It’s Saturday. It’s 12:15pm. The Weatherman just told us how rubbish the weather this weekend will be, so it’s time for… um.

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14: Escape to the Country

(Shown 4365 times, 2002-2021)

Richie: “Still, I did my bit for the country.”

Eddie: “What, you stayed in the town?”

Richie: “Absolutely.”

Now admittedly, and it might be my own personal circumstances at play here, but it does seem like the much of this chart falls into one of two categories. Category One is all the programmes that have been part of the TV landscape throughout what feels like our entire lives: your Panoramas, your Matches of the Day, your Songses of Praises. Category Two comprises programmes that seem to have amassed a huge episode count seemingly out of nowhere, mainly due to the camouflage of being on when most people are at work, college and/or school. That category includes The Daily Politics, Ready Steady Cook, Cash in the Attic and this next entry on the list.

For those who usually find themselves working/learning/sensibly doing something else when it’s normally on, Escape to the Country falls firmly into the Someone Buying A House And Maybe Living In It genre, and as these things go, it’s a pretty big deal. Generally, the action involves potential home buyers tiring of life in the Big City, and are surprised to learn that their two-bed London terraced home is worth a cajillion pounds, so they’re off to buy something massive near some fields.

The buyers will look at three or four suitably sprawling properties in their chosen location, including one ‘mystery house’ chosen by the production team. SPOILER: The mystery home isn’t haunted or anything fun like that, it’s basically just Another Very Nice House But The Kitchen Is Upstairs Or Something. Once all that’s done, the buyers are asked to guess the asking prices of each house, the real asking prices are revealed, and they’re asked to reveal which one they’d like to buy. And sometimes they do, which provides some material for a future episode.

As far as I’m personally concerned, it’s something to angry up my blood as I spend an unhealthy amount of time working and still need to consider selling an internal organ whenever it’s time for a big supermarket shop. However, for many it’s clearly a lovely little slice of afternoon escapism. Not everyone is cynical as me, and feels happy for some people who can sell the Balham semi they paid £3000 for in 1978 and can subsequently afford to buy a third of Leicestershire. And that’s only partly a lazy assumption, by the way. The Independent on Sunday picked out the first episode as a Pick of the Day back in October 2002, their write up casually mentioning “an extended family from Basildon, who have a budget of £600,000, are looking for a mansion in Derbyshire”. Ooh, let’s all root for the plucky ragtag family. Collective prayer that they get a mansion they like, everyone.

But anyway.

The programme began all the way back in October 2002, in a mid-afternoon BBC2 slot, arriving with the following billing in the Radio Times:
Hoping to “go green”, a young London couple want a country house. Catherine Gee gives them some options, in the first of a new series in which city-dwellers wanting to move to the country are found homes.

It would quickly go on to become a regular for the channel, proving popular enough to receive a short repeat run on weekday morning BBC1 in the run-up to a new series in October 2004. At the time, the premise of the programme focused on families looking to leave behind the urban rat race for a rural idyll, but much of the initial ‘action’ involved the potential buyers viewing potential homes on a laptop in their city house, picking a pair of dwellings to visit in person, along with a third ‘mystery’ house. Ooh, mystery house, that’s a bit spooky… oh, it’s just that one bedroom is behind a big curtain.

From the sixth series onwards, all four potential homes would be viewed in person by the buyers, along with a ‘taster’ day where the contributors are invited to sample delights of the local community, learn a little about the area and visit a few local attractions. A few series later, the number of homes was reduced to just three – retaining, obviously, The Mystery House (attic smells of tuna, third bedroom exists only in two dimensions, etc). And that’s where the format pretty much landed for the final time – it’s stayed that way ever since.

In September 2012, as Escape to… neared its testimonial anniversary, first-run episodes were promoted to plum afternoon slots on BBC One, though revised repeats of the series had been airing on BBC One in a similar slot since 2009. In fact, the programme has been the initial beneficiary of BBC One ending the channel’s long-running Children’s BBC strand, which had been in place since the early days of the Television Service, that first non-CBBC late afternoon schedule in December 2009 dominated by a young couple’s quest to find an East Sussex home with a suitably huge kitchen.

Such longevity would usually generate a spin-off or two, and that’s very much the case with Escape to the Country. January 2017 saw the first episode of catch-up series I Escaped to the Country, with  currently in its seventh series, and there was even a variant looking at those lucky enough to escape Normal Island in 2014’s Escape to the Continent. And, if rural living doesn’t butter your crumpet, 2019 saw the first episode of Escape to the Perfect Town, catering for those who get antsy if they wander too far from a Tesco Metro.

There’s even an Australian version of the series, Escape from the City airing on ABC from 2019. Indeed, the original UK version is popular enough in the antipodes to have warranted a pair of Region 4 DVDs from Aussie disc supremos Shock Entertainment – a pair of box sets totalling nineteen discs.

It’s even made a (modest) impact in the US, with the programme having appeared on US Netflix and Prime Video. Not a bad feat getting traction where huge houses are largely the default setting in all but the bigger cities, but it’s in the UK where Escape to the Country is truly an immovable feast.

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13: Grandstand

(Shown 4500 times, 1958-2007)

By the 1950s, the BBC Television Service had a problem with sport. Basically, it kept bursting out everywhere – especially on Saturdays – and it HAD to be contained. 1954 had seen the introduction of midweek sporting roundup Sportsview, which arrived with a mission to enthral viewers with the latest news, views and personalities from the world of sport. All very good, but with a runtime between twenty and thirty minutes on any given week, there was only so much room for actual sporting action. Conversely, on Saturday afternoons there was lots of space to broadcast live sport, the resulting BBC-tv schedule akin to a bull let loose in a Sports Direct. Sport was ruddy well everywhere. Live sports coverage was exempt from the Postmaster General’s broadcasting hours restrictions, so Saturday afternoons were pretty much a Linekeresque tap-in for BBC schedulers.

Picking a Saturday at random to give an example, 8 September 1956 saw the following schedule in the Radio Times:

1.50pm: Twenty minutes of Motor Racing from the British Automobile Racing Club’s September Meeting at Goodwood, including The Madgwick Cup, a five-lap race for cars up to 1,100cc. But no time to focus on that, because at 2.10pm viewers were whisked away to the Derby Baths in Blackpool for the National Swimming and Diving Championships. But don’t get too attached to that, because at 2.25pm we’re back off to the Motor Racing for twenty minutes, then back to the Derby Baths at 2.45pm. Who will win the big prize there? You’d better hope it’s decided by 3pm, because then we’re off to Farnborough for an Air Display by the Society of British Aircraft Constructors.

Phew, eh? There really should be a little more order to this kind of thing.

Luckily, a set of steady hands were on the way to steady the Saturday sporting tiller. Programme editor Paul Fox, production assistant Bryan Cowgill and presenter-cum-head of Outside Broadcasts Peter Dimmock had all worked wonders within the BBC’s Outside Broadcast team, Fox having created and edited Sportsview (plus the annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year, originally known as Sports Review of the Year), while Dimmock had proved his broadcasting mettle by taking charge of the BBC-tv’s coverage of the Queen’s Coronation, as well as working as main presenter of Sportsview. But it was Cowgill who had an idea that would transform weekend television for decades to come: an umbrella approach to the Saturday sporting portfolio.

Peter Dimmock’s stock was certainly high at the time. In the run-up to ITV’s big launch in 1955, the new network had been prepared to offer hefty pay increases to coax the BBC’s top talent over to the Light Network. Then-DG Sir Ian Jacob, displaying the sense of stoicism and stinginess you’d expect from the BBC of the 50s, was largely reluctant to match any such offers, him being well aware that the BBC’s more limited budget would necessitate cuts elsewhere offset any pay jumps.

That wasn’t the case when Director of Television Sir George Barnes rang up to let him know about ITV’s approach to Peter Dimmock. The response from the DG was definitive: “Make any sort of personal relationships for him – as a personal case – that are necessary.”

That was a decision borne of much more than keeping that friendly sports presenter on screen. Dimmock had displayed a special skill in negotiating sports contracts, and in selling the BBC programmes those contracts generated to overseas broadcasters. He’d also built up a series of working relationships with various sporting authorities, which combined with his ease at presenting live sport coverage made for a pretty comprehensive package. On top of everything else, he headed the BBC’s Outside Broadcasts Department, and had served as Sports Adviser to the European Broadcasting Union. If he hopped channels, any replacement would need one hell of a CV.

