What we were watching this week 20 years ago, as recorded in the back-issues of TV Cream’s weekly ‘e-mag’, Creamguide…
(We still send out Creamguides every week via email. If you’d like to receive it – it’s free, there are no ads, we don’t sell on your address, you can unsubscribe whenever; we’re basically soppy like that – then fill in your details below.)
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TV CREAM TIMES
12th – 18th October 2002
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Factfinder generals –
Graham Kibble-White, Chris Diamond, Phil Norman
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Saturday 12th October
BBC1
08.05 Looney Tunes
Are Merrie Melodies now part of a seperate deal, then? Even though nobody in the world can tell the difference between the two. Also on at various times throughout the week on both BBC1 and BBC2.
17.30 Only Fools and Horses
Slovakia vs England has shunted most of BBC1’s Saturday night schedule away, but of course the important stuff stays where it is.
BBC2
16.20 Perry Mason Returns
Even though he’s only been away for about three weeks.
21.15 Fame, Set and Match
Ruuuuubish name, but this new series could well be a lot of fun. It runs for ten weeks, and intends to “explore different events in cultural history using archive footage and interviews” – so it’s another I Love, then, and there’s no problem with that. And the concept seems to allow it to cover anything. First up, the girls of the Rolling Stones, including interviews with Marianne Faithfull, Bianca Jagger and Mandy Smith.
22.15 TOTP2: The Rolling Stones
And then a primetime excursion for this, which is all to the good because it means more people might hear Wright’s hideous narration and start complaining. Though actually, he may not be in this much, as the Stones themselves introduce the archive clips that you’ll have seen several hundred times before.
ITV
17.30 Bruce Forsyth’s Play Your Cards Right
Now they’re inviting “best friends” to be contestants! And one of last week’s couples came from America, and Brucie kept going “Come on, Britain!” all the way through, which was a bit xenophobic. Still, we’d like to put on record how much we enjoyed the clip of the opening song from Brucie’s Big Night on The Showbiz Set on Tuesday, most notably how the lyrics regarding “bringing the network together” suggested less a song, more minutes of a production meeting set to music.
23.00 Heaven’s Gate
Kris ‘Sunday Mornin’ Kristofferson proves once again that he can act a lot better then he can sing in this revisionist tale of immigrants arriving on the American frontier. Just about every mildy wacky, off-centre actor of their time is on show here, to whit: John Hurt, Brad Dourif, Christopher ‘Bridgeton’ Walken, Jeff Bridges, Mickey Rourke, and gosh darn it! It’s even got Willem ‘William’ Defoe as an uncredited extra, it says here. Anyway, barrel of laughs it ain’t, but quite good, it is.
02.30 Forever
The theme’s ‘celtic’, though apparently it’s just Scottish and Irish acts, which is all wrong. And it means that rather than the Super Furries and Gorky’s and the rest, we’ll end up getting U2 and Simple Minds and people. Boo.
CHANNEL 4
19.35 The Jewel of the Nile
Cast your mind back – if you will – and try to recall if you can how big a hit Romancing the Stone was. Can’t quite do it, eh? We saw that particular rollercoaster of thrills and spills a couple of weeks back for the first time in… oooh, yeeears, and couldn’t recall what all the fuss was about or much to do with it at all (apart from the total recall involved in people incessantly saying “that’s him from Taxi,” in the pictures). This, of course, was the sequel to that and manages to be not even as good as the original was. Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas star – or actually fill in the time until Danny DeVito is back on screen again – in this tale of a hunt for treasure turning into a battle against an evil desert tyrant, which must be an allegory for something.
05.55 The Magic Roundabout
That’s Sunday morning, of course. Got to keep this tidy…
CHANNEL 5
03.20 Queen Live At Wembley
It looks like Five spotted an awkward hour-long gap in the small hours at the last minute, so Kevin Lygo had a look on his video shelves and dug out this old chestnut. Well, we can’t think of any other reason why they’re showing it again.
