With England set to take on reigning world champions France in the Quarter-Finals of the 2022 World Cup in The Place Where Human Rights Go To Die, there’s been a lot of attention paid to the channel set to broadcast the match in the UK.
Word is, it’s a channel that – whenever it broadcasts live England matches in major tournaments – isn’t particularly lucky. And this is news. Well, content that’s easy to throw online. Sure, they beat Senegal 3-0 on ITV the other day, but with the France match also to be shown by the commercial broadcaster, that jinx is surely going to kick in, right? Right?
There must be some other reason for the team’s less-successful performance on ITV, surely? It could be anything, from ITV tending to bagsy advertiser-friendly clashes against bigger nations, to the BBC blagging first pick of easier-to-win group stage matches, to Bob Wilson having placed a curse on the broadcaster when they failed to renew his contract in 2002.
Well, I’ve looked up some stats, so why don’t we look at those potential reasons in detail? Oh, lets.
First up: a summary. I’ve gone back as far as Euro 96 finals matches for the stats, and used information from England Football Online for broadcaster details for each match. I’ve taken into account every England match in the finals since then (apart from the Third Place Play-Off against Belgium from 2018, because it’s not a proper match and tells us nothing). I’ve included every proper finals tournament match since 1996, including the Round of Sixteen victory over Senegal the other day. Which was on ITV. So, that should nudge the numbers at least a little their way.
Firstly, here are the headline figures, the ones that were quoted a lot over the last week. Where BBC and ITV have both shown the same match, I’ve put them in a third category. And where a knockout stage match has ended in a draw and gone to penalties, I’ve gone with the winner or loser of the penalty shoot-out.
So, that’s pretty unequivocal isn’t it? Winning 76% of the time on BBC, but only 28.57% of the time on ITV. England are much worse on ITV. End of discussion.
Except: no it isn’t. There must be a reason behind this. But what might that reason be?
No, having presenters and pundits with less gravitas than their BBC counterparts doesn’t count as a reason.
POTENTIAL REASON ONE: “THE NUMBERS ARE MUDDIED BY ENGLAND ALWAYS BEING RUBBISH IN THE EUROS (WELL, UNTIL 2021)”
Okay, let’s split out the information into two sets:
Well, there’s definitely a theme there. England are even more likely to win matches at the Euros than the World Cup (perhaps not surprising, as in the latter they’re playing the best teams from around the world), but the bad luck seems evenly spread for ITV broadcasts across both tournaments.
So, it’s not that.
POTENTIAL REASON TWO: “THE BBC TEND TO GET MORE GROUP GAMES, WHICH ENGLAND ARE MORE LIKELY TO WIN. ITV PICK MORE KNOCKOUT STAGE MATCHES, FOR THOSE SWEET, SWEET ADVERTISING BUCKS.”
Well, that would make sense. The Beeb do seem to cover a more group stage games, and that’s where the opponents are more likely to be minnows sloshing around at the deep end of the FIFA rankings. How many games from each stage of tournaments has each broadcaster covered?
Oh, okay. A very slight lead for the BBC when it comes to group stage matches in World Cups, but overall it’s ITV who are more likely to feature group stage matches at major tournaments. So, not that then.
Let’s take a quick look at those matches in more detail. Surely England are equally inept in the knockout stages on both channels? And equally capable in the group stages on both channels? Well, you’d think. And you’d be wrong to do so.
England typically win over 87% of group stage matches shown on the Beeb, and only 22.73% of those shown on ITV. Ouch. In the Euros, it’s even more pronounced, with England winning an improved percentage (33.3%) of group games on ITV, but England win a full 100% of group games shown on the BBC. In Euros knockout stages, it’s a similar story: 60% of England’s Euros knockout games shown on the BBC are won by the Three Lions, but only 50% of those shown on ITV.
For the World Cup, it’s a similar story. 81.82% of World Cup group games won by England on the Beeb, only 10% of them when on Independent Television. But at least there’s parity when it comes to knockout games, a 50:50 record for each broadcaster, from an admittedly small sample set.
If you’re wondering, the only time England have ever won a knockout match broadcast by both BBC and ITV: the 3-0 win over Denmark in the round of sixteen from 2002.
POTENTIAL REASON THREE: “OKAY, IT’S JUST A QUIRK OF FATE THAT ENGLAND TEND TO PLAY BETTER TEAMS WHEN THEY’RE ON ITV. THAT’LL BE IT.”
This is one that needs a little more digging. To try and work that out, you’d need to have access to a list of every set of FIFA World Rankings since they were first introduced in late 1993. And how would you even get that data?
By downloading the info from Kaggle, that’s how. God bless Kaggle (specifically Kaggle user Alex, the Python programmer from Kyiv who did all that statistical digging. Hope he’s okay).
Here we go. Basically, on the following table, a lower number represents a tougher opponent, a higher number represents a weaker one.
A lot of numbers to unpack there, but in summary: in major tournaments England tend to beat tougher opponents more often on the BBC, and lose to weaker opponents more often on ITV.
Looking just at World Cups for example, in group stages, England score victories over teams ranked (on average) 23rd place if they’re on the BBC. Over on ITV, they only get the better of teams ranked an average of 47th place. Similarly, if England are on the BBC, it’d take a team placed 7th(ish) in the world rankings to beat them. On ITV, it only takes a team rated 15th in the world.
On slightly hopeful note for ITV – in knockout World Cup matches, England tend to beat teams ranked an average of 16th on the light channel. Over on fusty Auntie Beeb, they’re only bettering teams ranking 27th on average. Though in fairness, as we’ve seen higher up the page, those nice neat figures are based on two knockout wins and two knockout losses for each broadcaster, so hardly using a wealth of data there. Those are some pretty thin straws for the commercial broadcast to be grasping at.
So, that seems to have exhausted all the most likely excuses for England’s poor form when appearing on ITV.
Oh wait, there was one more.
POTENTIAL REASON FOUR: “BOB WILSON PLACED A CURSE ON ITV AFTER THEY FAILED TO RENEW HIS CONTRACT IN 2002.”
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. ITV is cursed: FACT. And the former Arsenal and Scotland stopper is to blame. You read it here first.
NOTE: Updated 7 Dec 2022 to correct some figures – I’d incorrectly had the Euro 96 Semi has being ITV-only, but it was shown on BBC and ITV. Number now corrected accordingly – thanks to eagle-eyed David Howell for pointing out the error. And a slightly belated nod going out to Matthew Harris, with whom a conversation on Mastodon compelled me to dive into this big ol’ pool of figures.
First regular episode of The Old Campaigner (BBC-1).
Terry-Thomas stars as high-powered salesman/scoundrel F.J., who insists that his advancing years are no barrier to cross-continental caddery.
(Video is the Comedy Playhouse pilot, but still. In this episode Derek Fowlds plays F.J.’s youthful charge.)
FULL BROADCAST HISTORY
Fri 30th Jun 1967, 19:30 (BBC-1) Comedy Playhouse: The Old Campaigner by Michael Pertwee. Starring Terry-Thomas with Derek Fowlds
Fri 6th Dec 1968, 19:55 (BBC-1) The Best Laid Plans Written by Michael Pertwee. Starring Terry-Thomas as F.J. and Jonathan Cecil as Peter Clancy Jimmy Franklin-Jones, or ‘F.J.’ as he is known to his colleagues, is a high-powered expert salesman who travels the world on behalf of his firm, Balsoms Plastics. His main interest in life, however, is in birds-but not plastic ones.
Fri 13th Dec 1968, 19:55 (BBC-1) Minx Written by Michael Pertwee. Starring Terry-Thomas as F.J. and Jonathan Cecil as Peter Clancy Jimmy Franklin-Jones and his assistant Peter Clancy are on a trip to Spain on behalf of their firm, Balsoms Plastics. In Madrid, as elsewhere, ‘F.J.’ tries to combine business with pleasure-with a heavy accent on pleasure.
Fri 20th Dec 1968, 19:55 (BBC-1) Man of Letters ‘F.J.’ goes over to Amsterdam on business with his assistant Peter Clancy. His scheme to keep his wife happy at home while he is enjoying himself abroad goes very wrong.
Fri 27th Dec 1968, 21:05 (BBC-1) White Man’s Tomb This is the most exotic assignment that ‘F.J.’ has been given by Balsom’s Plastics and it leads him and his assistant Clancy to try to clinch a deal with an emergent African state. It also leads him, as usual, into a great deal of trouble.