Dimmock’s experience at working with the Outside Broadcasts Unit would be essential. He’d been a key component in TV coverage of the Queen’s coronation in 1953, serving as producer for coverage of the Coronation Service from Westminster Abbey, having worked closely with sceptical Abbey personnel to prove that the presence of TV cameras need not be a distraction from the main event. Before then, he’d worked on the 1948 Olympics, the first international relay from Calais in 1950 and the funeral of George VI in 1952.

Having been so instrumental in several of the biggest moments in BBC-tv’s life thus far, throwing to live racing from Haydock was hardly a herculean task. Having seen teleprompters in use during his time in the USA, he know how to get the best out of the nascent tech while live to air. In short, the only person who could hope to keep all the levers moving when it came to launching the BBC’s new, sprawling and enthralling Saturday spectacular: Grandstand.

Arriving on Britain’s screens for the first time on 11 October 1958, this was to no small undertaking. A shade under three hours of live television each Saturday, mostly, though not exclusively, devoted to sport – this was a programme from the BBC Television Outside Broadcasts department, after all. Paul Fox took to the Radio Times to explain just how it would all – hopefully – come together, promising that “all the items that used to appear here and there on Saturday afternoons will now come under the Grandstand umbrella”.

With Dimmock at the controls from a swanky new studio at Lime Grove, at least for those first few weeks before his co-anchor – a tyro David Coleman – took sole charge of presentation (allowing Dimmock to move behind the scenes), there were football newsflashes, racing updates (complete with the latest odds), and updates from reporters all around the UK. Fox promised that “sports news of the day will be given as it happens – and, whenever possible, where it happens”, thanks to that BBC Outside Broadcast unit. There was the promise of live horse racing each week, live swimming, motor racing, ice skating and table tennis in the coming weeks. Some of those admittedly easier to capture on camera than others.

There was even the tentative promise of (“if our hopes are realised”) live boxing. But, slightly surprisingly, the callout event on the big preview of Grandstand was… snooker. Not the most obvious draw for the black and white tellies of the time, but this was no ordinary event – Joe Davis, the “greatest snooker player of all time” had signed up for a series of special challenge matches at venues around Britain, taking on top players of the day, such as Walter Donaldson and John Pulman. And, to make it even more of an occasion, Joe’s first match would be against brother and fellow pro Fred Davis.

The action wasn’t just restricted to That England, either. The BBC’s Scottish Outside Broadcast Unit (a branding that conjures up a certain stereotypical image, unless it’s just me picturing an OB van bedecked in tartan) would be on hand to capture action from the World Amateur Team Golf Championship from St Andrews.

It’s fair to say that was a lot to be going on with. The only real hitch was a TV schedule that insisted subsequent children’s programming start airing at 4.45pm, a time which neatly clashes with all the sports results Grandstand would really quite like to tell viewers about. It took until April 1959 before those fifteen critical minutes were finally added to Grandstand’s runtime, allowing for a full Sports Result Service, and an easier route for participants in the football pools to learn they’d need to work for at least another week.

As mentioned, the whole affair being centred around the Outside Broadcast Unit rather than sport specifically gave the programme freedom to wander from its core remit if circumstances required, such as the Henley Regatta or sundry Car Shows. A prime example of this came on 22 February 1964, and an edition promising “the return of the Beatles to the UK, as well as horse racing and rugby union”.

Unsurprisingly given its position on this list, the programme was a success. So much so, the Grandstand branding swiftly swallowed up key events on the sporting calendar. Alongside regular Saturday afternoon Grandstand, the Radio Times would trumpet the presence of Derby Day Grandstand (from 1960), Cup Final Grandstand (from 1965), World Cup Grandstand (from 1966), Olympic Grandstand (from 1968), and Ryder Cup Grandstand (from 1993), many of which didn’t even air at the weekend. The slow creep of sporting endeavours into the Sabbath also led to occasional airings of Sunday Grandstand from 1967 onwards.

However, the most thrillingly-titled variant was set to arrive on the evening of Tuesday 21 April 1970, where a special edition (step aside, Sportsnight) featured the big Joe Bugner v Ray Patterson boxing match in London, followed by “Apollo 13 Splashdown”. Yep, the return to Earth of moon men James A. Lovell Jr, John L. Swigert Jr and Fred W. Haise Jr led to the programme being rechristened Splashdown Grandstand for a single edition. Just look at this planned programme schedule for the night:

8.0 International Professional Boxing: Joe Bugner v Ray Patterson
8.45 The Main News With Kenneth Kendall
9.0 Apollo 13 Splashdown
9.02 Re-entry due
9.11 Parachutes open
9.16 Splashdown
10.10 On Deck
10.15 International Match of the Day: England v Northern Ireland

Epic. Except, of course, a set of fuel cells 180,000 nautical miles from Earth had other ideas. The return flight of the Apollo 13 crew had to be frantically rearranged for the previous Friday, and one of the most exhilarating live broadcasts of the entire space race took place then instead.

All very well, but what of our Splashdown Grandstand? Those midweek sporting events instead went out as individual programmes, with the scheduled Splashdown programme replaced by The Dick Emery Show and a rescheduled 24 Hours. Ah, well.

Rewinding slightly, by 1965 Grandstand had a rival on the other side. ITV’s initial reticence to sport receding to make way for World of Sport, which was now very much in play. But while their rival had the winsome Dickie “Last Time I Saw Something Like That The Whole Herd Had To Be Put Down” Davies at the helm, the BBC still held the rights to all the key events, and with Frank Bough sharing hosting duties with David Coleman (the latter frequently off displaying his commentary chops), there was still only one destination for the serious sports fan. World of Sport had Canadian log rolling, Grandstand had Eddie Waring, Football Focus and the Vidiprinter. It was no contest. Especially as Grandstand would be the go to destination for getting those all-important results come 4.45pm. Even now, people of a certain age can only read the Classified Football Results with a particular intonation in their heads.

By the 1980s, a bejumpered Coleman was more at home behind a Question of Sport desk, and with Frank Bough occupied in a similarly wooly vocation on Breakfast Time, it was time for TV’s Mr Unflappability to shine. Step forward Des Lynam. Never had helming several hours of live television on a weekly basis – imagine an election night every seven days, basically – seemed so ruddy effortless. And so, by the late 1980s, Grandstand was cock of the walk. World of Sport had ceased to be, with ITV spending more energy on snaffling exclusivity on individual sporting events – think The Football League, Athletics and Horse Racing – but Grandstand’s greatest foe, and ultimate conqueror, was about to appear from the Sky.

The early days of satellite broadcasting had been no threat to the main broadcasters – nobody was breaking into a sweat over the Screensport Super Cup – but by the mid-1990s, Sky Sports had the budget and the broadcasting bandwidth to do everything Grandstand couldn’t. It could continue live coverage of golfing tournaments, rugby matches or tennis opens way into primetime, with no pressing need to halt coverage in favour of Steve Wright’s People Show or Big Break. And as the pot of available events began to empty, the BBC needed to make more of what it still had. Would people be tuning into Grandstand and hope they enjoyed what they found there, or would they be more enticed by a programme listing for a live Six Nations match?

In the digital EPG age of the noughties, viewers didn’t want to just see that a sprawling Grandstand strand was on, they’d want to know which sport to expect and when. A brand that was once spread across the BBC like sporting butter seemed to be little more than an anachronism kept around out of loyalty more than practicality, and in January 2007 it finally bowed out. By the time of the final Grandstand programme listing, pointing viewers toward the Red Button and BBC website for uninterrupted coverage of the Australian Open or European Figure Skating Championships was the norm, it was clear how the linear Grandstand strand wasn’t really needed any more. The fact that much of that final Saturday edition was shovelled onto BBC2 to make way for a live FA Cup Match of the Day between Luton Town and Blackburn only underlined how inessential the once hardy old brand had become.

Then, it was gone. Broken up for scrap. The following Saturday saw Football Focus officially span off as a standalone programme (which, as far at Electronic Programme Guides had been concerned, it had been for a while anyway), as was the BBC’s Six Nations Rugby coverage. Final Score had the same treatment, once an integral part of Grandstand, now a plucky stat-based orphan left to flourish on its own.

