TV Cream

How We Used To List

How We Used To List: 25th-31st MAY 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
25th – 31st May 2002
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Brand new and good for you –
Phil Norman, Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 25th May

BBC1

20.00 The Eurovision Song Contest
Which is, of course, only truly required viewing after about ten o’clock when the scoring starts. We’ve got a decent entry this year, but an awful draw, because we’re up second and nobody’s ever won then. But it’ll obviously be worth checking out even if you don’t normally watch it because we’ll get to see what Estonian telly is really like, and it’s fronted by “a man with the face of an authentic Estonian peasant”.

23.15 There’s Only One Kylie
Another documentary about the artist formally known as Charlene Mitchell/Robinson! Where were you lot when she was down the dumper? In any case, BBC Manchester are in charge, so we’re hopefully going to get some ace clippage – the specially recorded Top Of The Pops video for I Should Be So Lucky, as so beloved by Chris Lowe, would be nice – and Sir Peter Waterman and James Dean Bradfield are going to appear.

00.15 Fame
Alan Parker’s slightly *too* zeitgeisty stage school fluff comes round again, and of course we prefer the series – OK, it was watered down, the characters were generally niced-up etc, but it had more Debbie ‘where you start paying’ Allen, less Irene ‘Breakdance’ Cara, more of that Bruno/Mr Shorofsky to-and-fro, and of course Hi Fidelity, which is what we’ll really remember them for, when all’s said and done.

BBC2

12.45 Star Trek
A new slot, then – good for the fans who live up north, yes, but bad for us because now we have absolutely nothing to say about it.

00.10 Shaft
The overrated (a fairly good detective thriller riding on Isaac Hayes’ genius, when it comes down to it) and overexposed (on this channel more times than we care to recount in recent years) crimefighter plays out his complicated man stance once more. Last summer, they showed Shaft’s Big Score and Shaft in Africa after this, so eyes down for Creamguide’s first trilogy repeat full house next week – it’s our quest for the Roundtree (sorry).

ITV

16.20 Carry On Laughing
Rugby fans will be delighted to see that ITV’s coverage of the World Sevens is compressed to just an hour to make way for this, although better still tomorrow’s coverage is just half an hour long so they can fit in Nash Bridages. And what with this, and…

16.50 A-Z of Star Wars
…it’s the sort of Saturday afternoon line-up you thought ITV didn’t do anymore.

CHANNEL 4

06.05 The Magic Roundabout
One week we really should think about coming up with new ideas for the billings for C4’s early morning offerings. Not this week, though.

12.30 Little House On The Prairie
Well, they’ve finally stopped doing the Monday episodes, but that means you now have to wait a week for this two-part episode to conclude.

20.10 The Guns of Navarone
Gregory Peck leads explosive non-swimmer David Niven, Greek Anthonys Quinn and Quayle, Stanley ‘Helldrivers’ Baker, James Robertson ‘bleeding time’ Justice, Richard ‘recipe’ Harris and Bryan ‘Emma’ Forbes in The Greatest High Adventure of Our Time (studio’s phrasing).

01.10 Birdman of Alcatraz
“Strange name for a motion picture? Perhaps.” Burt ‘what’s an ulcer?’ Lancaster plays self-reforming penal aviarist Robert Stroud in a moving but possibly over-sympathetic protrayal of the real life bookworm ex-murderer. Karl ‘Streets of San Francisco’ Malden’s the screw, Telly Savalas the cellmate.

CHANNEL 5

17.00 Three Men and a Baby
Who else could rein in the conflicting primal forces of Selleck, Guttenberg and Danson but the cool, calculating Nimoy? Interesting thing, our Len’s behind-the-camera career – besides two St*r Tr*k films (sorry, but it’s a no-go area, as is all mention of St*r W*rs, unless it’s to do with either Jeremy ‘Fett’ Bulloch or William ‘Porkins’ Hootkins) there was the fondly-remembered US take on Look and Read’s Boy From Space that was The Powers of Matthew Star, several iffy romantic comedies, a Fantastic Voyage-style EPCOT Centre ride, Mission: Impossible of course, the odd homoerotic Jean Genet play and, er, TJ Hooker. Well, it’s interesting to us, anyway. Mind you, so was Lenny’s brightly-jumpered ’80s Clapperboard variant Standby, Lights, Camera, Action, and no-one else seems to give a toss about that, either. Ah, well.

