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THE ORGANISATION to THE OXFORD ROAD SHOW
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THE ORGANISATION
(1972)
YORKSHIRE
ARCH SATIRE on power games in the PR department of a large corporation and one most-literate series ever to grace the screen. The late PHILIP MACKIE wielded the pen, charting "the machiavellian machinations of middle-management". Richard Pershore (PETER EGAN) is unemployed and wants to get a job in the public relations department of the conglomerate The Greatrick Organization. With this in mind he enlists the help of Chantry and Blount behavioural and motivational psychologists who coach him in getting the job. He gets it. He meets the director of the department David Pullman (DONALD SINDEN) and the new deputy director Peter Frame (ANTON ROGERS) who has just replaced the sad and useless Ken Grist (NORMAN BIRD). Also in the department are press officer Rodney Spurling (BERNARD HEPTON), Eve Manship (who edits the company magazine) and the rather lovely Veronica (ELAINE TAYLOR) who starts as Pullman's secretary but goes on to higher things later. Much chicanery among the bulldog clips. Classic take-that ending.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...BRISTLING
PAPERFOLDY SHOW similar to the later ART OF... Sinister old bloke (RICHARD HIDDLEMAN) in Chinese overalls, ex-army brilliantined haircut and glasses, looking for all the world like a sinister doctor (or that bloke on the MASTERMIND box) sat at what appeared to be a card table, folding bits of paper and pressing down the folds with the butt-end of a pair of sinister lacquered tweezers. He was accompanied by an assistant, plainly native English yet made up to look oriental and dressed as a geisha girl. Her role was to follow his moves at a discreet time-lag and to be addressed as 'Netsuko' or something similar. She never spoke; whether this was because she was not an Equity member or because he ruled her with an iron fist we can only speculate.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...JUDGED "TOO FOREIGN" AND SOON AXED BY OFFICIALS
ANOTHER BLOODY sci-fi musical (see FACE LIFT). A sort of mammoth exodus from Earth on a spaceship, with no-one remotely famous in it (unless you count a young ERIC ROBERTS, which we certainly don't).
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...WRITTEN BY MELVYN "A TIME TO BONK" BRAGG
ORLANDO
(1965-68)
ASSOCIATED-REDIFFUSION
KIDS' SPINOFF from CRANE featuring SAM KYDD as the titular blarney-peddling hoodlum-pounding scruff. Ran for ages. MARC BOLAN - when he was still Mark Feld - appeared in an episode or two as a Teddy Boy. Swarthy manboy capers.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...WORKED IN A BOATYARD, LIKE ALL SCRUFFS IN THE 1960S
CHUNKY CHROMAKEYED puppetry, involving the tales of worm ORM and scraggy bird CHEEP, plus Crow, Mole and co. RICHARD BRIERS narrated the plaintive if peculiar ramblings. "If only Cheep could fly," lamented the signature tune.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...THEME ALSO CAUTIONED: "IF CHEEP COULD USE HIS WINGS, HE'D STILL BUMP INTO THINGS"
MORE CHROMAKEYED black velvet marionettage for summer holiday mornings, here concerning the titular happy-go-lucky rabbit and his adventures in the land of Rubbidge, a vicious (yet oddly sympathetic) pterodactyl ("G-Nashers") in a cave (complete with washing line of death), a knight with a clock in his body, and various other weird elements. See also DAILY FABLE, and the bits with the puppet caterpillars in RAINBOW.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...JAUNTY THEME ACCOMPANIED OSCAR IDLY NODDING HIS HEAD ON A SWING
OSKAR, KINA AND THE LASER
(LATE 1970s)
NOW THIS is what we call obscure. Apparently, Oskar was a ten-year-old kid in a rural village, who gets bored one summer and decides to build a laser, as you do. Oskar goes to a lecture about lasers, and thus makes a laser (out of a bit of glass painted red - no rubies required in this tale) which he totes about in a sort of wooden box a bit like a a school satchel. Strangely, he never had to plug it in after the first episode or so. The laser causes all manner of mayhem on the farm, his dad flips out and confiscates it, he gets pissed off and sneaks out one night with the laser and Kina (a goose, of course) in tow. The laser starts talking to him and advising him to head off to... some kind of wacky adventures or something. Much later whole thing ended with multiple tear-jerker when said laser ran out of power and shut down for good. We're continually surprised as to how many people actually recall this badly overdubbed (an English narrator's voice barely conceals the original Eurodialogue still faintly audible underneath) wonder.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...A LIKELY STORY
