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There's always been mucho debate over when the "Cream Era" ended. When did things go shit? Some will insist around 1982, when terribly-drawn Korean cartoons like Pole Position, Dungeons & Dragons and Dogtanian started appearing. Others will say 1989, at the end of the last great musical revolution, acid house. And someone said it was 1998 once. The received wisdom is that it's the year you reached 17. And now, the 1990s are over and done with. So we're well within our rights to step back and take a look at what television left behind in that "caring, sharing" decade, for future generations to look back on with that typical mixture of nostalgia, scorn and bemusement that we relish around here. What would you put into the TV Cream Time Capsule, rumoured to be soon occupying the hole left over from the disappointingly wet Blue Peter Time Capsule unearthed recently? Separated from the main TV Cream pages until they have "sufficiently matured" like a piece of Lymeswold left in the airing cupboard, here are a few items we'd gladly bury at the bottom of the TV Cream Sunken Garden tomorrow. But we might not be so keen on digging up some of them afterwards...
CAUGHT IN THE ACT (1992)
THE BBC in the early nineties was in a bit of a state, and what with
its charter coming up for renewal, they were going all out to be
"popular". The thought process behind this series was, seemingly,
'You've Been Framed is popular - let's just rip that off', and that's
what they did. Should you care, the "unique" feature were that the
clips were - wow! - international, and there was some sort of
spurious game show element bolted on.
Which doesn't sound so bad, but then...Shane Richie was hired to
present it. The "international" clips appeared to be linked - in a
bizarr-o Eurovision way - by a presenter from that country, who would
banter with Richie for ages. Of course later this scam was uncovered
as actors in adjacent blue-adorned rooms chancing their arm - which
tends to cloud impressions of grandieur given when one of the
"foreign" correspondents occasionally turned up in the studio, to
much fanfare. The "game" took up practically the entire programme,
but perversely this was just a plain old "home-video howlers" show.
And, just in case we couldn't grasp the subtle humour in Man Falls
Off Roof or Cat Falls Off Wall, they added on cartoon sound effects
to enhance the action - Twang Of Ruler, Smash Of Glass, Fracture Of
Bone, Collapse Of Lung... Unbelievably, the series managed to make
Beadle look good. Even more unbelievably, it got twelve million
viewers, but thankfully after thirteen hideous episodes, the BBC
decided it wasn't really the sort of thing they should be making, and
thus it never returned. Shortly after, the variety department closed
down forever. See also BOBBY DAVRO - PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE ("So,
Peter Stringfellow, how many people will fall for this Beadle-ripoff
prank?"), YOUR BEST SHOT (Game for a Laugh with none of the wit -
yes, that bad), and HIT THE ROAD (Z-list celebrities running around
in luminous anoraks).
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- to show there were
worse light entertainment programmes before Red Alert.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
somebody's finally
admitted Shane Richie was just a cruel joke at our expense.
CHANNEL 5: THE LAUNCH
(Easter 1997)
JUST MAKING IT into the Capsule by the skin of its teeth, but who
doesn't get dewey eyed when reminiscing about the first time they
ever found the test card in amongst the static? If only the actual
programmes were as good as the trail that ran non stop for six weeks
beforehand - "Give Me Action!" with DOMINIK DIAMOND playing
Scalextric, and JOSIE D'ARBY walking down a road. The anticipation
reached fever pitch by the time THE SPICE GIRLS kicked down the
testcard at 6.00 that Sunday, followed by those "faces" of Channel
Five, TIM VINE and JULIA BRADBURY, who spent the next half hour
trailing Jack Docherty and the Poland vs England World Cup qualifier
in two months time.
