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Your Wednesday Night In… January 1986


Wednesday, 8th January 1986

PICK OF THE DAY

5.35pm FIRST CLASS, BBC1
BBC Scotland upgrade to the network with the second series of their schools ‘video quiz’. It’s thusly cheerio to Louise Bachelor, as Debbie Greenwood takes over as host, adding an agreeable burr when pronouncing show super-computer’s name, Eugene. As this series began, Radio Times wondered if the First Class of 1986 would be from “Wiltshire, Wales, Dundee or Durham?” Whichever, the winning school would be awarded a microcomputer with disc drive and monitor. Part of a new look to teatimes on the channel, the 5.35pm stranded scheduling went thusly: Charles in Charge (Mon), Fax! (Tues), First Class (Weds, Thurs) and, once more with even more feeling, Fax! (Fri).

ALSO SHOWING:

5.00pm THE ROYAL INSTITUTION CHRISTMAS LECTURES, BBC2
We remain in the agreeableness of early evening with this Christmas clinger-on. The third in a series of six programmes, zoologist Professor David Pye tells us all about how bats are able to find their way in the dark, and even constructs his own flying mammal, optimistically described as ‘The Bionic Bat’. Which is great, but not a patch on the way he brilliantly confounded expectations around the portability of telephones in another speech from this run. Have a look!

8pm DUTY FREE, ITV
Mum, it’s back! Returning for a third and final series, how could David, Amy, Robert and Linda all possibly find themselves in each others’ lives again? Well… David’s out of work, so he decides a little holiday is just the thing to perk himself up. Etc, etc. Joanna Van Gyseghem (Linda) opined at the time: “It’s very clever the way the writers have managed to get us all back together, but I think they’ll really have to scratch their heads if there’s to be another series – unless we taken an ocean cruise and Carlos, the waiter, joins the merchant navy.” Yes! We’d watch that!

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    January 3, 2018 at 12:40 pm

    I like to think the First Class Eugene was the same one from Manic Miner. Just to give us a face to put to the name.

  2. Glenn A

    January 6, 2018 at 3:36 pm

    Maybe BBC One was looking for a teen rival to ITV’s hugely successful Blockbusters, although this mostly ran in the autumn. Also pre Neighbours, quizzes and games shows seemed to fill most of BBC One’s 5.35 slot. Some, like The Railway Csrriage Game, were dreadful, others like First Class were OK, and Masterteam was a genuine miss when Neighbours took its slot, as a few angry letters to Points of View complained about.

  3. Richardpd

    March 20, 2024 at 10:29 pm

    The Masterteam format was revived a few years later under a different name in a daytime slot.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    March 23, 2024 at 12:21 pm

    Duty Free was a really good sitcom that could have flopped, only having four main characters and being in a studio pretending to be a Spanish hotel, but the quality of the writing, the sexual tension and Keith Barron on top form as ever made it a massive hit and one of the few ITV sitcoms to win over the critics. Sadly 20 years later came Benidorm from ITV’s dark era of the mid and late noughties and this looked like a bad seventies sitcom moved forwards 30 years and was full of stereotypes that wouldnn’t have been very good in 1977 never mind 2007.

  5. Richardpd

    March 24, 2024 at 12:15 pm

    I was a little young to watch Duty Free when it was first on, but I’ve heard it was one of the better ITV sitcoms of the 1980s. One clip of someone falling into a fountain has been used a few times on clip shows.

    I didn’t watch it too much, but Benidorm seemed to be an odd mesh of concepts, with some modernist touches cover up some of the weaker elements.

  6. Glenn Aylett

    March 24, 2024 at 12:41 pm

    Duty Free was a witty, well made sitcom with four very strong characters and seemed more like a BBC sitcom than one ITV would make. Benidorm to me was like Don’t Drink The Water moved forward 32 years and was full of stereotypes, crass characters and ageing stars like Brian Murphy hoping for one last big acting job. Typical of one line I heard was a Spaniard was referred to being like General Franco, something that would be lost on anyone born after 1960.

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