And do you know what? It was fine. When there wasn’t any big sporting event to show on a Saturday afternoon, the BBC no longer felt the need to fling on something sporty for the sake of it. This was an era where Sky Plus was king of the living room. People wanted to be able to record ‘Rugby League’, ‘Swimming’, or ‘Golf’, not use up a valuable chunk of their PVR’s 20GB capacity on several whole hours of sport because that’s how the programme guide had wanted it.

This was the future.

And yet, in a way, it was 1958 all over again.

^{NOTE: Updated figure and table on 16/7/23 to correct the episode counts for 1965 and 1966, plus totals, accordingly. Thanks to eagle-eyed reader @michael_sas for spotting the discrepancy.}

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There we go, another one out of the way. Phew. Next time: we brush the quivering brim of the Top Ten. Ooh, eh?

“We interrupt this programme to bring you a football game.”

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16: Match of the Day

(Shown 4055 times, 1964-2021)

Well, here’s one that was always going to appear, and one where I probably need to clarify the criteria for inclusion. In general with this list, where something had specific programme branding applied to it and it keeps to the core format of the programme, I’m counting it. So, Nationwide Election Special counts, Tweenies Songtime doesn’t. Postman Pat Special Delivery Service please step forward, This Morning With Anne and Nick’s Live Autopsy Hour not so fast.

That gets a little more complicated with Match of the Day. For one thing, the first eleven times the title ‘Match of the Day’ appeared in TV listings, it had absolutely nothing to do with football. While MOTD as we’d come to know it first aired on Saturday 22 August 1964, Match of the Day first appeared as a programme title a whole two months earlier. A total of eleven editions of ‘Match of the Day’ aired in relation to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships in 1964 before the moniker was first applied to kickball.

The MOTD branding would go on to become closely aligned to both football and (during Wimbledon fortnight) tennis highlights, with the latter sometimes made clear in the programme title (as Match of the Day from Wimbledon or Wimbledon [YEAR] Match of the Day), but sometimes not.

The other complication comes in defining what makes up the ‘core’ MOTD experience. Saturday night football highlights are the main thing you’d associate the brand with, but it’s also been used for live football coverage (sometimes as Match of the Day Live, International Match of the Day or Match of the Day: The Road to Wembley, sometimes as just plain old Match of the Day). And what about Match of the Day 2? Does that count? How about Match of the Day Greats, or …Kickabout, or …Top 10? How about lockdown gap-filler Match of Their Day?

Right, to try and get some kind of vaguely accurate figure here, I’m going to go with the following rule: If it’s tagged as Match of the Day, and the bulk of the content is footage from a football match (or matches, either live or highlights) of a contemporary match, it counts. If it’s not one of those things (so, Kickabout et al), or doesn’t have the MOTD branding, it doesn’t count. Settled? Good.

The waters are, of course, further muddied by the MOTD branding not always being used in programme listings. Since 2014, much of the BBC’s live or highlight coverage of The FA Cup has been billed as ‘The FA Cup’, keeping it away from the (now) more Premier League-focused MOTD name. Which means that, in this age of iPlayer and rights issues, the two sets of highlights are now kept in separate containers. Even when they’re next to each other in the schedule.

The title World Cup Match of the Day was used when nightly highlights round-ups were broadcast in 1974 (live matches then going out as World Cup Grandstand). Then that title lay dormant for 15 years, with the programme title reused for highlights of Italia ’90 qualifiers in 1989, provided they were on a Saturday – midweek qualifier highlights went out as part of Sportsnight. That is until October 1989, when World Cup Match of the Day was used for a live (midweek) broadcast of the Poland v England qualifier. Then, the programme title hibernated until the 2006 World Cup in Germany, except for the highlights packages for Euro 2000 that used “MotD at Euro 2000” but not for the live matches… look, here’s a table of RT billing titles for every major international football tournament since 1950. Titles included in MotD’s episode count are in bold.

Anyway, let’s rewind a bit. Football on the BBC has gone out under a variety of guises – hey, here’s another largely pointless table, this time of non-MotD football match billings in the Radio Times:

So, it’s probably for the best that they settled on another programme title. The above isn’t even a comprehensive list – between 1971 and 1997, the Sportsnight Special branding was used for midweek football matches, mostly but not exclusively for those broadcast live (first: FA Cup Third Round Replay highlights, last: live coverage of AS Monaco v Newcastle United in the UEFA Cup).

The BBC’s first televised association with Association (Football) dates all the way back to September 1937. That inaugural coverage was, as you may well already be aware, a thrilling tussle between Arsenal and… Arsenal Reserves at Highbury. Yep, fifteen minutes of a training match. While this could easily have been some filmed footage flung out as part of Newsreel, the BBC didn’t take that easier option. The Beeb’s brand new mobile television unit travelled to Highbury to broadcast the footage live. The first ever billed football match (as shown below) was indeed “a demonstration by the members of the Arsenal team” on 16 September 1937, but live footage of football first went out a day earlier – two minutes of soundless but live footage of the Arsenal team went out at 3.45pm the previous day, as part of magazine series Picture Page.

Such was the cost of sending the mobile television unit (around £35, or the price of a pie at Wembley in 2023), a series of broadcasts from the ground were requested to make the whole affair a little more cost effective. As a result, a total of three transmissions were made from the ground, plus (following that brief initial broadcast on Picture Page) a test transmission of Arsenal Reserves versus Millwall Reserves was beamed back to a special viewing room at Ally Pally, so BBC bosses could gauge how suitable this football lark was for public consumption.

The second billed visit to The Arsenal occurred on 17 September that year, which led to another broadcasting first: George Male becoming the first footballer ever to be interviewed on live television. On being questioned about the diversity within the Highbury playing staff, Male proudly proclaimed “they are from Scotland, Yorkshire, Wales, all over the place… provided they are British subjects. We couldn’t put a foreigner in the team”. Plus ca change, eh? As a result (of the broadcast, not Male’s xenophobia), the BBC would go on to broadcast the FA Cup Final between Preston North End and Huddersfield in 1938, followed a year later with the Portsmouth versus Wolves final – the latter listed alongside the caveat “unless anything untoward happens” in the Radio Times (and a warning that “no rediffusion in places of public entertainment will be permitted”).

Following the war, the BBC were keen to show more live football for the demobbed masses, but there was a problem. The Football League – gatekeepers for the bulk of English professional matches – were dead against the idea, calculating that allowing the still-small television audience to watch coverage on tiny monochrome sets would be preferred to the full-3D, full-colour, full-Bovril matchday experience, and stop attending matches in person. Luckily for the BBC, the FA in general were more receptive to the broadcaster. Less luckily for the BBC, technology at the time limited them to covering events within a 20-mile radius of Alexander Palace.

As a result, the next televised football match, taking place on Saturday 19 October 1946, was from the lofty heights of the Athenian Football League, with Amateur Cup holders Barnet entertaining Wealdstone. Even then, the broadcast was far from simple – the permission of a local resident had to be sought so BBC engineers could borrow their phone line, and from another resident to plonk some scaffolding for cameras on their allotment. Thus the programme budget was duly increased to include compensation for damaged crops.

That wasn’t the end of the technical hitches. Despite the promise of “part of the first half and the whole of the second half” in the Radio Times, bad light ultimately curtailed the live broadcast fifteen minutes from the end of the match.

Despite those obstacles, the broadcast was deemed a success, and the BBC would go on to broadcast further (non-Football League) matches from the London area.

By 1954, the popularity of television had grown, along with the demand for televised sport. As a result, Head of Sport Peter Dimmock along with Paul Fox devised Sportsview, the BBC’s first midweek sporting magazine programme. This offered football match highlights alongside other sports, and soon became must-see viewing for sport fans lucky enough to own a television receiver. That popularity led to Sports Special, a Saturday night spin-off for the series packing a more football-focused remit, with Peter Dimmock taking to the Radio Times to provide exciting details on how “a helicopter, two aeroplanes, plus a fleet of motor-cycles and fast cars” would be employed to rush filmed reports from stadia to studio each week.

Sports Special would go on to run for ten years from 1955, accompanied in October 1958 by Saturday afternoon stablemate Grandstand. However, the very march of progress that made the programme possible in the first place (including, of course, the thrilling assistance of fast cars and helicopters and possibly at least one Milk Tray Man) would lead to its downfall. Match reports being shot on 16mm film meant that on arrival at the studio, footage first had to be processed, returned as wet negatives and frantically edited at Lime Grove by harried editors praying that they’d get the job done in time for transmission. The reliance on filmed reports (and the budget only allowing for a single camera at each match) also carried the risk of a crucial goal being slammed home while the camera operator was changing reels.