05.10 Sons and Daughters
Mind you, we’ve never understood why they’re showing this either, and on Fridays at the same time too.
Sunday 13th October
BBC1
16.45 Points of View
Hundreds of viewers complain about Fame Academy, because 90% of them think that slagging off ‘manufactured music’ is in some way an original and interesting opinion. It’s a good format, just give it a chance, that’s all we ask!
19.00 Sahara with Michael Palin
Seven o’clock?! A new series for Mike which follows the same sort of format as before, only, of course, to slightly diminishing returns. Still, it’s not going to be as bad as his appearance on RI:SE this week, is it?
23.00 Nighthawks
Not the feature length version of the covert operations of Rene Artois and his group of undercover agitateurs, sadly – this is instead the infinitely less interesting, but still awfully good story of anti-terrorist unit types Sylvester ‘Stop or My Mom Will Shoot!’ Stallone and Billy Dee Williams pitted against baddies Rutger ‘Guinness’ Hauer and Persis ‘If I’d been famous enough Terry Wogan would’ve called me Persil’ Khambatta.
01.00 Fear is the Key
Standard Alistair MacLean adaptation starring a pre-Petrocelli Barry Newman and a post-Dudley Moore Suzy Kendall, plus Bendhi Kingsley, James ‘Pallisers’ Berwick and Tony ‘Protectors’ Anholt.
ITV
22.45 The South Bank Show
Most weeks the theme tune is still the best thing about this series, but tonight you may want to try and make it past Melv’s always-awful introduction for a profile of Mike Leigh.
CHANNEL 4
22.00 A Clockwork Orange
We’re duty-bound by the film reviewer’s code here to lament this “landmark” screening as the end of an era, and then go on to mistily rhapsodise about bootlegs, so we’ll keep it short – eighth generation Tudor VHS copy with no colour and deafening hiss, fairly good colour copy that cuts out halfway through the Miriam Karlin scene, and decent widescreen edition plastered with Dutch subtitles. Ah, the romance of it all! You don’t get that with your region ones. In pin-sharp focus – Patrick ‘Caleb’ Magee, Michael ‘Blamire’ Bates, Adrienne ‘Amelia’ Corri, Aubrey ‘Ziebrecken’ Morris, John ‘Sir Frederick’ Savident, Steven ‘Orlov’ Berkoff, David ‘Dave’ Prowse and Carol ‘my dear, what’ve you got for meeeeee?’ Drinkwater.
CHANNEL 5
18.25 The Neverending Story II: the Next Chapter
More “timeless fantasy” which, ironically, has dated far more than, say, Pretty in Pink.
21.00 Dwarves In Showbiz
This is more like the C5 documentaries we know and, er, ‘love’. It’s a look at the careers of some of the more vertically-challenged on Equity’s books, with the bonus being that Christopher Ryan should be slightly too tall to qualify.
Monday 14th October
BBC1
14.35 Murder She Wrote
There’s a new series of Wipeout starting today, so we’re hoping that means that Bob’s back from his sickbed and raring to go, which is great news. And as long as we’ve got a Monkhouse masterclass in the daytime schedules, we don’t even mind this being on every bloody day, still.
17.00 Blue Peter
The power of Creamguide is shown off again as the breakfast repeats have moved to five past eight, so we can see the first ten minutes or so. And really, the exclusive look at the new Brownie uniform, which we got on Monday, deserved that larger audience. Today, though, the dancing competition winners are back, which means that Nicki Chapman might be too, alas.
22.35 One On One
“Mind you, it’s worth a tanner!” Another ace show last week with Asp in the chair, though there wasn’t any Telethon clips, worse luck. Roy Hudd’s in the spotlight tonight, who only got the job on the Huddlines because the producers thought of the name first and then tried to think of anyone with the name Hudd who could do it. It says here, anyway.
