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.)
**************************************
TV CREAM TIMES
14th – 20th December 2002
**************************************
Late night opening – Chris Diamond, Phil Norman
**************************************
Saturday 14th December
BBC1
08.00 Looney Tunes
Also on loads of times this week on other CBBC outposts, including the channel, though it’s odd that given the stringent conditions over the amount of imports they can show, they spend time showing something from 1950.
21.00 Only Fools and Horses
Last year’s Official Worst Episode Ever again, and this time you can’t even excuse the fact that it’s on Christmas Day and you’ve got nothing better to do. Presumably it’s to make us think that this year’s episode can’t be *that* bad, can it?
BBC2
14.20 Ironside
15.40 Perry Mason
This’ll be the afternoon to do your Christmas shopping, then.
23.00 Wild Rovers
Blake Edwards does a western – straight, and with a host of generic reliables on hand – William ‘Wild Bunch’ Holden, Ryan ‘Paper Moon’ O’Neal, Karl ‘Frisco’ Malden, Tom ‘Big Bad Mama’ Skerritt, Joe Don ‘Edge of Darkness’ Baker, Moses ‘Roots’ Gunn, Charles ‘Beast Must Die’ Gray and Jack Garner, James Garner’s brother, who got loads of walk-on parts in The Rockford Files at James’s behest, which had the possibly undesired effect of making it look like they couldn’t afford proper extras and the star was subbing at the last minute. Next week, Creamguide’s On-ly Other Rockford Files Anecdote – how our childhood discovery that James’s surname was real-ly Bumgarner spawned a week-long catchphrase frenzy that landed one of Creamguide’s schoolmates in hot water with the dinner ladies!
01.05 Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
James ‘misquoted’ Cagney breaks out of jail with the help of Barbara ‘troubled’ Payton, then goes after Helena ‘Invaders from Mars’ Carter’s millions.
ITV
21.00 The British Comedy Awards
‘Now it’s time for Best Stand-Up, probably the toughest job in comedy… apart from make-up artist on The Saturday Night Armistice.’ This hasn’t really been the same since they got rid of the black pudding joke, the Bake on scripting duties, and Best Variety Performer. And of course now The Premiership’s on after it they can’t overrun for hours like they used to. And The Office is going to bloody win everything, grumble grumble. But you’ve got to watch it, obviously.
02.00 Forever
That’ll be the series over, then, so here’s an episode from the last series with Andy Darling craply delivering his crap script over the mostly crap hits of 1993.
CHANNEL 4
21.00 A Fistful of Dollars
The Man With No Name – unless you count Clint – hitches up for the first of a double feature with the second part tomorrow. And it’s a comedy. No, honestly, it is.
CHANNEL 5
17.20 Kojak: Ariana
More bit parts for the star’s family members, as Telly’s son and daughter turn up in this late ’80s feature-length bore.
23.55 The Ordeal of Patty Hearst
Dennis ‘Gentle Ben’ Weaver is on the trail of the famous kidnapped heiress, played here by Lisa Eilbacher, who was in the old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries. Nancy herself, of course, was played by Pamela Sue ‘Fallon’ Martin who, alongside Dick ‘My Two Dads’ Butkus, presided over a short-lived US version of ITV’s legendary telly personalities’ sports day series Star Games, as featured in TVC’s ideal Christmas Day TV schedule at http://tv.cream.org/chrisday.htm. No, we can’t actually tell you anything useful about this film, sorry.
02.25 Honeysuckle Rose
This week’s country music-stuffed Texan heartbreaker (a film season we’re not personally that keen to see continue, but at least it’s not Norman Wisdom) stars Willie Nelson and Dyan Can-non, with able support from Slim Pickens. Which reminds us that we’d really like to see late ’70s fantasy-western mini-series The Winged Colt again, if only to see how poor the special effects we once thought were great really are.
05.10 Sons and Daughters
Great to see the title sequence of The Sullivans on Kylie Entirely last week, if only cos it’s the dullest thing in the world – still sepia picture, ‘THE SULLIVANS’ in yellow type, then ‘All charac-ters in this programme are entirely fictional…’ appears at the bottom. More sepia here, and on Friday too.
