TV Cream

How We Used To List

How We Used To List: 16th – 22nd MARCH 2002


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
16th – 22nd March 2002
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Five’s Company – Phil Norman
In The Cyberzone- Graham Kibble-White
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Look at that! Look at that! – http://tv.cream.org/arklong.htm
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Saturday 16th March

BBC1

21.00 2001 TV Moments
Michael Parkinson presents this show, which as usual he’s prefaced by slagging off a genre of TV in the paper and everyone going “Amazing!” as if it was a new idea or if he hasn’t said it several hundred times before. This week, Parky’s said that Celebrity Big Brother – screened a year ago – was crap, and that the people who appear on Big Brother are replacing people like David Attenborough. I’m sorry Parky, I’ve never seen The Private Life Of Plants With Narinder. Anyway, in no way hypocritically, this show features clips of Celebrity Big Brother, so please vote for it as the top TV moment just to piss him off. A load more clips of last year’s telly are included too, despite nobody noticing it’s now March. Still, Caroline Wright’s producing so it should be vaguely half-decent. Apart from Parky.

BBC2

13.45 Riddle of the Sands
It that Peter Ustinov? No, it’s Michael York! Discovering a dastardly turn-of-century German invasion plot with the help of yachting chum Simon “we’ll just cut away to this wobbly rubber hand, then by the next shot I’ll be a snake” MacCorkindale, and Logan’s Run chum Jenny Agutter. And who’s that, extending his acting range amongst the Kaiser’s ranks? It’s Mr Bronson again!

15.25 Alfred the Great
“Yes, I’m mainly known for my roles in films such as Blow Up, but I am also a quite accomplished television director, with the likes of Magnum PI, The A-Team, Quantum… oh my God! The cakes!” David Hemmings is the unlikely Wantage baking failiure, up against invading viking Peter – sorry – Michael York. Also donning gowns and woad – Ian “My action figure’s got bloody long johns on underneath!” McKellen, Peter “‘ere I am, JH” Vaughan, Julian ‘Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth’ Glover (playing a character called Shrdlu, according to the IMDb, which we always thought was a way of signalling a typo in old mechanical printing presses – hence “Gobfrey Shrdlu” in Denys Parsons’ old collections of amusing newspaper misprints – thus raising a few questions about the modernity of the IMDb’s equipment), Christopher “smell the glove” Timothy, Barry ‘Mind Your Language’ Evans and Henry ‘Arthur Sultan’ Woolf.

17.30 The Time Machine
Been to the loo while that thing about the dangers of Georgian building practices was on? Good, as the old film fun continues with this well-worn “re-imagining” of Wells with Rod Taylor using a big flywheel to view time-lapse film of shop window dummies and rescue shit-thick Aryan birds (namely Yvette ‘The Picasso Summer’ Mimieux, last week’s Creamguide fans) from albino gorillas. Our traditional gripe – where’s the bit at the very end of the book where he goes to the end of the Earth and there’s a great big crab monster? Eh? Because we really liked that bit.

21.00 Class Of 1977
Some nice research in this show, as last week one of the contestants went on to play for Brighton, and we saw a clip of him scoring against Man U in the Coca-Cola Cup in 1992, and from the same game a rookie Becks making his first appearance. Plus we got the theme tune to The Really Wild Show, and we’d forgotten quite how fantastic it was. Perhaps nothing that good tonight, but worth a look in any case.

ITV

15.15 Their Worst Nightmares – Sports Commentators
We went through the torturous process behind this programme when it was shown in a fifteen-minute re-edit three weeks ago, but now it gets even odder, as here’s the whole sixty minutes again to fill a gap. Quite a lot of swearing in it too, including Jimmy Greaves’ “We look a pair of dickheads!” (to which Brian Moore replies with “Don’t say that, Jimmy”, rather pointlessly after the event).

CHANNEL 4

06.05 The Trap Door
They’ll be remaking this next! Perhaps.

13.15 Little House On The Prairie
Also shown on Mondays, so they’re presuming all the audience is either retired or a lazy student. Probably correctly.