Fri 3rd Jan 1969, 19:55 (BBC-1) Home Cooking Jimmy Franklin-Jones is instructed to entertain an influential American client at his home. The dinner party takes place, but it all goes to show that ‘F.J.’ doesn’t need to travel abroad to get into trouble. He can do that just as easily at home.
Fri 10th Jan 1969, 19:55 (BBC-1) French Farce Jimmy Franklin-Jones is sent to cover an industrial conference in Monte Carlo. Business, as ever, takes second place to pleasure, but this time F.J.’s luck nearly runs out.
Mon 29th Dec 2003, 21:35 (BBC Four) Missing Believed Wiped: Comedy Playhouse – The Old Campaigner by Michael Pertwee. Starring Terry-Thomas with Derek Fowlds*.
(*As far as I can find, the Comedy Playhouse pilot was shown here. Anyone know any different?)
Afternoon pop show for YOUNG ADULTS hosted by Roy North and Linda Fletcher, joined by The Jets, The Smirks and Suzi Quatro. First sight of a VT clock at the start of a video so far.
Cowboys (Thames). Roy Kinnear and company in the builder-based sitcom. This episode sees Joe and his lackeys protect a colleague from the tax collector.
William Windon stars as New Yorkerish satirical cartoonist John Monroe in this US sitcom. This episode involves a rejection, a seal and a psychotic hallucination.
This imported NBC sitcom first aired on BBC2 on 12 November 1969, going out on Wednesday nights at around 10pm. From 21 June 1970, it made the move to BBC1, with a repeat run of the series going out on Sundays just after 11pm. Despite gathering positive reviews, moderate viewing figures led NBC to cancel the series after a single 26-episode season. In a final hurrah, it went on to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series, and the single season subsequently got a 1972 repeat run on NBC.
Europe’s Strongest Man (Thames). Derek Hobson hosts, flanked by ‘Enry Cooper, as ‘mighty’ contestants from five countries chase the titular title, plus a cash prize and a silver meat salver. Mean not necessarily included.
The first episode of Broaden Your Mind’s (BBC2) second series, the sketch-based encyclopaedia of the air by The Goodies before they became The Goodies. Wiped after original broadcast, but here’s a full audio-only recording of the episode.
UPDATE 2 DECEMBER: Spotter’s badge to Daniel James Webb for noting that the episode I’d posted was from… not the date I’d meant. Thanks to me rushing to put the Archive TV Advent Calendar into action before I got distracted by an interesting stain on the ceiling or something, I failed to notice the great big “1969-11-17” on the video. The correct video now just up there. If you want to see the episode I’d originally linked to (s2e1), it’s here. And, as a bonus, here’s the original RT listing for that:
And, because it’s nearly Christmas, here’s a summary of the broadcast history. That BBC1 showing: at 17:25 on Mon 25 May 1970.
YES. Back in the dial-up days of technology, there was Windows 95 and a bit later, there was Windows 98. Groundbreaking at the time, nowadays a curious glimpse into the technological past. People used to survive using a 800×600 resolution? But one of the best things about Windows 95 (and a bit later, Windows 98) was a hitherto unimaginable level of customisation. You could have great big BMP files as your Windows background. You could change icons. You could even change your startup music (and I know, I briefly changed mine to the entirety of Kandy Pop by Bis). And, if you couldn’t be bothered changing all those things by yourself, you could just ‘down’ ‘load’ custom themes someone else had made, using the ‘inter’ ‘net’. For free!*
(*£14.99 per month to an ISP for net access, a further 1p to your ISP for each minute you’re online, and the cost of the phone calls. So, not free. But it was the future.)
When it came to user-made desktop themes, there were lots to pick from if you knew where to look. And, looking at them now, it’s interesting how much of a mid-to-late-90s snapshot they really are. You could find desktop themes based on the cool newmusic acts of the day (and previous days), the latest hip films, the coolest new videogames, and obviously the happening-est US TV series. But you could also get desktop themes inspired by parts of the British TV landscape at the time. Some of them will be wholly expected. Some others, not so much.
Join me now, as I squeeze myself through the fibre pipes of today’s internet and crawl back to a more innocent age. An age of paid-for web browsers, of USRobotics 14400 modems and your mum shouting at you for hogging the phone line. It’s time for Twelve Surprising Windows 95/98 Desktop Themes For British TV Programmes.
An incredibly rare example of an animated British sitcom (for grown-ups) that actually lasted more than a couple of series. A few things were in its favour here. Firstly, it was good (that’s the trick Stressed Eric missed). Secondly, it was based on the Academy Award-winning short film Bob’s Birthday. Thirdly, and possibly most crucially, it was partly a Canadian production, with the latter two of the programme’s four series going as far as to be set in Toronto. In both phases of the show’s run, the premise of the show highlighted the mundane as much as high farce, as the titular twosome coped with topics from dinner party etiquette to a patient dropping dead in Bob’s dentist’s chair.
I’ll grant you, very little of this comes across in this Windows theme.
I’m probably on my own here, but when BBC One – especially early noughties BBC One – goes out of their way to tell you their new drama series is cool, it basically comes across like your mum or dad telling you about this cool new band you really should check out. “Well, now I’m not going to like it on principle.”
That’s how I always felt about this series, which seemed to come with a hastily-applied level of gloss that the content beneath really didn’t deserve. A by-product of those early days of Telly Trying To Be More Like Film, perhaps, or maybe just that everyone seems so bloody smug. Anyway, if you’re less cynical than me, here’s a theme you might like. With it arriving in 2006, well into the Windows XP era upon release, but each to their own.
(Postscript: the BBC Three pseudo-spinoff programme The Real Hustle, where undercover con artists showed common tactics used by real-life scammers, was much better. Even if they really phoned in the content by the end – such as in the episode where Jess goes into PC World with an external hard drive up her sleeve, with which to connect to a laptop’s USB port and ‘steal’ all the software on it. Oh no, that poor 90-day trial of Norton Antivirus, ripped from the teat like that.)
I mean, I’m 99% sure either the upload or the title is wrong on this one, but I can’t discount the possibility all of the above actually happened in one of the later Yes, Prime Minister episodes. A misplaced memo means Bernard has to get involved in a clinical trial of hallucinogenic drugs, perhaps?
Govan’s foremost street philosopher may have sent middle-England scrabbling for their writing sets to inform Anne Robinson that they need to page 888 when watching it, but that definitely didn’t hamper the sitcom’s longevity. Running as a standalone sitcom from 1988 to 2014 (and as a recurring character in sketch comedy Naked Video from 1986), this must surely take the crown of BBC2’s longest-running sitcom from a certain space-based sitcom. Mark the occasion with this background featuring not one, but two screencaps from a .mov clip of the series.
Aardman’s forgotten project. Rex the Runt – along with Big Bob, Wendy and Vince – was a frequent visitor to BBC2 between 1998 and 2001, and with good cause – Rex’s short episodes were packed with winsome whimsy, great gags and captivating cameos (ranging from Bob Holness to Eddie Izzard). I seem to recall they were even used as promotional mascots for Rowntree sweets for a spell. Beyond that, a future of increasingly sporadic repeats on digital channels beckoned, but at least there’s the opportunity to relive the series with this Windows 98 theme.
Granada’s main export. And bravely, the person behind this particular theme held no truck with (then-) modern day Corrie. Snubbing the likes of Bettabuys (or even The Kabin), Nick Tilsley secretly marrying Leanne Battersby or the endless bickering of the McDonald clan, this theme went with the classics: a cat in a nook, and Hilda Ogden guarding the Network Neighbourhood. 10/10, no notes.
This pre-watershed old-age sitcom, where Graham Crowden and (a 48-year old) Stephanie Cole play a pair of elderly residents of a care home, having as much fun as they can before being summoned to the choir invisible, isn’t the most likely to choices for a Windows backdrop. But hey, it was a primetime BBC1 hit that appealed to generations across the age spectrum, so who are we to judge?
One for anyone fitting into both of two categories.
CATEGORY ONE: You like the CBeebies television programme Tweenies.
CATEGORY TWO: You hate your eyes.
As Time Goes By (November 2000)
You can keep your Stargate, your Sliders, your Ally McBeal and your Buffy. If I’m having any TV programme greeting me each time I power up my Gateway Performance 600 it’s the autumnal romantic comedy starring pre-Dame Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer. Whose heart wouldn’t soar like an eagle being greeted by the above each boot? Each BSOD would make you chuckle on this inside, knowing you’re about to get an extra added glimpse of the above. Perfect.
