The Why Don't YouTube? Catchup - September 2nd-8th 2024
From the house of @whydontyoutube
September 2nd
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the pilot of Rising Damp came out of auditor and failed novelist Eric Chappell's play The Banana Box, which had a lot more emphasis on contemporary race suspicion and notions of nationality. It also in its original staging had Wilfred Brambell as the lead (known as Rooksby until an actual landlord with that name read a promotional interview and complained), which might make an interesting counterfactual. Leonard Rossiter, Don Warrington and Frances de la Tour were in place by the time it reached London, Paul Jones resigned himself to a future of Beat The Teacher on turning it down and allowing Richard Beckinsale - not his only big new TV role that week - to take the role. Yorkshire were so pleased with the critical and audience reaction that they immediately commissioned a series.
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: A Moment To Talk drops in on "some television viewers", which sadly isn't as Gogglebox decades ahead of time as it sounds but a cross-section of members of the public discussing their experiences with early Channel 4 Friday night current affairs strand The Friday Alternative. Tell us more about Coroners' Court!
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Roy Castle dies. The BBC Nine O'Clock News headlines, preceded by the BBC1 Saturday menu, lead on "cancer sufferer" as the main point of his career. The rest of the bulletin is full of mid-90s concerns - the CSA, Railtrack, the Mir space station, Gerry Adams being dubbed...; Passengers attempted to fuse Friday late night Channel 4 and world youth culture, which means awkward segues from rapping cops to Massive Attack to shelled buildings in Mostar, all linked by the voice of Jo Whiley.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: irascible fish out of water - ironically, given he's in Cornwall - Doc Martin has its roots in a secondary character, again played by Martin Clunes, from acclaimed Brenda Blethyn film Saving Grace. The roll call of reliable middle aged female actors is all new; two years after being ousted from HIGNFY Angus Deayton returned to the panel show presenting game with Bognor Or Bust, which couldn't work out whether it was a comedy show or an actual quiz, stole its final game from Don't Forget Your Toothbrush and wasn't recommissioned.
September 3rd
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Tom Edwards attempts to keep his debonair Thames linkman self in the face of both mechanical failure and, likely not unconnected, a literally just concluded technicians' strike; the BBC's news programming is shaken up with the Six O'Clock News replacing the failed Nationwide successor Sixty Minutes as central news bulletin and the launches of North West Tonight and London Plus, though given there's a cat in the studio and Bob Wellings is mentioned you'd be stretched to find the difference; Glynis Barber had inhabited the human version, amid cartoon digital paintbox backdrops, of Daily Mirror risque wartime comic strip heroine Jane a couple of years earlier; now came Jane In The Desert, much the same but in... the desert.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Challenge Anneka truck passes its MOT once more and the Rice rigmarole restarts at Wormwood Scrubs. Finally! They've... oh, right, it's building a riding school at the local pony centre.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: most of the Men Behaving Badly team - Neil Morrissey, Simon Nye, Beryl Vertue, BBC1 - came back together for Carrie & Barry, in which he and Claire Rushbrook try to keep their marriage healthy for, or maybe despite, a teenage daughter from a previous relationship (played by Sarah Quintrell, now a writer who worked on His Dark Materials and The Power) and a cabbie best mate in Mark Williams. While mostly forgotten from all of their plaudits, as a prime-time single camera sitcom at a time when prime-time single camera sitcoms were seen as passe, Morrissey says this is his favourite role of all, so here’s the whole series; maybe its fate is partially because Michelle Gomez's other sitcom starting that night left more of a trail/influence - in fact they can't stop bringing back Green Wing in one form or another. Deserved, though, and finally a hit for Victoria Pile who had writing credits going back twenty years. Also, John Oliver appears as a car salesman within the first minute. Channel 4OD On Demand will sort you out for the rest.
ALSO: the batteries are in the hoofer-doofer, Noel's been to the special knitwear area of the boutique, and Telly Addicts begins today in 1985. The families have left a special space at the end of the sofa for him, which is nice.
September 4th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: the eighth and last series of Steptoe & Son starts as a photographer - Roy Holder, Chas from Ace Of Wands and Timothy's best mate Frank in Sorry! - rents the yard for a modelling shoot involving Madeleine Smith, causing the inhabitants to dress up for personal gain; Granada's Late Night Drama strand features Starmaker, written by and starring Ray Davies and featuring the Kinks performing live songs from the following year's Soap Opera concept album amid a weird mix of kitchen sink drama, heavy handed satire and Granada shiny floor. Davies later said he couldn't watch it: "I knew it was going to be bad. It wasn't the producer’s fault... we got squeezed into some late-night slot, and we got the guy who does the drama sound. We always get resentment from those kind of people because we’re a rock band trying to do something on a theatrical level."
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Thames daytime talk-in, er, Daytime starts with Sara Kennedy debating the day's main issues, in this case talking to the wives of miners, and linking to Khalid Aziz literally in the field; Pop Quiz pits Paul Jones, Tom Robinson and PP Arnold against Bob Geldof, Steve Marriott and, embarking on a good few months of knowingly associating with Mike Read after "all that", Holly Johnson; The Lenny Henry Show begins - not back nor a repeat - with the Thriller routine.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: the Cowell supremacy was underway and there was no chance of slowing down its momentum, not with The X Factor opening its audition doors; as with so many others (Thaw, Kemp, Lancashire) ITV really, really tried to get something out of having Caroline Quentin under contract. The nearest they got was Von Trapped, a one-off by Gimme Gimme Gimme writer Jonathan Harvey about a Sound Of Music obsessive who goes to Salzburg to sort herself out, also featuring Jim Carter, Una Stubbs, Cranford's Emma Lowndes as a transmasc and future Corrie stars Vicky Binns and Natalie Gumede; Parkinson makes his ITV debut with - but of course - Billy Connolly, Tom Cruise with extra close close-ups, Kelly Holmes wearing her Olympic gold medals throughout as if she never takes them off, and, somewhat unexpectedly on all fronts, Razorlight.
