TV Cream

Your Wednesday Night In...

Your Wednesday Night In… April 2005


Wednesday, 4th April 2005

PICK OF THE DAY

9pm THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, BBC4
Unshackling from the usual TV Cream remit, we find ourselves at a more recent epistopic interface, but one – nevertheless – that is now 13 years old.  And a salient reminder of many things: live telly drama could be quite boring, old telly drama could be quite boring, Nigel Kneale was never boring. And there’s a Knealian paradox for you, right there.  Of course, this live recreation of the old 1950s’ series attracted special attention, due to the inclusion of the soon-to-be Doctor Who, David Tennant. Still we enjoyed the abundance of lab coats, if not a lot else. And of course, this was a repeat of the 2nd April showing.

ALSO SHOWING:

10.30pm TIME SHIFT: LIVE ON THE NIGHT, BBC4
Following straight after, came this redoubtable piece from a strand that we’re not sure is still going.  This was back in the day, when archive telly could still be quite enjoyable, and the Time Shift mob from Bristol always did a first-rate job of clip-compilage, wheedling out some of the lesser seen nuggets from the archive.

11.20pm TV ON TRIAL – 1970s, BBC4
What the hell, let’s stick with BBC 4 for our final entry.  And here was a programme to round off an evening of TV nostalgia.  Sarfraz Manzoor and Alan Coren were the two talents picked to pretend that there is any meaningful debate to be had around a large body of television, due to nothing more than the decade of its transmission, while John Sergeant tried to show an interest as presiding host.  For a while, he was on everything wasn’t he?

 

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Richard16378

    April 4, 2018 at 6:24 pm

    Just to add to the live tension the first Quatermass reconstruction screening had a news banner informing viewers Pope John Paul II had died.

  2. THX 1139

    April 4, 2018 at 7:15 pm

    Best bit of the Quatermass live remake was the bit where two of the stars walked off camera and we suddenly heard one of the biggest crashes ever on television. Did we ever get an explanation for that?

  3. Glenn Aylett

    April 7, 2018 at 2:33 pm

    Sci fi was becoming big business for the BBC in the mid noughties with the massive revival of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Quatermass. Even ITV joined in with the semi decent Primeval. It was quite a good time for television drama, particularly on the BBC, and the BBC seemed to be undergoing a creative revival after the barren Birt years, while ITV was shifting downmarket in the mid noughties with endless celeb reality trash like Celebrity Wrestling.

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