BBC2
08.30 Round The Twist
There’s something wrong here, because we’ve not got the birdshit episode yet and we’re sure there’s no more than thirteen episodes in the series. It looks like it could be moving onto series two later in the week, which was made four years later and replaced almost all the actors – something viewers may not appreciate with only a 24 hour gap between series.
13.10 Taxi
Back in its favoured role on this channel of filling awkward gaps, a la Bilko.
13.35 Johnny Guitar
Postponed from a fortnight ago, when we said – “Quite possibly the definitive Western For People Who Don’t Really Like Westerns. Sterling ‘essences’ Hayden moseys into town to defend pugnacious saloon owner Joan Crawford’s mates in this off-kilter, lushly-shot and deservedly feted western from Nicholas ‘Rebel’ Ray. So great the likes of Ernest Borgnine, John Carradine, Dennis ‘rubber ducky’ Hopper, Denver ‘Jesse’ Pyle and Sheb ‘Purple People Eater’ Wooley are footnotes in the cast.”
21.00 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
Perhaps it’s a bit depressing that the first round has turned into a ‘tokenistic question to excuse five minutes of comments about this clip/topic’ a la every other panel game in the world, but the guest list is still fantastic – this week with Jimmy Cliff, Sheila Ferguson and Dame Lauren Laverne, who we’d like to see on Pop, but can’t because Channel Five put it in the worst slot in the world – Saturday afternoons! – and move it about every bloody week. Sort this out!
23.20 I’m Alan Partridge
“And you think, Sunday, bloody Sunday!”
CHANNEL 4
09.00 Happy Days
Were C4’s publicity department to get their arse in gear, we may actually have episode synopses to refer to when billing this programme. Although we’d just ignore them and stick ‘every day at this time’ in instead.
23.05 That Peter Kay Thing
Possibly the weakest of the series, The Arena, but it’s still ten times funnier than everything else. Even if Daniel ‘Dinsdale Lansden’ Kitson steals the show, and on his website – http://www.danielkitson.com, unsurprisingly – there’s a chance to see the whole of his appearance on Blockbusters.
CHANNEL 5
11.00 Magnum PI
Every day at this time, as is the RI:SE-beating Make Way For Noddy.
15.35 Lost Flight
Lloyd Bridges and Billy Dee Williams survive a jumbo crash in this TV movie. Now Channel 5’s owners have owned up to being a bunch of old Nazis (well, ish), will MeedjaGraun start easing up on their increasingly bewildering championing of this station? We’re starting to lose our natural love of quixotic hyperbole! Although an ex-pat American weblogger we chanced upon this week rekindled the old flame slightly with a dewey-eyed tract on shoegazing – “I ached for the day where I could live in London and, y’know, be *near* to all my favourite bands. We all thought the streets of Camden would be paved with Andy Bells and Miki Berenyis.” Now, there’s an image.
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=WALL of FACT=
Hello! Well it’s finally the fifth and final “Wall of Fact” this week. “Ahhh”, yes by all means “ahhh”. In fact, let’s all “ahhh”. “Ahh!” Now, it’s Jeremy Beadle with the very last “One Day On This Day”. Jeremy?
“It’s the day today (October 10) but in 1978 and a famous country singer ‘busted out the front’ of her dress seconds before she was named country entertainer of the year at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Can you guess who she is? Yes, it was Dolly Parton!”
Ha ha ha! Another historic howler! That was great. We’re really going to miss Jeremy’s ye olde data! But enough of that, it’s time to fact.
1) Before appearing in FAME ACADEMY, professional talking-man Jeremy Milne enjoyed great success in a Lombard Tricity Training Film, and as one of the “99” in 99-1. Jeremy can be seen on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in Fame Academy on BBC1.
2) The television programme TIPPING THE VELVET prompted the Radio Times to use the word “cunnilingus” last week for the first time in its 79-year history. Tipping The Velvet can be seen on BBC2 on Wednesday at 21.00.