Videotape and multi-camera coverage were still only on the horizon, but Sports Special’s days were numbered. What was once a regular weekly treat became a more sporadic offering, and despite rebranding for most weeks as Football Special from late 1961, in April 1965 the programme would air as a Saturday night strand for the last time, by now on the rechristened BBC-1, with a broadcast of that day’s England v Scotland match from Wembley.

But! Hope for football fans was not lost. Over on upstart BBC-2, a new programme had arrived in 1964, opening with the classic Wolstenholme words “Welcome to Match of the Day, the first of a weekly series coming to you every Saturday on BBC-2. As you can hear, we’re in Beatleville for this Liverpool versus Arsenal match”, and ending with a score of 3-2 to the Mighty Reds.

It would go on to become quite popular.

The write-up for that first-ever episode in the Radio Times went as follows:

Today for the first time soccer fans can watch a feature-length version – as opposed to a potted ‘highlights’ version — of a regular League fixture. Which one? That, by agreement with the Football League, remains a secret until 4.0 this afternoon. But Bryan Cowgill, BBC-tv’s sports chief, promises that it will be a top match.

The agreement by which BBC-tv won permission for this came after careful negotiations between Bryan Cowgill and League Secretary Alan Hardaker. It allows for fifty-five minutes of coverage, enough to show the whole development of the game, and for its screening at a more popular hour.

Up to now we have only been able to show ten-minute edited films of any given match. which, effectively meant a machine-gun succession of goal-goal-goal,’ says Cowgill. ‘Now we can fall in line With BBC-2’s policy by offering “depth” treatment of our most popular sport’. To those who think this breakthrough is a further blow to turnstile takings, he offers his experienced opinion that ‘television never kept anyone away from the best in sport.’

In charge of the new venture as producer is Alan Chivers, BBC-tv’s most experienced soccer specialist. He intends to make full use of the technical advantages of 625 lines, and says: ‘We’re no longer restricted mainly to the close-up, With 625’s greater definition we can use wider shots without losing clarity, and so show much more of the overall pattern of a game.’

^{Radio Times Issue 2128, 20-26 August 1964}

Following the 1966 World Cup, famously won by A British Team Wearing Red (haven’t checked, I presume it was Wales), MOTD made the move from BBC-2 to BBC-1 for the 1966/67 season. Although the programme would move back to BBC-2 for a week in November 1968 so that the first colour edition of the series could be shown. Any football fanatics without a 625-line set that week at least got to watch Hitchcock’s Anatomy of a Murder on BBC1 that night. It wouldn’t be until 15 November 1969 that colour MOTD first arrived on BBC-1 – on the channel’s first official day of colour TV.

Transition to colour TV aside, the core remit of the series – football highlights on a Saturday night – remained unchanged for a long time. Even when events called for a special episode of MOTD, it was usually affixed to standard match highlights, as had been the case on 10 Jan 1970 and the excitingly-billed “Match of the Day Special: 1970 World Cup Draw“. This contained the exciting curveball of having David Coleman reporting from Mexico City’s Maria Isabella Hotel, where the 16 qualifying nations discovered who they’d be playing that summer (“Presented by Telesistema Mexicano”, no less). Even then, as befitting the programme, the bulk of the content that week was still of match highlights from a suitably sodden football ground.

A year before that Mexican jamboree, MOTD had added the first ever slow-motion replays to their coverage, an innovation that would make a huge difference to the way football was covered. And those innovations were increasingly important. At a time when the USA and USSR were in a PR war to get the first boots on the moon, BBC and ITV’s respective football flagships were locked in a similar, if slightly less cosmic, battle.

The nature of ITV meant there was no network-wide football highlights programme – the whole story of football on ITV could fill an entry on its own – but the big hitter was undoubtedly LWT’s The Big Match, which tried to add a little Light Entertainment pizazz to the whole affair (oh, okay. Brian Moore and a desk with a phone on it). The battle ultimately became so intense that Michael Grade led a coup to snaffle up exclusive rights to the Football League in 1978, the move was famously reported in the papes as ‘Snatch of the Day‘. Which would have been quite witty had the pun not already been public knowledge since a 1974 anti-pickpocket public information film. Luckily, the Office of Fair Trading put a stop to that nonsense, and Match of the Day was safe. For a while.

The battle of the broadcasters intensified throughout the next few years, though there was a truce of sorts after the channels agreed to alternate ownership of the prime Saturday night highlights slot, meaning MOTD aired on Sunday afternoons throughout the 1980/81 and 1982/83 seasons. However, for 1983/84 there was a new, long-awaited change for both channels: live coverage of Football League matches. It’s almost strange to imagine such a thing at a time when almost every single match in the top five tiers of English football can (legally) be watched live, but that represented the first time live league football would be shown on TV since 1960. Highlights briefly faded into the background. Especially during the start of the 1985/86 season, when disputes over money meant TV was a football-free zone for several months. At least that led to Saint & Greavsie parading West Ham’s leading goalscorer Frank McAvennie around London to see if anyone would recognise him, which is quite fun.

1988 saw a dramatic change to coverage for the Beeb, with ITV paying a (then-)whopping fee for exclusivity. It certainly seems quaint now, but paying £44m for 21 live matches per season was big news at the time, not least as it restricted MOTD to coverage of the FA Cup (and for the most part, a rebranding to Match of the Day: The Road to Wembley).

As football’s post-1990 popularity soared Skywards (insert a Waddle penalty gag here if you must) even bigger changes were afoot. But then you probably already know all about that. At least that meant top division highlights returned to the BBC.

And – if we all pretend those few years of Andy Townsend’s Tactics Truck et al were just a national hallucination – that’s where they’ve stayed ever since. And indeed, the lockdown-era Project Restart even led to the return of Live Top Tier Football to BBC1 after a gap of 32 years.

The mission statement of the programme has certainly changed a lot since Kenneth Wolstenholme’s original trip to Beatleville. The very thing original producer Bryan Cowgill was so happy to be leaving behind – “ten-minute edited films of any given match” – is now the core product of the programme. But, in a world where watching live football on TV is largely restricted to those with a disposable incomes or an illicit IPTV hookup, it’s still appointment television for many, and for everyone else it’s just nice to know it’s still there.

After all, we’ve now seen a vision of the future without Match of the Day. It wasn’t pretty.

NOTE: If you’d like to read a lot more about the history of football on British TV, be sure to take in Steve Williams’ superb Goalmouths over on OffTheTelly.

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15: Doctors

(Shown 4081 times, 2000-2021)

For a genre of television that has seemed utterly omnipresent since the days of Stooky Bill, it’s actually a little surprising to learn that medical drama series were few and far between in the early days of British television. In the early days of the BBC Television Service, the closest you were likely to get was seeing a concert by someone who’d left the medical profession for the world of music, such as pianist Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (5 Dec 1936, Starlight) or Norman Hackforth (4 Feb 1937, The Composer at the Piano).

As was the style at the time, there would occasionally be serious factual programming based on medical matters, especially in the post-war years, such as 1947’s I Want to be a Doctor, but dramatic fiction from within doctorly settings were a feature that television simply didn’t seem to fancy. It’s tempting to suggest that the medical profession was deemed sacrosanct when it to TV’s myopic gaze, but that’s swiftly disproved by there being a smattering of comedy plays about the profession. May 1947 saw Annette Mills’ comedy feature Rotten Row, where a dilapidated row of horse boxes is converted into a fracture unit next to an evacuated hospital in post-war London (I repeat: a comedy), while August that year saw the screening of The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse, a comedy thriller by Barre Lyndon.

By the late 1940s Britain finally had a National Health Service, so it’s perhaps understandable that television preferred to spend airtime demystifying what went on behind hospital doors. As a result, factual programmes often made an appearance in the Radio Times, such as 1948’s Mass Radiography, (“The Medical Officer in charge of a Mobile X-Ray Unit belonging to the North-West London Regional Hospital Board demonstrates a new technique of diagnosing chest diseases in their-early stages”), or 1949’s medical documentary series Matters of Life and Death (“Episode 7: Dr. F. Avery Jones and Mr. Norman Tanner, a physician and surgeon who have made a special study of gastric and duodenal ulcers, discuss their prevalence and show how they are diagnosed and treated”). All very worthwhile, but hardly using matters medical to offer a sense of escapism for the TV audience.

