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Your Friday Night In...

Your Friday Night In… March 1984


Friday, 23rd March 1984

PICK OF THE DAY

9.25pm WHICKER!, BBC2
The eighth episode of 10 of Alan Whicker’s sedate (belying the exclamation-mark) chat-shop finds the man welcoming in to “Whicker’s world” (and thereby confusing the brand, even more so as this thing touches down to the strains of the classic WW ‘Horizons’ theme)… well, let’s let Alan do the groundwork: “The perfect cast for an epic jungle film – Hitchcock’s leading lady, an explorer who knows darkest Africa and an Oscar-winning director who’s just had all his jabs.” Said trio assemble in Alan’s conservatory of conversation – they sharing a coffee table, he sat at a giant desk – because Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is about to be released and our louche host knew the director, Hugh Hudson, as a schoolboy. Of the film’s lead, Christopher Lambert, Alan opines he’s a “slim Frenchman with soulful eyes and a slight squint”. Squeezing in alongside Hugh are Tippi Hedren and Malcolm Coe of St Peter’s College Oxford. Recorded day before TX, meaning Radio Times had to wheel out various euphemistic guest rosters (‘The brash, the bizarre and the beautiful, the familiar and the unfamiliar-the people…’ etc)

ALSO SHOWING:


6.40pm DOCTOR WHO, BBC1
It’s time for the Doctor to take on his deadliest ever terror – Colin Baker.  It’s the second part of ‘The Twin Dilemma’, of which the BBC’s programme database helpfully informs us that there are four “ALIENS ENCOUNTERED IN EP2: Mestor (Gastropod); Edgeworth/Azmael(Time Lord) Jacondans; Humans”. Four!

10.15pm SPORTFOLIO, BBC1


Little is known about this fantastically named late night sport fest from BBC Wales, but that name is surely… sportacular.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Richard16378

    March 24, 2017 at 2:28 pm

    A literal plug for BBC1 Wales!

  2. Glenn A

    March 24, 2017 at 5:22 pm

    Colin Baker, when Doctor Who officially went bad ( well some of the Peter Davidson stories were pointing the show in a downward direction, to be fair). A Doctor who was completely dislikeable, cheap sets, boring stories and useless special effects, no wonder Michael Grade put the show on ice the following year. Sad thing is Sylvester ” Sylveste” Mc Coy was actually a far better Doctor, but no one wanted to know by then.

  3. Applemask

    March 25, 2017 at 2:51 pm

    Colin could have been a great Doctor if they hadn’t decided to make him such a prick from the outset. There was still some good stuff under his two-season tenure, not all of which even involved Daleks.

  4. Glenn A

    March 25, 2017 at 3:20 pm

    I think Colin, who is now a regular on the convention circuit, couldn’t have helped by being cast as an arrogant, dislikeable Doctor. Surely while viewers could expect a little bit of cantankerous behaviour from their Doctors at times, Baker’s portrayal turned people off.

  5. Droogie

    March 25, 2017 at 11:37 pm

    I feel sorry for Colin Baker. The Doctor I grew up with was Tom Baker. I was frankly disappointed with his regeneration into Peter Davidson, who played the Timelord as an indecisive wimp. Colin Baker’s portrayal as an arrogant narcissist made a lot of sense just as a contrasting character to Davidson’s.

  6. Richard16378

    March 25, 2017 at 11:37 pm

    I found that the quality of the scripts in season 22 seemed very hit & miss.

    By the end of it Colin Baker was beginning to get a more likeable feeling for his Doctor, but the plug had already been pulled.

  7. Glenn Aylett

    March 25, 2023 at 2:49 pm

    I could imagine Sportfolio, being Welsh and Welsh football not being anything great, being dominated by rugby union( I always add union as rugby where I live now most often means league). I wonder if Sportfolio had Cliff Morgan giving his opinions on The Five Nations with some help from JPR Williams and maybe a Welsh rugby loving celeb like Richard Burton turning up.

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