After all that, the programmes just sort of petered out. JACK
DOCHERTY started his ridiculously ill-advised nightly
Letterman-wannabe chat show with THE SPICE GIRLS (funnily enough) and
ROGER MOORE (offering strange parallels with Knowing Me Knowing You
with Alan Partridge), but by the end of the week we'd already had
FISH and STEVE PUNT, and it was even further downhill then, until it
was moved to a peak 1am slot once a week, normally not even presented
by him. But at least it wasn't as bad as The Creatives. The film at
9.00 went within a fortnight from the standard of Mrs Doubtfire to
the standard of My Stepmother Is An Alien, and of course there was
the 11.40 comedy slot - half "have you ever noticed ..." stand up,
and half "Have I Got 'X' For You"-style panel game shite, almost
always starring (if it's possible to "star" on Channel Five)
charmless Geordie Richard Morton. This was later replaced by hardy
perennial Prisoner: Cell Block H, and the ratings doubled, then by
pornography, and the ratings doubled again.
And Poland vs England did finally turn up, with ill-cast BROUGH
SCOTT, GAIL MCKENNA and DOMINIK DIAMOND, dining at the incongruous
"football cafe", a real live tables & chairs situation with
various C5 "celebs" eating, drinking and offering their opinions on
the evening's action. Two main errors: 1. There were proper waiters
wandering round all the time, serving drinks and getting in the way,
and 2. The general clatter of the cafe tended to distract attention
from the interview in hand. Footballer STEVE CLARIDGE regularly
provided the latest betting news on the game, simply because he likes
to have a flutter now and then. The channel almost died of
embarrassment. The viewing figures have, admittedly, increased, but
not before Private Eye managed to re-use all its Channel Four and
TV-am jokes ("Five viewers", "First rat to join a sinking ship",
etc.). But still nobody's watching the news - and sitting on a desk
is so
1990s!
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- being caught watching
it was even more embarrassing than being caught watching the porn
they show now.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
a Family Affairs actress
gets recognised in the street.
Relive those memories of the launch of Channel Five by breaking your vertical hold and going to http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/continuity/channel5.html
DANCE ENERGY (1990-3)
STREET-PORTER'S DEF II slot managed to come up with some fairly
credible music programmes during its run - SNUB TV, BEHIND THE BEAT,
and so on. It also came up with this. Yet it was much more fun than
any of the others and a real Monday night institution. The
ever-popular NORMSKI presented throughout, with a whole host of Ali
G-style catchphrases ("Let 'arf!" "The livin' ...!") and an array of
stupid haircuts and clothes. The first few series came from a plain
white studio ("with loads of affictions to the walls to make it look
even more happening!" - Normski) and followed a fairly
straightforward mix of a few live acts (The Beloved, Bass-O-Matic,
etc.), stupid dancing by the audience (including a vogueing GERI
HALLIWELL Before She Was Famous), and some news reports about De La
Soul read by Lisa I'Anson. But the fourth series saw a real change,
with the title changing to DANCE ENERGY HOUSE PARTY, and the action
relocating to - yes! - Normski's "house"! VAS BLACKWOOD, star of Lock
Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Spatz, was drafted in as comic
relief, and it was all loads better than before, with a baffling
array of bands in the kitchen, Number 73 style (The Charlatans were
on it once, for a start). There was also the Lift Off competition,
where each week we'd see a set of videos of some Staines Massive kids
pissing around with a Yamaha. And there was a "fashion" segment as
well, where Norm would go out and laugh at some punters in the street
and their crap outfits. The final series changed it's name to D
Energy, lost the house, lost Vas and lost all its viewers, before
pointlessly transferring to Radio One. Normski was last seen pitching
a chat show to Channel Five where he'd interview guests on a
skateboard.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- His real name was
Norman Anderson, you know...
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Later with The Dreem
Teem comes to BBC2.
