TV Cream

How We Used To List

How We Used To List: 9nd – 15th FEBRUARY 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
9th – 15th February 2002
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Cutting the crap and making it happen – Phil Norman
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Saturday 9th February

BBC2

09.00 Olympic Grandstand
For those early to bed last night, the opening ceremony again, with Barry Davies on the lip mike. We sort of think that the current series of Big Train isn’t as good as the last one as Baz isn’t on it (“Moment of hilarity in the commentary box, really do apologise!”) so we take any opportunity we get to listen to him. And there’s over twelve hours of non-stop sport on BBC2 tomorrow, which we’re sure hardly ever happened even when BBC Sport were in their prime. There’s about ten hours today as well.

20.30 Yes Minister
So the Winter Olympics means that most of the early evening shows are dropped (except The Fresh Prince of Bel Air), which gives us no space to remark upon last week’s TOTP2, which a) was a bit boring, except for Fred Wedlock, and b) included news of the new timeslot, as when it returns in three weeks it’ll be on twice a week – presumably in 25-minute chunks – on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 19.05. Although that might mean two dull new country tracks at the end. Should have put it on Thursday, shouldn’t they? Not that this scheduling’ll last for more than about a month.

01.15 Piccadilly Third Stop
’60s Brit thriller in which spiv does embassy over while William Hartnell searches for missing episodes of The Tenth Planet.

ITV

14.00 The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
It’s a big hello again to this film, which seems to crop up every six months these days. No matter really, as it’s better than ITV’s usual afternoon films, a fairly good comedy of mistaken Russian invasion hysteria on a small Massachussets island, with Carl ‘2000 Year Old’ Reiner, Eva Marie ‘Waterfront’ Saint, Alan ‘the other Inspector Clouseau’ Arkin and the brilliant Paul ‘Biiiilkooooo!’ Ford.

21.05 Another Audience With Ken Dodd
Not sure how this is going to keep the audience between the two halves of the Pop Idol final, to be honest, but after about a million repeats of the original, they’ve finally got Doddy in to record a new one. Though we’re sure that if he pitched any other show to ITV, he’d be laughed out of the building.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout
Back! Back! Back!

11.30 The John Charles Story
It was John Charles’ seventieth birthday, er, ages ago, in fact, but only now have Channel Four got round to scheduling this tribute to Wales’ greatest footballer. Which S4C appear not to be showing, actually.

22.00 Top Ten Duets
The E4 repeats of this series seem to have washed up on C4, for some reason, with this fairly entertaining edition, which lets itself down by putting Captain and Tenille at number two, which is all wrong because we’ve never heard of them. But there is a big long profile of Dollar, which is great (Paul Morley: “There was a whole new genre of pop music, which was brilliant, but it started with Dollar so we didn’t really mention it”).

01.30 I, Monster
We know what you’re thinking. How does Christopher Lee’s enjoyably atmospheric Amicus reworking of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde link with Dr Who and Children in Need? Well, not only does it use the same doesn’t-quite-work tracking camera 3D photography as the infamous “Who does Albert Square” CiN special Dimensions in Time, it also features, alongside Peter Cushing, Richard “William Hartnell’s stand-in for The Five Doctors CiN special” Hurndall. Fascinating, eh? We’ve got tons of this sort of stuff.

CHANNEL 5

22.55 Cujo
This was the first Stephen King book (as well as the first paperback with an embossed cover – classy!) Creamguide ever read, and we were surprised and disappointed at how much tedious guff about marital affairs and bedwetting and buying chainsaws and advertising cereal we had to get through before the main plot, ie. a Mom (in this case Dee ‘Mom off of ET’ Wallace) and her son Tad get trapped in a Ford Pinto by a rabid St Bernard. Christine rambled on for even longer, and we quickly went back to our beloved Pan horror anthologies.

04.15 Sons and Daughters
Even this and The Singing Sheriff (1944) is better than what ITV are showing at this time of day (is Box Office America still going?).

Sunday 10th February

BBC2

23.30 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
Here’s your chance to find out what everyone was talking about round the watercooler on Tuesday morning, as it’s Pete Burns’ appearance. This got in the Daily Star this week as well (on Wednesday, so they’ve got their fingers on the pulse) seemingly because someone there had watched it and noticed Pete looks a bit rum these days. In Creamguide’s view, it reminds us a bit of seeing Leigh Bowery on the telly when we were twelve, and having nightmares about him.