23.55 Fandango
Kevin Costner, Jason Robards’ son, the ‘scallywag’ character off of The Breakfast Club, and er, Jesse off of Nutriaman – the Copasaw Creature do some pretty entertaining all-American coming of age road trippery, with a laundry/parachute confusion gag and amusing trying-to-tow-knackered-car-behind-train tomfoolery. ’70s period soundtrack from Elton, Cream and, er, Blind Faith.

03.05 The Doberman Gang
Some dogs rob a bank. Barrel scraping stuff, even by Channel Five’s film-picking standards. Maybe they’ve also acquired some of the other timeless classics made by Dimension Pictures Inc – ‘Gator Bait, The Great Smokey Roadblock, William Shatner’s Kingdom of the Spiders, Love in 3D… or the *two* sequels this film somehow managed to spawn.

05.35 Sons and Daughters
Also tonight, BAPS – which clearly wasn’t taken into account when Halle Berry won the Best Actress Oscar.

Sunday 26th May

BBC1

17.45 Points Of View
Insanity on this programme last week when a viewer genuinely complained that Huw Edwards said ‘bye’ instead of ‘goodbye’ at the end of the news. For Christ’s sake. Tel’s buggered off again, but at least he has an excuse this time, and replacing him is a man who’s no stranger to Creamguide – although he’s normally appearared by accident – Eamonn Holmes. It’s like Open Air all over again!

21.00 Auf Wiedershen Pet
We enjoyed seeing Joe Fagin on Pops 2 last week, if only becasue we enjoyed the incongruity of him promoting an ITV programme on the Beeb. Wouldn’t have that trouble now, although this series’ shitty theme’ll never chart anyway.

22.55 Greater Than The Greatest
If it’s not Kylie, it’s Muhammad Ali! Another Ali doc, although this one appears to be made by the religious department and features Chris Eubank examining the impact Islam had on his career. Let’s hope for that clip from Eamonn Andrews’ chat show when Eamonn spent ages discussing his name change, and then kept on forgetting what it was and called him Cassius all the way through.

ITV

21.00 It’ll Be Alright On The Night 12
Apparently we’re not going to get drama on Sunday night ITV for a while because they’ve run out of money and Pet is annihilating everything in its path. Instead we get this repeat of, frankly, one of the weakest editions. We remember the time they showed number four (copyright 1984) in 1996, and it was brilliant because Denis did a What Happened Next bit in front of the most 1984 audience ever. So more of that sort of thing, please.

CHANNEL 4

06.15 Ivor The Engine
Let’s hope C4 review their decision to out the cricket-displaced Hollyoaks on at 8.30, becasue last week we found ourselves lying in bed and watching it properly, which is a particularly worrying development.

23.05 Banzai
A new episode, which in this situation means one that wasn’t shown during the last run for whatever reason – and we wondered why it was only five episodes long. We’ve always liked this series, partly because it has the best soundtrack on telly, but we may have to change our opinion after those bloody Sun adverts.

05.55 The Magic Roundabout

CHANNEL 5

14.35 The Green Berets
John Wayne’s foul-tasting old school Vietnam rewrite, with David ‘Fugitive’ Janssen and George ‘St*r Tr*k’ Takei. Actually, the thing that’s annoying us even more than W*rs or Tr*k at the moment is B*g Br*th*r, because some bright spark at Tabloid Towers seems to have got hold of every extension number at Elstree and journos are phoning them up at random, hence – “Hello, is that B*g Br*th*r?” “No, this is Creamguide (Films).” “Oh. (Pause.) So, do you know anything about what’s happening with B*g Br*th*r?” “No. This isn’t B*g Br*th*r, this is Creamguide (Films).” “Oh….” And so forth. Cheers for that, Mr. Bazalgette.

Monday 27th May

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
A great episode on Monday which featured a film of Simon actually directing the previous episode, which did actually have ‘Director – Simon Thomas’ at the end. And they also did a ‘what was life like in 1952?’ dressing up item. Meanwhile, what with the budget being frittered away on that Hollywood hairdresser item, today Matt takes Meg on a tour of London.

22.35 Match Of The World Cup
This is probably the most nostalgia-based build-up to a World Cup ever, especially as a re-edit of the Three Lions documentary about the England team is supposed to be coming up soon – they’ll have to be sharpish about it, in any case. Anyway, this is from BBC Manchester, so it’s bound to be watchable at worst and fantastic at best, taking a look at the best and worst bits of previous tournaments. And it all kicks off, ho ho, with 1966 to 1974.