THE OTHER 'ARF
(1980-84)
ATV/CENTRAL
WELL, WE know THIS one existed: LORRAINE CHASE'S first comedy series (see LAME DUCKS, if you dare), based, as her entire career was, on that "Naaah, Lu'on Airpawt!" Campari ad. She was the cockney mistress of a Tory MP. Concept ahead of its time, comedy miles behind. Cunning idents into and out of adbreaks proclaimed "Coming up the other ‘arf". Next step for La Chase - Cats UK.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...YES, SHE DID THE THEME AS WELL
PIDDLING TITFER scripted by the Esmonde-Larbey GOOD LIFE dream team had RICHARD BRIERS and MICHAEL GAMBON, both playing themselves, as two reps who worked together but were rivals and hence were forever trying to usurp, cough, The Other One. Much Spanish-baiting (the Spaniards had their misunderstood dialogue subtitled). Notable scenes included Richard Briers calling himself "a lone wolf" in a pathos-trowelled moment where he was plainly trying to remain upbeat despite having no friends; plus Gambon's enduring "Hello, hello, first cow of the day!" spiel whenever they drove past a field of bovines, because he'd said it once when he was a young boy and they'd got chocolate swiss roll at lunchtime.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...OH FOR THE SWISH OF A PENELOPE WILTON SKIRT
THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT
(1986-89)
GRANADA
IT WAS the best of times, it was the blurst of times. Having manufactured, variously, a menstrual egg-timer, record sleeves made of sandpaper, a desk that hung from a boardroom ceiling and numerous long-running feuds, the late great TONY "ANTHONY H" WILSON decided to turn his hand to, naturally, a late night magazine programme. After all, Manchester was where it was all happening back then, even if it amounted to little more than yet another re-release of Blue Monday. Hence this: a pretentious-as-hell "arts review" which somehow landed a slot on night-time network ITV. From within a set entirely furnished by IKEA (when they only had one store in Warrington and they were trendy), Tone held forth on acid house, himself, the opening of the Liverpool Tate ("Have they got the Rothkos right?" Anthony says: yes!), Martin Amis, Peter Greenaway, Factory Records, himself, why Manchester was the greatest city in the world, the Hacienda, why Ian Curtis would have been bigger than Bono, and himself. It's claimed every single person who saw the show later went off and formed a band. Sadly, they were all shit.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...THEME TUNE ("MEET ME ON THE OTHER SIDE/THE OTHER SIDE OF MI-IDNIIIGHT...") BY YARGO ACCOMPANIED SHOT OF STILL-TRENDY VENETIAN BLINDS
SUMMER HOLIDAY fare, c. 10am weekdays. Family of four try to return home from future, only to be inhibited by bloke who played henchman to Steven Berkoff in Beverly Hills Cop. One episode discovered a colony where men were submissive to women, a la The Worm That Turned in THE TWO RONNIES. Blokes were kept on collars and leads, and traded by sort of Amazon slave dealers. The family were also being pursued by a mental military type who travelled in a silver car that - being futuristic - skimmed across the ground but which was obviously just a motor with a metal skirt.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...POINTS SALVAGED BY EPISODE TITLES SUCH AS "I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR" AND "VILLAGE OF THE MOTORPIGS"
OTT/SATURDAY STAYBACK
(1982-83)
CENTRAL
ADULT TISWAS, with chief Wasser CHRIS TARRANT in charge, unably assisted by BOB CAROLGEES, LENWORTH HENRY, JOHN GORMAN, HELEN ATKINSON WOOD (who wouldn't?) and, for a bit, ALEXEI SAYLE. First incarnation was Central's hugely-hyped opening gambit on network ITV; results soon stank the place out like a bucket of particularly ill-kempt custard egg tartlets. Big girls in small T-shirts were liberally soused in water, explosions went off, naked balloon dances went on, and the whole thing, being live, fucked up big time at least once a night, most infamously when "The Ratman", a no-go sideshow act who stuffed live rats down his tights, let one of the buggers loose on air, and it ended up being booted across the studio unceremoniously. SATURDAY STAYBACK followed a year later and was little better, exhibits A and B being the involvement of TONY SLATTERY and PHIL COOL.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...NOT WHAT THEY WANT