Sunday 15th December
BBC1
14.50 The Blue Peter Book Awards
There’s loads of BP output over Christmas, you’ll be pleased to know, and it all kicks off with the annual ceremony. Ian Hislop used to be chair of the judging panel, and perhaps still is, which we always used to love because seeing Ian being interviewed by Konnie and sitting on the BP set is just a brilliant image.
16.25 Points of View
Funnily enough, this is the nearest Tel gets to Christmas telly this year, which would have been absolutely unthinkable about fifteen years ago, wouldn’t it? No wonder if this is turning into a request show now, a la Ask Aspel, but no good, obviously.
20.00 The Royal Variety Performance
This is supposed to have ‘a more youthful, vibrant feel’ this year, but they say that every year, and basically means a boy band and someone who’s been on The Stand Up Show is in the line-up. And this year, the latter is the absolutely charmless Jimmy Carr who deserves to be on here almost as much as we do. But look, Lord Bob of Monkhouse is the compere, and Lee Mack’s there, who should be on telly more.
BBC2
17.05 Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
…which of course was on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1974, the same day as A Stocking Full Of Stars with guest Michael Crawford as Frank Spencer, and before The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show with Yarwood as Frank Spencer.
CHANNEL 4
14.50 On the Buses
It always amazes us that this programme could still be responsible for so many cultural refer-ence points, since the show itself was always diabolical, at least that’s the opinion on this side of the Filmguide fireplace. Yet strangulated cries of “I ‘ate you Butler!” can still be heard regu-larly (if you listen in the right places) in public and looking like ‘Olive from On The Buses’ is still a rather cutting insult in many parts – most particularly a pub where some of us used to work. Oh, but the film’s actually better than the series… and here it is. We suggest you watch it whilst clutching a goblet of brown ale just to heighten your level of participation.
22.00 For a Few Dollars More
The Man With No Name gets a name in this one as he sets out across the West dealing with deadly despicable desperados in a demotically dedicated dissection of the duodenums of de-pravity. With Lee Van Cleef.
CHANNEL 5
14.55 I’ll See You in My Dreams
Biopic of songwriter Gus Kahn, with Doris Day as his wife, Jim ‘Magoo’ Backus as his, er, back-er, and songs from the canon such as Makin’ Whoopee and Shine on Harvest Moon. Of course, Sunday evening wartime wryathon Shine on *Harvey* Moon was an early success for Clement and La Frenais’ Witzend Productions who, as well as obscure Cream favourites like Astronauts and Dead Ernest, started out by producing the film version of Porridge, which we’re hoping will turn up, as tradition demands, in next week’s bumper Christmas Creamguide. We’ll stop ram-bling on in this aimless way when we get to a film we actually know something about, honest.
18.10 The Incredible Hulk (’77 TV movie)
Bill Bixby gets very angry having out in the wrong colour of contact lenses and turns into Lou Ferrigno. No, but seriously, this is tremendously good stuff for it’s sort. Watch and enjoy and if anyone in the room starts bleating about where he gets all his new clothes, belt them for us please.
20.00 Robbie Williams Is My Son
Course, Sunday was supposed to be Five’s big documentary night, but they seemed to go off that idea and have started showing crappy films at nine o’clock again instead. But this slot con-tinues for a bit, this week telling the story of Peter Williams, the sort of cabaret entertainer you just don’t get anymore. Big Bob’s not actually in it, y’know.
Monday 16th December
BBC1
17.00 Blue Peter
This is the day they should have started lighting the advent crown, not bloody two weeks ago, duuhh. And frankly we’re a bit pissed off with this programme because last Monday’s show was the first we’ve missed for ages, and they showed The Simon Thomas Television Spectacu-lar with Matt and Simon’s I Enjoy Being A Girl drag act again, and we didn’t see it. And they’ve moved the frigging repeat to 7am again! Grr. Today Simon goes to Madame Tussaud’s.
BBC2
12.00 Taxi
The schools programmes have already finished, although it doesn’t really feel like they’d actu-ally started, given the half-arsed slot they devote to them these days. Still, it means the return of this, every day at this time.
13.20 Pimpernel Smith
The Scarlet Pimpernel updated to wartime Europe with clever Leslie Howard confounding those naughty Nazis at every turn and featuring David Tomlinson’s second appearance as many weeks. We reckon that with bit of luck we should be seeing David every week ’til the New Year what with Xmas and all. And all to the good, too.