BBC2

07.45 Blue Peter Unleashed
We’ve not seen this series, but we do know that Ash supply the theme tune, which you perhaps wouldn’t have expected about five years ago. And it says here Katy’s on it, so we don’t really want to see it. Still, she could do with the repeat fees. Also on Wednesday and Friday.

13.40 The French Line
Oil baroness Jane Russell takes to Paris to search for a suitor in the first of several Howard Hughes-funded Russell pictures this week. The big gimmick with this one – 3D waist-up shots, if you please – will be lost here. We wonder if the reclusive Mr Hughes, like his Ever Decreasing Circles namesake, had a Polly-Wolly-Doodle room in his famous penthouse suite?

18.20 Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons
Creamguide gets away with writing these crap billings. You do not. Do not try to imitate it!

20.00 University Challenge Reunited
This returns to Creamguide because we watched it last time and the first ten minutes of it are brilliant. As you know, two teams from previous series return, and last time one of the teams was from 1986, when the show was careering down the dumper, and as the clips proved, they’d given it a complete revamp, including a foul-looking set where the teams were *actually* sitting on top of each other. And they had a cheap wooden ‘baton’ that they had to ‘pass’ to the next member of the team when it was their turn to answer a question. And everyone just laughed at how shit it all was, which was fun. One of the teams is from 1984 this week, so expect something similar, and then you can turn it off during the actual quiz.

22.00 The Day Today
As we always say, this was the best comedy show of the nineties, and it’s clearly also the best comedy show on telly at the moment too. And it’s clearly better than Brass Eye, too, and that’s official.

ITV

17.05 Never Had It So Good
We caught this show again last week and as luck would have it Maconie was on it again – as indeed was everyone else who’d appeared with him the first time, just sitting in different seats. It’s only on til Wednesday this week, and we don’t know who’s on it, but do please bear in mind that Rowland Rivron’s always there.

REGIONALIA!
18.00 Granada Reports (er, Granada only)
Normally we’d avoid this programme like the plague, but we’ve now got the Triumphant Return of Anthony H Wilson! Anchoring this programme every single night. His first day on Monday was ace, as he constantly missed his cue and passed comment on every single report, and at the end he swung around in his chair. Great to have him back, but unfortunately the rest of the programme is truly awful, and we’re not deserting Gordon Burns on North West Tonight now!

CHANNEL 4

06.00 Ivor The Engine

09.00 Bewitched
We’re not sure what’s going on here, because we’ve also got…

09.30 I Dream Of Jeannie
… yet it’s surely not half term yet, is it?

10.00 Joey Boy
Odd little Britcom in the WWII roguery sub-genre, with bungling crims Stanley ‘In Reel Terms’ Baxter and Harry H Corbett enlisting into the army to avoid the long arm of the law, with ensuing scrapes, mishaps and fol-de-rol. Also with Derek Nimmo, Bill ‘Gus is ready’ Fraser, Lance ‘an international cake!’ Percival, Norman ‘SImon’ Rossington and Reg Varney as one Rabbit Malone.

05.55 The Magic Roundabout

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker
Now The Dog Listener’s being repeated daily, this is the second worst thing on Channel Five.

15.40 Caprice
This is the stuff, Channel Five! A rare and welcome outing for this top flight ’60s hairspray-based spying mish-mash, with Doris Day (in a variety of ‘swinging’ outfits and outsize round sunglasses – check) involved in cosmetics-based intrigue and drug-smuggling, with a blue eyeshadow-wearing Richard ‘Camelot’ Harris, a cross-dressing Ray ‘My Favourite Martian’ Walston and debonair cosmetics chief Edward ‘Knight Rider’ Mulhare, all whipped up into a knowingly deranged Mod frenzy by ex-Warner Brothers cartoon director Frank ‘Hare Remover’ Tashlin (and here’s hoping Five dig out his masterful The Girl Can’t Help It soon, hint hint). For OTT set design and jet-set glamour (Spy-vs-Spy ski slope shootouts, private jet interiors, that infamous chain-suspended double bed, the Eiffel Tower – check), misplaced critical derision and star disownment, multi-plot confusion and arbitrary, wild shifts of tone, only Casino Royale beats it, we’re saying. Enjoy.

