GREAT NEWS FOR ALL READERS!
From now on we're going back to weekly newsletters - from Monday anyway, this is the bridge issue - and drastically reducing the amount of programming we write about. The reason is possibly obvious, namely we were spending literally all our spare time writing the extensive daily Newsletters, battling personal issues, the engagement stats that have made us wonder whether WDYT? is still worth it at all and the losing fight with the work-self imposed work-life balance, for next to no reception or recompense (ko-fi link at the bottom, ta), so what we write up is from now going to be cut down to the most significant or interesting shows. Hope that's OK with you.
June 1st
30 YEARS AGO
More of Games World: House Of Games, which for those who missed our first ook before saw Jane Goldman - co-writer of the X-Men and Kingsmen screenplays, also Mrs Jonathan Ross - and then-Sega Power editor Neil West in a fantastical graphics bluescreen house linking reviews, including some from Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Like the parent show, it was made by Hewland International who were also responsible for Gamesmaster so seemingly just wanted to do something with gaming all year round.
June 2nd
70 YEARS AGO
If you want a marker post in the development of television as *the* mass medium you should look no further than the Queen's Coronation as the driver for set sales taking telly into normal households, an audience of 20.4 million making it the first event to outdo the radio listenership figures. The day before the event commentator Berkeley Smith took a BBC TV van along the procession route for Newsreel.
40 YEARS AGO
Return Of The Jedi goes on general release in UK cinemas, the morning after the Dominion Theatre in London had a special trilogy showing. While obviously nowhere near what there would be now, there are cosplayers including a Leia who didn't fancy being vox popped by ITN. For what it's worth, this is what Iain Johnstone on Film 83 thought.
20 YEARS AGO
The Terry & Gaby Show began on daytime Five, an attempt by Chris Evans in his production wilderness years to sample Wogan and Roslin’s live chemistry from Children In Needs past that didn't work once blown up to hours every weekday despite having the long cherished Wogan's Web as a point to start from. One of the regular features in the early months was Johnny Ball answering viewers' questions mostly of a physics and linguistic bent, which someone has made a compilation of beginning with show number one.
Spooks' second series starts with the bomb death of the Northern Ireland secretary *and* a Serbian war criminal seeking revenge whose plans are revealed through the discovery of MOD mole Benedict Cumberbatch.
June 3rd
40 YEARS AGO
Two big guests on Nationwide, as after a report on Return Of The Jedi's US launch "Princess Carrie Fisher", as Sue Cook calls her, reveals how to act against bluescreen, while Dean Martin previews his first solo UK shows to and plays pool with Tom Brook in his Hollywood home.
Baffled old hack confused by technology alert as Whistle Test's David Hepworth gets to grips with the idea of music on computers, with the aid of new records by Pete Shelley and, of course, Chris Sievey.
30 YEARS AGO
The best remembered and most loved of the Rik Mayall Presents series - also the last in the first run - Dancing Queen is the one with Rik as the hooray Henry bridegroom being spiked at his stag night by apparent friends Nathaniel Parker and Martin Clunes, and having been too drowsy to appreciate stripper Helena Bonham Carter - already being typecast as a Merchant Ivory English rose, which she hated - finds himself on a train, with a one way ticket sans trousers and with a woman he should have recognised from the previous night but doesn't, with all finding the train is surprisingly heading for Scarborough. The reason people remember it is NO NOT THAT BIT but the subtle romance and charm inherent as Mayall realises what he wants from life, finds out who his friends and fiancée really are and does the right thing for once. Also, Scarborough looks almost bathetic. A year later Clunes directed and starred in Staggered, a film in which a bridegroom who has the same first name as Mayall's character is spiked on his stag do and wakes up underdressed and miles from his wedding...
June 4th
30 YEARS AGO
Modern cricket's Halley's Comet moment, Shane Warne's "ball of the century" to Mike Gatting. Most television, BBC included, seems to use Australia's Channel 9 commentary these days as it's Richie Benaud on the mike, whereas in the Beeb box Tony Lewis is at first just as baffled as Gatting (17:44)
Part of already endangered Holbeck Hall in Scarborough chooses its moment to collapse over a cliff live on Calendar. Richard Whiteley's face when he thinks he's finished makes it.