18.00 Treasure Hunt
‘Hello.’ Chatsworth Television’s finest hour (and yes, we are including The Interceptor in that) returns for a new run, showing at this time every day this week. We know that Dermot’s in the Kenneth role, and Suzi Perry won’t be much cop in the Anneka role, but alas we haven’t yet been told who’ll be replacing Wincey. And you’ve got to have a Wincey! This pilot run doesn’t leave the South East, but it’s success will decide whether we get a full series, and we’re hope-ful they won’t have messed about with it too much. Mind you, the last game show piloted over a week in this slot was Carry On Campus with Will McDonald.
22.00 I’m Alan Partridge
‘He’s got the biggest collection of hatchbacks in the country!’ This is the last in the series, and every single episode has made us laugh out loud. And that’s all we want.
CHANNEL 4
06.00 The Magic Roundabout
13.35 The Lamp Still Burns
The lives and hard times of student nurses during the Blitz, with Stewart Granger, John Laurie and Joyce ‘Don’t do that’ Grenfell.
CHANNEL 5
11.00 Magnum PI
Every day at this time, and then nothing for two blissful weeks. Aahhh.
15.40 The Christmas Gift
The first Christmas-themed film of the season! Hooray! Sadly it’s a piece of leaden ’80s schmaltz with John Denver (we were, at this point, going to slip in our old joke about what weighs nine pounds and won’t be plucked this Christmas? John Denver’s guitar. But that would be unforgivably tasteless).
**************************************
IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME
Welcome everyone to what is (we sincerely hope, anyway) the last Creamguide Top Ten. But there *will* be umpteen charts and lists from TV Cream in the future, we can’t stress that enough. We hope you’ve enjoyed this feature that was, basically, just made up to fill a gap while we came up with something better. Hence, we’re sending it on it’s merry way by re-calling ten similar features on TV shows that were presumably intended to be long-runners, but instead simply failed to catch on and were swiftly binned after, in some cases, just one outing. The reason we do this is a) to prove that TV producers are not infallible, and b) to prove that there were less successful ideas than Wall of Fact.
10) NOEL’S HOUSE PARTY (1994)
Of course, towards the end of its lifespan, the House Party was in freefall, launching new fea-tures every week that nobody liked, then trying another load the following week that nobody liked either. But even in it’s “golden age” earlier in the run, there were still a few items that didn’t really capture the public’s imagination. Take the moment in the first show of one series when a craply-animated ‘workman’ walked – or more correctly, juddered – onto the screen and started bantering with Noel. Presumably this was supposed to be his new Posh Paws-style sidekick, but the crap animation meant that the whole routine died on its arse, and the charac-ter never appeared again.
9) FINAL SCORE (2001)
The bold new era of post-Premiership BBC Sport led to big changes to Ray’s results round-up, including a completely new look thanks to the Beeb’s new graphic designer, Prince. Some of the new innovations were actually quite good (we love that picture of Gerald Sinstadt looking debonair!) but perhaps the silliest was the classified results being accompanied by music. In actual fact, it wasn’t that annoying, but the clipped tones of Tim Gudgin backed by light drum’n’bass just sounded stupid. So they threw the CD away after a week.
8) TOP OF THE POPS (2001)
Here’s this week’s mention of Top of the Pops, if only to recall the terrible hour-long show that heralded the show’s return to Television Centre last year. In the pre-publicity, producer Chris Cowey spent ages going on about how he lived for music, and how it was all about the bands, but somehow managed to forget all that while making the programme, and cut performances short to make way for interviews with Ricky Tomlinson and week-old celebrity gossip in a ‘Liq-uid News @ TOTP’ sequence, which was dropped after one show. But was it really any worse than the bloody Star Bar, which they’re still persisting with? Put some microphones in it! It’s a television studio!
7) FAME ACADEMY (2002)
Creamguide will, of course, not hear a bad word against this programme, but will admit that the earlier programmes in the run weren’t quite as polished as they could have been. One of our favourite bits in the series was during the first evict… sorry, expulsion show, when, after the loser, whoever he was, got flung out, he had to join his fellow students for one last per-formance of Lean On Me. However the production team hadn’t really counted on how emo-tional the evictions were going to be, and thus when they got to the song, not only had all the students forgotten where they were supposed to stand, but nobody had worked out what they were going to sing into. Cue a frantic production assistant running on the stage to hand out a pile of microphones. Unsurprisingly, later evictees simply shuffled off.