19.00 Topranko
Seemingly the Tony Wilson comeback starts here, as he’s also fronting this new comedy quiz which is from the makers of Banzai (perhaps his first non-Granada gig, maybe?) and might just possibly maybe be the new Remote Control. Or it might not. For more on this story…

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A new five-part series for summer on Creamguide bringing you five factacular facts from the TV week. Yes, it’s –

=WALL of FACT=

Welcome to “Wall of Fact”! From now until the end of June we’re going to be providing you with factual facts about the telly you watch, week in, week out! But first – what are facts? Facts are things that are true.

Now over to Jeremy Beadle’s “One Day On This Day”: “It’s the day today (May 24) but in 1819 – and a little baby girl is born who will grow up to become the most powerful adult lady in the world. Can you guess who she was? Yes, she was Queen Victoria.”

Thanks Jeremy. Now let’s factor in those five facts from the TV week:

1) During filming of the second series of AUF WIEDERSEHEN PET Tim Healey (who plays Dennis) hurt his eye on a magazine. The current series can be seen on BBC1 on Sunday at 21.00.

2) The Official Countdown Dictionary does not list the words “bleatings”, “curations”, “eighteens”, “fifteens” and “fiftieths” even though they all may *possibly* be accepted as legitimate answers on the programme. COUNTDOWN can be seen on Channel 4 on weekdays at 16.15.

3) Anthony H Wilson’s table, suspended by wires from the ceiling (as seen in 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE), was bought off him by Peter Hook. Anthony H can be seen in TOPRANKO on Monday, Channel 5 at 19.00. (Factxtra: The programme’s researcher emailed TV Cream looking for TV-related top ten lists, but we were too grumpy to reply!)

4) On February 18, 1952 Terry Wogan beat his school friend Horgan at subbuteo. The score was 10-4. Terry can be heard on THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST on Saturday, BBC1 at 20.00.

5) Phillippa Forrester used to have a snake phobia until TV hypnotist and former Capital FM DJ Paul McKenna cured her. Phillippa can be seen in ROBOT WARS: THE FIFTH WARS on Friday, BBC2 at 18.45.

That’s it from “Wall of Fact” for this week! We’ll see you next time for more fact-filled fun and edutainment! Until then – goodbye! (If you would like more facts, you might be interested to know that a fact-sheet will be available at the end of the series.)

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Tuesday 28th May

BBC1

22.35 Match Of The World Cup
Today it’s 1978 thru 1986, including, we hope, Bob Wilson and Trevor Brooking doing Dial-a-Goal in 1978, and Bob Wilson and Emlyn Hughes doing World Cup Report in 1986. And something from 1982 although we’re not sure what that might be because they never show any clips of the coverage of that tournament. Incidentally, nobody seems to have noticed that Bob Wilson appears not to be doing anything for ITV in this World Cup, and as Matt Smith is now after work since ITV Sport’s closed down, we suspect we’ve seen the last of Primrose. Expect to read this in Media Guardian in three weeks’ time.

BBC2

13.15 His Kind of Woman
Robert Mitchum hitches up with Jane Russell and winds up at mob boss Raymond Burr’s Mexican retreat populated with a host of misfits, especially a couple of flamboyantly self-parodic turns from Vincent Price and Jim ‘oh, Waldo!’ Backus. The best of the Russell films on this week.

18.20 TOTP2
Quite a fun pair of shows last week, with Sandie Shaw and The Smiths doing Hand In Glove, Joe Fagin, as we said, and Secret Affair performing on a scaffolding-based set which looked less like a set and more like, well, actual scaffolding, as if the studio was being done up during the show. And Wright didn’t get any of the dates wrong, for a change, although he has now started talking over the whole of the theme tune, which is not on. Might be good tonight, too, as we’ve got The Divinyls, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Sister Sledge. ITV

00.35 Cagney and Lacey
Eh? No colons? Why, it’s the original TVM! With Hotlips Swit instead of Gless. But no Detective LaGuardia, sadly, and we don’t think *that* theme tune is anywhere to be seen either, although we’d welcome confirmation of this.

02.40 The Big Match Replayed
Result! The Grand Prix reruns have moved to Wednesday, so we get an extra episode of this – although we expect the slot to be given over to World Cup reruns for the next month. Last week’s episode went back further than we’ve ever seen, to April 1972, when it still had the vaguely comedic theme tune. And Mooro sat in a sort of pod, and when he introduced the first match, the (hideous) backdrop moved to one side to reveal a CSO screen which the pictures were superimposed on to. If you’re not taping this, you’re undoutedly missing a treat.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 Ivor The Engine

09.00 Bewitched
Actually speaking of Media Guardian, as we were up there, we couldn’t quite believe that at the top of the page for two days this week was ‘Pompous Editor Of Style Mag Nobody Reads Gives Hint That He Might Leave At Some Point’…

09.30 I Dream Of Jeannie
…and then it was replaced by ‘Pompous Editor Of Style Mag Nobody Reads Does Leave And Is Replaced By Someone Else Nobody’s Ever Heard Of’. Tch.