And there we go. Thanks to Ben Baker for putting the idea for an update in my head with a Discord post about the Windows theme for One Foot in the Grave. If you like this update (or my other, better updates), you’ll almost certainly enjoy Ben’s latest Live Repeat on Noisebox Radio looking at the forty best TV themes of ALL TIME.
Hello, everybody. Sorry it’s been a while since the last update to this list, but (amongst ploughing through forty years of Channel 4 viewing figures), this selection has required a little more research than most.
Before hitting the list, a two bits of minor admin. Firstly: most people seem to be coming to the site via my Tweets on The Twitter. That’s good. Except Musky Burns seems determined to pull all of the Kerplunk straws from Twitter’s infrastructure (for the lulz, I assume), so it’s hard to gauge how long it’ll last in its current state. That’s bad. So there are a couple of alternative ways to get updates.
WAY ONE: I’m on the Mastodon. I’ll be posting each time there’s a new update on there as well as Twitter. Follows and boosts appreciated (say hi if you’re there from this blog so I can follow back, as a lot of people seem to be doing mass-follows to inflate their numbers at present).
WAY TWO: At the bottom of the screen, you should see a ‘follow’ button. If you click it and enter your email address, you’ll get each update automatically emailed to you. In full, not just the first bit and ‘Click here’, the full lovely update. Which is nice.
Okay, second bit of admin. Unless you’ve got an adblocker, you may well be seeing banner ads on the site. They… aren’t meant to be there. I’m paying for WordPress hosting, meaning the site shouldn’t have them. All being well, they’ll be disappearing soon. (That makes a nice change from sites saying ‘your Adblocker is killing my children’, doesn’t it?)
Okay. Admin done. Let’s crack on with…
45: Question Time
(Shown 1910 times, 1979-2021)
Here’s one that was a safe bet for inclusion. But firstly, a few things that aren’t Question Time. Starting with…
QUESTION TIME (2 October 1952)
Not the version we know and… love(?), but rather a one-off discussion programme where Young Adults of the era discuss topics raised by viewers of the same age. So, an early proto version of Twitter (except, as I say, populated by young adults). Despite the appeal in the Radio Times at the time to send in questions (“on postcards, please”), this doesn’t seem to have returned to the Television Service, at least not under the same name.
GARDENERS’ QUESTION TIME (4 June 1955)
“This is the first time that this popular programme from the North of England has been televised”, proclaimed the Radio Times listing. And indeed it was, a rare audiovisual outing for the Home Service mainstay. For whatever reason, the experiment wasn’t repeated, and it has remained an audio-only endeavour ever since. At least nationally – the RT listings for 1973 include three episodes of regional TV programme ‘Northern Gardeners Question Time’, because Northern Gardeners don’t want to share any of their secrets with those soft southern shandy-drinking bastard gardeners.
QUESTION TIME (11 Feb 1958, 6 May 1968) QUESTION TIME FOR YOUTH (5 March 1960)
To think, certain corners of the internet get all het up about rampant BBC lefty bias if a QT panel somehow contains participants from Labour, the Greens AND a fashionable stand-up comedian. These two offerings would likely have them putting their foot through the screen and sending the bill to the remains of Harold Wilson.
Firstly, in 1958, an event that certainly has all the hallmarks of QT as we know it. A politician is asked to face a series of questions from an invited audience. The politician in question: the sainted Nye Bevan. The audience in question: “a group of young Socialists”. The reason? This is actually a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party.
Then, just over ten years later, almost exactly the same thing again. This time, it’s much larger in scale, with Labour MPs Barbara Castle, William Ross and George Thomas in the hot seats, and questions coming from audiences in Glasgow, Manchester and Cardiff. Simulcast on BBC-1 and BBC-2 at 9pm, just in case you thought you could escape it.
In between those two, 1960 saw Question Time for Youth, though this seems to have been on a much smaller scale – only on BBC1, shoved out just before closedown at 11pm, and the Radio Times couldn’t even be bothered listing the names of the MP questionees.
Did the tactics work? Well, the closest political poll to the 1958 broadcast was the Rochdale By-Election, called following the death on 16 December 1957 of the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament, Wentworth Schofield, and if that’s any metric it was a big success. Labour’s Jack McCann won the seat, beating Liberal candidate (and at the time, writer and radio presenter) Ludovic Kennedy and Conservative candidate John E. Parkinson.
No big national election in 1968 either, but there were by-elections in Nelson and Colne, Oldham West and Sheffield Brightside the following month. Not quite as successful this time, with results respectively being CON GAIN, CON GAIN and LAB HOLD. Thus the Question Time moniker was relinquished by the party, and never used again. As for the 1960 Youth effort – the closest contests to the transmission date were the Harrow West by-election and the Brighouse and Spenborough by-election the following month. The results? CON HOLD and NATIONAL LIBERAL GAIN. So, yeah. Not a huge success.
QUESTION TIME! (5 March 1960)
At least, something different. No politics, but at least there’s a sense of urgency to the programme title as anyone still up at 10.55pm tuned in to see… “a talk by the Rev. W. D. Cattanach.”
ELECTION 70: QUESTION TIME (9 Jun 1970, 11 Jun 1970)
This time a more open-ended political discussion, and one with a real General Election set to happen the following week. Harold Wilson’s Labour up against Ted Heath’s Tories. Bob Wellings chaired a debate between a group of journalists and representatives of the main political parties on the issues surrounding the election. Getting closer to the canon, but not quite there.
COMMON MARKET QUESTION TIME (2 Sept 1971-23 Sept 1971)
So close to the real thing now. This was a series of four programmes from regional centres where questions from members of the public regarding Britain’s membership of the Common Market could be addressed by policy-makers of the day. This ticks off quite a few of the key criteria: each episode from a different town? TICK (County Durham, Port Talbot, Glasgow and Coventry). Members of the public? TICK. A round table of political thinkers expected to provide answers? TICK. And crucially, Robin Day as chairman? TICK. In fact, it’s only the fact these went out under the umbrella of news magazine show 24 Hours that prevents me from including these in the overall total. Similarly, in 1974 Nationwide included an Election Question Time strand that followed much the same format, minus the future Sir Robin.
QUESTION TIME (25 September 1979)
At last, the real deal. The Beeb finally offers us a whole hour to question the ideas and decisions of today. Robin Day takes the chair on stage at the Greenwood Theatre, South London, as public personalities face questions and reactions from the general public. With him tonight: The Rt Hon Michael Foot, MP, Edna O’Brien, Teddy Taylor, The Most Rev Derek Worlock, Archbishop of Liverpool.
FINALLY. But… you know what Question Time is. An excuse for all of Twitter to get really angry at each other. Well, not all of Twitter.
44: A Question of Sport
(Shown 1933 times, 1970-2021)
So, from Question Time to a Question of Sport. For some of the quiz programmes in this list there’s a feeling they’re pretty much a constant. Mastermind has remained largely the same, no matter who the questionmaster might be. Ditto University Challenge, ditto Call My Bluff. However, when it comes to QoS, it feels (at least to me) that there are decidedly distinct eras, immediately identifiable from each other
Those of a certain age will instantly think of the Coleman-era, with faux-stadium trimmings, small-firstname-BIG-LASTNAME nameplates, all that. It’s okay, people who remember that, we’re not old. We liked the Wet Leg album, so we can’t be.
“Actually David, I feel that their promise dropped off substantially following Wet Dream.”
Those of a more recent generation may find their minds immediately drift to the latter-era, the Sue Barker years, the larger set, the audience sat behind the participants (which is great if you want spend an evening looking at the back of Ally McCoist’s head, I guess), the bantz-heavy dialogue, the desperate need to be more like They Think It’s All Over.
Each generational grouping thinks theirs is the ‘correct’ QoS epoch, and that all members of the other are nought but fooles. Apart from a tiny, embittered third grouping that thought Sporting Triangles was best. The two larger generation groups decide to join forces, take on that third generation, and beat them up. With good cause. And now, nobody ever mentions Sporting Triangles. Until me, just then. But anyway.
My meanderings do, of course, wholly discount a whole period of the show from before I started watching it. Hey, I’ve spent ages researching hosts of a programme I can’t even settle on a consistent naming convention for, cut me some slack. The series proper began (following a BBC North-only pilot in 1968) as a Monday teatime offering in 1970, with viewers settling down to their sausage, spuds and sport greeted by original host David Vine, along with team captains ‘Enry Cooper and Cliff Morgan. The first ever episode came with a suitable special line-up: ‘Enry joined by footballer George Best (at least according to the RT listing – I assume he turned up) and cricketer Ray Illingworth, while Cliff teamed up with athlete Lillian Board and footballer-of-a-very-different-generation Tom Finney.