September 5th
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: "what, from 'ere?" Porridge... well, it's a better title than Prisoner And Escort. Lennie Godber, Richard Beckinsale starting both his iconic sitcom roles in the same week, is newly imprisoned and Norman Stanley Fletcher has to show him and Heslop - so was Brian Glover's role meant to be bigger? - the ropes
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Minder returns with Arthur having acquired some smuggled tobacco and sending Terry and his new friend Arnie, Ray Winstone, off to get it. Bill Treacher pops into the Winchester at the end, a few months before he decided the Queen Vic was more welcoming; horror was evidently passe as Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense opens up with Mark Of The Devil, in which desperate gangster Dirk Benedict kills tattoo artist Burt Kwouk only to find a mysterious mark developing on his chest.
20 YEARS AGO TODAY: if we must have a God slot let it be filled with the likes of Tom Baker, talking to Kate Sanderson for The Heaven And Earth Show; Christopher Brookmyre's debut novel Quite Ugly One Morning is turned into a James Nesbitt vehicle, with a strong cast including Eddie Marsan, Annette Crosbie, Daniela Nardini and of course Fish from Marillion, by ITV with a whole lot of changes made, not least that Nesbitt is quite clearly not from Edinburgh, where the book is set; self-important role playing drama-doc Crisis Command: Could You Run The Country? tackles what might happen were the UK threatened by a mysterious infectious disease, like *that* would ever happen.
ALSO... Lenny Goes To Town was a series in which Lenny Henry went to a place and made substandard jokes about it amid bits of business and surprises, but the opener from Stoke-On-Trent today in 1998 is notable not just for Robbie Williams turning up and a Theophilus P Wildebeeste revival but for sketches starring Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton.
September 6th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: Daytime discusses the creation of and reaction to wealth with guests including Anita Roddick, Viv Nicholson and a man who if we didn't know better we'd think was from smarmy playboy casting central; if Porridge, as featured yesterday, was Ronnie Barker's sitcom alpha then The Magnificent Evans, written by Open All Hours' Roy Clarke but lasting one series, may have been his omega, his overconfident, tactless Welsh photographer forgetting Barker characters are supposed to be amenable; The Hot Shoe Show acted as a showcase in the modern hoofing to pop on shiny floors idiom of dance, Wayne Sleep and Bonnie Langford heading a troupe including TOTP long server Cherry Gillespie. No full shows, but someone's kindly archived a whole load of routines from across its two series.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: after a five minute piece to camera astrology really doesn't make for gripping television. Russell Grant's All Star Show found this out the hard way, insisting Grant couldn't just be a chat show host, admittedly wise as this proved in and of itself. Instead he gets out his tarot set for Eartha Kitt, giving Cilla Black her future, arranges a meaningless surprise involving two Gladiators (Zodiac, obviously) and goes to Greece for the hell of it. The show was so well produced the closing credits list someone who was on an earlier show.
September 7th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: a rare chance to head Islandswards, not for tremendous protein value for once but Channel Report and its blinds drawn across set, though doubtless it insisted on newsroom relentless supervision. Most of the actual adverts are pleasingly cheap; after a successful pilot at the end of 1982 'Allo 'Allo!, to give it its properly punctuated title, begins its multifaceted farce, The Fallen Madonna in play straight away; Les Dawson takes over Blankety Blank and immediately makes an important statement.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mas-sive 94 follows six people preparing for Notting Hill Carnival and the culture around it; in-car chase footage Police Stop! had already been a successful sell-through video when the forces' footage was adapted for the benefit of Alistair Stewart and ITV, everyone somehow forgetting in the process that Sky had already run several specials under the same title with much the same action, which is why it became Police Camera Action! for the rest of its life; Points Of View races through complaints about extended news, overrunning cricket and Keith Floyd, then saunters at its own pace through those crying at Animal Hospital Live and a vox pop in Exeter about the Proms.
September 8th
40 YEARS AGO TODAY: 3-2-1 puts on a murder mystery musical number, Mayhem At The Manor, featuring Leslie Crowther unleashing his inner music man. Bill Pertwee, Dilys Watling and Felix Bowness are mere decoration by comparison; Paul Daniels sets a man's arm on fire, demonstrates an unrideable bike, does some clowning with future Broadway Lion King star Geoff Hoyle and caps it with "a spiritualistic effect" involving Britain's most spiritually enlightening man, Richard Stilgoe. However good he is, though, a ventriloquist as the speciality guest is a bit of a letdown.
30 YEARS AGO TODAY: Bad Influence returns for a third series and things aren't going well - not only have they changed the 'Andy and Violet in the game' titles but the Datablast is dead too! No amount of Earthworm Jim or people dressed as Mortal Kombat 2 characters can make up for either.
ALSO... titles rarely come better than Angela Rippon Meets The Hoofers, in which the sometime Wise-botherer traces an apparent revival in tap dancing today in 1981, taking lessons from Lionel Blair and advice from classic era Hollywood musicals star Ann Miller.
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