Thursday, 31 May 2018
1014 General Election 1992
First viewed : 11 March 1992
This was one of the more memorable election campaigns with John Major's Conservatives pulling off a surprise victory over Neil Kinnock's Labour. The opinion pollsters called it wrong and have been adjusting for "shy Tories" ever since. Perhaps it shouldn't have been too much of a surprise; no leader from the Celtic fringe has been given a parliamentary majority in normal circumstances since Campbell-Bannerman in 1906*. The result was widely interpreted as a rejection of Kinnock as Prime Minister, his deficiencies encapsulated in his "we're alright ! " ejaculations at a rally in Sheffield the weekend before the poll. I remember watching that on the news and thinking "this is a bit premature, boyo !"
As for the Liberal Democrats , fighting for the first time as a merged party, the campaign started promisingly with much talk of proportional representation but they slipped back to 20 % and a slight reduction in numbers. This was disappointing but coming just four years after the merger debacle, Paddy Ashdown had done well to keep them in the game.
* Lloyd George and Ramsay Macdonald won theirs at the head of a coalition of parties.
Tuesday, 29 May 2018
1013 Cue the Music
First viewed : 1992
Cue the Music on late night ITV was simply a gig broadcast with a redundant link at the beginning.
I can only recalling taping two. The first was Latin Quarter from the mid-eighties with link by Supersonic's Mike Mansfield. The other was A-Ha from 1991 introduced in tiresomely unfunny fashion by Tony Slattery.. The band had fallen out of favour in the UK by then but were absolutely huge in South America and this was one of their stadium gigs in Brazil. Morten Harket had grown his hair long and grouchy guitarist Pal Waaktar was still fairly outgoing at this point.
Thursday, 24 May 2018
1012 Murder Squad
First viewed : February 1992
This was an excellent fly-on-the-wall documentary series from Thames TV looking at the investigation of real-life murder cases, some solved , others unresolved. If nothing else, it proved that even convicted murderers are interested in getting their faces on TV.
The two cases I recall involved the murder of a seedy old man who'd been pimping out a middle-aged woman and then been battered to death by her much younger boyfriend who I think was called Steve. The police were the only people to attend the funeral. The culprits were reported by the woman's daughter who described her mother as "just an old slag - she'd go with anyone for a few quid". You could hear the detective catching his breath at that one. The pair were on the run but were then arrested when they turned up at the Post Office to collect Steve's "social" as if nothing had happened. We're not exactly talking about a criminal mastermind here.
The other one was an affray case where a man ended up dead after an encounter with three young guys. Everyone questioned said that one of the guys , called Gary I think, was completely non-violent and wouldn't have touched him. He came in voluntarily and told them exactly what had happened and yet the police were still trying to charge him with murder under the joint enterprise rules. They didn't succeed and he was acquitted of all charges.
The first season had seven episodes. After a long gap there were two shorter seasons in 1996 and 1997.
Wednesday, 23 May 2018
1011 Hooked !
First viewed : 25 January 1992
This was a six-part late night documentary series on ITV looking at drug addiction. It was presented in acerbic fashion by thuggish-looking Scottish music journalist turned TV producer Stuart Cosgrove..I watched it because I was still writing my screenplay based on Prisoner Cell Block H's drug addiction storyline broadcast nearly a year before. I remember history professor Norman Stone being on the programme, confessing to his craving for nicotine but not much else.
Tuesday, 22 May 2018
1010 Casey Kasem's Rock n Roll Goldmine
First viewed : Uncertain
This was an offshoot from America's Top Ten, allowing the cardigan king to delve into the archives and present his own history of rock and roll in his usual inimitable style. Obviously the archive clips were of somewhat higher quality than their presentation.
Monday, 21 May 2018
1009 Brides of Christ
First viewed : 23 January 1992
This six-part Australian mini-series was shown on Channel Four and looked at the lives of the nuns and students at a Sydney convent school in the 1960s. As usual, I was on the lookout for ex-Prisoner faces and tuned in for the first episode concentrating on the conflict between a free-thinking new recruit Diane ( Josephine Byrnes ) and the conservative Sister Agnes ( Brenda Fricker ). Trying to keep the peace was Mother Ambrose ( Sandy Gore who was in Prisoner Cell Block H as white collar criminal Kay White ).
The series was well-acted and thoughtful, avoiding crude stereotypes but I didn't stay with it, That's a shame as I missed a young Naomi Watts as a troubled student, the main focus of the second episode. Russell Crowe also turned up in a later episode.
Sunday, 20 May 2018
1008 Film 92 Special : Barry Norman talks to Michelle Pfeiffer
First viewed : 7 January 1992
The late, great Barry Norman was a superb critic even if you didn't always agree with his verdicts, but as an interviewer he left a lot to be desired and this was the first of two that particularly besmirched his reputation.
Michelle Pfeiffer was in town to talk about Frankie and Johnny, the film in which she was supposed to look a bit dowdy which she " achieved" through not wearing as much make up as usual. According to Norman, delays in the film reaching the UK meant she had lost interest in promoting it and the interview was going a bit flat so he changed tack and started talking about how beautiful she was. Naturally, Pfeiffer perked up a bit when this subject came up and the interview became near-unwatchable as Norman fawned over her. Reportedly, his wife wasn't too chuffed when she saw it.