ITV

10.25 Scooby Doo, Where Are You?
As both BBC channels are sports mad this weekend, there’s virtually nothing Creamy on today, so we’re highlighting this to pad Sunday out a bit. The Premiership repeat is cut by fifteen minutes to make way for this, although we do lose Andy Townsend, so maybe that’s a good thing.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout
C4 don’t let us down, though.

06.05 The Clangers

14.20 Damn The Defiant!
“HMS Defiant? Two set teas, please!” Yes, we’ve dragged out that Python reference again, to mark the dragging out of this battleship biopic (last spotted June 21st last year) yet again. Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Ray ‘Mr Benn’ Brooks, Anthony “condemned veal” Quayle, Tom ‘Out’ Bell and Johnny ‘Baldwin’ Briggs are among those wondering if the Deja Vu sketch might be more appropriate next time.

20.00 Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture
It’s the episode we’ve all been waiting for – we should get to see Andy in the video for Down To Earth by Curiosity Killed The Cat! Also worth mentioning here the Rosie Millard report about the Warhol exhibition that’s just opened on the Ten O’Clock News on Wednesday night, which was brilliant – for a start, we had an interview with Isabella Blow, who should be on telly more, wearing the world’s stupidest hat, and nobody made any reference to the fact you couldn’t actually see her face at all. Then Rosie did her piece to camera in a T-shirt with ‘Where It’s At’ on it, before cutting back to Peter Sissons who said ‘Where it’s at!’ and smiled. You won’t get this on ITN!

Monday 11th February

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
So CBBC gets a relaunch today, which can’t come soon enough because we’re sick of those bugs all over BBC1, and in today’s BP there’s a big feature about the new CBBC channels, in no way similar to the feature on Newsround Extra last week. We’d also like to take issue with the line in the Radio Times feature about CBBC, which says that the new Top Forty show will be presented by ‘Konnie Huq, here given a sexier, stickyback-plastic-free makeover’, as a) it’s a really unoriginal reference, and b) it’s impossible to have a sexier Konnie Huq. Ahem.

23.05 Johnny Vaughan Tonight
Might be worth catching the omnibus of last week’s shows on BBC Choice on Sunday at 22.15, because on Monday we had the best interview of the series so far – Ross Noble and Vaughan playing with Star Wars toys, before Ross described the Mork and Mindy board game (“like Snakes and Ladders, but with Mork instead of snakes”). Hope for more of the same this week.

BBC2

07.05 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show
Not the programme we’d have picked to launch the bold new era of CBBC.

12.20 The Family Ness
Nor this, to be honest.

21.00 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
John Robinson, who writes the completely pointless Music On TV column in the Guardian Friday Review, gave us another reason to dislike him last week as he previewed this show by first of all saying nothing about it at all, and then saying ‘At least The Office is on after it’, and then the following day, The Guide previewed Big Train by saying the exact same thing! Shut up! The Office is rubbish, and that’s final! Anyway, tonight it’s Alexander O’Neal and Mark Owen, who we saw last week in the reception of a hotel in Kensington (well, that’s what they said, although it was just off Shepherd’s Bush Green) carrying a bin bag, so presumably he’s got some cleaning work since the hits dried up. But ‘Clementine’ was good, wasn’t it?

ITV

16.20 How 2
HOW crappy does CITV look now the new CBBC channels have launched?

CHANNEL 4

22.00 The Double Life Of Jonathan King
Jon Ronson’s documentary was postponed a few weeks back for legal reasons, but we’re pleased to see that it’s been swiftly rescheduled and should make for fascinating, if grim, viewing.

05.50 The Magic Roundabout

05.55 The Clangers

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm
Which is no longer on Sunday as it’s made way for Miracles Of Faith, despite it still being the best thing on the channel, and that is true.

15.40 One Last Fling
This unremarkable ’80s TVM tosh will rate due to the ever-vigilant Scott “Oh boy!” Bakula fanbase, but there’s also a chance to see what the American version of Richard O’Sullivan, John ‘Three’s Company’ Ritter, looks like. This channel thrives on these sorts of micro-demographics, you know.