21.00 Heroes Of Comedy
Ronnie Corbett is the subject, and yes, Fork Handles does appear. Let’s also hope for the title sequence to Sorry!, because it’s Creamguide’s favourite theme tune of all time, and also more clips of No That’s Me Over Here, because the sequence they showed on his Best Of British programme looked quite lavishly mounted, and we’d like to see more of it, kinda. Oh, and last week we pondered about Robin Le Mesurier, and Darren Riley has pointed out that he “was Rod Stewart’s guitarist in the late 70’s – early 80’s and played guitar on such classics as Lady Jane and Do Ya Think I’m Sexy (not the Kenny Everett version alas…)”. So now you know.

22.00 Top Ten Heartbreakers
So far this year we’ve not had any Maconie clashes, which is a shame. The besat we can come up with is tonight, when his radio show is immediately followed by this edition which contains one of those patented Fireside Chats, as it’s basically Another Top Ten Love Songs. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

CHANNEL 5

04.15 Sons and Daughters
Jon Peake has complained about the standard of billings this series has received in Creamguide, saying “Okay, I’m not watching at 4.15am, but once I was a fan. Gordon! Barbara! Beryl! Wayne! And whither Patricia? Trapped in an Aussie world of beige (“they’re 10 years behind in everything”, as we used to say about Down Under before Neighbours changed our world view), skullduggery and slip-ons were the name of the game in this two-centre (Sydney and Melbourne, so one didn’t get jealous of the other) tale of small business, cake shops, murder and incest. Students loved it, those sepia opening credits featuring unflattering headshots of the current cast promising untold riches. Anyway, the show’s so old, most of the cast are dead. So let’s not speak ill of them. Let’s raise our glasses. All together now: “love is very strange, it can come and go….”” That’s us told, Jon. Now, any chance of Sally Phillips’ phone number? You’re our best hope!

Sunday 17th March

BBC1

18.15 Getting Close To Thora
An “intimate” profile, perhaps devised so she can qualify for a BAFTA again this year.

19.40 Only Fools and Horses
Looks like we’re getting all the Christmas shows in order again, exactly as we did about nine months ago. And they all go crap after this one, “Dates”.

23.55 In The Heat of the Night
Sidney “They call me MISTER” Poitier squares up to Rod “Whom?” Steiger in the classic Southern cracker expose.

BBC2

12.25 The Phil Silvers Show
And Stingray has finished, so we don’t have to carry on with the awkward 11.15/12.00 discussion. Apart from here, obviously. Everyone gets this, at the same time too.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Trap Door

Monday 18th March

BBC1

14.10 Doctors
This is on all year round now, so expect them to work their way through the whole of Equity before the year’s out – including Matthew Kelly today. And Christopher Timothy directs, fact fans.

17.00 Blue Peter
Our favourite bit on last week’s programmes was the appearance of Sum 41, which we like because it’s about a hundred times more credible than The Saturday Show.

BBC2

08.35 Postman Pat
So at 08.15 every morning Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee sing the Cbeebies song to introduce the day’s programmes, which always starts with the day of the week – obviously today’s is “It’s Monday, it’s Monday, it’s always a fun day” but we’d like to complain about the half-arsed nature of “It’s Wednesday, it’s Wednesday, it’s always a pleasant day”.

13.10 The Phil Silvers Show
Doesn’t even bloody scan!

18.20 Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
We thought the daily Simpsons was supposed to bring order to the schedules, but this moves back to the slot it was in two weeks ago.

18.45 Techno Games
Return of the series which is a bit boring, to be honest, but it’s included here because Barry Davies does the commentary, and we really, really like him. And the fact he wasn’t in the last series of Big Train is perhaps the main reason why it wasn’t as good as the first one. Also featuring Andy Collins, of whom, more later.

21.00 Shooting Stars
The guests don’t even matter anymore! Hence Michael Winner and Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall. Still, George Dawes sung a bit of the theme tune to The Lenny Henry Show, which was brilliant.