Monday evenings was where the programme would stay until 1981, save for a special Sunday World Cup edition at the end of May 1970, featuring captain Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Alan Mullery versus captain Johnny Haynes, Tom Finney and Stan Mortensen, and a brief flirtation with Thursday evenings in 1975.
By the time of 1981’s new Friday night peak 7pm slot, David Coleman had taken on hosting duties, with Emlyn Hughes and Gareth Edwards serving as team captains (and future captain Bill Beaumont in a guest spot in the first episode of the series). It then spent the next few years being booted about the schedules wherever there was a spare pre-watershed spot to fill, the programme appearing in Tuesdays in 1982, Wednesdays in 1983, back to Tuesdays in 1984, before landing in a regular Thursday night home from 1985 for a few years. From 1988, it was back to Tuesday nights, where it would stay until the mid-90s.
There’s a case for arguing that the 1980s marked the height of the series’ popularity (and not just because it was popular enough to be lampooned by A Bit of Fry & Laurie). From 1983, one-off Christmas specials of the series started to appear, starting with a tantalising line-up on 29 December that year: original captains ‘Enry Cooper and Cliff Morgan made a return, with showbiz guests Max Boyce, Georgie Fame, Lennie Bennett and Anita Harris.
The 1984 Christmas Radio Times marked an episode of the series going out on New Year’s Eve, tucked into the early evening schedules between Blue Peter Review of the Year and film Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr, though it seems this may well have been closer to a regular episode, with the series returning less than two weeks into the new year. QoS had a higher profile the following Christmas, airing in a peak 8:30pm slot on Christmas Eve, sandwiched between Kenny Everett’s Christmas Carol and a festive episode of Terry and June. On top of the prime scheduling, celeb guests reappeared on the programme, with actors John Nettles and Ray Brooks joined by comedian Eddie Large and ‘comedian’ Stan Boardman.
Another celebrity line-up appeared in 1986’s Christmas special (between peak-era ‘Stenders and another new Kenny Everett special), with Les Dawson, Leo Sayer, Su Pollard and Leslie Grantham, who I really hope walked on set in the same outfit he’d just been wearing behind the bar in the Queen Vic. You know, for continuity purposes.
That’s certainly a much better line-up than the one that appeared in 1987’s Christmas Special. In descending order of merit, Roy Castle, Peter Howitt, ‘controversial cricket writer’ Frances Edmonds, every single speck of dirt in the studio, and Bernard Manning. I know, bloody hell, eh? You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you? And yet, in 1988 – on Boxing Day, no less – Manning returned to the QoS studio, along with Tim Rice, Frank Carson and Bread’s Gilly Coman.
And with that line-up, Celebrity Christmas editions of A Question of Sport would be no more, until quite a few years into the 21st Century. Which is probably for the best. But hey, at least it means that incoming new QoS host Paddy McGuinness won’t be the worst comedian to appear on the series, so that’s something.
43: Late Night Line-Up
(Shown 1992 times, 1964-1989)
Right from BBC-2’s (slightly belated) launch night in April 1964, the decision was made to open each evening with broadcaster Denis Tuohy offering those awaiting a televisual feast a ten minute glimpse at that night’s BBC-2 menu. This strand would be known by the gently unassuming title of ‘Line-Up’.
The intent was to showcase the rich variety of original programming on offer by the new channel. After all, this was an age where you’d have to get up, walk across the room and change the channel on the TV itself, meaning that many viewers just sat back and let a single channel entertain them for the evening. The actual effect was that viewers may realise there’s nothing they liked the look of until later on, and took the trouble to get up and change to another channel. And so, not for the first time, the lofty ideals of a new channel were to be cast aside for something less highbrow but more popular. It’s like ITV4’s launch including a full repeat run of The Larry Sanders Show.
But that wasn’t the end for Line-Up. Add a more intellectual edge to it, change it from a glorified programme menu to a discussion programme, and put it out live. Of course, this would need to go out after the 9pm watershed, in case discussions got a bit too feisty for tea time. And not just bang on 9pm, where the runway would need to be kept clear for big flagship programmes. Late at night, that’s best. Who doesn’t like seeing a great big argument while supping up your Horlicks and getting into your 1960s pyjamas?
Plus, with nothing following it in the schedule, if a discussion was getting really riveting, the channel could stick with it until it wraps up naturally. Within the confines of Postmaster General’s broadcasting regulations, anyway – BBC2 was only permitted a certain total amount of airtime per day, but it seems there weren’t any instances of the Late Night Line-Up plug being yanked out of the socket by a furious Postmaster General in dressing gown and curlers at 1.29am. Which is a bit of a pity, frankly.
This had the added benefit of letting BBC2 stay up later than both BBC1 and ITV, who generally went to bed at about 11.45pm. 100% audience share of 2,076 viewers is still 100% audience share, after all. And so, from Saturday 12 September 1964, late night viewers were invited to “Round off the day with Denis Tuohy and Michael Dean” for the first time. As time went on, Joan Bakewell and Tony Bilbow would also go on to be key hosts of the programme.
Initially, discussion focused on one or two interviewees, but that remit soon drifted. Wikipedia has a splendidly comprehensive list of topics and interviewees featured on the programme year-by-year, and dipping into episode descriptions for those first few years highlights how Late Night Line-Up soon evolved:
In 1965, a chat with an individual figure appears to have been the norm, such as Robert Morley (18 March), Douglas Bader (17 September) and Tony Hancock (5 October). By 1966, the remit had opened up to take in particular topics alongside guests of interest. Episodes included: Line Up Rugby / Yugoslav TV Film / Shirley Abicair (1 January), Ivor Cutler / Clifford Davis Conjuring Tricks / TV Critics (13 January), and N. F. Simpson Interview / Jimmy Edwards’s Moustache / Breakfast TV / Donald Campbell Interview / Tonia Bern Interview (7 May)
When 1967 came along, the toe-tippingly popular music of the day became too big for the programme to ignore, though there was still room for discussion on other topics. So, episodes covered things such as: Discussion on building industry / Gladys Aylward (1 February), Jimi Hendrix Experience / Psychedelic Happening / Pierre Schoendoerffer (17 May) or Electronics And TV / The Rolling Stones / Discussion on the Canadian Film Industry (24 August)
By 1968, the theme seems to have navigated back toward single interviewees, though not exclusively. Episodes included: Lotte Reiniger / girls from Hammersmith County School give their views on public schools (9 March), John Peel (18 September) and Alfred Hitchcock (27 September)
By 1969, Line-Up episodes airing on Sundays offered “Late Night Line-Up’s weekly look at the cinema”, airing (and billed) under the banner Film Night, and featured stars of the screen such as Vincent Price (23 March) or Peter Finch (30 March), or individual films of interest, such as The Illustrated Man (22 June) or topical Hammer flick Moon Zero Two (13 July).
1970 saw an interesting mix of topics and interviewees, one standout in particular showing how daring this live, late-night programme could be. Episodes including Playgrounds (25 September), The Man Who Almost Won The National (29 October) and (yes, this is the standout one) Lenny Bruce Stand Up Routine (18 December). 1971 saw Saturday nights handed over to individual contributors in episodes branded One Man’s Week (or, much less often, One Woman’s Week). Weekday editions still found time to discuss other matters of the day, such as 22 October’s discussion regarding “A 4th TV Channel”.
The tape of that’s not going to survive, is it? Boo.
1972 saw the (regular) series draw to a close, but not without packing a lot into those final months. Including: Welcome Little Kangaroo – Eight Years of BBC2 (21 April), Cable Vision (9 August) and Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (18 October). Plus, as a grand finale on 14 December, a discussion of BBC2 in general, with Michael Dean, Tony Bilbow, Sheridan Morley And David Attenborough
Arguably the most infamous Late Night Line-Up discussion of all, A Serious Talk About Comedy (7 Jan 1966) is also on YouTube, thanks to the ever-excellent BBC Archive account. The panel includes comedy writers Marty Feldman, Ian La Frenais, Johnny Speight, John Chapman, Richard Waring and comedy producer Duncan Wood. The clip however starts with an intervention by comedy writer and playwright John Antrobus, who… clearly wasn’t invited. But that wasn’t about to stop the writer of the The Bed-Sitting Room having a good old go at getting involved. The remainder of the discussion is no less spirited, aided by it being a noticeably smoke-filled and drink-fuelled one.