10.00 Watch Your Stern
Another Gerald Rogers unofficial Carry On (confusingly also titled Carry On Admiral) with Kenneth Connor, Leslie Phillips, Joan Sims and Sid James augmented by Eric and Hattie, Spike Milligan, Robin ‘Mr Susan Stranks’ Ray, Leila ‘Blue Peter’ Williams and Jack ‘Love Thy’ Smethurst.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

21.00 No Way Out
Costner (again) in against-the-clock spy race with Gene Hackman, Sean ‘watch my career go down the pan’ Young, The Future Mrs Bowie, and our old friend Terence ‘The sixth James Bond, you know, that really wooden bloke who had an indeterminate role in Casino Royale and was edited out completely after about ten minutes’ Cooper.

Wednesday 29th May

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Thanks to Peter Longbottom for filling us in on what happened on Wednesday’s show, which we missed in any case. “Today’s opening item was a preview of the film Thunderpants about a boy whose amazing farting abilities are called upon to save the world. Cue Simon barely able to keep a straight face whilst interviewing the two young stars of the film. ST ended the piece by reminding us that “passing wind” is perfectly natural and we all do it… well, not our Konnie judging by the look on the poor girl’s face as Liz explained her habit of farting under the duvet with it pulled over her head.”

22.35 Match Of The World Cup
And finally it’s 1990 to 1998, which we hope will be as good as BBC Choice’s World Cup Replay from about eighteen months ago, which in its 1990 edition included a load of clips from a few episodes of Top Of The Pops, such as Mark Goodier’s live link-up with the England team in Sardinia, and Pop Will Eat Itself doing Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina. Probably not, though.

BBC2

13.20 Underwater!
Jane Russell does The Deep – ie. swims about a lot looking for treasure. We do love exclamation marks in titles – so many uses and intonations! They can be used, as here, as simple way of calling attention (see also Oklahoma!, Sweeney!), as a signifier of comedy (What a Carry On!, Follow That Horse!) or horror (Amicus favourite And Now The Screaming Starts!), or both (Carry On Screaming!), as part of an exclamatory phrase (Avanti!), deployed with knowing irony (O Lucky Man!) or shoved in all over the place for demented drive-in chic (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) The ever-versatile exclamation mark (or – if you’re one of the Cambridge poshoes who wrote the BBC Micro User Guide – “pling”), we salute you! Next week’s dramatic film title punctuation mark… the ellipsis!

18.20 TOTP2
Pops 2 “shows imagination” shock! It’s a Royal Special, with, er, Queen, The Korgis, Dave Edmunds and Paul Young, which has got to be Love Of The Common People, hasn’t it? Please?

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched
We’ve got nowehere else to put this, but that nostalgia show piece in this week’s RT was awful, wasn’t it? First it made reference to the “forthcoming” Never Had It So Good, then it said that the Forty Greatest Music TV Moments is coming soon, when it was on last August. And can’t be shown again because Darius has had a haircut since, and is now credible. Wouldn’t have got that with Nick Brett.

09.30 I Dream Of Jeannie

10.00 For Better, For Worse
Dirk Bogarde and Susan ‘Barretts of Wimpole Street’ Stephen are newlyweds in this Rings On Their Fingers-style romantic comedy with Thora Hird, Sid James, George ‘Inigo’ Woodbridge, Robin ‘Potter’ Bailey, James ‘Mr Tebbs, you know, the short-lived, toupeed Mr Grainger replacement off of Are You Being Served?’ Hayter, Alma ‘Never do a Tango with an Eskimo’ Cogan, Peter ‘Book’ Jones, Ronnie ‘drunk in the bar off of Carry On Cruising’ Stevens and Professor Digby ‘Wild, Wild West’ Wolfe of the University of New Mexico.
CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

15.45 Hart To Hart: Til Death Us Do Hart
So what number’s this, then, Five? Presumably quite late on given that ludicrous subtitle.