That changed in 1951, with a six-part television adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s 1855 book The Warden. The first of the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, the book followed the fortunes of Mr Septimus Harding, an elderly warden from Barsetshire-based Hiram’s Hospital. That offering aside, it took the launch of ITV in 1955 to successfully transplant the notion of a medical TV drama into Britain’s cathode-ray tubes. Emergency Ward 10 (ATV, 1957-67) became one of the nascent network’s breakout hits, albeit one that came about due to a misunderstanding. It had been suggested to programme creator Tessa Diamond that a show about daily hospital life might be a hit. It was only after Ward 10 was created that her agent revealed the original suggestion was actually for a documentary series.

Once that happy accident was out of the way, the programme quickly became a success. So much so, in ten years on the air it clocked up a total of 1,016 episodes – including in 1964 one that featured an early example of an inter-racial kiss between two actors.

Aside: For a spell, it seems to have been considered television’s first-ever such embrace (coming a full four years before the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren”). However, it was actually preceded by both Granada’s 1962 Play of the Week In Your Small Corner, and 1959 ABC Armchair Theatre play Hot Summer Night – both plays featuring Jamaican actor Lloyd Reckord.

Anyway, with Ward 10 proving a success, other medical soap operas would later appear in an attempt to rebottle that magic, such as General Hospital (ATV, 1972-79), Angels (BBC, 1975-83) and Children’s Ward (Children’s ITV, 1989-2000). On top of that, daytime TV found plenty of room for antipodean imports The Young Doctors (Nine Network 1976–1983, airing on ITV from 1982 and Sky Channel from 1989), A Country Practice (Seven, 1981–1994, shown on ITV from 1982 and Sky Channel – in primetime! – from 1984) and Shortland Street (TVNZ 2, 1992–, shown on ITV from 1993).

As the millennium (and to a lesser extent, the Willennium) neared, the previously-listed Holby City (BBC, 1999-2022) started a residency on BBC1. And, with that proving popular enough for BBC bosses to attempt a daytime version, this was followed a year later by the first episode of… Doctors. Yes, we’ve got to it at last. Phew.

Set in the fictional Midlands town of Letherbridge, the Chris Murray-devised programme follows events within the local doctor’s surgery and the nearby university campus surgery, along with those of the stakeholders within.

Commissioning a brand-new scripted drama to go out in the pre-news slot 12.30pm each weekday – a place you’d usually expect to contain an episode of Changing Rooms, Celebrity Ready Steady Cook or Bargain Hunt – was certainly a brave move by BBC head of daytime programming Jane Lush. To remain receptive to occasional viewers, the programme was to use self-contained stories featuring the key cast rather than having long-running plot strands (a la imperial phase The Bill). In addition, casting cosy drama series stalwart Christopher Timothy as key character Mac McGuire certainly wasn’t going to hurt.

To introduce viewers to the series, the opening episode aired in a primetime-adjacent slot of 6:35pm on Sunday 26 March 2000, with the first regular daytime episode airing the following lunchtime. Under the auspices of showrunner Mal Young, whose vintage included Holby City, Casualty and would later cross the Atlantic to exec produce The Young and the Restless, Doctors proved successful enough to be tried out in a 7pm weekday slot in the summer of 2000. However, it quickly became obvious that a rival soap wasn’t much of a threat to the Emmerdale behemoth, and it returned to the cosier confines of 12.30pm.

And that happy little niche was where it would stay for just over a year and a half, before shifting to a 2.10pm slot in November 2001 in a soapy double-bill with Neighbours. And that was where it stays for several years, Letherbridge being happily twinned with Erinsborough five days per week, making it a Doctors appointment you weren’t likely to miss (oh shut up).

However, in 2007 calamity struck. With the FremantleMedia demanding a whopping £300m from the BBC in return for the rights to Neighbours for the next eight years, the flagship show was instead set to move to Channel Five. The result: a major soap-shaped hole in BBC1’s daytime schedule. What was the BBC to do? Splurge a chunk of programme budget on nabbing the rights to Shortland Street? Fling on repeats of The Sullivans? Nope, by that point Doctors was doing well enough for it to be promoted into that key post-news slot, with the remaining episodes of Neighbours switching to its post-2pm slot.

Doctors continued to perform admirably for the lunchtime audience, but finding a companion for it proved a little more tricky. US drama show Monk was tried out in that slot during December 2007, before long the Neighbours burn-off episodes were restored to the slot while packing its bags and preparing for life on Five. Diagnosis Murder was given a run in that slot a few months later, but April 2008 saw the launch of the BBC’s new secret weapon: Out of the Blue. It was cool. It was sexy. It could air five days per week. And most importantly, it was Australian.

Set in the fashionable Sydney beach suburb of Manly, the action started with a group of thirty-year-old friends returning home for a high school reunion, only for the reunion to end in murder and an investigation into which of them done it. It couldn’t fail. And crucially, it had actually been commissioned by the BBC, so could be tailored to meet the needs and wants of a British audience.

Obviously, it failed. Big time. Ratings were so unspectacular, it was nudged over to BBC2 after just fourteen episodes on BBC1, and lasted less than a year before being cancelled entirely. Not to worry though, Five picked up the repeat rights to the series, and put them out on digital offshoot Fiver. I’m assuming for a much lesser outlay than they’d paid for Neighbours. Diagnosis Murder picked up the post-Doctors reins, and proved a much more popular companion. After all, it is the 62nd most-broadcast programme on the BBC of all time.

Speaking of Doctors (which is what we’re supposed to be doing here, of course), it was the bedrock of the BBC daytime schedule. By 2010, it was picking up a comfortable two million viewers per episode, regularly winning the daytime ratings war. Indeed, some episodes even rated as high as 3.5 million viewers, numbers that EastEnders producers would probably throttle Wellard for nowadays.

And as time went on, those viewing figures only continued to grow. By 2017, they were sitting at a comfortable 2.5 million per episode, at one point reaching a peak of four million (according to a Telegraph link I’m not going to pay to read, so we’ll take Google’s word for it).

Now, as will be abundantly clear from this update, I’ve barely ever watched an episode of Doctors. However, what has become clear to me is that the creative team behind it aren’t afraid not to try something thrillingly different from time to time. The most obvious example of this would be superbly titled episode “The Joe Pasquale Problem“, which involved a patient seeing everyone as Joe Pasquale (special guest for that episode: Joe Pasq… oh, you’ve guessed).

Better still, an episode airing on the telltale date of 31 October 2014 saw character Al “forced to confront his scepticism of the supernatural when he finds a whistle with mysterious powers”. Or, if you prefer, an episode of a daytime soap opera was used as an excuse to put on a production of M R James’ 1904 ghost story Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad. You don’t get that with Emmerdale, do you?

That’s the only episode of Doctors I’ve ever watched, and not going to lie – it was great. The modest budget of a soap episode really helped it capture at least a soupçon of the 1970s aesthetic of the original A Ghost Story for Christmas, which is handy as Jonathan Miller’s 1968 version of the same was a decidedly different beast from the annual anthologies it begat. That Doctors episode is on DailyMotion if you fancy seeing it. And so are plenty more, if you like the sound of the series and would like to catch up.

(By the time you finish that, I might have the next entry on the list written.)

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That’s another one in the bag, which isn’t a literal bag. More ‘soon’, if I get out the habit of spending an hour researching something for the sake of a single sentence about something not really connected to the programme I’m meant to be talking about.

So close we can taste that top twenty.

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22: Eggheads

(Shown 3049 times, 2003-2021)

Hang on, what’s a Channel 5 programme doing on here?

Admittedly, I really don’t know much about the series. Never watched it, and one time some work colleagues were thinking of taking part, and one suggested to me that they’d like me to become an Egghead with them. Given the person who’d asked me was bald, I was unable to immediately dispel the suspicion I was about to have my head shaved.

Anyway, let’s crack out ChatGPT and see if I can work out where it’s wrong using my own feeble human brain? Over to you, Chatty. If nothing else, it’ll distract it from destroying society for a few minutes.

“Eggheads” is a British television quiz show that first aired on BBC Two in 2003. The show is produced by 12 Yard Productions and is hosted by Jeremy Vine. The format of the show features a team of five contestants, known as the “challengers,” competing against a team of quiz experts known as the “Eggheads.”