3) Peter Kay sat the same degree as both the TV and Radio Creamguide Editors’ sisters (that’s Media Studies at Salford University). Peter can be seen on THAT PETER KAY THING on Channel 4 at 23.05. (Factextra: The TV Creamguide Editor’s sister may well have wanted her hair to look like Whitney Housten’s circa “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” but the Radio Creamguide Editor’s sister actually admired Debbie Gibson’s. We have no information about Peter Kay’s preference.)
4) Keith Chegwin used to scrump apples from Bob Monkhouse’s garden. Bob can be seen presenting a new series of WIPEOUT at 12.30 on BBC1, weekdays.
5) Des O’Connor would like to open a restaurant and call it “Dezos”. Des can be seen in TODAY WITH DES AND MEL on ITV at 13.00, weekdays. (Factextra: When THIS IS YOUR LIFE moved to ITV, Des was the first celebrity to be featured.)
And that really is all the fact for now! We hope that “Wall of Fact” will be back sometime in the not too distant future, but until then, it’s been smashing fun … and that’s a fact!!!
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Tuesday 15th October
BBC2
18.20 TOTP2
We forgot last week it was time for the annual screening of Ooh La La La Let’s Go Dancin’ by Kool and the Gnag, which annoys us because it’s not even from Top of the Pops, it’s from The Late Late Breakfast Show. Duuuh. Hopefully no such problems tonight, as we get Sinitta, Julian Cope and The Carpenters.
ITV
20.00 The National Television Awards
Trevor McDonald really is an awful presenter of this programme, because he may have gravitas, but that’s not going to help you deliver a comic monologue at the start. And the whole script is just about Judy Finnigan’s breasts anyway. But the Outstanding Contribution award is normally fun, because the last two have been Des O’Connor and Chris Tarrant, and you get some decent clips accompanying them.
22.30 The Frank SKinner Show
This isn’t the programme it used to be – the dropping of the stand-up means it relies ever more on the standard of the interviews, and they seem to be more straightforward than before as well. Which is a shame, but there’s still Creamy clips to be had.
CHANNEL 4
06.00 The Magic Roundabout
21.00 The Real James Hunt
Creamguide was looking through Murray Walker’s latest autobiography the other week, purely for anecdotes about Steve Rider, and perhaps the most interesting point is that the BBC contract that Hunt had throughout his summarising career said that they didn’t have to physically go to one of the European races each season, and Hunt didn’t like Austria, so they always did that one from a toilet in TV Centre. The anecdotes in this repeated documentary may be a little more sleazy than that one.
02.15 Road to Bali
Bob ‘rhyming slang’ Hope and Bing Crosby on the road, but at 2.15am, not pm! Doesn’t anyone at Channel 4 know their audience? With a cameo by Jane Russell and a dream sequence featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and not forgetting Dorothy Lamour, this is just about as good as it gets this week, folks.
Wednesday 16th October
BBC1
17.00 Blue Peter
Lat time Matt Baker was involved in a quest on this programme it involved him dressing up as a woman and miming to Blondie in an attempt to see a tattoo on Peter Duncan’s arse. Unfortunately his latest mission, as featured on today’s programme, is to explore the mountains of North Africa. Boooring.
BBC2
13.10 Doctor in the House
Dirk Bogarde gets all Sparrowe-d up for the first time in the original ‘Doctor’ number ably assissted by the roll call of the great and good; Donald ‘Born To Be Wild’ Sinden, Kenneth ‘camel’ Moore, James ‘bleeding time’ Robertson Justice, Joan ‘I’m sorry but my washing machine is on’ Hickson, Joan ‘Fox-Custard’ Sims and Richard ‘Sebastopol Terrace’ Wattis. Fred Griffiths plays a taxi driver – natch.