6) TFI FRIDAY (1996)
Obviously, almost all of the regular features on TFI were dropped when Evans realised that the more time someone else was on screen, the less time he was on. But before It’s Your Letters, Freak or Unique, and the rest, the early shows included some other items – most notably, The Bar Room Debate, where two punters would take opposing views on an issue (the first, memo-rably, was ‘Should Noel’s House Party be axed?’) and the rest of the bar would vote. However, the first show also contained a lengthy sequence written by Danny Baker, where Evans went out on the street to “test” whether a joke about eggs was funny or not. This was along the same lines as the sketches on the Bake’s own chat show (such as “300 Years Of Adult Maga-zines”), consisting of a central theme with loads of quickie routines throughout, and was per-haps the best thing in the whole show. Inevitably, they never did that sort of thing again.
5) DON’T FORGET YOUR TOOTHBRUSH (1994)
Uniquely, Toothbrush had it’s pilot episode broadcast during the first series – we forget why, something to do with the studio being double-booked or something. Evans had to come in to record a special introduction, telling us not to phone up the telephone number given out on the show; this was an early version of the bit where the viewer at home was waiting on the line in case the studio contestants lost (the Captain Scarlet bit, of course), where the winner would be the first person to call an in-studio phone – something obviously unworkable on the live show. The final round in the pilot also included questions along the lines of ‘Jools is operating the camera – is it in or out of focus?’, which weren’t used again. Oh, and Will McDonald appeared as a baggage handler.
4) SATURDAY SUPERSTORE (1987)
An odd one, this – we refer to the edition towards the end of the run when Bruno Brookes showed up to host a quiz called ‘Time Against Time’. Running throughout the morning, in pre-recorded chunks, this involved two teams of contestants, armed with phones and encyclopae-dias, attempting to find out such things as the height of Canterbury Cathedral and the colour of Des Lynam’s socks. Presumably a pilot, the quiz was never seen again anywhere. A bit like the pilot for All Star Secrets being on the last ever Bruce Forsyth’s Big Night, we presume.
3) RED ALERT (1999)
Well, there were so many things wrong with this programme, almost everything from the first show got dropped after a matter of weeks, but two items were so crap they never even got a second outing. The first was the shameless rip-off of the ‘Throw things out of your windows’ game on Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, where a camera would arrive in a street and those liv-ing there were enticed out of their houses to play some game or other. Which was bloody aw-ful. The second, of course, was Sid Waddell’s stint as The Voice Of The Balls. The first problem was that they turned Sid’s mike up as loud as it could go, so nobody could understand a word he was saying. The second problem was that when the balls came out, Sid said stuff like “21! That’s seven double seven!”, which was utterly pointless and confusing. And the third problem was that he was just completely useless at reading from a script. Hence, Deadly returned for show two.
2) CD:UK (1998)
“We thought the show was going to be taken off the air” was Cat’s assessment of the first few episodes of the Saturday morning behemoth. And rightly so, thanks to a number of ludicrous ideas. The first show included contributions from “Doctor Pop” – ie, Phil ‘Pick of the Pops’ Swern, who sat at a desk in a spangly jacket looking about eighty, and said stuff like “There are eight new entries in this week’s chart!”, which absolutely nobody cares about. Also ill-advised was a link-up to a record shop in Manchester where hideous Virgin DJs Pete and Geoff com-pletely died on their arse while asking a few underwhelmed kids what records they were buy-ing. Both items were taken into a metaphorical wood and metaphorically shot after a fortnight.
1) THE PREMIERSHIP (2001)
Predictable, yes, but it wasn’t just the crap scheduling or the irritating chortling between Des, Terry and Ally that annoyed everyone in the world. One of the major problems was that they cut down on the amount of actual football so they could arse around with stupid gimmicks. Andy Townsend’s Tactics Truck was the highest-profile casualty, where Britain’s Most Hated Man sat in the back of a truck and patronised a player by telling them exactly how they’d cocked it up – journalist Giles Smith suggesting that “Sooner or later, someone is going to thump him”. Worse still, though, was ProZone, which was some sort of 3D business that con-verted players on the pitch into tiny numbered dots, to explain… well, nobody’s quite sure what it explained. Nothing that couldn’t already be explained by just showing the actual players on the pitch. Next time round it produced – wooh! – some graphs. Then the next week, Des actually asked Terry “No ProZone this week?”, which is ludicrous, as it just drew attention to the fail-ures – he may as well have said “No viewers this week?”.
