The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - February 26th-March 3rd 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
February 26th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: once Michael Fish is done That's Life appears, featuring a showjumping cat and Michael Groth playing a lute; the early days of Spitting Image were a mess behind the scenes - get yourself a copy of Tooth & Claw - but it was like nothing TV had seen before when it started. The cold open instantly sets things up and Philip Pope gets to do his Dylan impression.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: by now the Saturday morning video review was into its Trevor & Simon's Video Garden phase. Ever wondered what the Proclaimers and Michael Palin thought of Pavement?; the Dream City cinema fire from which eleven people were eventually died leads the ITN Weekend News, ahead of freedom for Yeltsin coup conspirators and Waco cult members and, oh look, Israel/Palestine-related violence.
MEANWHILE… BBC Schools' Come Outside used Lynda Baron to explain things to pre-schoolers. Today in 1997 her topic was marmalade, flying a small plane to a Seville orange harvest. (Or rather her body double does and green screen handles the rest.)
February 27th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Marty Feldman, making a short return to sketch comedy on Marty Back Together Again, and Derek Griffiths duet on a Tom Lehrer song.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: The South Bank Show recounts the history and sociology of rap music with the aid of Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, KRS One, Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg among others in Looking For The Perfect Beat; Ruby Wax does her thing, managing to break her chair in the process, as topical correspondent on Sunday Night Clive. James’ main guest is Michael Palin, who's "heavily identified with animals all over the world", which is a question that's been allowed to wither but allows Palin to tell his pig anecdote.
MEANWHILE… by 1993 That's Life is going heavy on investigative journalism complete with OBs and post-Roger Cook undercover work, not that that means they can't also feature a lovelorn crab, maggot racing and junior sheepherders.
February 28th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: "Is the music business really that glamorous?" asks BBC Schools' Scene, following Sweet to find out, finding along the way some very good behind the scenes Top Of The Pops footage; CON LAB LIB? The general election, which would surely sort out the country's divided political issues once and for all. Alastair Burnet helms the all night and all morning BBC coverage, fifteen hours of it retained by BBC Parliament. (part two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight)
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the first of the BBC's two big post-British apocalypse dramas for the year, Play For Today Z For Zachariah, in which the last two survivors find each other in the Welsh countryside and then learn that hell is other people.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Denis Healey joins Zig, Zag and Chris in the bathroom for The Crunch, where in just under eight remarkable minutes he balances sweetcorn on his eyebrows, dons a Dracula mask, discusses monetarism in the former Soviet Union and appraises EYC.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Kylie runs the Parkinson gauntlet, flanked by Robson Green and Paul O'Grady, and Parky gallantly tells her she's too old for kids at 35.
MEANWHILE… today in 1988: "...and I should tell you that you are actually sitting next to Nicholas Winton."
February 29th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: as you might expect with series being halfway through there's not a lot of new Leap Day clippage around, so here's BBC1 filling its mid-morning with Pages From Ceefax.
March 1st
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Breakfast Time attempt to find a way to promote Ullo John Gotta New Motor on Alexei Sayle's terms; later on he makes it onto a live Top Of The Pops and despite the appropriate prop clearly runs out of things to do pretty quickly; plenty to go through on the BBC Nine O'Clock News with John Humphrys - a union ban at GCHQ, football hooliganism, David Dimbleby versus the NUJ and the debate over divorced people remarrying in church.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Dexter Fletcher era of Gamesmaster comes to an end with the Team Challenge final, a production wreck involving games being changed mid-round, arguing families and the producer being fired. And all for the infamously terrible CD32 and Atari Jaguar; Alison Steadman *is* Sarah Dunant! Louise Jameson, Michael Pennington and future Olivier winner Henry Goodman also appear in Degas And Pissarro Fall Out, a Without Walls rip into The Late Show by way of re-examining the Dreyfus Affair.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: after 37 years Look And Read ends with time travel adventure Shadow Play, with Sophie Aldred, Javine Duvitski, young lead Jack Bannon later of The Imitation Game and Endeavour, and an interstitial sketch series with Doreen 'Mrs Warboys' Mantle as Queen Victoria.
March 2nd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: the road to Micro Live continues with Computers In Control, in which Ian McNaught Davis delved into robotics, real world detection devices and so forth. Once more, the Computer Literacy Project archive has come through for us; Jools Holland gets the cliche in a decade early by playing boogie-woogie piano with Thomas Dolby on The Tube. Sadly Magnus Pyke doesn't appear to contribute to She Blinded Me With Science.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: a hell of a concept for a Screen Two, Genghis Cohn stars Robert Lindsay as a former SS officer being haunted by Antony Sher as the ghost of a Jewish comedian he killed. Also features Diana Rigg, Frances de la Tour and the first significant role for Daniel Craig.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: while soon overshadowed by more hard-hitting hospital dramas No Angels, with its central quartet of hard partiers, attempted to do for nurses what Teachers had done for, er, teachers.
March 3rd
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Not On Your Nellie was essentially LWT's continuity Nearest And Dearest with all the recycling and cheap gags that implies, Hylda Baker's character moving to London to help her dad run a pub. She wrote and performs live the closing theme too.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday Superstore celebrates Mike Read's 37th birthday, two days late, with Shaky, Bananarama, Break Machine, Bobby George, Roddy Llewellyn, the kids' favourite Dennis Locorriere of Dr Hook and Sarah investigating home gaming; fair to assume that until CD:UK in 2003 this Tommy Boyd grilling about films and brownies on The Saturday Show was Madonna's only studio appearance on Saturday morning TV; bored housewife decides to become saloon car racing driver. Ah, that old comedy-drama canard. Paula Milne, who created Angels and later became a prolific screenwriter, came up with Driving Ambition. Here's the whole series. Tim Roth is in episode 2, if you like.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mark E Smith on Top Of The Pops, scrap of A4 in hand/pocket, nearly getting thrown out of the studio before he'd even rehearsed, at the invitation of the Inspiral Carpets. But was Andi Peters happy about it? No, he was not; one of three episodes penned by Steven Moffat, the second series of Dawn French's black comedy anthology Murder Most Horrid begins with her as a suicidal social worker turned Peter Vaughan assassin at Amanda Donohoe's behest.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: checking back in with Carlton's ill-starred attempt at a TV Just A Minute, featuring Tony Slattery, Hattie Hayridge, Neil Mullarkey and, of course, Tony Banks MP.
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