22.00 Room 101
If Len had kept the “Lenny, Lenny, Len” theme tune, we’d have watched his current series. Anyway, Alexei Sayle’s the guest, whose Stuff series was absolutely fantastic, and the video compilation of that show we bought for three quid years ago is still one of our faves, but whose Merry-Go-Round series a decade later stank. Which Alexei’ll turn up tonight, then? Oh, and last week we got The Great Big Groovy Horse – though obviously taken out of context and sneered at, as is this show’s wont.

ITV

16.15 How 2
HOW long is this repeat run going to be? Every day at this time.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Trap Door

07.00 The Big Breakfast
Two weeks to go (we think)! Actually the replacement so far has Chris Rogers, Kirsty Gallacher and Mark Deurden-Smith lined up to present, and apprarently it’s going to be a bit like Loose Women, so we may look back on this as a golden age. They’re still showing old clips around 08.10, which the other day included some great corpsing from Zig, Zag and Chris, and some days they have Johnny Vegas, but you can see him on better programmes. In the ten seconds of the live stuff we can bear to watch, we noticed that Lisa Rogers is presenting this week, although exactly why Amanda Byram can’t wait a fortnight to go on holiday, we don’t know. Still, not that we mind her not being there.

09.00 Bewitched
The new programme’s going to have the same running time too, so this’ll probably be sticking around.

13.25 Little House On The Prairie
So exactly why don’t we get films on Monday?

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm
The Sunday show has been dropped for the repat of It’s Your Funeral, which is also going out in the hallowed slot of 13.30 on Mondays, followed by a brand news arts series. Nice scheduling, C5!

11.00 TJ Hooker
Meanwhile the rest of the week you get Oprah there, who’s just announced she’s quitting her show because standards are slipping – in 2006. We admire a woman with principles, especially when she said the same thing in 1999 and then changed her mind.

13.30 It’s Your Funeral
Actually we’d better mention this, because Hazel O’Connor’s the guest. And if you can’t get to a telly, as we say, the repeat’s on at the more convenient time of 06.30 on Sundays. Yes, C5 are really doing their bit in religion.

15.35 She’s Working Her Way Through College
Ronald Reagan musical (he doesn’t sing, alas) which we only include here as it features Hope ‘Mrs Colonel Hall’ Sansberry. So anyway, a hot topic on the Creamguide Ask The Family forum at the moment is Old Films Channel Five Could Be Showing in Spare Timeslots Like This One Instead of Rubbish ’90s TV Movies. For this mid-afternoon musical slot, Creamguide reckons the sainted Never Too Young to Rock would be ideal, or maybe Tommy Steele’s Half a Sixpence, or The Happy Millionaire (“Just do your best and leave the rest to fortuosityyyy!”) Other correspondents chipped in with Mario Lanza’s Seven Hills of Rome, Slade in Flame, Three Hats for Lisa (with Joe Brown, Una Stubbs and a singing Sid James), the Joe Meek/David Hemmings/Peter Glaze vehicle Live It Up (the only film we know of to feature both Kenny Ball and Ritchie Blackmore), and the fantastic-sounding Great Yarmouth-based Billy Fury/Amanda Barrie/Jon Pertwee vehicle I’ve Gotta Horse. So come on, Channel Five! We know there are a few Long Acre staff amongst the ‘Guide’s readership. Let’s get some of these forgotten gems back on the telly!

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“TV Cream” what?! Oh, TV CREAM HEROES WEEKLY!
It’s a fresh and fly look at the world of telly

#8 Andy Collins, as seen in TECHNO GAMES, Monday – Friday, 18.45, BBC2

Well, we got quite excited this week when the Creamguide Ed handed us the usual slim dossier pertaining to our designated TVCHW. This was it! The big one! As we reached for our bulging clippings folder and placed a call to Amanda Howard Associates the Ed pulled us up short. No – it’s *Andy* Collins.

