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Your Wednesday Night In...

Your Wednesday Night In… May 1989


Wednesday, 17th May 1989

PICK OF THE DAY

7.00pm WOGAN WITH SUE LAWLEY, BBC1
“We bring you the big news from Liverpool!” There’s a proper scoop for Sue tonight, as she reveals the identities of the new Joey and Aveline Boswell, thus denying a holidaying Tel the chance to exchange “Greetings!” with Graham Bickley and Melanie Hill, who are interrogated in costume but not in character. In fact, most of the chat is dedicated to their appearance (“I was going to ask whether you’d fit into Joey’s leather trousers”) although Melanie does let slip that she’d never actually seen Bread before getting the job. Also on the guest list, Chancellor (and soon to be ex-Chancellor) Nigel Lawson, who, according to Sue, “has been said to resemble a Regency swell and a Victorian villain,” and married concert pianists John Ogdon and Brenda Lucas.

ALSO SHOWING:

6.00pm BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25th CENTURY, BBC2
Once a crewman in the ITV Saturday night ratings corps, Captain William “Buck” Rogers had been blown out of his trajectory and frozen in time before returning, erm, nine years later to land on BBC2. The perfect piece of disco sci-fi teatime escapism, but now with added irony and kitsch. And of course, as no less an authority than Clive James had it, “the hardware looks good”.

7.00pm BUSMAN’S HOLIDAY, ITV
Sarah Kennedy hosts the leaden Granada quiz (you could tell it was a Granada quiz because the audience sat behind the host) featuring teams from three professions answering questions about their jobs for the prize of a “working holiday” related to their careers. The teams in tonight’s show are brewers, marine pilots and, it says here, vegetarians, which is not, as far as we know, an actual profession.

8.00pm BROOKSIDE, Channel 4
Turn up the synths to 11, it’s destination Brookside Close, where Frank and Chrissy Rogers are fretting about the mortgage on number 5, while “Growler” is off for a trial for Liverpool Boys football team (spoiler alert: he’s too small). Billy Corkhill asks Tracy how she feels about Sheila moving into his room. And Paul Collins gets a visit from a former Burma prisoner of war who has a confession to make about an egg he ate in 1943.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    May 16, 2018 at 10:38 am

    A quick Google reveals Graham Bickley has concentrated on the stage since leaving Bread as Joey’s second regeneration.

    Was there ever a team of quiz show hosts on Busman’s Holiday?

    Was Growler a dog? Like Gnasher?

  2. Richard16378

    May 16, 2018 at 6:40 pm

    I felt Graham Bickley and Melanie Hill had a thankless task replacing the original actors, especially as Bread had passed it’s high point by 1989.

    I missed BBC2’s original repeats of Glen A Larson’s sci-fi shows, but caught them during the mid 1990s.

  3. Glenn Aylett

    May 17, 2018 at 10:07 pm

    Bread was brilliant for its first three series, often attracting 18 million viewers, but was never the same with the new Joey and Aveline, and then inevitably the Carla Lane vegetarian stories crept in, in the same way her more critically acclaimed Scousecom went after 1975. However, while The Liver Birds at least remained amusing right to the end, Bread was completely mouldy and dull by its final series.

    • Richard16378

      May 18, 2018 at 1:29 pm

      The high point for me was the 1988 Christmas Special when they went to Rome.

      After that it was downhill with Celia vanishing without much if any explanation, Oswald’s drinking problem, Nelly getting a fancy man as well as the re-casting. I think Julie swapped actors at one time too.

      I always thought it was odd that Joey was vegetarian but wore plenty of leather, or was that part of the joke?

  4. Glenn Aylett

    May 20, 2018 at 10:40 am

    @ Richard 16378, it could have been fake leather as Carla Lane probably would not have approved of real leather. Also vegetarianism and Liverpool seem to be a recurring thing in Carla Lane’s work, as well as animal rights.
    Out of interest, Carla Lane set up her animal sanctuary in the nineties next to a place she despised, Aintree raecourse.

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