DANNY BAKER AFTER ALL/THE DANNY BAKER
SHOW (1993 and 1994)
"KINDA LIVE from London, it's Danny Baker After All..." Oh yes. BBC1
bosses took one listen to the Birt-approved "loose cannon" and best
thing on the old Radio 5, and freed up the post-MATCH OF THE DAY slot
for two months at the end of 1993. Unfortunately, Baker had, like
Jonathan Ross before him, prepared for a comedy chat show after
imbibing too much Letterman, and thus most of the viewing public -
not to mention newspaper TV reviewers - switched off (he imitated the
world's most overrated chat show host right down to flimsy
"cityscape-through-Venetian-blinds" thing behind him). Some good
ideas, though, including getting musical guests to do a Beatles cover
and Those Who Also Entertain, spotlighting people at the ephemera of
showbusiness, including Slimfast king BARRY BETHELL ("I can't believe
I was that fat!"), who turned out to be "larger than life", you won't
be surprised to hear. Top marks too for getting viewers to send in
unwanted CDs, and then taking them to a rifle range for clay pigeon
substitution purposes. Fact: the house band, The Railtown Bottlers,
not only went on to record the theme for one-series Roy Barraclough
sitcom vehicle Mother's Ruin, but were led by Radio 1 film "buff" and
doctor of horror fiction MARK KERMODE. Months later, bloodied but
unbowed, Baker launched the second show into the same spot, sans a
lot of the Letterman detritus, but also without much of the redeeming
entertainment factor, despite Rick Wakeman once appearing in a toga.
Baker recently said that radio is his preferred medium, and a lot of
his TV and advert work was purely to make enough money to raise his
family safely. Which explains a lot.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- Are you reading this,
Chris Moyles?
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
The world finally admits
that Conan O'Brien is better.
DAYTIME UK/PEOPLE TODAY/GOOD
MORNING...WITH ANNE AND NICK (1990-6)
HOPEFULLY, like us, you spent your capsule-era mornings tucked
blissfully neath your 15 tog. If, however, you sneaked an eye towards
BBC1, you may have witnessed some of these marathon paint-driers.
After an inauspicious start (Santa Barbara, anyone?), ITV had zoomed
ahead in the daytime ratings, so the Beeb cast around for a rival
vehicle. What turned up was a clapped-out banger called DAYTIME UK.
Bits of Pebble Mill were welded to some parts from Open Air and a
heap of leftover scrap from Nationwide. Yep, that tiresome old BBC
round-the-regions theme raised its ugly head again, and what a
lumbering behemoth DTUK was. For a start, it was four hours long.
Secondly, it "starred" ALAN TITCHMARSH, JUDI SPIERS, local radio
nobody DEBI JONES [see below] and ex-Esther's nancy ADRIAN MILLS. To
be fair, Adrian was never going to court bad publicity by being
accused of nicking booze, mainly because he didn't look like he'd
have the bottle to go in an off-licence in the first place.
Basically, they just did, er, stuff for four hours. Oh, and KILROY's
droneathon was moved to 11.05 to provide "the meat in the sandwich".
Ham, presumably.
Respite was provided by Playdays, prior to which Spiers would
"banter" with Simon Parkin via the medium of puppetry. The nadir was
the eight-minute item on boiling an egg. Fortunately, after three
months, the Gulf War intervened, and rolling Dimbleby in front of a
scary picture of Saddam Hussain took its place. DTUK came back for a
few final months in scaled-down form, so we have one thing to thank
the Iraqi dictator for.
The following autumn, all the lessons had been learned, oh yes! MILLS
was paired with, er, DR MIRIAM STOPPARD to front PEOPLE TODAY, which
featured all the usual, er, stuff, but starting 50 minutes after
R&J;'s show on ITV - in a bid to grab "men tuning in for the news".
Nope, can't see any flaws there...
But hold it right there, because this time they've cracked it! In a
breathtaking act of counterfeitery, the Beeb unveiled GOOD MORNING...
WITH ANNE AND NICK in 1992. With the TV-am duo reunited, the sexual
chemistry fairly sparked across the screen! OK, so she just primly
sat there while his jokes fell flat. But still. The show was off to a
loser from the dire opening titles in which Diamond smiled at a
traffic warden. There was a "coffee" "break" "love" "story" every day
at 11:15, narrated by the likes of Christopher Casenove. There were
weird fake ad breaks which contained recipes and household hints.