**************************************
Tuesday 17th December
BBC2
18.45 TOTP2
Back to the 45-minute format for one week, and never knowingly original, it’s Christmas rec-ords. However this year it’s devoted to Christmas number ones, so we’ll get The Pet Shop Boys and The Housemartins (which technically wasn’t Christmas number one, it was Jackie Wilson), and hopefully not White Christmas, which they play every bloody year even though it is *not* a bloody pop record! It’s from 1942, for God’s sake!
ITV
19.30 Best of After They Were Famous
Not entirely sure this is the sort of programme you can do a ‘best of’ of, especially when it in-cludes Andrea Jaeger and Jet Harris out of The Shadows. And we’ve also got Geoffrey Hayes, and after all this “post-modern”, “ironic” “revival” stuff, we never want to see him again.
20.00 Never Say Never Again
‘Unofficial’ but still rather dull legal-loophole rehash of the not-that-good-anyway Thunderball. There’s a bit of fun to be had with unfamiliar names in familiar roles, viz Max von ‘Tim Tyler’ Sydow as Blofeld, Edward ‘VII’ Fox as M, Alec ‘Mr. Palfrey of Westminster’ McCowen as Q etc, but otherwise you’ll have to be content with Rowan ‘Bu-harclaycard??!’ Atkinson, Pat ‘no-one’s grabbed Bomber’s arse!’ Roach, Prunella ‘Kinvig’ Gee, Ronald ‘Radio 4’ Pickup and someone getting piss thrown in their face. Charming. Oh, and flung around the news, with the first part being two hours long, and the second – 25 minutes. Nice scheduling, guys.
CHANNEL 4
02.10 The Anderson Tapes
One of Sean Connery’s ‘other’ films and one of the better ones, too featuring as it does the likes of Martin ‘gesundheit’ Balsam and Alan King.
Wednesday 18th December
BBC1
14.10 Quincy
Exactly what’s going on with BBC1 afternoons these days is anyone’s guess, as we had this for a few days, then Diagnosis Murder, and now this again. Still, it’s only up against Everything Must Go, so you’ve got to watch it.
17.00 Blue Peter
This is an odd one, it appears to be a repeat of last year’s Christmas panto. Not that we’re moaning, cos all the presenters get to do big song and dance routines, and Tina Heath is in it as well.
00.15 Shout at the Devil
In this African set feature starring Lee Marvin, Ian Holm plays a mute but Roger Moore gets to talk loads, which seems to us to be a reversal of what should have happened with the casting. Maurice Denham’s in this too and therefore this should be watched just to reiterate the fact that he did actually appear in something other than Porridge, which one might easily believe given regular viewing of the BBC.
BBC2
19.30 The Good Life
You’ll never guess what episode they’re showing next week.
REGIONALIA!
21.40 Look Around You (Scotland only)
This series was messed about a bit north of the border, and there are two as yet unseen epi-sodes, which BBC Scotland are screening on consecutive nights. First up, it’s the story of iron, with brilliant ‘clang!’ sound effect.
ITV
22.55 Psycho
The skinny did it.
CHANNEL 4
13.05 Love Me or Leave Me
More Doris Day, more Broadway biopicage, as she takes the lead role for the story of singer and “taxi dancer” (no, us neither) Ruth Etting, with James ‘for the record, I actually said “that dirty, double crossin’ rat”, you silly impressionists!’ Cagney as the seedy gangster who pro-pelled her to stardom.
CHANNEL 5
14.30 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
‘Oh look, I’ve dropped my flower!’ Cleo Rocos guests today, and has an intimate, informative conversation with Gloria, while we watch a great pair of knockers (it’s a quote, honest!).
Thursday 19th December
BBC1
12.30 News Review 2002
Eh? These things normally go out one evening around the 29th December, but this being such a pifflingly uninteresting year, it goes out at lunchtime before Christmas. What if something amazing happens on Boxing Day, then?
14.10 Quincy
And there’s one today, but not tomorrow! What lunacy is this?