22.00 Fort Apache, the Bronx
Authentically gritty but still rather bitty look at coppering in New York city (note to Creamguide sub – substitute this for something less inappropriately trite) with Paul Newman, Pam Grier and Ed ‘Lou Grant’ Asner.

Thursday 30th May

BBC2

13.10 Arch of Triumph
Charles Boyer stalks Nazi Charles ‘Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd’ Laughton and falls for Ingrid Bergman in pre-war France. Remade for TV with Lesley-Anne ‘School for Unclaimed Girls’ Down, oddly enough. If these billings seem a little flat, try imagining them read in the dulcet tones of Andrew Collins, as he read out TVC’s Get Fresh entry on his Radio 6 show on Tuesday and it sounded surprisingly coherent. A talking book version of Creamguide is in development as you read this.

22.00 Porridge
We haven’t had The Good Life for a good few weeks, and better still here’s something truly great.

01.50 What Have The Eighties Ever Done For Us?
We’ve never seen this, by the way.

ITV

22.30 Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned
So suddenly everyone hates this programme now, though surely you’ve got to respect a programme that can include a discussion on whether shagging two eighteen-year old twins is the same as shagging a 36-year old woman, on peak time ITV. What’s not to love, eh?

CHANNEL 4

06.00 Ivor The Engine

09.00 Bewitched
Apparently RI:SE is getting axed in August, which seems rather unfair given that The Big Breakfast ran on for a good three years or so after it stopped being any good at all. Not that we’d miss it, mind. In fact we’d be happy if Colin Murray went tomorrow.

09.30 I Dream Of Jeannie

10.00 In the Doghouse
Leslie Phillips plays an honest vet, James ‘Kenny Aimes, you know, Ally Fraser’s dodgy mate with the yacht in series two of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ Booth plays a dodgy one, in this typically whimsical Carry On/Doctor comedy from the pen of Michael ‘Jon’s brother’ Pertwee. Esma Cannon, Fenella Fielding, Joan Hickson, Hattie Jacques and Patsy Rowlands are among the extended Britcom rep cast.

05.50 Bagpuss
Why is this schedule so slack on Thursdays?

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

14.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
Boo, Des Lynam’s on today as are The Opera Babes singing the ITV World Cup theme tune. If they don’t have Gary Lineker on in the next week, we’re complaining to the ITC, just like those Swansea fans who complained to them this month to say HTV’s football show was biased towards Cardiff. Unfortunately, the complaint wasn’t upheld.

Friday 31st May

BBC1

21.30 Blackadder II
Also tonight, Alistair McGowan’s Big World Cup, which is said to include an impression of Ray Stubbs. Let’s hope he keeps saying ‘He certainly is one of the nice guys of football’.

23.20 Johnny Vaughan’s World Cup Extra
Actually his chat show was really good at the end, and this is exactly the same thing only it’s about football and it’s got regular guests – one of whom is Danny Kelly, so we’re hoping for discussions about wallcharts, how to make accurate results for a made-up league, and footballers expressed as pages in diaries.

23.50 The Jerk
Steve Martin’s Optigrip-inventing, Thermos-picking idiot savant gets another airing, which is all fine and dandy, but whatever happened to his old SNL buddy Earl Stevens’ Poodleman film? We’re still waiting.

BBC2

13.15 Odd Man Out
Wounded IRA gangleader James Mason ducks in and out of the streets of Belfast one night, meeting drunken painter Robert Newton, barman William Hartnell and assorted others as a touch of the magic realism sets in. Also with Wilfrid Brambell and Dora ‘Taste of Honey’ Bryan.

19.30 Top Of The Pops
This looks set to be rotting away on BBC2 for a month, which is just not on. Anyway, we reckon the 2000th show will be coming up in a few weeks, and we wonder if anyone might be able to confirm exactly when that might be.

ITV

11.00 World Cup 2002
Your first chance to see the break bumpers that’ll irritate the arse off everyone in the UK by the end of the next week, how ugly and soulless the ITV set, how useless Des is at the moment, and of course, those all-important tournament graphics. Never mind the football, these are the questions that demand answering.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Bewitched

09.30 I Dream Of Jeannie

10.00 The Constant Husband
Amnesiac Rex Harrison comes to in darkest Wales, discovers to his horror he’s a serial philanderer, and gets taken to court. Solid British Lion film with a solid British Lion supporting cast – George Cole, Michael Hordern, Charles Lloyd Pack, Sam ‘Orlando’ Kydd and George ‘Inigo’ Woodbridge.