Oh dear. Not off to a great start. Eggheads actually started airing on BBC One in November 2003. Look, here’s the Genome entry and everything. Not a bigtime slot or anything, tucked away in lunchtime between a new episode of Cash In the Attic and the 1pm News bulletin. But still, BBC One. Not Two.

It actually first aired on BBC Two in Monday 10 May 2004, going out at 2.55pm between an airing of 1955 Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Escape to Burma and a Flog It!, if you’re wondering.

My feeble human brain: 1, AI: 0

The original Eggheads team consisted of five members: Chris Hughes, Kevin Ashman, Judith Keppel, Daphne Fowler, and CJ de Mooi. Each member of the Eggheads team is a former quiz show champion, with several holding titles such as Mastermind and University Challenge champions.

Yep, I’ll give you that.

My feeble human brain: 1, AI: 1

The show quickly became popular and was moved to a prime-time slot on BBC One in 2008. The format of the show has remained largely the same over the years, with each episode featuring a series of rounds of general knowledge questions.

Well, it had mainly been a BBC One programme at first anyway. Of the first 70 broadcasts for Eggheads, 63 of them had been on BBC One. I’ll call for a steward’s enquiry over it quickly becoming popular, though. It took until 23 May 2005 for the ‘Heads to first arrive in the slot it’d be most closely associated with – weekdays at 6pm on BBC2, at which point it made a fleeting appearance in the weekly Barb Top Thirty for the channel – sneaking into the arse-end of the chart for the first couple of weeks in the teatime slot (between 24th and 29th place on the weekly lists for weeks ending 29 May 2005 and 5 June 2005, if you must know), but after that it disappeared from the Beeb ratings for BBC2 until August of that year, when a week of airings at 17:15 – a lead-in for a fresh batch of Weakest Links – saw it reach the BBC Two top ten for the first time. It wouldn’t return to that BBC2 top ten until the following May, and even then only for a single episode.

My feeble human brain: 2, AI: 1

Oh, and it never aired in a prime-time slot on BBC One, either. Don’t know where you picked that up from.

My feeble human brain: 3, AI: 1

The challengers are given the opportunity to select a category for each round, and the Eggheads team must answer questions on that topic. If the challengers answer more questions correctly, they win the round. If the Eggheads answer more questions correctly, they win the round.

I mean, yes that’s technically correct. But you’re not getting a point for saying how a quiz works.

My feeble human brain: 3, AI: 1 (Goal disallowed)

Over the years, the Eggheads team has grown, with several members joining and leaving the team. Some notable former Eggheads include Barry Simmons, Pat Gibson, and Lisa Thiel. The current lineup of Eggheads includes Kevin Ashman, Judith Keppel, Barry Simmons, Chris Hughes, Steve Cooke, and Lisa Thiel.

While the number of eggheads has indeed grown over the years, putting together a list of just three notable ‘former Eggheads’ that includes two people you then say are current Eggheads is poor form. For shame. Also: the current line-up of Eggheads doesn’t include Judith Keppel. She left in October 2022. Pfft.

My feeble human brain: 4, AI: 1

The show has been a success for the BBC, with over 2,000 episodes produced as of 2021. In addition to the main show, several spin-offs have been created, including “Celebrity Eggheads,” “Revenge of the Egghead,” and “Eggheads Jumbo Quiz.”

Not going to knock the claim of ‘over 2,000 episodes’, as that’s the reason it’s here, so well done there. But, (and feel free to correct me in the comments, fellow squashy human brain beings) there’s never been a thing called “Eggheads Jumbo Quiz”. Poor show, ChatGPT.

FINAL SCORE: My feeble human brain: 5, AI: 2

CURRENT AI THREAT TO HUMANITY LEVEL:

Yeah, right. Hey, Supposed AI Menace That Will Doom Us All, do a picture of you being outwitted by me, a genius.

Bah.

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21: Pebble Mill

(Shown 3137 times, 1972-2004)

In this age of ENDLESS TELLY, it’s a bit weird to consider that back when Britain just had a tiny handful of channels to keep us entertained, they didn’t even bother broadcasting throughout the daylight hours, let alone overnight. If you’d scored a day off school with some horrible 70s Scarfolk disease (probably mumps), you might settle down on your brown and orange sofa, pull up your warming if scratchy blanket (also brown and/or orange) to watch whatever might be on telly. Except: the daytime TV menu seldom contained anything other than “For Schools comma Colleges”, which was hardly fun. Maybe there’ll be something else on after that… oh it’s an hour of the test card. Or, if you’re lucky, ‘Interval’.

I always felt a bit cheated that I was born too late to see what the difference was between ‘Closedown’ and ‘Interval’. Presumably one of them had different music to the other. Anyway, it was all the fault of that ruddy Postmaster General, limiting the aggregate totals of hours in which TV can broadcast in a given week, meaning Britain’s TV companies sensibly opted to do so during hours where more people would be watching. If you were a daytime viewer, the occasional public service remit broadcast of Nai Zindagi Naya Jeevan (see list passim) or Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol (see a small part of a future list-part) might be all you get.

However, October 1972 brought a bit of good news for Sickday Britons – the GPO bigwigs loosened their grip on the broadcasting reins, affording the nation Proper Daytime Telly for the first time. Nothing new before noon during termtime, mind – those hours were still reserved for broadcasting programmes for schools and colleges, but at least the hours between the lunchtime news and the start of children’s programming around 3pm could be filled with something other than Test Card F. And so, from Monday 2 October 1972, BBC-1 viewers got to experience Pebble Mill At One for the first time.

Welcomed to the airwaves by the Daily Telegraph’s Richard Last as “one of the first genuinely new programmes to emerge from unrestricted daytime hours”, Pebble Mill At One offered up at least a couple of new things.

THING ONE: a daily jaunt to plucky upstart regional outpost, um, Birmingham. Hey, it was a novelty at the time.

THING TWO: The whole affair coming from the foyer of the titular (and for the period, pretty darned modern) Pebble Mill studios. For a nation used to the hard-hitting likes of Tonight, 24 Hours and Panorama, this was a much gentler affair under the auspices of editor Terry Dobson. No custard creams were in danger of being dropped into cuppas.

If nothing else, it was probably a relief to the BBC that the building was doing something to help earn its upkeep. Constructed at the cost of £6m and initially decried as a white elephant, by the time Pebble Mill at One came along, the studios themselves – all 6500 square feet of them – were often filled to capacity (which might explain the need to fill At One in the foyer), but it took a while to reach that stage, such was the concentration of TV talent in London during those early years.

…At One came about thanks to former manager of BBC Radio Leeds, Phil Sidey. By 1972, he’d found himself in the role of Head of Network Production Centre, Birmingham, and having previously worked on 24 Hours and Nationwide, he certainly knew his way around a daily live production. Using his contemporary Midlands location, he was able to offer viewers what was considered a “non-Metropolitan view” of British life, which certainly helped sell the concept to BBC1 controller Paul Fox. With their moneyed rivals over at ITV busily preparing their own daytime TV schedule, a thrifty Beeb was never going to have the budget to take on an ITV line-up containing the likes of Emmerdale Farm, Lunchtime with Wogan or Crown Court on their own terms. But it did have that innate BBC talent at putting together reliable live programming on a daily basis.

To front the programme, former newsreader Bob Langley was chosen, having been deemed suitably avuncular for the new programme. Throw in a theme tune and title sequence that made the whole thing look like a precursor to Dynasty, and Cup-a-Soup Britain would never be the same again.

As mentioned, it was certainly didn’t hurt that BBC Pebble Mill was finally being used frequently. Theoretically, given its status as a single entity, the BBC should have been freed from the multifranchise bunfight between the big ITV regions trying to get their own shows to a national audience. In reality, the BBC regions were having an equally tough time getting their content shown nationally, with niche shows turned breakout hits like Pot Black or Gardener’s World the kinds of exceptions that found regular audiences.

The hope was that this would change. Pebble Mill became home to an English Regions Drama department, headed by David Rose, original producer of Z Cars, with fare from the department including a series of Thirty-Minute Theatre plays, alongside provincial offerings for the Play For Today strand. Luckily, things soon worked out for the Pebble Mill Studios, with it going on to become home to (at least briefly) Top Gear, Doctors, Telly Addicts, Howards’ Way, Juliet Bravo amongst others.