That wasn’t the end of the Line-Up, however. A new live episode of the programme aired as part of the Festival 77 season on 1 August 1977, with guests David Frost, Dennis Potter and Christopher Morahan. The programme returned for a full week as part of BBC TV’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 1986, with Michael Dean, Tony Bilbow, Joan Bakewell and Sheridan Morley as guests. In 1989, a package of series highlights was screened as part of BBC2’s 25th anniversary hullabaloo*. Finally, and not qualifying for the total here, BBC Parliament’s Permissive Night (26 May 2008) included a one-off comeback episode, with Margaret Drabble, Peter Hitchens, Michael Howard MP and Lord Robert Winston discussing the liberalising legislation of the 1960s.
(*First person to leave a comment saying “no, that’s the other kangaroo” wins a shiny shilling.)
Right at the start of the Moving Pictures era of the entertainment industry, deaf people were on an even footing with everybody else. Picture houses showing the latest flicks by Chaplin, Keaton or Lloyd could be enjoyed by hearing and hard-of-hearing alike, with inter-title caption cards explaining dialogue to the entire audience.
Then, The Jazz Singer came along. Al Jolson’s “You ain’t heard nothing yet” signalled the start of the end of that equal footing, where deaf audiences would start to need a strong lip-reading game to enjoy the latest cinematic hits.
The situation for deaf people hoping to take part in popular culture didn’t improve with the advent of television. For those early pioneers of the tube, it was enough of a challenge throwing hours of live content into thousands of cathode-ray tubes each day, providing verbiage to match would have proved an insurmountable task. And, for the most part, it would continue that way for several decades.
Not that there was nothing. Starting in 1952, Jasmine Bligh introduced For Deaf Children, where sign language was used to include deaf children in the fun and games. But, it was hardly a regular helping of fun, totalling just a single twenty-minute programme per month. In January 1955, monthly children’s programme Monday Magazine launched, with the RT listing highlighting the programme’s suitability for deaf children. That at least meant there was now only a two-week gap between programmes for deaf children, but still very little for them once they left childhood.
There were also occasional one-off or short run programmes catering for deaf viewers. January 1963 saw a production of The Magic Shoes featuring members of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf Mime Group, a programme arranged in co-operation with the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. Later that year, a couple of multi-part Sunday Stories included “interpretations for the deaf” by Joan Turner as Cyril Fletcher read for viewers – ‘The Childhood of Helen Keller’ ran from 17 March until 14 April 1963, while ‘Ambassador in Bonds’, a story of blind missionary to Burma William Jackson, ran from 24 November to 8 December of the same year.
For Deaf Children certainly had a good innings, running until 7 February 1964, but a month later came a key change in the way programming for deaf children was presented. Vision On arrived in the slot vacated by For Deaf Children – 5.35pm on Fridays – but now aired fortnightly. And that wasn’t the only change. Surveys had shown that one of the favourite BBC-tv programmes for deaf viewers was Top of the Pops. Pops’ fast-moving format made it feel like viewers were part of the coolest party in town, and deaf viewers were still able to enjoy the lower frequency notes of those swinging sounds of the sixties. That livelier approach was at odds with the sedate pace used in For Deaf Children, and producers Ursula Eason and Patrick Dowling set about making things a bit livelier with Vision On.
The new programme’s remit was entertainment over education – hey, it’s Friday evening, after all – and the need for subtitles or sign language was drastically reduced by making the action within the new programme almost entirely visual. Noises were, to all intents and purposes, off. The new programme would encourage viewers to dive into their imagination by serving up sequences both sensible and silly, and while the approach was likely to attract the attention of a wider audience, the goal was always to serve deaf viewers.
The programme was a major success, running until 1976, hoovering up awards, and helping introduce a number of names that would become key to children’s television over the next few decades, such as Tony Hart, eccentric inventor Wilf Lunn, Silvester (then ‘Silveste’) McCoy and the work of a certain company later known as Aardman Animations.
And yet – despite the wider (and likely more cross-generational) appeal of Vision On, deaf adults were left wanting (aside from Saturday evening News Reviews on BBC2, which “for the deaf and hard of hearing” were afforded “a commentary [that] appears visually”. Y’know, subtitles.
For those with deep enough pockets to procure an early teletext-capable set, subtitles were already a common option for deaf viewers. The birth of Ceefax in 1974 allowed for text-based accompaniment alongside TV programmes, though it took until 1975 for the first Ceefax-subtitled programme to appear. Appropriately enough, that first-ever subtitled programme was This is Ceefax, a late-night documentary presented by Angela Rippon, looking into the new service that remains an amazing innovation for the time.
Initial audiences for Ceefax subtitles were limited. Indeed, that initial audience for those inaugural subtitles: one household. Specifically the household of Ceefax editor Colin McIntyre, location of the country’s only privately-owned teletext set at the time. That kind of limited launch may well have been for the best – at this early stage, subtitles had to be keyed in live, transmitted at each punch of the enter key, which combined with the far-from-comfortable keyboards at Ceefax HQ, made for very hard, unforgiving work. Much more information about those early days in this entertaining post by Adrian Robson, part of the initial editorial team of Ceefax, and the person who’d put out those first ever subtitles.
Then, eventually, 1981 happened. And so did See Hear!, a new weekly (weekly!) programme for people with hearing issues. And it was set to run for at least twenty weeks. No wonder the programme’s title felt the need to append itself with an exclamation mark – this was big news for the underserved community.
From this point on, while there’s certainly no real scope for criticising the BBC’s earlier output for people with hearing problems (save for their lack of frequency), See Hear! really did offer a fresh perspective. Broadcast with open subtitles and in BSL (by Martin Colville), and hosted by deaf presenter Maggie Woolley, promising to cover news, views and entertainment, and generally cramming in as many genres as the budget would permit. Well, to be fair, the team behind the programme had a lot of time to make up for.
The format proved to be a success, leading to special editions of the show coming from the nations and regions, plus topical specials themed around the 1983 General Election, technology and education. In 1984, the line-up was bolstered by the introduction of Clive Mason, who would go on to be the programme’s longer-serving presenter, and who would become a major part of the programme’s regular Christmas and pantomime specials.
By 1990, the brand had even grown beyond the main programme, with each morning’s signed-and-subbed BBC2 rebroadcast of the previous hour’s BBC1 Breakfast News bulletin going out under the title See Hear Breakfast News. This also proved a success, with the practice becoming a true simulcast of the BBC1 7am bulletin from 1995.
In later years, the provision of programming for people with hearing problems was greatly expanded, providing viewers were willing to record overnight Sign Zone broadcasts. However, that did little to dampen the success of See Hear!, with the programme currently (at the time of writing) in its 42nd series. That said, perhaps as a result of Sign Zone’s longevity (plus iPlayer allowing for more user-friendly scheduling of signed content), See Hear! output has fallen since 2013, and the series is now back to going out on a monthly basis. That’s a shame, but See Hear! really did so much show how much more television can do to help keep the hard-of-hearing community informed, entertained and included. Long may it continue.
41: Town and Around
(Shown 2044 times, 1960-1969)
Nominally “a daily presentation of news and views from London and the South-East”, but this was more than just local news. Thankfully, or I’d have to remove it and renumber the entire list. This is more of a magazine programme, and therefore CAN be included in the rundown. Phew.
So, what was Town and Around? Well, other than the standard write-up in the Radio Times – “a news magazine for South-East England” – it’s not especially easy to find out. In fact, of all the programmes I’ve covered so far, it’s been the hardest to find any information on. It doesn’t help that the cruel hand of fate placed my birth several years after the programme finished, so I’ve no personal memory to draw on.
Here’s what I have been able to find out, accompanied by some best-guesses that will be disproved in the comments within an hour of this post going live.
What with it going out in the regional news slot in London and the South-East (it making the list because, at the time of pulling all the data, that was the region used for the listings in Genome), it makes a kind-of sense that it would be less newsy than the regional news in other parts of the UK. After all, with That London being the focal point of the majority of current events going on in the UK, all of the capital’s newsworthy events had just been covered in the national news bulletin. And so, despite only needing to full a short ten- or fifteen- minute slot, it seems there was room for other non-news content.
