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Your Wednesday Night In...

Your Wednesday Night In… October 1979


Wednesday, 24th October 1979

PICK OF THE DAY

6.05pm THE MUPPET SHOW, ITV
Dudley Moore is the Very Special Guest Star, but he’s not the main attraction here, because tonight heralded the return of ITV to our screens after 10 weeks of industrial action and blue apology captions (that’s except for viewers in Yorkshire, who got an appeal for information about the Yorkshire Ripper). The Mike Sammes Singers harmonised THAT jingle to welcome home channel three, before Leonard Parkin lifted off the dustsheets in the News at 5.45 studio (“Let me simply say, let’s get on with it!”) to introduce an urgent report from Granadaland featuring the Coronation Street postbox being placed back in position outside Alf’s shop. And then, in a masterstroke of scheduling, it was over to Kermit and the gang, ensuring every kid in Britain insisted on switching the Trinitron back to the light channel after three months of the boring old Beeb.

ALSO SHOWING:

6.45pm ANGELS, BBC1
Bit of a test run for imperial phase EastEnders in this dispatch from St Angela’s Hospital, Battersea, with Shirley “Debs” Cheriton, Kathryn “Mags” Apanowicz and Judith “no nickname but she played Carmel” Jacob all present and correct on the wards, alongside future Doc Cox accomplice and Fast Forward stalwart Joanna Monro. Actually, this was the first time the medical saga had been broadcast twice a week, making it the BBC’s first sort-of-soap since Z-Cars had returned to a weekly outing in 1972.

9.25pm RIPPING YARNS: ROGER OF THE RAJ, BBC2
“Owing to my cold, I’ve put off a proposed curry evening with TJ to celebrate Roger of the Raj. So happily watch at home with a half bottle of champagne and thoroughly enjoy it. It’s now up there with Tomkinson and Olthwaite as one of my three greats,” noted Michael P in his diaries for 24 October. It was the last ever of “the Yarns”, starring Palin as the titular Roger alongside John Le Mesurier, Joan Sanderson, Richard Vernon and Jan Francis.

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    October 24, 2018 at 12:56 pm

    The Angels theme tune should really have accompanied the credit “And Antonio Fargas as Huggy Bear” in the opening titles.

  2. Glenn Aylett

    October 24, 2018 at 8:52 pm

    Angels was the Holby City of its time, although with far cheaper sets and an absence of gay characters and scenes in an operating theatre, as this wpuld be too controversial in 1979. Nevertheless, it did portray an Asian nurse struggling with alcoholism, inter racial relationships and nurses having affairs with doctors, which was ground breaking for the era Angels was written in and a lot better than General Hospital from the same time.

  3. richardpd

    October 24, 2018 at 11:06 pm

    The Angels theme is very good if a little misplaced.

    Just like the Sorry! theme would be more at home for an urban drama, which I believe it was originally written for.

    Also the original The Avengers theme sounds like it was borrowed from a late night chat show.

  4. Glenn Aylett

    October 25, 2018 at 8:05 pm

    I always thought the Angels theme was a bit too jolly for a sometimes hard hitting series, but it is a good theme tune and most people over 45 will recognise it straight away.
    On a different note, when ITV finally came back after 10 weeks on strike, I do remember Len Fairclough( Peter Adamson) telling people what had happened on Coronation St in the ten weeks the show was off air before the first episode since August.

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