Points Of View starts with someone criticising the theme music and continues in much the same tone with upset dog owners, royalists (at Rustie Lee), Kathy Kirby fans, naval base fans, coriander sceptics and Delia conspiracists.
The last in the series of Have I Got News For You and you don't need us to tell you the circumstances under which Paul Merton has ended up being paired with saturated white fat product. What you may not remember is how Merton plays the partnership throughout, his T-shirt bring a series-long running joke to a climax or how the cards are stacked against him even greater in the missing words round. Or, actually, the official apology to Michael Winner, by unexpected way of Calley from Grange Hill.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
June 1st
1981: in a move that hurts your head if you think about it too much, Ted Bovis - introduced as Paul Shane but in character alongside Gladys Pugh - sings Holiday Rock on Cheggers Plays Pop. At least it's not You've Lost That Loving Feeling.
1987: John Craven's Beatles primer on Newsround marks his understanding that the twentieth anniversary of Sgt Pepper was as important as the album's release itself. Back in the broom cupboard, what we'd give to see Peter Duncan sporting a beard of bees.
1988: Take Two asks kids about the first series of Red Dwarf - a post-watershed programme! - and its "heavily disguised message",
1992: what's that, Simon Groom? You want to return to Blue Peter six years after leaving to perform your self-released Europop cover of Can't Help Falling In Love? And you want to sing it live? That's going to go well. Richard Marson, who was around Children's BBC production well before becoming editor of the show, says of the pre-recorded performance "the buzz that something unmissably awful was happening went round TV Centre and offices were full of people glued to the internal monitor system in fascinated horror".
1992: the series of Cluedo with Tom Baker as Professor Plum, and no spoilers but this was bound to happen eventually. Given the series concept.
June 2nd
1975: like watching the balance of power shift in real time, Paul Daniels appeared on The David Nixon Show. "Not a lot" makes what may have been its TV debut.
1980: Tina Heath premieres and explains the next generation of Quantel to Blue Peter viewers.
1987: just short of a year after the 'JUNKIE GEORGE HAS EIGHT WEEKS TO LIVE' headline, Boy George judges a kids' novelty hat competition on Children's ITV's Splash.
June 3rd
1982: it's unclear how much they say they had in it, but Echo & the Bunnymen are joined by a special friend on Top Of The Pops.
1988: The actual studio tape of The Last Resort With Jonathan Ross, with Tracey Ullman, Sabrina, Marenghi-esque horror writer Shaun Hutson and Danny Wilson. Warning: contains Rivron.
1992: the first of five sitcom pilots shown over consecutive weeks on Channel 4, Dead At Thirty was the first work outside Enfield-dom by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, an entry level awkward flatshare sitcom starring Mark Williams, Paterson Joseph and Jesse Birdsall. A whole series was written but the station wasn't interested.
June 4th
1968: Johnny Ball: Origins, the earliest surviving colour Play School, out and about at Marlow Lock with Ball joined by Marla Landi, an Italian actress who had been in Hammer horrors a few years earlier.
1982: There's Nothing To Worry About! was a Granada sketch show intended as an answer to the deceased Not The Nine O'Clock News, but that it was not just only shown in one region but is less remembered than its reboot tells you how well that went down. The cast were two-thirds drawn from the celebrated Cambridge Footlights Revue - Fry, Laurie, Thompson and Paul Shearer - whose Cellar Tapes had gone out on BBC2 only two weeks earlier, plus Siobhan Redmond and, recommended by Rik Mayall who had been approached but turned it down, Ben Elton. All but Redmond, plus Nick Symons who went on to produce A Bit Of Fry & Laurie (and TV Burp), are credited with writing it - though Fry says it was partly he and Hugh for their own sketches and Ben with practically everything else - so they only have themselves to blame, sharpening up by the time it was recommissioned as Alfresco. Jon Plowman is credited as researcher, which he doesn't mention in his book. Producer Sandy Ross went on to a wildly varied career including Wheel Of Fortune, What's Up Doc?, Take The High Road and Fun House.
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