What sort of content? Well…
Cooking was certainly one of the topics covered. Enough cooking to generate not just one cookbook containing 100 recipes, but a follow-up containing a further hundred. And it wasn’t even billed as a cookery programme.
When it comes to compiling these entries, there are a few sources I consult for some added information. No, not Wikipedia. Only sometimes Wikipedia. The obvious starting point is the BBC Genome website. But also, the scans I’ve accumulated of elderly Radio Times issues, a variety of books on television history, several newspaper archives and a collection of BBC Yearbooks. Here’s the net sum of what I’ve gleaned from those sources for Town and Around:
From the BBC Yearbook 1960: “The year saw two notable developments in regional broadcasting – the introduction of Television News for north-east England from the Newcastle studio and ‘Town and Around’ the magazine programme for London and south-east England.”
A good start in a section on regional broadcasting. With it being a daily programme focused on the capital of Britain, it’ll surely get regular mentions each year, right? Right?
Yes. By which I mean: no. The next reference to it comes in the BBC Yearbook 1965.
And again in the 1966 yearbook:
But, in the 1968 yearbook – a reference to the series isn’t about cooking!
…admittedly, it’s not about much at all. But wait, in the BBC Yearbook 1969, a bit of a revelation:
A fifth book containing a hundred recipes by Zena Skinner? Fair dues, she was carrying that show.
Other than that, there’s very little out there. My hopes were raised when a Google search threw up an article in America’s Journal of Marketing Research (Vol 6 No 2, May, 1969). Sure, I needed to register with ‘digital library for the intellectually curious’ JSTOR to take a peek, but this would be worth the trouble.
Here you go, stats fans.
Yeah, good luck picking the bones out of that.
So, what have we learned? Well, for one thing, I really should have tried to claim this programme was too news-adjacent to include in the rundown. That would have saved me a lot of trouble. But mainly, an appreciation for the work ethic of Zena Skinner.
Well done, that lady.
Oh, also Nigel Kennedy appeared on it when he was seven. Thanks, Radio Times 16-22 July 2022.
And – here’s one out of left field – thanks to the Mustard Project website, a “TELLEX Transcript of interview with Pro-Vice-Chancellor, ‘TOWN & AROUND’ Monday 20 May 1968: 5.55pm”. So, one extreme to another. Starting with photos of some cookbooks from eBay, ending up with actual internal BBC documents. Full document here if you’re curious.
So, in short – nobody reading this is about to pick Town and Around as their specialist subject on Mastermind, but at least you got to see some covers of BBC Yearbooks. So, that’s not nothing.
Phew, that took a long time to research and write. Hope you enjoyed it, and let’s hope the next bunch of programmes don’t include any that haven’t aired within the last fifty years. Toodles!
Until that next update, if you want to take a peek at some BBC Yearbooks, the World Radio History website has got you thoroughly covered.
Onto the last leg of our list. Which, for the record, doesn’t include The Last Leg.
Lots of big programmes we’ve not seen yet on the list, and with only a few places remaining there’s not enough room for all of them. I’m starting to think we won’t see Murun Buchstansangur on this list at all.
The list thus far:
40: THE NICK (21:00 Monday 3 Oct 1994, 6.5m viewers)
17: FILM: MONA LISA (21:30 Thursday 23 Feb 1989, 7.82m viewers)
16: TREASURE HUNT (20:30 Thursday 24 Mar 1988, 7.85m viewers)
=14: INTERNATIONAL SNOOKER (21:45 Sunday 16 Dec 1984, 8.25m viewers)
=14: FILM: DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (21:00 Tuesday 21 May 1985, 8.25m viewers)
13: BROOKSIDE (20:00 Wednesday 3 Nov 1993, 8.27m viewers)
12: THE MIRACLE OF KATHY MILLER (21:00 Tuesday 21 Apr 1987, 8.3m viewers)
Anyway, here they are, that final, um, eleven. Yes, eleven. Definitely didn’t uncover another high-rating broadcast at the last minute, no. Starting with…
11: CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER (20:30 Friday 19 Jan 2007, 8.78m viewers)
A franchise always likely to feature here, the question is… which series attracted the highest viewing figures? Here’s a clue: it was the one where the phrase “the values of the Carphone Warehouse” entered the public lexicon. The one that led to a diplomatic row between the UK and India. The one that led to a Prime Ministerial statement. And it wasn’t just to point out that Donny Tourette was a bit of a bellend.
Given how easily ignored Celebrity Big Brother was during those final years on Channel Five (if you have to explain in an intro video what you’re “most famous for”, you’re not famous), it’s remarkable how high the calibre of guests was during this period of the show’s history. For the series in question here, you had Leo Sayer, Ken Russell, Cleo Rocos, Dirk Benedict and actual bloody Jackson Five member Jermaine Jackson. And yes, the laws of the universe also dictate that you’d get some stunt casting to offset that, people whose lofty level of celebrity status existed only within their egos, but it was part of the formula. Rough with the smooth. And at least Donny Tourette’s presence was enlivened by his introductory encounter with a butter-smooth Dirk Benedict (“Oh my God, it’s Dirk fucking Benedict!” “Well, I don’t normally use my middle name, but hi.”).
Anyway, I’m pretty sure you all know the details of The Event here, even if it’s only from the Stewart Lee routine. Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty was one of the celebrity housemates, and arrived with a clear air of Girl Awkwardly Trying To Fit In At A New School. A group of the other participants – glamour model Danielle Lloyd, pop star Jo O’Meara, previous Big Brother contestant Jade Goody, along with boyfriend Jack Tweed and mother Jackiey Budden – decided they didn’t like her (for… whatever reason), and the end result was one of the most unedifying weeks in the history of television. Unedifying for the individuals involved, for the production company, for the channel that gleefully pumped it out night after night, and ultimately (hands held up here) for the viewers who may have been disgusted, but who weren’t about to switch off.
There was a lot to unpack from the whole affair. The most overt display of racism coming from the mouth of Danielle Lloyd, followed by an “ooh, aren’t I naughty” giggle, was probably to go-to example, but there were several more distasteful moments of note. The one that springs to mine for me was the programme producers Endemol addressing rumours that Jack Tweed had used the word P*** to refer to the (perfectly pleasant) Shetty, by releasing (partly) unbleeped audio confirming it was fine, he was just referring to her with the word c***. So, um, that’s still not exactly great, is it?
Ultimately, Endemol seemed to realise that throwing more kindling on their bonfire of dignity wasn’t helping anyone – not least when lead sponsor Carphone Warehouse demanded to be disassociated with the show, and agents of the main culprits saw lucrative contracts suddenly cancelled – and Jade Goody was duly evicted. The usual eviction night crowd may have been absent, but the TV audience were certainly present, in huge numbers. But, from this point on, the Celebrity Big Brother brand was irrevocably tainted, and I’m saying the affair definitely directly resulted in a ‘Leave’ vote in the EU referendum. Still, maybe next year’s ITV2 reboot will undo all that? Yeah, I know.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Nothing else stood a chance, really. BBC1 offered sitcom After You’ve Gone followed by WWI-era drama Lilies. BBC2 dug up an episode of Grow Your Own Veg, followed by Timewatch episode Killer Cloud. ITV threw on a Midsomer Murders and went to the pub, while Five followed Nick Baker’s Weird Creatures with an NCIS off the shelf.
10: BIG FAT GYPSY WEDDINGS (21:00 Tuesday 8 Feb 2011, 8.8m viewers)
Span out of warmly-received 2010 Cutting Edge episode My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, this series dipped into the lives and traditions of families from the Traveller community as preparations were made for a family wedding. While the original was awarded ‘Most Groundbreaking Show’ in the ‘Cultural Diversity Awards’ (which were possibly invented specifically to annoy your uncle on Facebook), the full series was criticised by many from Britain’s Traveller and Romani community for playing up the quirkiest, most outrageous examples of life within the featured families.
This highest-rating episode came from the first series, with an episode looking into the community’s weddings and christenings from a purely male perspective, but most episodes from that opening series rated north of eight million viewers. It’s only in later series where the programme’s popularity began to slide, with many of the standalone ‘event’ episodes from 2013 falling outside BARB’s published ratings, putting their figures below two million viewers.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
BBC1 broadcast poorly-received sci-fi drama Outcasts, while BBC2‘s The Chinese are Coming explored China’s role as an emerging economic superpower. ITV were still pushing out episodes of Taggart, with tonight’s tale tackling the world of cage fighting. Five threw on a bunch of CSI episodes for the night and went to bed early. The Viacom takeover couldn’t happen soon enough.