So we’re annoyed now, not least because we actually really hate Andy Collins. But – as with Barbara Knox three weeks ago – he’s entered into our treasury of, er, pleasurey because we have a personal connection with the man. It’s a slight one, though (not as slight as driving past his house, mind). In 1995 or something we auditioned to “Beat The Elite” on Sky One’s weekday computer games-playing programme GAMES WORLD – and we did rather well actually thanks to being really skilful at Mario Kart. Anyway, Andy Collins was there serving as a warm-up man for the audience. Even then we remarked upon what a plucky young fella our Andy was, because despite his speech impediment, unlikeable persona, jug ears, lack of wit, poor dress sense, zero stage presence and – most damningly – scant knowledge of the short-cut in the haunted house level of Mario Kart he still went up on stage and gave it his best shot.

Andy eventually went on to take over from host Bob “Waistcoat Wednesday” Mills on GAMES WORLD and that’s where we stopped watching. He then showed up on [.tv] doing more computer game stuff. We can’t even remember the name of the programme to be honest but it featured him doing crazy things and shouting on poor-quality video tape whilst guys wearing bandanas and sunglasses indoors reviewed the latest games. When the channel went down we hoped that’d be the last we’d see of him – but he’s back again now on BBC2 doing more high-tech stuff. We won’t be watching. Unless Rex Garrett is on. With heavy heart, then, Andy C is allowed into the TV Cream Heroes Weekly suite and allocated the room we had set aside for C&VG’s Tim Boone. Now there’s a man who doesn’t do enough telly nowadays. Him and Jeremy Daldry.
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Tuesday 19th March

BBC1

23.55 The Producers
It’s great. We know. But it’s on telly more often than it’s on Broadway these days. Unlike that other Mostel/Wilder comedy, the bizarre Ionesco adaptation Rhinoceros, which Channel Five used to show late at night a few years back and could start airing again…

BBC2

08.30 Postman Pat
And as for “It’s Thursday, it’s Thursday, it could be your birthday”…

13.10 What a Whopper!
Adam Faith searches for the Loch Ness monster in the sort of fantasy comedy only a collaboration between Jeremy ‘Are You Being’ Lloyd and Terry ‘Genesis of the’ Nation could produce, with one of those Cream cast lists to die for – Sid James, Clive Dunn, Charles Hawtrey, Spike Milligan, Wilfrid Brambell, Terry Scott, Lance Percival, Molly Weir and Fyffe “I’m standing here with this huge fish” Robertson.

19.05 TOTP2
How many times has that Orange Juice clip been on now? We’re sure last week was it’s third showing in under a year. Similar deja vu promised tonight with King Kurt and Can, because they must have only done one performance each, but actually we really want to see the Can clip again. Also there’s Ian Dury and The Rubettes, and we like the Sugar Baby Love clip if only because we like the way the lead singer is trying to hold it together while the rest of the band ham it up to ridculous levels.

21.00 When Louis Met Keith Harris And Orville In Panto
This might sound like Louis’ just going through Spotlight and getting the address of every D-list celebrity he could find, but apparently this programme is actually damn good fun. And it allows us to boast that we saw Keith live, at his peak and everything, in the Plas Madoc Leisure Centre in Wrexham in 1984. Like seeing The Beatles at Shea Stadium, perhaps.

ITV

03.10 ITV Sport Classics
Can’t be long before Spurs 3 Man U 5 shows up here.

CHANNEL 4

06.05 The Trap Door

09.00 Bewitched
Actually, why don’t we do ‘On every day at this time’ here? We’re hopeless, aren’t we?

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker

14.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
C5 are taking up a big chunk of this week’s Creamguide, aren’t they? Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz guest today.

15.35 Promises in the Dark
Thoroughly depressing teenage cancer tale, included here for the presence of Michael ‘Dempsey’ Brandon, and an odd soundtrack featuring Billie Holliday, Elvis Costello, The Cars and Sylvester. Perhaps Channel Five would do better screening a vintage comedy instead. ATF suggestions include – Sid James/Kenneth Connor horror spoof What a Carve Up!, fantastic Crazy Gang vs. Alistair Sim naval lamp genie romp Alf’s Button Afloat, Arthur Askey pics like King Arthur Was a Gentleman, The Love Match, or the Cream cameo-stuffed Make Mine a Million, ignored early Peter Sellers films like The Smallest Show on Earth or Heavens Above!, or any of the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple flicks, especially Murder Ahoy! Get some in, Channel Five!