00.55 Doomwatch
Moving from Friday to Thursday night, but otherwise untrammelled, the BBC1 horror slot this week throws up Tigon’s film adaptation of Gerry ‘Cybermen’ Davis’s top flight BBC series pro-filing the trials and tribulations of government-appointed environmental watchdog, the De-partment of Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work. Sadly it’s now chiefly remem-bered, if at all, via oft-shown clips of dodgy special effects such as a chicken with a false rub-ber ‘human’ face and the infamous stuffed-rat-and-frying-pan scene from Tomorrow The Rat, bookended by a silently chuckling Clive James. Which is a shame, as on its day it was good, downbeat sci-fi/horror/”British gothic” of the sort no-one’s really doing anymore (OK, so Chan-nel 5 did try and revive Doomwatch with a one-off TV special with Trevor Eve a few years back, but best not to mention that). In this story, partially culled from lost early episode Burial at Sea, chemical waste from a sunken tanker off the Cornish cost causes acromegaly (a genuine hormonal growth disorder – they did their research, did the ‘Watch boys) in locals living off lo-cally-caught fish. Regular department heads, the Benny Hill-alike John ‘Swallows and Ama-zons’ Paul and the slightly more dashing Simon ‘Terrornauts’ Oates (He no stodgy old prof! He wear a cravat!), are augmented by semi-regular Jean ‘Dominic Hyde’ Trend and newcomer Ian ‘Spooner’s Patch’ Bannen. Robert Powell’s out (well, he did get blown up at the end of the first series), and, alas, John ‘CJ’ Barron’s meddling minister has also been chopped, though George ‘Psychomania’ Sanders provides a bluff naval foil to the intrepid watchdogs in his stead. Hardly a classic, but not bad of its kind, all told. We could have done with more of the Doomwatch su-percomputer, mind. Also with Judy ‘Star Maidens’ Geeson, Shelagh ‘Aunt Beru’ Fraser, George ‘Inigo Pipkin’ Woodbridge and Pam St. Clement. Here’s hoping this strand continues past the Christmas recess, as there’s still a ton of ace rarities for the schedulers to get through.
BBC2
13.15 Holiday Affair
Festive consumer-oriented romance between Robert ‘bongos’ Mitchum and Janet ‘curtains’ Leigh.
REGIONALIA!
21.50 Look Around You (Scotland only)
And here’s the final episode. Hopefully the BBC Scotland continuity announcer won’t talk over the fantastic full version of the theme at the end.
ITV
22.30 Harry Hill’s TV Burp
‘Well, we’ve got hold of the little black book – it’s a sort of buff colour.’ Last in the series of the best thing ITV have done for years, and that’s true. And he’ll be back with a stand-up/sketch show soon, too, so that’s all to the good.
Friday 20th December
BBC1
17.00 Blue Peter
Liz got in The Sun the other day, because she’s wearing a catsuit in the Christmas panto – hope-fully that’s not the costume designed by the competition winner, or we’ll be very worried. That’s on next Monday and is, brilliantly, an hour long, before the Presents For The Pets/Christmas Crib/Salvation Army Band/Shiny BP Ship Next To The Copyright Date show on Christmas Eve. Dunno what’s on this one, though.
20.30 The Story of Only Fools and Horses
A history of the show formerly known as Readies, this one-off documentary includes interviews with John Sullivan, David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst, as well as celebrity fans (please God, not Garry Bushell), the inevitable clips, and hopefully some interesting and unseen stuff as well.
23.20 Black Sunday
Originally scheduled for the 20th of October (cleverly actually *on* a Sunday – scheduling de-partment pulls face of smug pride, spends rest of afternoon in BBC bar), but presumably post-poned due to the terrible events in Bali. Robert ‘electric toothbrushes’ Shaw stars in this tale of an Israeli agent setting out to prevent a dastardly terrorist plot to drop a bomb from an airship onto the Superbowl. Not to be confused with Two-Minute Warning, in which Charlton ‘Colum-bine’ Heston is up against a sniper hiding behind the scoreboard at the Superbowl. Or a rubbish Cypress Hill LP.
BBC2
22.00 Porridge
Oh, and last week we made reference to Peter Cook’s 1971 live chat show Where Do I Sit? and asked whether any clips from it actually exist. In fact, they’ve just discovered some and they’ll be shown on the documentary on Pete over Christmas. Which is convenient. We never got that sort of response about Breakfast In The Broom Cupboard, did we?