9: THE PRICE (21:30 Thursday 14 Feb 1985, 8.9m viewers)
COME ON DOWoh wait, it’s not that. But rather the concluding episode of a tense six-part thriller starring Peter Barkworth and Harriet Walter. The tale of Geoffrey, a millionaire trapped in an unhappy marriage to a wife twenty years his junior, but his devotion to his wife and her mardy-arse daughter is soon tested as they’re kidnapped by the IRA. With his assets far from liquid, he struggles to raise the required ransom, and his attempts to free capital cause the share price of his firm to tumble. Ah, the priorities of television characters from the eighties.
In this final episode, “Geoffrey enlists the aid of computers to track down his wife and step-daughter. But the police close in while the gang still hold his family”. Given the computers of that era, fingers crossed for no R:Tape Loading Errors, eh?
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Final episode of amateur sleuth-em-up Charters and Caldicott on BBC1, followed by Question Time. ITV had an episode of TV Eye looking at the rise of lawlessness on the New York subway systems, and the groups of vigilantes who formed to tackle them. Over on BBC2, a Forty Minutes episode looking at two stories of young love (Feb 14th, of course) followed by The Rockford Files. Meanwhile, later the same night on Channel Four, an episode of Cinemax-C4 collaboration Assaulted Nuts, a pretty much made-for-export sketch comedy series starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer and Cleo Rocos. It’s worth looking up details on that series, as it’s a deliciously off-piste piece of British comedy history. Even if it’s not exactly brilliant.
8: NUNS ON THE RUN (1990) (21:00 Sunday 18 Apr 1993, 9.2m viewers)
There have been quite a lot of films on this list, haven’t there? Some big budget American ones (The Abyss, Good Morning Vietnam), some more modestly-budgeted but well-reviewed homegrown movies (Wish You Were Here, Mona Lisa). And, besting all of them in the ratings battle… this.
Eric Idle and the late Robbie Coltrane play inept gangsters Brian and Charlie, whose attempt to rob a gang of Triads results in them ripping off the rest of their gang to escape to a life of Brazilian bliss. Things don’t quite go to plan during their getaway, meaning the duo are forced to flee and seek refuge at a nearby nunnery. Brian’s love interest Faith (Doctor Who’s Camille Coduri) spots the cackhanded crims attempt to flee, and also joins the nunnery posing as a student.
Cruelly overlooked by the Academy Awards judging panel, the whole affair was a diverting enough romp if you ask me. Yeah, there was no intellectual nourishment on offer here, but sometimes you just feel like a tube of Pringles, yeah? Mind you, Roger Ebert stated that when it comes to Nuns on the Run, “your laughter may reveal more about you than about this particularly dreary film.” It’s still better than Splitting Heirs, I counter.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Sunday night treats on offer elsewhere were an episode of A Year in Provence followed by Mastermind on BBC1 (PD James, the Napoleonic Wars, the Cornish clay industry and medieval castles on the latter, the Mayles have a go at French sport in the former). BBC2 dealt out an Arena special on the career of South African pop megastar Brenda Fassie followed by Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). ITV finished off a Maigret before welcoming a textbook Aspel & Company line-up (Mary Tyler Moore, Brian Conley and Sting) and News from ITN.
7: FRIENDS (21:00 Friday 28 May 2004, 9.64m viewers)
Ah, here it is.
One the one hand, Friends was always bound to appear on this list. But on the other hand, you’d have thought the same about Cheers, Frasier, Ugly Betty, The Cosby Show, Ellen, The Golden Girls, Desperate Housewives, A Handmaid’s Tale or Will & Grace, and you’ll notice there’s not enough room left for many of them. Or possibly any of them.
After the reliably popular Cheers came to an end in May 1993, it left a big hole in Four’s Friday night schedule. While the channel had seen quite a few similarly well-received Friday night comedy imports – The Golden Girls enjoyed a lengthy run on the channel, but that had already run its course, and spin-off The Golden Palace had been and gone by the time Cheers came to a close. What was the channel to do? Other options such as Roseanne weren’t as popular as they had been, and new acquisitions such as Susan Harris’ post-Golden Palace project Nurses or HBO sexcom Dream On had failed to draw much attention.
On 28 April 1995, their prayers were answered, with a programme debuting – as it happens – just after the second ever episode of Father Ted. Nestled between the latest from Craggy Island and one-off spoof Jack and Jeremy’s Police 4 (or pilot for Jack and Jeremy’s Real Lives, if you prefer) came the first episode of NBC’s hot new sitcom hope, starring (as The Times had it at the time) “NYPD Blue’s David Schwimmer” in (as The Mirror had it) “half a dozen single twentysomethings fighting on the battlefield known as life”.
You know the rest, I’m sure. This high point of the series viewing figures comes for the final episode, at a point where Channel Four had expensively wrangled the rights back from Sky, and where it served as a lead-in to a brand new series of Big Brother.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
BBC1 fought comedy with comedy, offering an episode of The Lenny Henry Show featuring guest star Harry Enfield. BBC2 offered a clear alternative with Art of the Garden, while a bullish ITV went big with a heady mixture of celebrities, kitchens and bollockings with a ninety-minute episode of Gordon Ramsey’s Hell’s Kitchen. Five merely admitted defeat and farted out a showing of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Double Impact.
6: CUTTING EDGE (21:00 Monday 14 Feb 1994, 9.78m viewers)
Here’s one out of left-field.
Not necessarily that Cutting Edge would make an appearance in this top ten – it’s a very long-running topical documentary strand, basically the channel’s answer to Panorama. But rather the episode that happens to have been the most-watched of them all.
It could have been 1994’s Graham Taylor: An Impossible Job, a groundbreaking sports documentary where the levels of access granted to the film crew capturing the working life of beleaguered England manager Taylor was rivalled only by the levels of swearing throughout. After all, I can’t think of any Panorama episodes that led to a phrase that would capture the imagination of a nation like “Do I not like that?” did.
It could have been Bafta-nominated episode Katie: My Beautiful Face from 2009, which followed the recovery of ex-model Katie Piper following a malicious acid attack. Or even 2010 episode My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which span-off into a full, very popular series of its own.
Instead, it was 1994 episode Shops and Robbers that drew the largest audience. Far from a scintillating takedown of a notorious figure, or capturing a slice of life that simultaneously captured the nation’s hearts, it investigated the battle between Marks & Spencer and shoplifters. On the part of M&S, there’s a look at the company’s security hub, and at their futile attempt to nab a gang of professional pilferers. On the part of shoplifters, there’s an encounter with a serial shoplifter who routinely lifts clothes from the store, deliberately damages them, and then attempts to return them for a no-quibble refund. No wonder they subsequently changed that policy.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
Speaking of Panorama, that was BBC1‘s alternate offering following the Nine O’Clock News that night, with reporter Roger Harrabin investigating the claim that air pollution was causing a rise in the rates of asthma. BBC2 also offered up a documentary alternative, with a Horizon episode dissecting the aftermath of the 1992 Columbia air crash. Lighter fare on ITV, with Under the Hammer, an episode of the Richard Wilson/Jan Francis comedy drama featuring a guest turn by Thora Hird. Not a lot of light relief for anyone under thirty finding themselves dateless at home that particular Valentine’s Night, really.
Bill Forsyth’s film takes a look at adolescent sexuality through the filter of life in early 1980s Cumbernauld. Gawky teen Gregory Underwood is the hapless striker of his hopeless school football team, until the team manager takes a gamble on keenly talented but controversially female Dorothy in his place. Gregory couldn’t care less about regaining his place up front, of course. He’d much prefer to form a striking relationship with Dorothy off the pitch.
A brilliantly funny film that’s no less enjoyable in a world where girls playing football is the norm, and I say that as someone made to cringe myself inside out appearing in a GCSE English dramatic performance of it (I was brought up not to swear in front of adults, so having to joyfully utter the word “tits” in front of a bunch of them failed to provide the subversive thrill you’d expect).
A British film that still makes best-of lists now – even Entertainment Weekly placed it in their ‘50 Best High School Movies‘ list some 34 years after initial release.
WHAT ELSE WAS ON?
The News followed by play The Last Evensong on BBC1, an gritty-era episode of The Bill (“Det Insp Galloway on the trail of a pornographer”) followed by News at Ten on ITV, and a niche triumvirate on BBC2: Pot Black ’85, followed by Doctor’s Dilemmas (“exploring the ethical dilemmas facing doctors”, reasonably enough) and World Darts.