Wednesday 20th March

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Live from Brussels, so they’ve obviously been playing the playing the Famous Belgians game in the office – hence, the stories of Tintin and The Smurfs.

20.20 This Is Your Life
Ooh, smart scheduling, BBC1. Programmes should *never* start at twenty past anything, and that’s the law.

22.35 When Shoulderpads Ruled The World
Not much of a theme tonight, as it’s ostensibly about Dallasty, but also sneaks in stuff about Duran Duran and other aspirational crap – so it’s got to have some decent clippage in, hasn’t it?

00.20 Breaking Away
Top grade American smalltown cycling comedy with a leg-shaving Dennis ‘Dreamscape’ Quaid.

BBC2

08.35 Postman Pat

16.00 Yes Minister
Why not put The Good Life here and Yes Minister in the evening, as this hasn’t been repeated non-stop for the last four years? Well, not as much, anyway.

19.05 TOTP2
At last! The Dooleys make a welcome appearance on this programme, as do Billy Bragg and Colin Blunstone. So that’s all smashing.

20.00 The Good Life
One day we’ll get out our Radio Times collection and work out how many weeks this has been on over the last four years or so, and how many times each episode has been screened. And they’ve still not shown the compete When I’m 64, with the Queen meeting the cast and Brian Johnston commentating, which is the only one we want.

22.00 Attachments
At least they’ll never repeat this.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Trap Door

09.00 Bewitched

13.35 The Long Arm
The last film made at the legendary Ealing studios was this Jack Hawkins police procedural/domestic crisis drama, with Harold ‘Joss Shackleton’ Goodwin, Glyn ‘Keep it in the Family’ Houston, Stratford ‘Softly’ Johns, Sam ‘Orlando’ Kydd, William “kindly old gentleman on the train” Mervyn, Nicholas “bloody” Parsons and, after what must be a record time away from the nation’s screens, Marianne Stone.

01.30 Anatomy of a Murder
We’d look like a pretty crap film guide if we were to reveal we’ve never actually seen this monumental James Stewart vs. George C Scott courtroom drama, wouldn’t we? Ahem.

05.55 The Magic Roundabout
We’ve seen this, though.

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker

15.40 Columbo: Ransom for a Dead Man
Lee Grant’s the main guest star. Otherwise, drill is as usual.

Thursday 21st March

BBC1

00.05 Coming Home
Bruce ‘Silent Running’ Dern sods off to ‘Nam, wife Jane ‘Fat Burners’ Fonda shacks up with “difficult” paralysed vet Jon ‘Midnight’ Voight and gives new meaning to film’s title, Dern comes back, goes to pieces. Flippantly reductive billings, us? Good, if omnipresent, ’60s period soundtrack.

BBC2

08.35 Postman Pat

ITV

22.30 Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned
Audience, shut up! We don’t watch this to hear you. Obviously we dunno what’s going to happen, so here’s another quote – “Isn’t that the song, Santa Claus Has Got The AIDS?”

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Trap Door
Looks like Thursdays have taken over from Tuesdays at the thinnest Cream-related TV day of the week.

09.00 Bewitched

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker

21.00 The Mechanic
Another bloody Michael Winner/Charles Bronson thumpathon. We’d much rather see ’50s gangland panic stirrer Cosh Boy, with the likes of Johnny ‘Baldwin’ Briggs beating the crap out of all and sundry, and an unimaginably young Joan Collins. Chalk it up, Channel Five!

Friday 22nd March

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Today’s guest list sums up everything we like about this programme – Blue and a gnome collection.

22.35 Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
Gnnngh! Why oh why have we got this stupid frigging “band” still on this programme! What puirpose do they possibly serve? How come nobody at Open Mike seems able to spot the obvious flaws (ie, it’s bloody boring) in this show, when the rest of the world can from a mile off? God, it drives us mad. On the plus side, The Pet Shop Boys are scheduled to guest. Let’s hope for such gems as Neil’s legendary “Viewers, get a dishwasher, it will *transform* your life”, in between our seething at this show’s obvious-to-all-and-sundry-except-everyone-making-it shitness.