Dynamic WILL HANRAHAN did the usual consumer hectoring. There was,
er, stuff - and for several demented weeks, they tried to pretend
they were the now-defunct TV-am by bunging an identical clock in the
corner and hiring Greavsie to do the telly reviews. All to no
avail.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- Realisation that if
you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and if you can't join 'em, you'll have
to bung on reruns of She's The Sheriff.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Vanessa Feltz fronts
new-look "relevant to people's lives" Newsnight.
DAYTIME UK UPDATE! The Cream Capsule recently received this irate email from one Steve Doran, aka Mr Debi Jones, headed 'Local Radio nobody who could buy and sell you many times'. In the interests of fairness [or just so we can snigger at him like the talentless, worthless scum we are] we reproduce it in full here. Plump up those cushions...
"Just to let you sad people know that the "local radio nobody" Debi Jones, (5 years as breakfast show presenter for Radio Merseyside, the biggest BBC local radio station in the country) as mentioned in your crit of Daytime UK, is alive, well and pulling over £150K pa. fronting a show for a European digital satellite broadcaster. ( 6 million viewers per day for the last two and a half years) You unfortunates just don't understand where the money is do you...... That "nobody" undoubtedly has more talent and earning potential than individuals of your calibre can even dream of. Incidentally, it wasn't Adrian who was charged with theft from a supermarket, it was Richard Madeley. Also if you care to look at the figures of the time, Debi's shows repeatedly had better figures than all later variations of the theme including Miriam Stoppard and the Nick and Anne show. Get a life."
Sadly, Mr Doran was too busy maintaining his dignity to mention which 'European digital satellite broadcaster' Ms Jones now appears on, as we wanted to join the six million viewers tuning in every day. If you know, please tell us...
ELDORADO (1992-3)
WAS CROSSROADS really such a tired old byword for the ultimate in
crapola British television? The BBC, in conjunction with the press,
seemed to think so. What started off as an apparently well-meaning
attempt to take the Beeb's soap quota over and above the then
slightly wobbly EastEnders quickly became one of the biggest national
jokes of the 1990s. The plan, hatched by 'Enders creators Julia Smith
and Tony Holland, was to launch a "supersoap" (their term, which
should've been a warning) originally titled Little England (warning
siren number two) set in a purpose-built ex-pat village on the Costa
Del Sol, thus giving a hopeful nod in the direction of
Euro-syndication. Albert Square with added sangria ("...and sex",
natch), in other words, although Smith provoked much ridicule when
she announced it would be "more escapist than Eastenders" (cf. STAB
IN THE DARK). From the start it was buggered - the dodgy Spanish
workforce hired to build the set resulted in much Carry On
Abroad-style "Hotel Elsbels" anti-publicity, and by the time WOGAN
dutifully gave up his thrice-weekly 7pm slot, press vultures were
gathered for a sarky banquet to beat even Blackeyes hollow.
And what a show they had to smack up. Aside from the Dirty Den Mk II of JESSE "SCUM" BRIDSALL's Marcus Tandy, who could have been made more rounded with the addition of a top hat and waxed moustache, there was corny 'generation gap' lovin' couple Bunny Warren and 'Fizz', various sub-Manuel Spanish characters, and a bunch of 'youth interest' types (Drew and Nisa, anyone?) to make you really appreciate the Hollyoaks gang's keen grasp of the Method. The pish SIMON MAY faux-latino theme tune came out as a single, "When You Go", in the manner of his pish EastEnders theme. It was crap from day one basically, and everyone in the country knew it. Panic stations in London and over in Malaga. Producers quit, hackwriters were fired and hired, characters excised like mad. You could say the remote disaster was to the BBC what Apocalypse Now! was to Hollywood, except that turned out to be a good film and this never had a chance of being anything more than a 10 million quid tax loss. Some maintain that towards the end it was improving, which may have been the case (it couldn't get much worse), but alas the decision had already been taken, and eventually Alan Yentob did the decent thing. The show was hastily wound up, ending less than spectacularly with Tandy's flash sports car exploding from a bomb, and magically turning into a rather cheaper car a fraction of a second before it did so. Thus exit the 'Rado, as crummily as it entered, providing ample space for reruns of Dad's Army. They never, ever, tried that again. Until Castles.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
-"Lest we forget..."