18.20 TOTP2
Incidentally, this programme’s website, at www.bbc.co.uk/totp2, now includes a series of clips from the 1000th episode in 1983, which are fantastic – all the Radio 1 DJs presented, but most hardly got to do anything, with Mike Smith only saying ‘Here’s the top ten’ in the whole programme. If you haven’t got the time to download them all, just watch the eighth clip, billed as featuring Jonathan King, which is bonkers – Kid Jensen carries out the most unnatural interview in the world with Jeffrey Daniels, before handing over to John Peel (“Over to you, shorty!” “Thanks, big guy!”) who “interviews” Clare Grogan (“That’s very very nice indeed”) and then hands over to Jonathan King who ponces around New York and links into messages from popstars, including Charlene. Then Gambo and Mike Read (the latter presumably thinking it was a fancy dress party, and arriving as John Cooper Clarke) swap chart statistics and read out the top thirty, before introducing Blancmange. Incredible. Oh, this programme? Freeez, Taja Seville and Dick Spatsley.
ITV
20.30 30 Years Of Emmerdale
Interesting that less than a year ago everyone was going on about there being loads of soaps on telly, but now both Brookside and Night and Day are playing in off-peak omnibus slots only (yeah, Night and Day is still on, at 12.30am) and Crossroads is on a lengthy break. The ‘dale continues to go from strength to strength, though, and this documentary promises to tell the whole story. Hope they don’t show the 80s sepia-tinged title sequence, though, as Creamguide used to find that very unsettling.
03.15 Pit of Darkness
William ‘Sccchhhh!’ Franklyn succumbs to amnesia-related traumas in another Butcher’s in-for-a-penny potboiler with Leonard ‘a panoply of portentous prestidigitators’ Sachs, Tony ‘I was at the centre of things’ Booth and Nanette ‘Late Expectations’ Newman.
CHANNEL 5
14.30 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
Daniel Thornton, a man more au fait with daytime television than Creamguide, pulled us up over last week’s suggestion that Gloria doesn’t normally take days off, apparently she’s hardly ever there, yet the show remains billed as ‘…with Gloria Hunniford’, even when it isn’t. One of last week’s stand-ins, Aled Jones, returns to be a guest today, alongside Bill Wyman. Hopefully he won’t talk about the boring old Stones, but the majestic Si Si Je Suis Un Rock Star.
Thursday 17th October
BBC1
16.30 Call The Shots
Still clinging onto its place here by the skin of its teeth, if only because today’s programme goes behind the scenes of Film 2002. A programme that regularly goes out past midnight, you note.
01.10 The Hound of the Baskervilles
We’ve had just about every other version of this tale of late, and here’s the one we could easily have done without – a flatlining Pete and Dud caper wherein the only pleasure to be had is watching humourless Warhol acolyte Paul Morrissey (he of the tedious longeurs and gay cowboys) pompously decide that a career mostly spent filming Joe Dallesandro wander around for hours with his knob out is the perfect grounding for an exercise in Carry On-style “bawdy” comedy, and come a massive cropper in the process. Less fun is seeing greats such as Kenneth Williams, Spike, Terry-Thomas, Max Wall, Roy Kinnear, Prunella Scales and Penelope Keith, not to mention Denholm ‘Peter Niss’ Elliott, Joan ‘Girls On Top’ Greenwood, Rita ‘Pompeii’ Webb, Josephine ‘Ronnies’ Tewson, Dana ‘Time Forgot’ Gillespie, Anna ‘Lou Beale’ Wing, Irene ‘Fruitbat’ Handl and Henry ‘WAP’ Woolf, get dragged down with him.
BBC2
21.50 Look Around You
Y’know, when we started writing this, we always thought that very soon TV producers would be flooding the Creamguide office with advance tapes of their exciting new series so they’d get a nice write-up here. No such luck, which is why as Creamguide goes to press we’ve still waiting until the first episode of this comes on the telly. But our flash showbiz contacts who have seen it, the gits, tell us it’s truly brilliant, and we don’t doubt them. And www.bbc.co.uk/lookaroundyou is bloody good as well.