00.20 The Sunshine Boys
“EN-TEEEER!” Probably more frequently repeated than The Producers. Possibly even better.

BBC2

08.15 Bill and Ben
We don’t like this stupid 13.00 repeat either, and we’ll say it til we’re blue in the face.

08.35 Postman Pat

13.10 Whistle Down the Wind
Wide-eyed girl (Hayley ‘That Darn Cat!’ Mills) discovers obvious non-Christ (Alan ‘Once Upon a Tractor’ Bates) to consternation of dad (Bernard ‘Dangerous Davies’ Lee). Meanwhile, in the West End, Netto composer (Andrew ‘Book Tower’ Lloyd-Webber) spots musical cash-in opportunity (Jim ‘Total Eclipse of the’ Steinman) and completely ruins original script (Keith ‘Happy Apple’ Waterhouse).

22.00 Porridge
See The Good Life. Still, at least the Have I Got News For You repeats have finished, albeit pending another bloody series in a few weeks.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker

15.40 The Sign of Four
Ian “couldn’t possibly” Richardson does Holmes in this TV movie, with Cherie ‘Manageress’ Lunghi, Clive ‘Kit Curran’ Merrison and Gordon ‘Bootle Saddles’ Rollings.

22.55 Fanny Hill
One of the last of the “golden era” soft-porn romps to feature past-it actors in desultory supporting roles, with Oliver Reed, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Shelley Winters, Alfred Marks and Liz Smith. Of course, Channel Five’s been a lot more dilligent in unearthing new examples of this genre than usual, but we don’t think they’ve yet shown the bizarrely self-referential Eskimo Nell, a sort of The Bad and the Beautiful or 8 1/2 of Britporn if you will, with the likes of Roy Kinnear, Katy Manning and Max ‘Starting Science’ Mason. The Terry-Thomas/Barry-Humphries-in-a-black-wig nightclub musical comedy Side by Side (with guest turn from Fox!) is also ripe for the rerunning, or on a similar broad comedy tip, either of the two Barry Humphries ‘Barry MacKenzie’ films, just to see what they’re like. We were out when C4 showed them in 1999. Get your finger out, Channel Five!

00.35 Ode to Billy Joe
Yes, this really is “based on the Bobbie Gentry song of the same name”. Robby ‘Rent-a-Cop’ Benson jumps off said Tallahatchie bridge. James ‘Roscoe P Coltrane’ Best is also involved. Follow-up film told the moving story of a girl who caught a cold off her boyfriend, who from that day forward refused to contact her on the telephone. We’d like to see these named-after-songs films – Catch Us If You Can, Help!, Cliff Richard’s mighty ’70s Birmingham fast food adventure Take Me High, and maybe even Seasons in the Sun (starring Terry Jacks and the daughter of Ross ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Bagdasarian, of course) for curiosity’s sake. Have a care, Channel Five!

02.25 The Black Scorpion
Studio calls in Willis ‘King Kong’ O’Brien to animate giant scorpions eating Mexico, then runs out of money halfway through and knocks up a couple of dodgy puppets for the remaining shots. Joan Collins’ Empire of the Ants, the notorious Robot Monster, or Island of Terror, with Peter Cushing up against blobs of slithering rock, would make equally good dodgy monster choices.

04.00 Sons and Daughters
If you want to be a part of TVC’s Operation Alf’s Button, why not get in touch with Channel 5 and tell them what obscure old films you’d like to see them show. You can write to them at The Duty Office, Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd., 22 Long Acre, London WC2E 9LY – don’t forget to mark your envelope “Come on, Channel Five!” – you can email them via the contact form at http://www.channel5.co.uk/channel5/contact/contact_form.php – don’t forget to type “Come on, Channel Five!” at the end – or you can call them on 08457 050505. Don’t forget to include the phrase “Come on, Channel Five!” in your message. Or you can register your support by downloading and printing out our tasteful “Come on, Channel Five!” bumper sticker, available at http://tv.cream.org/images/alfcamp.png while stocks last. Together we can make a difference (to the mid-afternoon and graveyard schedules of a minor British television channel). Will you get going, Channel Five!