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
The last Eastenders star
has left Albert Square "to pursue a recording career."
FULL SWING (1996)
AFTER BIG BREAK HAD been a decent success for the Beeb, they decided
to commission a further cheapo teatime quiz along the same lines.
Except the format was so derivative that even the most cretinous
Davidson fan could see that the show was just Big Break with
"snooker" scribbled out and "golf" written in. So, the Beeb found
another washed-up old comic, and on strode The World's Most Famous
Golfer, JIMMY TARBUCK, to the crappiest studio set in the history of
light entertainment - an astroturfed floor which was meant to
"represent" a golf course. Three luckless punters were teamed with
"celebrities", including the likes of GARETH HUNT, KENNY LYNCH and
FLOELLA BENJAMIN, and the aim was to "putt as many balls as you can"
- do you see? Only a small part of the gameshow "element" can be
recalled, thankfully - the first round employed a "virtual reality"
golf hole, consisting of a special tee attached to infra-red beams,
wires and the like, with a massive videowall display (no more than a
jumped-up PGA Tour Golf II, really); they played a bit on the
astroturfed set (complete with bunkers, lakes and other hazards) and
the punter who came last in the first round went on to play "Crazy
Consolation", and whoever lost in the second round did "Charity
Consolation". The final involved the punter and their "celebrity"
partner hitting balls at a target and winning cheap and nasty prizes
in the process. The last edition invited viewers to become
contestants in the next series, but thankfully this never happened.
And just to prove that BBC1 hadn't gone downmarket, each episode was
foillowed by the equally cerebral Pets Win Prizes.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
-There are worst sights
than John Virgo dressed as a panto dame.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Frank Skinner presents
"Winning Goal", a teatime game show where you've got to "kick as many
balls as you can" - with Stan Collymore as referee or
something.
GAMESMASTER/BAD INFLUENCE!
(early 1990s)
AH, COMPUTERS, eh? Where would we be without them? I'll tell you -
watching TV instead of reading about it on silly websites. The 1990s
will be known as the decade of the computer, Of That There Is No
Doubt. But how did television cover this onslaught? Well, back in the
early 80s, when the home computer started its rise to fame, there was
a plethora of computer-related programming (MAGIC MICRO MISSION,
MICRO LIVE!, THE COMPUTER PROGRAMME, VIDEO & CHIPS), which tended
to be rather...specialist in their outlook (and were usually
presented by Fred Harris). The 90s, however, saw an explosion in
gaming (remember the Megadrive? The SNES? The 3DO?), with better
graphics and bigger sales. TV responded amicably with two shows.
Channel 4's Gamesmaster first introduced us to the delights of
DOMINIK DIAMOND, starred a digitally-squashed PATRICK MOORE as "The
Gamesmaster", and was usually set in some obscure, inaccessible place
(oil rig, submarine, dungeon). It combined a healthy dose of game
reviews, cheats (dispensed by an oblivious Moore in the Consoletation
Chamber), news and the obligitary celebrity contest on some game or
other (for the prize of a golden joystick) with Diamond's
double-entendres, insulting jokes, piss-takes of kids and filmed
bollocks from The Latest Trade Exhibition, usually crammed full of
irony. The show lasted a surprisingly long time in the
ultra-fast-moving arena of computer games, although much criticism
was heaped on after the hiring of punchable Cock-er-ney and one-time
Press Ganger DEXTER FLETCHER in place of Diamond after he left in a
storm over the show's decision to receive sponsorship from McDonalds.