CHANNEL 4
06.00 The Magic Roundabout
23.55 The Best Of TV Go Home
Not sure how many episodes of this there are. We’re still floating the idea of the Creamguide TV series, y’know, although the planned pilot show had to be aborted mid-recording when the Schedule Wheel malfunctioned while the RT Review sub was stuck halfway up it during a death-defying stunt. It could have been very nasty.
Friday 18th October
BBC1
01.05 Legend of the Werewolf
Ropey entry in the werewolf canon from short-lived (and you can see why) Hammer imitators Tyburn, with Peter Cushing and Ron Moody outcamping each other, plus Renee Houston, Michael Ripper and Roy Castle. The TVC Brithorror chart at the moment goes – Hammer (the daddies), Amicus (portmanteau gold!), Tigon (mainly poor Hammer rip-offs but the occasional gem like Witchfinder General), Tyburn (The Ghoul and nothing much else). But we’re sure we’re missing another ’70s horror outfit, even less prominent than Tyburn. Anyone?
BBC2
06.50 What Have The Nineties Ever Done For Us?
The OU really should bring back Weekend OUtlook, we used to love that.
19.30 The Good Life
22.00 Porridge
Of course, we’re not mentioning the new series of an old Creamguide pet hate which begins on BBC1 tonight, though we bet any money that they won’t have got rid of the ludicrous house “band”, who do bloody nothing! Grrr.
01.15 Triple Echo
Glenda Jackson, Brian Deacon and Oliver Reed star in this tale of draft-dodging and cross-dressing which could best be described as, erm, ‘cult’. From a novel by H E Bates, fact fans. Perfick it ain’t! Arf.
CHANNEL 4
06.00 The Magic Roundabout
Oh, is that it?
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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
incorporating CREAMGUIDE LETTERLINE
* Doh, Creamguide last week stupidly assumed that The Alf Garnett Saga was the original Til Death Us Do Part film renamed by Granada Plus, only for Barry Delve to tell us that it was in fact another film entirely, made in 1972 and, he reckons, featuring scenes of The Garnetts in WWII. Oops. No danger of any such problems in this week’s digital listings, unless something stars Roddy McDowall, whose name Barry says we keep on misspelling (it’s not got an E in it!)
* Football Years kicks off on Sky One on Wednesday at 22.00 with 1995/96 – it’s bound to be rubbish, but at least they’ve actually got footage they can use to illustrate it, eh, Football Stories? A better documentary is Whicker’s World – The Love Generation, which looked bonkers when we saw clips of it on One On One the other week. BBC4 give us a welcome chance to see (most of) the whole thing on Saturday at 20.15 and Wednesday at 23.45.
* The rest is very much as you were – Phoenix Nights series two is shown back-to-back on E4 on Saturday at 22.00, with the first (and best) two again at 02.45. G+ have Cuddly Ken on Saturday at 22.30 and 04.30 while UK Horizons start screening You Only Live Once again (Tuesday-Friday, 00.30), including on Thursday – ooh, topical – Edwina Currie. And after last week’s odd special, the new series of Shooting Stars begins on BBC Choice (or BBC3 for DTT viewers, of course) on Sunday at 22.00, then again on Monday at 22.30 and 01.30 and Wednesday at 21.00. Hmm, I wonder how they’ll make that tight budget for BBC3 work?
* Creamguide also received a letter this week from the mysteriously-named, er, “rikki&dazdotcom”. He/she/they referred to last week’s mention of Paul LeRoy pointing at a record, and asked if that was a quote from somewhere. As far as we know, it’s not, just a Creamy convention, perhaps started by that fantastic feature in Q magazine about Radio 1 DJs five or six years ago. If you have any questions about what you’ve just read, get in touch with us via e-mail (please remove the original Creamguide if you hit ‘reply’) or Ask The Family, the TV Cream message board – accessible via pressing Long Shots at http://tv.cream.org
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Trying to find somewhere to plug the TV Cream Update – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers, Daniel Thornton
mack501
October 14, 2022 at 1:36 am
Brilliant