good( one involved an ex sergeant srabbing a noisy neighbour to death), but which hardly anyone remembers now. Applemask is right, most of the Checkland era dramas, which were OK at the time but were soon forgotten, now can probably be found in discount DVD racks as few people care.
OTOH ITV drama was going through an imperial phase and shows like Taggart and Prime Suspect are fondly remembered now and crop up regularly on Gold channels.
Richard16378
January 29, 2018 at 2:52 pm
I remember the Civvies trailer being played a lot “we were the roughest & the toughest”, ending with 2 of thme jumping off some scaffolding.
Glenn Aylett
January 29, 2018 at 8:44 pm
There was an extremely brutal near fight to the death between two ex Paras in one episode over an incident in Northern Ireland. Yet in the main, BBC drama of this era, often shown on Wednesday nights, was meh and barely remembered now( Specials, Rides, anyone?).
George White
January 30, 2018 at 10:04 am
It was a post-Prime Suspect Lynda laPlante thingy with Jason Isaacs, and astonishingly Peter O’Toole as an East End gangster.
No wonder Segal and co could get him for the aborted early plan for the McGann Doctor.
Richard16378
January 30, 2018 at 1:46 pm
Between The Lines generated a lot of Headlines (mostly about how it should be called Between The Sheets or Between The Loins!) but was more or less forgotten by the end of the decade.
Jimmy Nail had a double of short lived hits with Spender & Crocodile Shoes.
Gavin Culloty
January 16, 2019 at 10:31 pm
This is the same night that the TV schedules were interrupted to announce the start of Operation Desert Storm. https://youtu.be/gFoEC2O9R4U?t=1537