03.00 The Beast Must Die
Once again, Amicus Productions come through with the goods. After Vault of Horror a fortnight ago we’re treated to their excellent, all-over-the-shop werewolf whodunnit. Superfly millonaire Calvin ‘Dynasty’ Lockhart (replete with ‘tache, leather gloves and black polo neck) rigs up the grounds of his stately pile with chopper surveillance, snipers, security cameras, ground mics and an unexplained ‘pressure grid’, all controlled from a big desk of flashing lights, in order to trap a werewolf who he knows (somehow) is among his invited guests (including Charles ‘Blofeld’ Gray, Michael ‘BAFTA’ Gambon, suspect longhair Tom ‘The Changes’ Chadbon and Scandinavian ‘werewolf hunter’ Peter Cushing). Cue a run-through of all the usual horror legends during juicily overacted dinner table confrontations, before the dog attack climax and final heavily-signposted plot twist. Plus points are a swingingly inappropriate wah-wah/big band theme tune, and the bizarre ‘werewolf break’, wherein the sub-Vincent Price narrator stops the film and demands ‘you, the audience’ work out which of the guests is the lycanthrope while a clock ticks away – a device which should be employed more often, we think.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 TJ Hooker

15.40 Caravan to Vaccares
The balance of world power hinges on the life of a single, mysterious refugee (it says here). It’s up to Charlotte Rampling and Dr Samuels off of St Elsewhere to get him out of France and off to New York in this no frills Alistair MacLean adaptation. As Creamguide reveals in our forthcoming book, >From Angel Heart to Zardoz – Rampling Through the Decades, this was our Lottie’s boom year – after faff like this, Zardoz and The Ski Bum, The Night Porter came out, and then it was respected Euro hit after respected Euro hit. Er, until Orca. But that measured analysis still doesn’t explain why our book devotes its first eighteen chapters to Charlotte’s career up to and including beating up Patrick MacNee in The Avengers: The Superlative Seven, while the last twenty years take up all of three short paragraphs full of typos.

02.25 One on One
Channel Five’s love affair with ’70s k-list teen idol Robby Benson seems appropriate – although something of a much-hyped prodigy in his time (acting by the age of five, in films by 10, writing in his early 20s, directing in his early 30s) he has, rather like The ‘Five itself, never actually accomplished anything of note at all, and is still best known as Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s Dad, and he wasn’t even in that very much. Here our man co-writes and stars in a featureless romance as an illiterate college basketball player. The dark before the dawn that is the theme to Sons and Daughters.

05.10 Sons and Daughters
We’d like C5 to put this on earlier so it isn’t the anti-climax it clearly is at the moment.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE

BBC CHOICE
Saturday, 19.00
Liquid Eurovision Party – With the unfortunate demise of Christopher Price, we’ve got the terminally useless Jenny Eclair in charge here, but it could still be fun in any case. Basically it’s a simulcast of the contest itself, but with Eclair, Jan Leeming and a bunch of Z-list pundits sitting around watching it and adding bitchy comments. Much like MUTV’s We’re Watching The Match!, shown opposite the 1999 Champions League Final, which consisted of their presenters, er, watching the match.

BBC4
Friday, 22.00
Timewatch: Jubilee Day – Two excellent shows back to back on Four, almost making up for the rest of the week’s awful programming. First off it’s I Love Timewatch, with a look back to 7th June 1977 that includes loads of clips from the Nationwide Jubilee Fair, which is the best programme ever made and we’d like Four to show it in full next week, please. And then…

Friday, 22.50
Trouble at the Top – Another outing for the story of Eldorado, which includes Alan Yentob talking about the programme on BBC1’s short-lived Friday night showbiz fest Entertainment Express with Selina Scott and John Leslie. Well, we were excited.

CHALLENGE?
Monday, 17.30
Telly Addicts – That’s what the channel’s called, apparently. Anyway, it cut straight to the quarter-finals of that fantastic 1990 series this week, so you’ve already missed Andrew Collins Sings Paddington Bear, but his semi-final appearance should appear on Monday. If you don’t want to know the result, look away now…

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They lose, thanks to Andrew’s mum not passing quickly enough. Well, if you ignore Noel you’ve only got yourself to blame.

GRANADA PLUS
Saturday, 18.30, 00.00
The Kenny Everett Video Show – Thankfully last week was just a blip so we *do* get a peaktime helping of Cuddly Ken this week.