Back to 1972 and the studio’s daytime mainstay, and the Times didn’t seem particularly enamoured with the new programme, with TV reviewer Stanley Reynolds referring to it as “aggressively lower brow” and (it’s still 1972 there, this wasn’t as much of a cliche then) something that “makes Blue Peter look like Panorama”. He’d waited until December to write that, too.

Despite that stinging broadsheet rebuke, Pebble Mill at One went on to because a resolute rock within BBC-1’s daytime schedule, gradually picking up a fiercely loyal audience. Plus, it didn’t exactly hurt that it saw plenty of Golden Age of Light Entertainment stars popping in for a lunchtime chat.

And, this being something I have to mention as it always pleases me, if circumstances led to it going out at a time other than 1pm sharp, the programme title was occasionally amended accordingly:

By 1974, the programme was popular enough to warrant its very own Christmas specials. Still in the daytime schedule (on 23 and 24 December, mind), but they’re using the word ‘spectacular’ in the listing, so something big must have been going on. Not big enough to let them borrow an actual studio, but still.

In 1976, Pebble Mill at One was considered such a safe pair of weekday hands, the decision was made to make a Saturday night spin-off of the programme. As such, Saturday Night at the Mill roared into life at 11.30pm on 6 March 1976, pretty much as post-watershed as it was possible to get. So, what debauchery could an audience who’ve just tumbled in from the Dog and Trumpet with a belly full of Watneys expect? Well, the Daily Mirror’s preview of the programme promised a programme every bit as “bland, folksy and fairly predictable” as the daytime counterpart. Indeed, the safe pairs of hands Bob Langley and Donn MacLeod were on hosting duties, with the premiere episode featuring guests Michael Bentine, Elaine Delmar and Buddy Greco. There was also time for “a nostalgic look at British films and television of twenty years ago”.

Not going to lie, that’s probably preferable to The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV.

While it hardly set the TV schedules ablaze at the time, Saturday Night at the Mill certainly proved a sturdy weekend outpost for BBC1, running until July 1981. The final episode saw hosts Bob Langley and Jenny Hanley joined by Honor Blackman, Griff Rhys Jones and Edward Woodward. Not a bad way to bow out. And at least they’d finally settled on a co-host for Langley by that point. Previous co-hosts had included Hayley Mills, Liza Goddard and writer Anrianna Stassinopoulos, none of whom apparently proved a success. The latter reportedly failed as a result of her Greek accent proving impenetrable to the parochial ears of the viewing public – Stassinopoulos lasted just five episodes.

Additionally, if nothing else, Saturday Night… led to one of the great Not Quite The Right Names Of The Programme listings in 1977:

Back at the day job, O.G. Pebble Mill at One would continue all the way through to 1986 (despite having their special ‘Pebble Mill at Ten‘ celebration in 1982 kicking off with the Black and sodding White sodding Minstrels), but by then it was time for BBC1’s shiny new daytime schedule to take over. Out went the old guard (mainly Programmes For Schools and Colleges, which shuffled over to BBC2), and in came the new Daytime UK line-up. At the hand of then-BBC1 Controller Michael Grade, Pebble Mill at One made way for a new One O’Clock News bulletin, and in October 1987 the Pebble Mill at One chat-and-chicken-soup remit was to be fulfilled by brand new early afternoon chat show ‘Daytime Live’. Which came live each lunchtime from… Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham.

By 1990, the fairly bland title of Daytime Live was abandoned for the equally unmemorable ‘Scene Today’, which really sounds more like a regional news bulletin. And so, with no small sense of inevitability, 1991 saw Pebble Mill returned to Britain’s screens, this time shorn of the ‘at One’ suffix. The regular set within the lobby of Pebble Mill Studios was retained, but by now the likes of Bob Langley had been replaced with Alan Titchmarsh, but the regular recipe of light chat and light music was retained.

Then, in 1996, this happened.

Clearly, things had got badly out of control. In March of that year, the final regular edition of Pebble Mill aired on BBC1.

And that was it. Save for a single retrospective programme on Pebble Mill, made to mark the closure of the storied studios in 2004.

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Phew, we got there. Sorry this was a bit of low-energy effort this time. A proper piece of Heavyweight BBC Programming in the next update, however. See you next time, armchair Britain.

Into the Top Thirty we go, and a real treat in store for anyone hoping to see a picture of Ken Burras examining a Luffa. Kicking off with a programme promising to make the most out of new-fangled colour television.

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30: Gardeners’ World

(Shown 2736 times, 1968-2021)

Borne out of Percy Thrower’s Gardening Club (526 episodes, 1955-1967), Gardeners’ World promised a fresh look at gardening for the colour TV era. It’s a format that made for ideal comfort viewing for many, perhaps making it no surprise it’s a programme that’s still with us today.

Gardener’s Club may have offered “a weekly date for enthusiasts to meet Percy Thrower and his gardening friends”, but Gardeners’ World set goals that were a little more lofty. Writing for the Radio Times in advance of the first episode on 5 January 1968, producer Paul Morby set out his stall. For the full effect, you may want to start listening to some Elgar… now.

For twelve years Gardening Club on BBC-1, with Percy Thrower and professional or top amateur guests, has served the nation with its gardening facts, techniques and inspiration. During my eight years’ association as producer, I have opened 100,000 letters which have said ‘thank you’ to the artists concerned.

I realise that we must have exasperated and disappointed, even insulted viewers on many occasions: the connoisseur breeder of orchids has little patience with a programme about polishing onions for the showbench. But our commission has been to serve all levels of gardener in the entire British Isles.

No hobby is practised here with greater devotion and skill than gardening. It is not just a ‘weekend pottering’; it is an Art as well as a Craft. Its exponents, who practise in all sizes and shapes of garden, on allotments, in backyards, patios, or window-boxes, will continue to be the audience we aim at.

After our opening feature from Oxford with Ken Burras, programmes are waiting on garden design and garden history, on carboys, cacti, and houseplants, on chrysanthemums, tomatoes, and dahlias, for the millions who fight every year to achieve ‘their best crop ever.’ Percy Thrower will be there for these programmes, and there will be film visits to some of the great National Trust and private gardens.

The British people have a right to be proud of their gardens, and of the enormous range of plants, introduced by collectors from every corner of the world, that will thrive in our climate. A plant that once grew only in the Himalayas now lives and brightens corners of Wapping, Wakefield, and Wick.

Those splendid amateurs who cultivate the finest vegetables and fruit are served by the professional skills of research stations, trial grounds, and top nurserymen.

There will be no limits to the plants and places covered by Gardeners’ World.

Paul Morby, Radio Times issue 2303, 30th December 1967

Stirring stuff. Not that Gardeners’ Club was the first horticultural programme ever put out on the television service, of course. 21 November 1936, only a few weeks into the life of BBCtv, saw the first Gardening Demonstration by broadcaster (and “one of the most popular talkers on the air” according to the Radio Times) C H Middleton, and while the audience will surely have been tiny, the benefit of seeing an actual garden (albeit in 405 lines on a tiny screen) offered an immediate boon over any radio equivalent. And so, with Middleton’s demo of autumn pruning techniques, a distinctly British genre of television broadcasting was born.

(Aside: despite the lack of moving pictures, gardening tips had long been popular on the radio by that point, and had been running since the early days of the BBC. Ever since 2ZY Manchester broadcast Gardening Notes by P. Langford for the first time in November 1922, in fact. And even now, it’s clear Gardeners’ Question Time will outlive us all.)

Following those early Morby-helmed episodes, Gardeners’ World would go on to become a fixture in the BBC2 schedules (and an occasional visitor to the BBC1 daytime schedules in 1973, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1993 and 1994, if you’re wondering). In all that time, while broadcasting norms have evolved, from the days of the early BBC2 Colour service to modern-day HD widescreen, the content has remained the same: amiable presenters chatting about what to do with the things that grow in your garden, things you might like to start growing in your garden, and hey! get a load of these gardens. No attempt to focus on attracting a greater share of the 18-24 demo, no Top Gear-style rebrand, the only changes coming when someone like Alan Titchmarsh regenerates into someone like Monty Don.

It certainly hasn’t hurt matters that the show has been popular. Very popular, in fact. Looking at the publicly-available BARB viewing figures from 1998-2018, GW has been a hardy performer, being the most-watched BBC2 programme on 44 different weeks throughout that period, during its post-millennial peak posting the kinds of numbers that TV producers would strangle their nan for today. It has featured in BBC2’s weekly top ten no less than 482 occasions during that period. Given there were only (by my reckoning) 600 different episodes during that period, that’s an especially impressive feat.

