Friday, 24th November 1963
PICK OF THE DAY
9pm THE PRISONER, ITV
With Captain Scarlet And The Mysterons also lording it over the schedules earlier in the evening, Lew Grade must have been a rather happy man. Until… probably right about now. In this week’s instalment, Patrick McGoohan delivers a thought-provoking black and white blazered analogy on arguing with people on a big chess board, with Peter Wyngarde as The New Number 2, and Rosalie Crutchley as that week’s double-crossing dolly-bird in a stripy top, Number 8. The audience respond by showing off to everyone in work about how little of it they understood and what was all that about the balloon all about etc etc, prompting ITC to hastily curtail the series after 17 episodes and McGoohan to flee from reporters in a gryocopter or something, Still, at least we got a proper ending.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26yig0
ALSO SHOWING:
8.20pm PG WODEHOUSE’S THE WORLD OF WOOSTER, BBC1
Early Bertie’n’Reggie adaptation starring Ian Carmichael and Dennis Price as the farce-prone bounder-averse literary double-act; today’s foxtrot-soundtracked hijinks involved The Fixing Of Freddie, roping in Derek Nimmo as Bingo Little, and the series was a favourite of the young Stephen Fry, who used to marvel at what a wonderful chap the producer Michael Mills must be, until he ended up working for him and was bawled at and ratted on to his agent for being about 30 seconds late on set. Revenge is a dish best served as a superlative big-budget Saturday night ITV adaptation.
8pm WHEELBASE, BBC2
Long-forgotten Top Gear ancestor fronted by not-exactly-PC-Brigade-baiting petrolhead Gordon Wilkins, this week posing the questions that really matter: How big is the American influence in British cars? Does Detroit dominate the policy of Ford, Rootes. and Vauxhall? How many boardroom bosses are still British? The answers, apparently, are all to be found at The International Motor Show at Earls Court. And, surprisingly, not some harebrained column later collected in an endless procession of charity shop-hogging paperbacks with an inexplicable animal cameo on the cover.
Glenn A
November 24, 2017 at 1:09 pm
While Wheelbase sounds very serious and worthy, don’t forget the first ten years or so of Top Gear were similar and dominated by reports on car reliability and mpg figures. Also BBC2 in its early days tried desperately to be different to the two main channels, had Wheelbase been on ITV it probably would have featured Pat Phoenix trying out the latest Mini and Benny Hill singing a ditty about car strikes.
Richard16378
November 24, 2017 at 1:49 pm
I think Wheelbase also featured some highlights of motor racing events when live coverage was a rare thing.