4: THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF (21:00 Tuesday 24 Nov 2020, 11.74m viewers)
Often when popular programmes get gazumped by other channels, it doesn’t work as well as hoped. Sky One did this quite a lot, snatching the rights to Friends, Lost, The X-Files, 24 and sundry others, the net result generally being each show immediately lost about 70% of its audience. Thames famously coaxed Morecambe and Wise over to ITV in the late 1970s, and their magic soon began to fade – ditto after The Goodies decamped to LWT. In fact, it’s harder to think of success stories: Men Behaving Badly became huge after being picked up by the BBC, but that mainly happened because ITV had given up on it. So, we’re left with a list that has the name ‘Kenny Everett’ on it and little else.
Aside, that is, from Bake-Off. The odds seemed stacked against it – one of the BBC’s biggest shows being seized by a smaller channel, three of the four main hosts declining to make the move, a programme everyone was used to viewing without interruption suddenly having to make room for ad breaks. It doesn’t stand a chance.
And yet… all of those obstacles did the series very little harm at all. At the programme’s high point on BBC1, it drew a total of 15.9m viewers. That fell by a relatively minor amount following the channel switch, with 11.74 million viewers tuning in for the pox-era finale. Yes, the C4 figure is smaller than the BBC1 figure, but that still made it a sixth-most watched programme of the year for any channel. And in a year when we were legally forced to remain indoors, that’s pretty good.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
It was 2020, so a perpetual chronicle of doom on The News, or – as before – Netflix.
3: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994)
(21:00 Monday 28 Apr 1997, 12.38m viewers)
In 1994, director Mike Newell single-handedly (okay, Richard Curtis helped) gave the British romantic comedy genre the firm, hard boot up the arse it sorely needed.
Not that the genre hadn’t existed before then, nor that Curtis hadn’t previously had a hand in it. Indeed, Richard Curtis’ previous film for cinemas, The Tall Guy (starring Jeff Goldblum, Emma Thompson and Rowan Atkinson) was a firmly enjoyable romp, but it seemed destined for little more than limited domestic success, maybe a weekend showing or two at 10pm on ITV, and little else. Having enjoyed his directorial work on Jack Rosenthal’s Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill (Granada, 1976), Curtis picked Newell to work with on his next project, and it’s fair to say it was quite a success: Four Weddings became the (then) top-grossing British film in history at that time, Hugh Grant was catapulted to superstardom, Curtis was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar and Wet Wet Wet clamped themselves to the top of the pop charts on the back of the soundtrack single.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
An extended Nine O’Clock News, followed by a Labour Party Election Broadcast and ‘scientific thriller’ Breakout on BBC1, the reboot of The Outer Limits and This Life on BBC2, while ITV plumped for an episode of Bramwell and News at Ten.
2: BIG BROTHER (22:30 Friday 27 Jul 2001, 13.74m viewers)
Another inevitable entry near the top of the list. Despite the format fizzling out by the time it’d moved to Five (and a certain amount of eye rolling when news broke ITV2 are reviving it next year), there was a time when the vanilla version of Big Brother was a national talking point.
One slightly curious thing about that original series of Big Brother UK – while several routes were used to try and attract participants, the main televised call for contestants that I remember went out immediately after a repeat of BrassEye (with some online commentators subsequently assuming the whole premise was a Chris Morris spoof). As a result, those involved in that original series seemed far less like those in later series, they were more akin what might be considered a set of stereotypical don’t-just-watch-the-sitcoms Channel Four viewers. As it was, the initial series seemed more like an Orwellian social experiment than an easy route to fame (or at least short-term notoriety). Indeed, the BBC News story for that early casting call mentioned how “a nominal fee, equivalent to the amount paid for jury service” was on offer. Nobody was about to put a down-payment on a Mercedes with that line in the contract.
As time would soon tell, not least to the antics of Nasty Nick, it quickly became a national talking point, and the show’s success was sealed. (Aside: from that first series finale, when winner Craig Phillips – who had only entered to try and win some money for a charity – was briefly reunited with Nasty Nick, the latter joking-not-jokingly uttered “Let’s go halves! Let’s go halves!”)
This ratings high arrived at the conclusion of the second series, where the audience that grew as the first series progressed were on board from the start. As it turned out, it was a relatively controversy-free series (certainly no overt racism from someone who’d scored themselves 10 out of 10 for intelligence), and not too many of the participants rekindle memories now – aside from the series winner, the only one I remember is Bubble, and that’s partly because he cropped up in the finale of The Office. Basically, it’s quite nice that a series that didn’t generate any heated headlines or controversy turned out to be most popular, and in series winner (and future BB host) Brian Dowling, one of the people to have justifiably left the house with an elevated reputation to boot.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
In contrast to the unfolding reality show drama on Four, BBC1 offered actual drama with a repeat of Casualty and a new episode of The Cazalets. BBC2 dug in with Gardener’s World followed by a repeat of WWII documentary The War Behind the Wire, while ITV foisted forth Family Fortunes followed by a repeat of Taggart. Channel Five offered up an episode of Fort Boyard followed by movie choice Pink Cadillac, neither of which were repeats, so credit to them for that.
So, what’s at number one? After all, this is the channel that brought us Creature Comforts, The Snowman and was the first channel to broadcast Wallace and Gromit in A Grand Day Out. It served us a Big Breakfast and a Friday Night Dinner. It made us laugh with comedy from Cheers to Chelmsford 123, from Absolutely to Adam and Joe, from Phoenix Nights to Frasier. It brought us Traffik, Black Mirror, The Manageress and GBH. It took us from Countdown to the Crystal Maze, from Gamesmaster to the Girlie Show, from Richard & Judy to Rude Tube, from The Tube to TFI Friday, from Max Headroom to Married at First Sight. Surely one of those will be in the top spot? Surely?
Well, nope. Surprisingly, it’s this:
1: A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE (21:00 Friday 4 Jan 1985, 13.85m viewers)
Yep. I would have said at this point “I bet you weren’t expecting that”, but given someone else has tweeted this bit of information out today, there’s a good chance you were. But for those who are a bit surprised by this turn of events: blimey, eh?
This series was a three-part adaptation of the 800-page novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, originally published in 1979. The story opens with a battle for control of a vast business empire controlled by seventysomething Business Woman (of Substance) Emma Harte, who discovers that her duplicitous offspring are scheming to carve it up for themselves. A far cry from Emma’s own upbringing, as a downtrodden servant girl.
The focus of the three-parter falls on Emma’s modest rise to power, a Yorkshire village girl taking a job at the local squire’s home, Fairley Hall. From there, a tale unfolds of her rise to power, but no material gains can ever dilute her burning hatred and lust to to enact vengeance on the Fairley family that treated her so unfairly in those formative years.
Jenny Seagrove played the younger Emma Harte, with Deborah Kerr tackling the character’s modern-day persona. And with a decidedly weighty novel to cover, a similarly solid heft of airtime was needed to tell the tale – three consecutive nights, with a two-hour runtime on each.
It was a lengthy yarn that entangled a sizeable audience, with this 13m+ high coming for the conclusion of the initial story. But that wasn’t the end of the tale – May 1987 saw a sequel miniseries, Hold the Dream, which saw Jenny Seagrove and Deborah Kerr return as respective Emma Hartes. While not as colossal a smash at the original, it still attracted a high of 8.1 million viewers. Not too shabby.
WHAT WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE?
News, spy drama Wynne & Penkovsky and cop actioner Starsky & Hutch entertained any viewers left watching BBC1, while Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine (you gotta have a system) starred in film Gambit (1966) on BBC2. ITV showed the end of Superman II, followed by US not-as-good-as-Alright-on-the-Night cockup compilation Bloopers, hosted by Dick “Not as good as our Denis” Clark.
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So, There you go. A few things to unpack from that entire list.
Nuns on the Run was the third-most popular film ever shown on Four.
The most-watched sitcom in the channel’s history wasn’t Father Ted, The IT Crowd or Phoenix Nights, but a mostly-forgotten Matthew Kelly vehicle.
There was no room in the list for any Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsey vehicles, no Supernanny, Grand Designs, or England matches. All popular, just not popular enough to make this final forty.
But a repeat of Man About the House came closer to final forty than any of them.
Anyway, thanks for everything, Channel Four. Long may you continue, hopefully free from privatisation, free to entertain or annoy us as you see fit for a long time to come.