Our sarky Scottish friend came back for the last series, and it died.
Now he can be found in the Daily Star, ferrchrissakes!
Bad Influence! occupied the more traditional 4:45 slot on ITV.
Generally acknowledged as "shite", it took pretty much the same route
as GM - full of reviews, cheats, news etc., but set in a boring Going
Live!-sized studio. Presenters were the fabled ANDY CRANE (now to be
heard on tinpot local radio in the North-West) and VIOLET BERLIN, who
we assume was a, erm, "cyberbabe", on account of the fact that she
had spiky hair and wore tight tops. BI! was much more pedestrian than
GM, and almost had a "motherly" approach with frequent items about
the "serious" application of computing - of course this led to mass
switching-over. Game reviews were performed by "the kids", and never
got more complex than "Yeah, I think this game is great!", and in a
failed attempt to attain cool-dom, the tips and cheats were brought
to us by a stupid mad skinhead character called "Nam Rood". He
shouted and gesticulated, had those bizarre "cheat codes" written on
a piece of card which he stuck to his head ("ABCBCAB START" etc), and
always referred to the viewers as "furtlers". Extensive research
tells us that "furtling" is a synonym of "masturbation", thus he was
calling all of you "wankers". Every time Violet linked back from him
she said "Oh, he's bonkers, he is", obviously indicating to us the
viewers that he was rather contrived, in fact. Easily forgettable,
except for the innovative "Datablast", which compressed all of the
information from the show onto a rapidly-changing display above the
credits. You had to record it ("Get your video recorder ready!" quoth
ver Crane) and freeze-frame through it to glean addresses, phone
numbers etc. It was dead exciting first time round, but once you'd read through
the forty pages of useless rubbish you didn't bother again.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- Neither show had an
associated website where you can find the latest news, reviews and
cheats, at the click of a mouse!
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Andy Crane is on This Is
Your Life.
GET STUFFED! (1991-4)
"GET STUFFED! GET STUFFED! GET STUFFED YEAHHH!" went the theme to
this tip-top cookery-for-the-people five-minuter found late at night
on ITV, predating Fern Britton and the "Naked" Chef by ohh, at least
a hundred years. Point: demonstrate to viewer how to make quick,
simple, cheap but TASTY meal using basic ingredients. Presentation
format was decidedly "zoo", with the usual suspects of shaky camera
work, shouting, cheapo hand-drawn illustrations on cardboard and
comedy songs in the background all present and correct. Show's pair
of hosts were different each time, but never deviated much from saggy
long-haired male student and sexy indie-chick female student. One
slightly older chap called Andy cropped up on a regular basis.
"Today, we're going to show you how to make chili con carne/mince
& jacket potato/pasta something-or-other". First off to the
grocer's to get some ingredients..."You'll need some potatoes!" "A
cabbage!" Each were shown to camera to avoid confusion. Then go home,
lay out all ingredients, and announce show's inimitable catchphrase:
"Now, we'll do some cooking, but first we must WASH OUR HANDS!"
Without fail, every time. Then the cooking started, in zany
in-and-out camera fashion interspersed with crudely-done marker-pen
drawings of potatoes with faces, cartoon men turning ovens down, 10
MINUTES GAS MARK 4 wrote large and other weird shit, all constantly
backed by punkish guitar-thrashing and lyrics echoing what was
happening ("Wash the broccoli!" wakka-wakka "Stick it in the pan!"
weeoww). Occasionally, action was interrupted by the MYSTERY CHEFS!,
two properly-uniformed cooks with plastic masks who just did
something strange/comedic for about ten seconds then went away again,
in true TISWAS style. Actually one of the Mystery Chefs was Andy, the
regular host, who turns out to be one of the producers. That is it,
really. How useful it was is unknown, but it made for great fun in
between WCW Wresting and American Gladiators on Granada on a Friday
night. Was parodied to great effect by Graham Linehan and friend in
"Sorted!" Home Office advice sketch on THE DAY TODAY, and to a lesser
degree on a Corn Flakes ad (ie it was shit). Produced by the
aptly-named Last Ditch Television.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- "Zany"; "madcap".