ITV
00.20 Midnight Cowboy
This is another of those films which we’re supposed to think is marvellous and convince us that Dusty Hoffman is a great actor, as opposed to just a mumbling smout. We try then not to like it, but the final scene on the bus just tears us apart so we cannot comply. Oh, and Jon Voight’s in it an’ all.
CHANNEL 4
13.00 The Way Ahead
Now, we’ve never seen this and we don’t know why cos it sounds tremendous. Starring David ‘Candleshoe’ Niven, Stanley ‘Albert’ Holloway, John ‘Dooomed!’ Laurie, Jimmy Hanley and Wil-liam Hartnell as the sergeant – would you Adam an’ Eve it? – it says here that Tessie O’Shea is in it as herself singing; presumably this was part of some exercise to get the troops used to the hellish sounds of war. Written by Peter Ustinov and directed by Carol Reed and watched by us.
CHANNEL 5
00.40 Hotline
Lynda ‘Wonder Woman’ Carter and James ‘Kenny Aimes, you know, Ally Fraser’s dodgy mate with the yacht in series two of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ Booth – together at last! In this TV movie about a female Samaritans phoneline crew member terrorised by a stalker.
**************************************
DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
* First up, Wheeltappers news, and last week’s show was tremendous only because it featured Russ Conway at the top of the bill. We’re still wondering how Jools so-called Holland managed to miss Russ out of his History of the Piano recently but since being an uber-snob and having alloted Liberace about fifteen seconds this was hardly surprising. Don’t know what happened to Miss TV Times of Granadaland, except to presume that someone at Granada Plus must have woken up to the fact that they were going to show it. This week (Saturday, 22.30, G+) should be Johnny Ray and The Grumbleweeds if logic is applied. Could be anyone then.
* “I eff daytime, and I eff, effin’ night time!” It’s Sophie’s Choice, of course, the subject of the best bit of Frank Skinner’s Room 101 appearance – and one of the best bits of his autobiog-raphy. It’s on BBC4 on Saturday at 21.00, and don’t forget to tell your parents how to turn the digibox off.
* Good news, everybody! Bullseye is back on Granada Plus, on Saturday at 18.00, and better still in the tinned peaches slot of 17.30 on Sunday. Also on that channel you’ve got Tommy Cooper (Monday-Thursday, 19.30, 03.00), The Comedians (Sunday, 22.30), Les Dawson (Satur-day, 18.30 – dunno when they’re from though) and on Saturday at 23.00, there’s the bloody aw-ful Jack Dee’s Saturday Night, which we mention because it’s probably the first TV exposure Menswear have got for years. You know somewhere here we’ve got a bit of an old episode of Live and Kicking from 1995 on tape, where Pip Schofield’s the guest, and in Trev and Simon’s Video Galleon, Pip says that Sleeping In by Menswear is ‘absolutely brilliant’. If you want us to destroy the tape, Phil, we’ll accept a cheque.
* Sky One repeat the TV Year of 1996 (Wednesday, 22.00), and The New Statesman continues on Paramount (Monday-Thursday, 23.00), the same channel that’s screening Monty Python At The Hollywood Bowl (Sunday, 22.35). And that’s it.
**************************************
IT’S YOUR CHRISTMAS ON TEE VEE CEE
Not long to go now until the bumper double Creamguide wings it’s way to your inbox – a two-part giant e-mail including everything Creamy hitting your screens over fourteen days, and without a Holidays 2003 supplement right in the middle of Christmas Day. I mean, really. And as a festive treat – and because nobody’ll be in work next Friday and thus nobody’ll read it oth-erwise – it’ll be coming out early next week, probably around Tuesday evening. And just to show how totally committed we are to the cause, the week after that will see the publication of the Creamguide Review Of The Year – our annual compendium of in-jokes and score-settling. Then on 2nd January, the regular weekly Creamguide will be back, with an exciting new look! Sort of.
Plus don’t forget all the festive fare on http://tv.cream.org, which is also where you can sub-scribe to The TV Cream Update, and the Christmas ‘Up will also be out sometime next week. And if you still want more, then bung your questions and comments to Ask The Family, the TV Cream notice board. And there’s snow on the logo too. TV Cream – we care.
**************************************
They’ve all got salmonella, and the doctor’s not about – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers