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IT’S… TV CREAM HEROES WEEKLY
They’re calling it “the pocket-guide to a nation’s TV pride”

To be honest we’d always scheduled TVCHW#3 as a dedicated “Jeni Barnett” number (as seen on UK Food’s GOOD FOOD LIVE). We’d even undertaken some research (The programme: PEOPLE, 1988 – “A survivor of the Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster a Punch and Judy man and a Lincolnshire supermum are interviewed by reporters Chris Serle, Jeni Barnett and Lucy Pilkington. Presented by Derek Jameson”). Unfortunately, now that Creamup’s started with the topical gags (“Liability”?!) the Creamguide Ed is insisting that “topicality” is to be our new watchword too in the ‘Guide. Hey, I know it’s wrong and you know it’s wrong but what can we collectively do about it? Well you can email us, like Tim Lawton did last week to ask “How could you forget Kipper from Big Deal (1984)?” in our round up of Roger Walker’s achievements. But beyond that we’re stuck for ideas. So…

#3 Tracy Childs, who you will be able to see in HOLLYOAKS – soon (hence the topicality, y’see).

Luckily, in keeping topical we can write about the intriguing Tracy Childs. Soon to be appearing in HOLLYOAKS as the mother of Izzy Cornwell (the blonde one) Tracy’s career touches upon many Creamy – erm – touchstones. Sometimes billed as “Tracy”, sometimes “Tracey” she has a right royal flush of Cream-era programmes up her sleeve. OK, so she did UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS but better than that she appeared in the sci-fi-meets-the-legitmate-theatre-but-is-*still*-embarrassing-for-all-concerned strand PLAY FOR TOMORROW on the BBC in 1982. Her story – a simple and evocative name, this – “Shades”. In ’85 she turned up in an episode of DEMPSEY & MAKEPIECE but we liked her best as Lynne Howard (“teenage daughter” say IMDB) in HOWARD’S WAY. Particularly that series cliffhanger when she fell into or off something (we don’t really remember it too good to be honest). And if you still doubt her qualifications for entrance into The TV Cream Heroes Weekly Hall Of Fame “Some Girls You May Like” Department, then try inputting “Tracey Childs” into Google and you’ll find that the first hit coming back at you is something entitled “The Tertiary Console Room”. An oblique link to the world of Terry Nation’s Dr Who – now that’s Cream!

Because we mentioned it:
http://www.tertiary.consoleroom.btinternet.co.uk/traceychilds.htm

No picture available:
http://www.starletsdatabase.com/spages/x_02P13RA22.asp?name=Tracy%20Childs
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Tuesday 12th February

BBC2

07.05 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show
Maybe these’ll be the episodes where the theme tune had lyrics.

12.20 The Family Ness

13.10 Man of the Moment
More familiar film scheduling, as BBC2 unveils a mini Norman Wisdom season, rather similar to the mini Norman Wisdom season they unveiled in the exact same slots in December 2000. Bad news – he sings in this one. Good news – Charles Hawtrey’s in it.

ITV

16.20 How 2
HOW long can Fred carry on fronting this?

22.30 The Terminator
There’s nothing left to say about this that hasn’t already been mulled over at great length on your shiny new region one DVD special edition box set extras disc, although we feel what’s missing from these big budget sci-fi releases is a heckling commentary by Tom Baker, which would certainly be the ‘killer app’ to make us get a DVD player. Baker commentating on Alien during a cinema screening – “I mean for God’s sake, stop walking around the spaceship like bloody estate agents! Why don’t they all go down the hole and just bore it to death?” See? It’d be brilliant.

01.05 Steptoe and Son
Last Sunday’s episode of S&S, the one where all the Steptoes go to a funeral and have their eyes on a porcelain figurine, was sitcom at its best, complete with comedy drunk, a car chase, double-cross plot twists, Mollie Sugden, George A “Donkey, Mrs McCluskey?” Cooper and someone showing their “draws”. This first cinema outing can’t hope to be as neatly scripted but is still a cut above the usual big screen sitcom transfer, and features Mike “You Spanish pilchard!” Reid as a club compere.

03.15 ITV Sport Classics
There’s new sport on the BBC, y’know.

CHANNEL 4

13.15 The Diary of Anne Frank
“She’s in the attic!” By no means a classic take on the middle school set text, with Melissa ‘Little House on the Prarie’ Gilbert in the title role, and Maximilian ‘Black Hole’ Schell.

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm
All of a sudden Tuesdays have really brightened up, haven’t they?

Wednesday 13th February

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Today rather oddly featuring a performance by allSTARS, just as their record is plummeting down the charts. Incidentally, we really are serious about wanting a band to cover My Camera Never Lies, it’d be brilliant. It’s the tune to get Hear’Say back at the top of the charts, that’s for sure!

20.00 The Variety Club Showbusiness Awards
“Michael Crawford there, he won a Variety Club award this week – mind you, so did Mike Smith!” During the 1980s, these used to be a real BBC1 staple, with Tel and Ray Moore doing some of their priceless whimsical banter in between the gongs. Then in the 1990s, it moved to a Sunday afternoon, before last year, in no way connected to the fact the news had moved to ten o’clock and they were running out of programmes, when it was catapulted back into primetime. These are the fiftieth awards, though as we always say, they’re less a round-up of who’s been great in showbiz this year, more just who’s been in showbiz this year, as if they just open up the Radio Times and pick names at random. Expect Hear’Say to win Best Group, that sort of thing.

BBC2

07.05 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show
If it’s this much struggle to fill up one morning, what hope two whole channels?

12.20 The Family Ness

13.10 Trouble in Store
More Wisdom, this time his first ever, with back-up from Margaret Rutherford, Joan Sims and Esma Cannon, who of course portrayed Flo in Carry On Cabby, which would’ve been on this week if only Channel Four had the gumption to etc etc…

ITV

16.20 How 2
HOW does Fred get that colour anyway?

20.00 The Kids From Alright On The Night
Oh, for Christ’s sake! This has been on every six months since 1994! And it’s ridiculously dated, as well, as it’s the one with all the kids describing their favourite out-takes, a la Child’s Play, and we’re sure some of those kids must be in their twenties by now, so if you were in it, do let us know. And tell us how much you’ve accumulated in repeat fees thanks to ITV’s stupid, stupid scheduling. How *dare* they show this again!

CHANNEL 4

13.35 The Admirable Crichton
Kenneth More is the desert island butler, Gerald Harper the bloke who prompts cries of “Ah, I always preferred Adam Adamant to Dr Who!” from certain quarters.

21.00 Because You’re Worth It: 100 Years Of Make-Up
Includes ‘archive footage’ of Avon ladies and so on, so there might be something worth seeing here.

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

16.05 TJ Hooker
We’ve been disappointed by the quality of Channel Five’s daytime programming since Charlie’s Angels finished, and that’s why we’re terribly excited by this! Best of all, we’re seemingly getting every episode, including the feature-length pilot right here.

Thursday 14th February

BBC1

20.30 This Is Your Life
As Creamguide’s going to press (ho ho) Fern Britton’s the subject, which is the sort of person we want to see here. We’re hoping to see clips from when she presented News After Noon for a month in 1983, back when they gave Richard Whitmore a different female sidekick every month from the various regions – Viv Creegor, Judi Lines, the lot. They should do that now, we think. Oh, and her sister’s married to Brian Cant! What were we talking about again?

BBC2

07.05 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show

12.20 The Family Ness

13.10 A Stitch in Time
Yes, we too thought for a moment this was Patrick Troughton’s excellent CFF film A Hitch in Time, but alas this particular contrived Who link was not to be. One of Norman Wisdom’s last pictures – great scheduling, fellas – with Glyn ‘Keep it in the Family’ Houston, Patsy “I’ll remember you in my will!” Rowlands, Peter ‘Book’ Jones, Patrick ‘Wives’ Cargill, Johnny ‘Baldwin’ Briggs again, and Pat “cereal ad” Coombs. Hopefully they’ll show The Bulldog Breed next week, as the Cream cast list for that goes on for bloody ever.

21.50 Trouble At The Top
“My camera! My camera-ra-ra-ra!” You see, you don’t get lyrical prowess like that anymore. Anyway, we’ve been waiting for this for ages, as the normally ace documentary series turns it’s attention to Bucks Fizz, which should include acres of fantastic footage, and then the post-Jay, post-Cheryl, post-Shelley line-ups, which at various points have included Bobby, Mike and David Van Day, and now there are two of them, one called Bucks Fizz and one called Buck$ Fizz. This deserves forty hours, not forty minutes!

ITV

16.20 How 2
HOW brilliant is this Fern Britton This Is Your Life? We’ve had clips of her on her dad’s This Is Your Life in 1977, presenting Westward News in front of a revolving backdrop, and TVS closing down in 1992. Plus Richard Whitmore on the sofa, and Fred *via satellite* from Southampton!

CHANNEL 4

13.10 The Postman Always Rings Twice
After showing the remake a few weeks back, Four trot out the (superior) original. Hmm. Next week, in a Schedulers in Need special, Jessica Lange and Lana Turner join forces to battle Jack Nicholson as the Master in The Two Postmen.

22.30 Banzai
Hopefully this isn’t undergoing Difficult Second Series Syndrome, and remains ace viewing.

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker
“You made them cancel The Cosby Mysteries! That show had limitless possibilities!”

Friday 15th February

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
*Two* bands in a week? That’s not right, but the new S Club 7 single is ace, so we don’t mind at all. Plus a Sport Aid competition, which seems about fifteen years too late, unless they mean Sport Relief, which is the subject of an evening of programmes on BBC1 on July 13th – although we’re not sure what that will entail.

BBC2

07.05 The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show

11.45 Bill and Ben
Yet still repeated at 13.00 for the kids with really low attention spans.

12.20 The Family Ness

13.10 Stalag 17
In a drastic change of pace after those Wisdoms, the vintage concentration camp fag exchange tale with William Holden, Peter ‘Airplane’ Graves and, briefly, Ross ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Bagdasarian.

23.35 One-Eyed Jacks
Marlon Brando directs and stars in this western, with Karl ‘Streets of San Fancisco’ Malden and Slim “one miniature combination Rooosian phrasebook and bible” Pickens.

ITV

16.20 How 2
HOW are we going to keep this joke lasting another week?

CHANNEL 5

06.30 Dappledown Farm

11.00 TJ Hooker
Your only option now Bargain Hunt’s not on.

21.00 The Return of Hunter: Everyone Walks in LA
Fred “Works for me” Dryer’s back! But there’s no Dee Dee McCall! What’s the point of that? You fools!

22.55 Dead of Night
No, not *that* one, sadly.

04.00 Sons and Daughters
But it is *this* one.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE
Brand new, and good for you…

BBC CHOICE
Sunday, 21.00, 23.45, Tuesday, 22.30, Wednesday, 21.30, Friday, 23.00 Shooting Stars – Actually a lot of these guests aren’t very interesting, are they? Such as Nell McAndrew and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who appear tonight, and Michael Winner who we’re sure has been on before. And there’s another repeat, ridiculously.

BBC KNOWLEDGE
Sunday, 23.00
Face To Face – From Monday Knowledge kicks off at 7pm, so less room for stuff like this. To see it out, Tony Hancock.

CBBC/CBEEBIES
We love the cover of this week’s Radio Times, as at last Chris Jarvis has got the recognition he deserves! Unfortunately the otherwise in-depth article on these new channels neglects to confirm how ‘Cbeebies’ is pronounced, and there aren’t any daily listings either, oddly. Instead you’ve just got the brief schedule to cut-out-and-lose. Anyway, they seem to have dropped the repeats of Pigeon Street we enjoyed so much on CBBC on Choice, so we deduce there’s nothing on Cbeebies worth watching. On CBBC, though, we’ll draw your attention to the snappy Newsround bulletins, just like proper news, at 07.30, 08.00, 08.30, 12.30, 13.00 and 13.30 each day, plus the brilliantly titled Newsround Lite, dealing in showbiz news, at 18.20.

Better still, the new channel has heavy Blue Peter content, which is what we want. On weekdays (weekends, of course, will be covered in next week’s Creamguide) BP appears three times a day, at 08.35, 13.35 and 16.35, although it appears to be the same programme on all three screenings. On Mondays and Fridays it’s Blue Peter Unleashed, which sees the gang take part in extreme sports and the like. On Tuesdays and Thursdays it’s Blue Peter Catchup, which is presumably, given it’s also on Saturday, a straightforward repeat of the previous day’s show – not that there’s anything wrong with that. On Wednesday is Blue Peter Flies The World, and if this runs forever, we may even get some decent archive stuff here. Although frankly we’re only interested in the current team at the moment.

Next week, join us as we ponder exactly why The Saturday Show Extra is shown at the same time as, er, The Saturday Show.

E4
Friday, 22.00
Top Ten Duets – Eh? What’s the point of this? Seemingly nobody’s told E4 that Channel Four are repeating this as well, so the rerun trundles along on its merry way.

GRANADA PLUS
Sunday, 17.30, Thursday, 22.30, 01.30
Bullseye – We’ve had a big response to our request for Creamguide readers to tell us about their personal favourite “bits of Bully”, which we’re grateful for, as it shows that at least half a dozen people actually read this all the way to the end. First out of the starting blocks, literally hours after Creamguide was published last week, was Clare Hudson, who tells us that her favourite moment is “straight after the ad break when Bully emerges from a pub toilet looking as if he’s doing up his flies. Class.” However, Irena Zientek suggests that the best moment “has to be the bit just before they went to the commercial break – and Bully disappeared off to the loo”. Irena also rightly suggests that “the entire production from start to finish was a masterpiece of the 20th century”. Amen to that. Barney Salton, however, takes a different view and nominates the doggerell from Bully’s Prize Board – “IIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNN OOONNNEEEE! Licence to grill – this fantastic outdoor barbecue set. IIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNN TWWWOOOOO! Hair we go again – this fantastic hair-dryer.” If you have a favourite bit of Bully, please let us know, and at the end we might compile a chart of the most popular suggestions, if we’re bored.

Friday, 22.30, 01.30
The Wheeltappers’ And Shunters’ Social Club – We’ve lost At The Wheeltappers, worse luck, but the original series is still running, making cracking Friday night viewing. Last week’s show was billed as featuring Jimmy Jones, but in fact he couldn’t make it and Bernard had to fill in instead. What we like about that was that G+ didn’t actually watch the programme and spot he wasn’t there, and instead relied on a dog-eared 25-year old copy of the TV Times for their billings.

ITV SPORT
Saturday, 18.30, Wednesday, 20.00
The World Cup Years – 1978 on Saturday, which didn’t include much panellage (we just made that word up) but did feature Kevin Keegan and Andy Gray punditeering plus Brian looking at the next day’s papers. Wednesday is 1982, a World Cup that tends not to feature in nostalgia shows much, but it saw the start of many ITV Sport icons – Welsby, Saint, Greavsie, Rosenthal, Newbon – so we’ll be hoping for some cracking clippage (we just made that word up too).

PARAMOUNT
Monday-Thursday, 23.00
The Frank Skinner Show – We’d presume the first series again, but don’t quote us on that.
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All times correct at time of writing and refer to England except wherestated. All programmes subject to cancellation, shifting, editing, blah blah blah.
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GOT SOMETHING TO SAY?
Then let us know at the usual TVC addresses. Everyone appreciates a letter, and unlike certain magazines, we might actually do something about them – Bully anecdotes, moans about Shoestring, we love them all (mostly). Meanwhile Look! Hear! It’s The TV Cream Update waiting to be subscribed to – http://tv.cream.org
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Dealing with it – Chris Diamond, Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Graham Kibble-White, Phil Norman, Simon Tyers

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    February 9, 2022 at 10:20 am

    I actually preferred the second series of Big Train to the first, that’s when it clicked for me, and it has the fantastic “world’s worst film editor” sketches. “Status Quo? Rockin’ All Over the World? Live version?”

    Nice to see CBeebies and CBBC were a roaring success. Though last time I happened to see CBBC, they were showing a Scooby-Doo episode with Scooby-Dum, so ITV showing Where Are You, Scooby-Doo? in 2002 doesn’t seem quite as outrageous.

  2. Richardpd

    February 9, 2022 at 9:56 pm

    I really liked Big Train, it seemed to have the best elements of most of the contributors blended just right, and bridged the gap between the 1990s & 2000s comedy shows just right. I would have liked more, but I doubt the formula would have stretched that far, but it’s a shame the BBC didn’t think to repeat it as much as the should have.

    The rights to show Scooby-Doo seemed to be passed between the BBC & ITV every few years for the last few decades. Even then I don’t think we got to see the series with lots of guest appearances & send up of American celebrities which probably would have confused some of the potential audience.

  3. Applemask

    February 15, 2022 at 5:45 pm

    I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing much in the way of Big Train repeats unless one of its prime movers recovers from having gone completely fucking insane, and that doesn’t seem to be on the cards.

  4. Richardpd

    February 15, 2022 at 9:54 pm

    If you mean Graham Linehan then that’s a real possibility, recently he’s managed to outdo both Germaine Greer & JK Rowling combined for transphobic comments.

  5. THX 1139

    February 18, 2022 at 10:58 am

    So, er, what happened to this feature this week (w/b 16th Feb 2002)?

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