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Ready Steady Cook is
taken off the air after horrific fire in "kitchen" kills all...only
joking, readers!
THE GIRLIE SHOW (1994-7)
DAILY MAIL WRITERS and other reactionary folk would describe this
Channel 4 three-series outing as the female equivalent of FANTASY
FOOTBALL LEAGUE - but at least that show was watchable to people who
would only buy magazines with women on the cover if they were
properly dressed. The Girlie Show - produced by those arbiters of
quality and distinction, Rapido TV - could only be viewed through
glasses not dissimilar to those recommended for proper viewing of the
recent solar eclipse, for this was one of the programmes which led
the Mail to brand then-C4 chief Michael Grade "Britain's
pornographer-in-chief". Taking up THE WORD's schedule position, the
show brought mouthy 19 year old Boltonian SARA COX, whose style was
once memorably described as "attempting to remember her lines before
being enveloped in green chiffon", to the world's attention
(thanks!). Her cohorts on the series were JENNIFER COX and American
supermodel RACHEL WILLIAMS, who may have been lesbian (ooh,
controversial) and definitely went on to appear in a George Michael
video. The contents - interviews in club toilets, video diaries of
girls out on the pull, features on supermodels and Charlie's Angels,
and much drinking/fighting/use of the word "hunky"/use of the phrase
"tragic man" - defined ladetteism well before the term was coined. J.
Cox pissed off after one series complaining that the show's style was
not what she had been led to believe, although this is easy to
understand given that Channel 4 commissioned some viewer research on
the first series and found that the main viewing audience was
comprised of men over 60. C4 promised changes, but evidently forgot
by the time it returned to our screens. At this stage, men were
clearly outnumbering women in the studio audience. Oh, and lest we
forget, "Wanker Of The Week", in which a celebrity was nominated as
the week's most, erm, disagreeable man, the prize being a sub-Stilgoe
comedy song. Williams and Cox's replacement (name lost in the mists
of time) quit after the second series, claiming rows with the
production team and misleading career advice. S. Cox carried on
regardless for a third series, this time joined by tiny
bottle-redhead SARAH CAWOOD, incongrously moving to the show from
kid's channel Nickelodeon. Beat that, Gail Porter. The style changed
slightly, in that men were nearly becoming accepted as an equal sex,
and there were now interviews ("'e's gorgeous!" style), a weekly live
band and Supermodel Sweep, in which a supermodel swept the floor (do
you see?) Without this, we would never have had Something For The
Weekend. Er, hang on...
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- No, Miss Cox, we
haven't conveniently forgotten just because you're now a major
star...
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Granada Men And Motors
overtakes Sky One in the TV ratings.
JUST FOR LAUGHS (most of the decade)
(i) A
STAPLE OF bank holiday and Saturday afternoons on ITV for many years,
these shows compiled unfunny clips of unfunny British films. This was
done in a random manner that made it impossible to work out when each
clip began and ended and what films they were taken from. It was
sometimes called Make Em Laugh, but the mix of bad editing and 'Ooh,
what the hell's his name? Is it Norman Rossington?' argument sparking
was the same in both cases. Produced by Gerald Thomas, but more Carry
on Columbus than Cleo.