LUGBURIOUS LUNCHTIME fare for kids fronted by a cartoon seagull, whose chief job was to fill in the wearied viewer on the show's never-changing location. "At the back! You know! The back! Not the front! But the back!" Cheers. The song went on to reassure: "It's safe to play in our backyard," a hint at the darkening times ahead. Three inhabitants populated the eponymous locale: Jean, a fully-grown woman, Laura, who was Jean's offspring, and about five years old, and Peter, a fully-grown man in body but a gooning ape in mind and sense of so-called humour. His role in the household was somewhat undefined since he definitely wasn't Laura's father (this, in the days before the Child Support Agency, so possibly Jean had resorted to sponging off whatever gullible loser she could find as a last alternative to the game). The show then unfolded with various dull songs, stories, and activities, whose raison d'etre was ostensibly to give the uncharismatic, and resolutely difficult-to-please child Laura something to do to keep her off the streets, but was in reality to give the uncharismatic, and resolutely difficult-to-please child-man Peter something to do to keep him off the streets. Jean was aided/hindered in her efforts by the Band Next Door, a sub-Rod, Jane and Freddy three-piece, whose singer bore some physical resemblance to Carol Leader but who was not actually fit to tie the shoelaces of the PLAY SCHOOL loveangel. One of their songs, designed to coincide with a simple cookery feature on making Coconut Ice, went "Pink and nice, coconut ice". Repeat, ad nauseum.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."THERE'S LOTS TO DO..." OH REALLY?
GEORDIE GRIMNESS in the form of a Catherine Cookson adaptation and foisted on 70s kids, later repeated in the classic Sunday serial slot. Pit disaster claims John Willie's father, leaving him (deaf and dumb) and brother Davey hunting work. They are "taken in" by the kindly but strict (as ever) Miss Peamarsh. Much gritty Northern rivalry betwixt heroes and baddy Coxon (MALCOLM "WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN" TERRIS), and the dog, Snuffy, dug up some skeleton or other in the greenhouse. Canny, like.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...STRICTLY SPEAKING, "WOR JOHN WILLIE", BUT THIS WAS MADE IN THE MIDLANDS FOR SOME REASON KNOWN ONLY TO BBC REGIONAL PROGRAMMERS
ROTTEN SATURDAY rowdy runtathon and brief regional replacement for the "irresponsible" TISWAS, begatter of the Melissa Wilkes "Grand Pricks" debacle and all subsequent shows with loads of kids clapping in the background and a camp black presenter who has thankfully faded into obscurity.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."WELL, IT'S SPELT "PRICKS" ON 'ERE!"
OUR WORLD/MY WORLD
(LATE 1970s/EARLY 1980s)
ITV
EVER-CHANGING TITLE of sub-religious "Why can't we all just get along?"-ery in the form of a kindly bearded man in a studio "meeting" kids and showing film of global activities. Of kids. Then a story, similarly skewed to the central message of the show. Animated globe-jigsaw titles ingrained in many a mind. Religion not so ingrained. One-nil to cartoons!
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."OF COURSE, IN RHODESIA THEY DON'T HAVE TELEPHONES..."
FOUL-MOUTHED, KIDNEY-KNUCKLING ex-con TOM BELL got "out" of nick and went on the trail of the bloke who done grassed him up. Trailing behind: loopy wife LYNNE FARLEIGH, reformed prossie KATHERINE SCHOFIELD, and old lags BRIAN CROUCHER and JOHN JUNKIN.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...LAW AND ORDER WITHOUT THE LAW. OR THE ORDER.
OUT OF THE UNKNOWN
(1965-71)
BBC
SUPERLATIVE BRIT-FI anthology in the old TWILIGHT ZONE format, overseen by sink plunging-wielder TERRY NATION among others. Here's a few -
- The one where people are allowed to commit serious crimes if they serve several years of punishment in advance, with MIKE "RANDALL" PRATT.
- The weird one with MILO O'SHEA as a fishmonger who feeds rabbits to carnivorous plants. Also with ERIC "ROUNDABOUT" THOMPSON and PATSY ROWLANDS.