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
We’re not moving from here until you click that link above.

BBC CHOICE
Sunday-Tuesday, 21.00
Johnny Vaughan Tonight – For a series that’s finished this is on a hell of a lot. Worth noting that the EPG description says this “adds up to one-fifth of your recommended daily allowance of comedy”. Hmm.

Sunday, 22.15, Friday, 23.15
Shooting Stars – “It’s only f**king Daddies!” Whitehouse’n’ Hagman, which is a lot of fun.

BBC4
Thursday, 22.00
Apes In Hollywood – Programme on BBC4 doesn’t sound hideously dreary and pretentious shock! Mostly because Stuart Maconie fronts this part of the otherwise dreary and pretentious apes season, looking at chimps in the flicks. Drearily and pretentiously, the film King Kong, which follows, is the original one from 1933, and not the 1978 remake, which we were all hoping for. It was on peaktime BBC1 as recently as 1994, y’know.

E4
Saturday, 22.00, 01.30
Top Ten Rap – Flavor Flav and Mark Lamarr front this mid-range effort into the canon, which proceeds to piss off everyone who’s watched and appreciated it by putting Will Smith at number one. And The Wee Papa Girl Rappers aren’t in it at all!

GRANADA PLUS
Saturday, 18.30
The Les Dawson Show – Which follows Just For Laughs, the badly-edited compilations of clips from British comedy films that used to fill dead slots on ITV for hundreds of years. Creamguide once watched one of them in A-level Media Studies (to this day we’re not sure why) but was unable to concentrate as practically every sequence included at least one line Kevin Greening was using as a jingle at the time. “Oh, what a beginning, this one’s going to be fab!”

Sunday, 23.30
The Comedians
“Oh my God, it’s not monkey glands, is it?” That was another. For more information on Kevin Greening, check out http://www.planetbods.org/radio/kevin/index.live Doesn’t include the complete “Records With Numbers In The Title” list, alas.

PARAMOUNT
Monday-Thursday, 23.00
Harry Enfield’s Brand Spanking New Show – Frank’s finished, and instead here’s your opportunity to ponder just how much Enfield’s star has fallen if even Sky One can’t be bothered repeating his shows anymore.
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All times correct at time of writing and refer to England except where stated. All programmes subject to cancellation. So what did ITV2 do on Wednesday given Survivor Raw was supposed to seamlessly follow on from the main programme, and ITV were, as usual, some ten minutes behind schedule?
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LIKE IT’S NEVER BEEN GONE
Ask The Family, the TV Cream message board, is back up to speed again, and it’s managing to come up with all the answers to your Creamy questions even quicker than it did before! Well, that’s what it feels like. Said forum also includes The Creamguide Office Suggestion Box, which is the place to stick your comments, suggestions and observations about what you’ve just read. The place to be is just, er, several clicks away – go to http://tv.cream.org and click the Long Shots button. Also while you’re there you must, repeat must, subscribe to the TV Cream Update. And look at http://tv.cream.org/images/alfcamp.png again, cos it’s the best thing we’ve ever done in Creamguide.
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The Talking Heads – Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers, Darren Riley, Jon Peake

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Andrew Barton

    March 17, 2022 at 7:06 am

    Ah,Sons and Daughters with Ian Rawlings before he was in Neighbours.

    No wonder the Martin kids didn’t turn out well with Wayne Hamilton for a dad.

  2. THX 1139

    March 17, 2022 at 3:40 pm

    You can get most of those Channel 5 film suggestions on Blu-ray from Network, and other vintage labels. I’ve Gotta Horse isn’t very good, Billy Fury comes across as an animal-obsessed weirdo in it. Stick with Alf’s Button Afloat (which is Talking Pictures TV fare, now).

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