(ii) A
STAPLE OF late nights on Channel 4 for many years, these shows
compiled unfunny clips of unfunny American comedians. Recorded at the
Montreal Comedy Festival (like the Edinburgh Festival, but even more
rubbish and overrated), the programmes admittedly gave early exposure
to Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Hicks, but also gave exposure to a
thousand other yank acts who all did the same material about their
girlfriends and their dogs (sometimes these could be merged into one
if they were from the Deep South) and have all now got eponymous
sitcoms on NBC. The programmes normally lasted about two hours, and,
just so we didn't get bored, a few of 'Us Crazy Brits' would be added
to the bill, all of whom would face the ashen-faced Canadians in the
audience and die on their arses - this was especially true in the
case of Jerry Sadowitz and Reeves & Mortimer. Show had a "mascot"
- a horrible little green ugly monster, who bounded around the title
sequence pushing the words 'Just For Laughs' along the screen (no
explanation was ever offered). It's still going, but now only plays
to an audience of about three people on Channel Five. All of whom
have indeed noticed that sometimes when women ask if this dress makes
her look fat, she'll complain if you say yes! It's true, though,
isn't it...
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- A prime example/two
prime examples of cheap television/shite television.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
Rich Hall leaves the UK
for the last time.
THE LEGACY OF REGINALD PERRIN
(1996)
AH, PERRIN. One of the truly great comedy series of the 1970s, with a
masterful performance by Leonard Rossiter, who really stole the show.
In comparison, most of the other characters were one-dimensional,
most only really existing as catchphrases. So, what a great idea it
was to resurrect the series twelve years after Rossiter's death,
without Perrin featuring at all, but with the other characters taking
centre stage. Amazingly, it was commissioned, so the first episode
began with - yes! - the reading of Perrin's will, where the cast were
asked to do something absurd to claim a share of his money. This
scene ended up lasting practically the entire first programme,
because there were a dozen characters and everybody had to have
lines. In many cases, these were just their catchphrases, regardless
of whether they were funny or not (ie, "Would you like a cup of tea,
CJ?" "I didn't get where I am today by having a cup of tea", and so
endlessly on), and the amount of innovation in the series could be
spotted by the fact that one of the new characters was someone who
always said "wicked!" - you see, a bit like "great" and "super". In
the last episode it was decided that what they'd done hadn't been
interesting enough and they'd just wasted their time. Which is more
or less what the viewers thought as well.
REASON FOR INCLUSION
- to show 70s sitcom
writers could be just as bad as 90s sitcom writers. See also the
remake
of THE LIVER BIRDS produced after the death of [spit] Carla Lane's
comedic talent.
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
cryogenics makes it
possible to literally resurrect sitcoms. "In tonight's Steptoe and
Son,
Harold is upset when he brings a girl home to find Albert's rigor
mortis setting in..."
THE LIVING SOAP (1993)
PART OF the mainly-poor Def II strand on BBC2 apres 6pm, this was an
attempt at a British version of the even less plausible The Real
World on MTV. It featured several students in Manchester, at the
height of the 'Madchester' scene, sharing a house for a year, and
being filmed in the process. This house was, to say the least, not
your average student pad. Poverty was not an issue with these kids,
which of course was why they signed up to it in the first place, but
the inevitable national figure-of-fun status awaiting them seemed to
be worth it, they thought. The thing was supposed to run for the
entire academic year, but it was such a disaster that the weekly
editions were pulled, and the remaining material was edited into a
couple of compilations tucked away at about midnight, and narrated
by...Brian Cant. Each character, to start with, had a programme
devoted to themselves, for us to laugh at them on an individual
basis. Characters "we loved to hate" included the sad,
lecture-skiving, sub-Pearl Jam heavy metaller wandering about and
playing the bass in his basement flat, before getting a job at the
Virgin Megastore very easily; and Asian girl "Spider", who notoriously got a
brick through her window, which she claimed it was a racist attack.
To be fair, that probably had a degree of truth, but she didn't seem
to be able to link "going on TV and behaving like a completely
clueless, arrogant, self-obsessed twat" with "being disliked rather
strongly". She also wanted to become a TV presenter in the Caitlin
Moran mould. Didn't. Unbelievably (or perhaps not), The Independent
recently resurrected the idea on Wednesdays, with the exact same mix
of rancour, decay and tedium.
REASON FOR INCLUSION -
How many do you
need?
TO BE EXHUMED WHEN -
We actually hear from
any of them again.
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