In fact, who’d like to see a rundown of the ten most-watched Gardeners’ World episodes of the last 25 years? Because that’s what’s about to happen.

10. Fri 27th Feb 2004 (4.57m viewers)

With spring around the comer, the team get started on the £20 flower border and meet a novice vegetable gardener, while Monty Don inspects the Berryfields garden after its first winter. With Chris Beardshaw and Sarah Raven.

9. Fri 19th Mar 1999 (4.61m)

Gay Search helps viewers to gain inspiration in the first of six features focusing on design. Stephen Lacey visits an Oxfordshire garden rescued from ruin by the late interior designer Nancy Lancaster, while Pippa Greenwood offers advice on sowing vegetable seeds in her organic kitchen garden, and Alan Titchmarsh provides more timely tips from Hampshire.

8. Fri 9th Apr 1999 (4.64m)

Gay Search’s garden-design course reaches the stage when she gives a guide to choosing flowers and foliage. Pippa Greenwood picks out tomato seedlings and sows carrots, parsnips and cauliflowers in her organic kitchen garden, while Stephen Lacey explores the garden rooms surrounding a former vicarage near the Norfolk coast. Alan Titchmarsh imparts advice from his Hampshire home.

7. Fri 26th Feb 1999 (4.65m)

Stephen Lacey travels to sunny California to find the colourful horticultural antidote to the grey skies of the British winter; Pippa Greenwood plans ahead for a fruitful garden and a bumper harvest by giving her guide to planting fruit trees; and Gay Search visits the peaceful haven of a small cottage-style garden in Buckinghamshire.

6. Fri 16th Apr 1999 (4.67m)

Gay Search concludes her Living Space features by looking at garden furniture and accessories. She also visits a spring garden in Clevedon, Somerset. Stephen Lacey takes in the spring bulbs at the public gardens of Highdown in the South Downs, and Alan Titchmarsh gives his weekly tips from his Hampshire garden.

5. Fri 14th Aug 1998 (4.69m)

While Alan Titchmarsh offers topical advice on gardening jobs for the weekend, Gay Search visits a national collection of penstemons flourishing in Portland Bill, Dorset. Ceri Thomas views some exotic vegetables growing on Asian-run allotments in Handsworth, Birmingham, and Stephen Lacey visits Ireland to see a classically inspired shady garden in Dublin.

4. Fri 26th Mar 1999 (4.72m)

Stephen Lacey explores the garden rooms surrounding a former vicarage near the Norfolk coast, Pippa Greenwood gives advice on sowing vegetable seeds in her organic kitchen garden, and Gay Search continues her guide to garden design with surveying and soil testing.

3. Fri 7th May 1999 (4.76m)

Gay Search provides a simple design solution to transform a shady passageway, Pippa Greenwood builds a new compost bin in her organic kitchen garden and Stephen Lacey pays his final visit to Beth Chatto’s garden in Essex, where he explores the lush plants around the water gardens. Alan Titchmarsh provides more advice from his Hampshire garden.

2. Fri 21st May 1999 (4.80m)

Dan Pearson shows how the domestic gardener can learn from plants in their natural habitats. Pippa Greenwood introduces pest controls to her test greenhouses and, following an appeal to viewers, the first spectacular small garden is featured. Back in his Hampshire garden, Alan Titchmarsh dispenses more tips and advice.

1. Fri 19th Feb 1999 (5.87m viewers)

Alan Titchmarsh returns to present a new series full of horticultural hints. To mark its 30th anniversary there’s a look back at the programme’s history, while Stephen Lacey looks forward to the next millennium with reports from Paris and California on the future of gardening.

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29: (The) Daily Politics

(Shown 2793 times, 2003-2018)

Now we’re definitely in an era of Too Much Politics (no? Just me? Should I stop looking at Twitter?), it seems almost quaint that it was once a thing that could be pigeonholed into occasional off-peak broadcasting nooks, generally on Sunday mornings when sensible people were busy sleeping. As we’ve previously established, for a long time the BBC’s main daily outlet for all things Westminster was, well, Westminster (aka Westminster Daily and Westminster On-Line). But come the dawn of the third millennium, politics wasn’t just safely contained within an old building on the bank of the Thames. Devolution had resulted in policy-making totems at Stormont, Holyrood and The Senedd. And so it was time for the BBC’s flagship political programme to broaden it’s horizons to other parts of the UK.

Well, okay. It still focused almost exclusively on Westminster, but it did get itself a new name and a bit of a refresh.

The start of the transition came about in September 2000, when Greg Dyke demanded a review of the Beeb’s political output. As a result of the subsequent review, the axe fell on a number of long running mainstays, such as On The Record (after 14 years), Westminster (after 31 years) and Despatch Box (just four years). The revamp came with an increased budget for political programming, which leapt from £18.5 to £23.5m per year. Think about that while watching BBC World News clumsily dumped on top of the BBC News Channel so they can stop paying half the newsreaders.

A new approach was demanded, and in 2002 some Big Changes were reported in the Guardian as being on the horizon. Changes such as a post-Question Time political roundup on Thursday nights, which became dignity-vacuum This Week with Andrew Neill, while Saturday mornings would see a new show targeted at “under-45s”, with potential presenters named as Rod Liddle, James O’Brien and Fi Glover. That programme seems to have become Weekend with Rod Liddle and Kate Silverton, which lasted for a total of… six episodes before freeing up the Saturday 9am slot for Repeats Of Old Wimbledons. Plus, perhaps inevitably given it was the dawn of digital TV, the promise of brand new interactive BBC service I-Can, reported as offering “direct participation between the public and decision-makers”. That seems to have quietly disappeared before any launch – the only other reference I can find to this on the entire internet is… the BBC press release that the Guardian article was gleaned from. I’m going to assume someone released that they could offer the same service much more affordably by just having an email address. If anyone does have any other details on I-Can, I’d love to know more.

At the centre of all this: a full relaunch and rebrand for Westminster, with a full two hour slot each Wednesday so that in-depth coverage can be provided of PMQs, with hour-long slots running, as before, each Tuesday and Thursday.

And so, on Wednesday 8 January 2003, The Daily Politics (which lost its definitive article somewhere along the way) made its debut on our screens, with Andrew Neil and Daisy Sampson at the controls.

(For the record, as this was billed as “the successor to Westminster”, I’m treating it as an individual programme, and not a continuation of Westminster/Westminster On-Line/Westminster Daily, because it was complicated enough as it was.)

The new approach proved to be a successful one, so much so that the programme moved from three to five episodes per week from April 2005, with hour-long episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays reduced to half-hours, with new half-hour episodes on Mondays and Fridays. By 2012, these five episodes were complemented by a sister show each Sunday, with the appropriately-named Sunday Politics differentiating itself from the main show by incorporating regional opt-outs allowing for local political affairs to be covered in appropriate depth. (NOTE: I’m treating Sunday Politics as a distinct entity, by the way.)

All good things must etc, and in 2018 – after fifteen years on air – it was time for Daily Politics to be replaced with something fresher, or as the BBC press release at the time had it, “to improve its digital coverage, better serve its audiences, and provide more value for money”. Inspired by the pacier stateside approach of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and aiming to coax the wider range of people interested in politics via social media and podcasting back onto the legacy medium of TV, Politics Live vowed to be more discursive and conversational, and less beholden to topics MPs would prefer to be discussed. Plus, in a nod to the changing times, studio guests were given reusable branded plastic cups, rather than Daily Politics’ branded mugs.

And so, on Tuesday 24 July 2018, Daily Politics aired for the very last time, the final episodes coming with the promise of “a political jamboree on College Green”. And, following that political par-tay, The Daily Politics was dead, and in came Politics Live, fashionable lower-case lettering and everything.

If only they knew how busy the next few years of politicking would make them.

You’ll notice Daily Politics was only ever broadcast once on BBC One. If you’re wondering, that was on 13 July 2016: “Andrew Neil and Jo Coburn present live from Westminster as David Cameron conducts his final Prime Minister’s Questions before handing in his resignation.” Remember him? Seems so long ago, doesn’t it?

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That’s that. A pair of programmes a tad less sexy than Top of the Pops (and Pointless), I’ll grant you. But get your hotpants ready for the next thrilling installment. Excitement is on the horizon: guaranteed.