- The "population control" one with bit parts for GEOFFREY "CATERING FRONT" PALMER and (yes!) CHLOE ASHCROFT.
- The one where KEITH "LINDA!" BARRON explodes and ends up as a novelist on a QUANTUM LEAP trip, along with Godfrey off DAD'S ARMY and MOLLY "MACWITCH" WEIR.
- The one with JANE ASHER as a stowaway on an emergency aid spaceship with PETER "JASON KING" WYNGARDE as the captain, who has to decide whether or not to chuck her off so they can reach their destination.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...ALSO APPEARING: HANNAH GORDON, BURT KWOUK, WARREN MITCHELL, FULTON MACKAY, PETER BOWLES, MICHELLE DOTRICE, WENDY CRAIG, GEORGE COLE, IAN OGILVY, ANTON RODGERS, BRIAN WILDE, LESLEY-ANNE DOWN AND TESSA WYATT
OUT OF TOWN/OLD COUNTRY
(1955, 1963-1980/1983-1984)
SOUTHERN/CHANNEL 4
A PROGRAMME as old as ITV itself - nearly. The first instalment of this resolutely ruralcrat-oriented programme turned up at 10.20pm on the second ever evening of ITV broadcasts, hosted by LESLIE PERRINS ("In this first programme we see, among other things how radio-active materials are being used to help farmers.") Most well-known, however, was the early-evening fifteen minuter hosted by JACK HARGREAVES who went "out and about" for these rural craft series" with little or no impact, unwittingly providing the template for The Fast Show's Bob Fleming ("And we'll be taking a good long look at a lovely collection of old keys. That promises to be a real treat, don't it?") To wit: "Jack Hargreaves is the true countryman who knows and loves rural life in all its moods and aspects...from a sunset to a sailing boat, from a rare bird song to the crack of a shotgun. Each week, he shares his own deep knowledge and country happiness." Popularly believed to have been 'under the influence' on several programmes, there were stories about him looking distracted as if someone off-camera were waving furiously to prevent him saying something embarrassing. Smoked a pipe, and wore a tweed hat with fishing flies all over it. For OLD COUNTRY, he moved to C4 to present a weekly rural diary "from beautiful Hardy country". Topics included Downland Cattle Breeds and Cutting Up a Pig.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...SOILED
OUTER SPACE
(1970-73)
BBC
PRE-SWAP SHOP carry-on of precious little consequence and even fewer viewers. Set in a spaceship, more specifically on the control panel whose monitors acted as windows through which the regular segments of the show were seen. These segments were 1) a different puppet model dinosaur each week in a model landscape, its details given the ship's computer-voice; 2) a serial in still-drawing form (rather like ZOKKO's "Skayne" space epic) set in the future when Earth was covered by a new Ice Age; 3) TV studio pop music act, usually Cat Stevens.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...WIPED FOR GOOD. AND FOR GOOD.
RESIDENT PATIENT of the Beeb's early 70s schedules, spun off from THE DOCTORS and another attempt at a soap-lite goer (see THE NEWCOMERS). NIGEL STOCK was the eponymous quack, somehow losing an extra "S" at the end of his name in moving from his previous existence. Po-faced pronouncements on the pressures of running a piddly small practice usually resolved into lip-quivering emotional tear-fests.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...FINLAY OF THE VALLEYS
THE OWL SERVICE
(1968)
GRANADA
FOWL PLAY from the North. Posh girl cultivates broody pining in both local bit of rough and equally posh stepbrother. Discovers set of plates with owls on them. Starts scratching people's faces. Makes cut-out birds. Gets possessed. Lots of running about on hills. Someone turns into an eagle. Someone else gets hit by a stick. Turns out it was all a dream. Next!
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...OUT OF SERVICE, THANKFULLY
THE OXFORD ROAD SHOW
(1980-81)
BBC
TEXTBOOK WORTHY-BUT-DULL show on "issues" for "young adults" by "young adults" presented from a scaffolding-riddled studio on Oxford Road, Manchester (hence the title - not, as many thought, a travelling Radio 1-style revue of scarf-wearing dons, though maybe that would have been more entertaining).
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...PLUS TOP PROTO-DE CADENET PLUMMY PRESENTRIX BY THE NAME OF VICTORIA STUDD
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