Saturday, Sunday, 23.30, Monday-Friday, 19.30, 23.00
Bullseye – As well as an almost obscene amount of this. And given that the show’s co-creator Norman “You wanna get off that show, Norman” Vaughan sadly died this week, let’s hope for a terrestrial outing soon by way of a tribute.

PARAMOUNT
Saturday, 01.30
Harry Hill – Is this the only screening it gets?

Sunday, 00.10, Friday, 23.45
A Bit Of Fry and Laurie – “Only have to small the stuff and I start voting Conservative.”

Monday-Thursday, 23.30
The Kenny Everett Video Show – As we say, the best bit in this show is Cupid Stunt because you can hear the crew bellowing with laughter in the background, which you really don’t get on comedy shows anymore. And that’s a real shame.

Monday-Thursday, 00.05
Monty Python’s Flying Circus – Let’s hope when Paramount relaunches later in the year, they freshen up their schedules, so we don’t have to flannel our way through this every week.

SKY ONE
Saturday, 23.30
Pop Years – Repeat of last week’s 1983 instalment where every last cliche about nostalgia shows came true with the appearence of Kelli from Liberty X (born 1982) alongside Pete Burns (on Boy George – “music that grandmas would like”), Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Tony Mortimer, Kim Appleby and, er, ex-TOTP magazine editor Peter Loraine, plus John Bloody Robb claiming to hate everything, the nadir being describing Michael Jackson as “really rubbish, innie?” with the same conviction as if he were reading the side of a cereal box. But we did get Peter Powell! In his house, in front of some bay windows, and with insights such as “those kids (Depeche Mode) worked really hard to try and bring something different to the scene” and “I’m a great believer in one hit wonders”. We also had the videos to Freez’s IOU, Ryan Paris’ Dolce Vita, and the Rock Steady Crew, plus Bill Wyman on Breakfast Time on the Stones’ banned Undercover video (“We just made a video, something interesting”). No show this week, though, to make way for A Tribute To… er, sorry, The Magic Of David Blaine.

SKY SPORTS 1
Monday, 09.30, 13.00, 16.30, 18.45, 22.00, 01.45
World Cup Football Special – Ah, the summer is always fun on Sky Sports because all the big events are on terrestrial and they have to fill in loads of time – hence Richard Keys going on Fantasy World Cup in 1998 and claiming nobody was interested in the tournament after England went out. Hence, umpteen showings this week for three programmes that have actually been available as commercial videos for several years, starting off with this celebration of The Boys From Brail.

Tuesday, 09.30, 13.00, 16.30, 18.45, 22.00, 01.45
World Cup Football Special – Meanwhile today’s asks “Diego Maradona: Victim or Vilain?” And if you don’t know by 3am, you’re obviously beyond help. Finally…

Wednesday, , 09.30, 13.00, 16.30, 18.45, 22.00, 01.45
World Cup Football Special – The tournament’s greatest goals, and all with ITV commentary, too. Thankfully, they have the test match for the rest of the week.

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Prgrms crrct @ tm o wrtng + rfr 2 Englnd xcpt wr statd
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Pling pals – Drew, Chris Diamond, Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, TV’s Jill
Phythian, Simon Tyers

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    May 29, 2022 at 11:59 pm

    I noticed that on the Internet Movie Database, every film listed on there had been awarded a 10/10 by some easily pleased punters – except Caravan to Vaccares. Its highest rating was 6, which theoretically meant it was the worst film ever made. Alas, someone watched it and was moved to give it a 10, meaning they believed it was one of the greatest. Spoilsport.

  2. Andrew Barton

    June 4, 2022 at 12:04 am

    RI:SE got the axe at the end of 2003, having undergone another revamp (and having another editor to add) to boost ratings. It was relocated to add from Sky’s studios in Isleworth to Whiteley’s shopping centre in Bayswater.

    Zora Suleman was brought on to RI:SE to replace Chris Rogers as newsreader before it was axed, and she is now on Talk TV, a channel with even less viewers than RI:SE.

  3. Andrew Barton

    June 4, 2022 at 12:08 am

    Robby Benson did achieve main success later, but as a voice over artist though.

    He provided the voice of The Beast in Disney’s Beauty And The Beast alongside the likes of Angela Lansbury no less.

  4. Richardpd

    June 4, 2022 at 9:53 pm

    RI:SE never seemed to know what it was about, or who it was supposed to be aimed at, not helped by a few revamps along the way.

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