Saturday, 19 May 2018
1007 Moon and Son
First viewed : January 1992
This was writer Robert Banks Stewart's follow up to Bergerac which ended the year before. It was much lighter in tone about a psychic duo who shuttled between the UK snd France both helping and hindering the local police forces. Much of the publicity focused on the return to British TV of singer-comedienne Millicent Martin as Mrs Moon. Martin made her name as the singer on sixties satire show That Was The Week That Was but hadn't been seen since the early seventies after subsequent vehicles failed to make the same impression and had been living in the U.S. since 1978. I had a brief dip into the series but didn't like it and it seems I wasn't alone as plans for a second series were quietly dropped. Banks Stewart wouldn't have another show on TV for nearly a decade.
Friday, 18 May 2018
1006 Love Hurts
First viewed : January 1992
This was a lightly comic drama written by the Marks and Gran duo ( Birds of a Feather, The New Statesman ) starring Adam Faith as Frank Carver, a self-made Cockney property developer who forms an unlikely relationship with po-faced charity worker Tessa ( Zoe Wanamaker ). I wasn't grabbed by the concept but tuned in for episode 6 because it featured Arkie Whiteley as a solicitor with whom Frank has a one night stand while Tessa is away in Chad. She appeared again a few episodes later when Frank's great dockside deal went south. Faith's easy charm carried the series but I still wasn't impressed enough to stay with it and never saw any of the subsequent two seasons.
Thursday, 17 May 2018
1005 Secret History
First viewed : 28 November 1991
This was Channel 4's answer to BBC2's Timewatch, a history series of hour-long documentaries with an emphasis on suppressed stories from the past
Ratlines ( 28 November 1991 )
The first episode I saw was a timely examination of the role of the Vatican in enabling Croation war criminals, most notably the brutal dictator Ante Pavelic, to escape justice at the end of World War Two. In doing so. it provided ample justification for Serbian reluctance to countenance the re-creation of a Croatian state. Another part of the programme I recall is the friendly links between Pavelic and the papal aide Montini who later became pope Paul VI.
The Hidden Holocaust ( 27 July 1992 )
This episode concerned the Armenian Genocide of 1915-16, still denied by the Turkish government. It concluded with a reference to Hitler's reported remark in a speech in 1939 , "Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Aemenians ?"
Wednesday, 16 May 2018
1004 Neil Sedaka in Concert
First viewed : 12 November 1991
This was a late night treat on BBC One , an edited broadcast of the American singer-songwriter's recent concert at Birmingham Symphony Hal , part of a tour to promote a greatest hits compilation which ad just crashed the Top 10, his first appearance in the Bitish charts since the mid-seventies. The 52-year old had also recently been given a wild card appearance on Top of the Pops. Sedaka was in good voice and played the hits with gusto.
Tuesday, 15 May 2018
1003 Taylor and McMenemy
First viewed : 9 November 1991
This Granada series was very much in the same vein as Best and Marsh-the Perfect Match, inviting the England management duo to share their football nostalgia although the host was Elton Welsby rather than Tony Wilson . Unlike the earlier series, I couldn't find any stills or footage, reflecting a collective will to forget about the ill-fated reign of Turnip Head and his dubiously qualified buddy.
Two things stick in my mind from the show. One was being asked about their footballing heroes and Taylor picking some clogger from Grimsby Town in the fifties of whom no footage survived although the research team dug up a photograph.
The other was a discussion on strikers. When asked for their nomination for best striker , McMenemy asked for a clarification on the criteria then said " until you mentioned technique I'd have said Ted McDougall". McDougall was a prolific goalscorer in the lower divisions but failed to impress as Frank O Farrell's flagship signing at Manchester United . He later rediscovered his goalscoring touch at Norwich and McMenemy's Southampton. The discussion hinged on his poor first touch, McMenemy describing him as having "ten to two feet" , and singleminded approach to goalscoring. Apparently he wasn't happy if the team won without his name appearing on the scoresheet.
Friday, 11 May 2018
1002 Sounds of the Sixties
First viewed : 5th October 1991
This was nothing to do with the Radio Two show of the same name but ten half hour collections of performances from the archives loosely grouped by genre : beat groups, folkies, pyschedelia etc. Many of them have become very familiar over the years given the Beeb's notorious wiping of its archives in the sixties and seventies leaving a restricted pool from which to draw material.
The highlight of the series was the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd's encounter with Austrian musicologist Hans Keller on a programme called The Look of the Week. The group got to perform Astronomy Domine but at the price of being savaged by the lugubrious and conceited music professor. What amuses me most about the footage is that Keller introduces them and says to the audience "I don't want to prejudice you , hear them and see them first" but then goes on to say "To my mind, there is continuous repetition and proportionately they are a bit boring". It would be interesting to hear his idea of a biased introduction. He goes on to interview Roger Waters and a still compos mentis Syd Barrett and castigates them for being too loud -"I can't bear it". The guys, even the notoriously prickly Waters, are surprisingly polite to him under the onslaught.
Thursday, 10 May 2018
1001 Have I Got News For You ?
First viewed : October 1991
I entirely missed the first series of the long-running satirical news quiz in 1990 and first caught it a year later round about the time of Robert Maxwell's death. I became a pretty regular viewer for the next decade. Among many highlights I recall
- Paul Merton skewering Derek Hatton's attempt to re-brand himself as a comedian
- The Tub of lard standing in for Roy Hattersley
- the fake Elton John
- Elvis Costello coming in and finding nothing whatsoever to say
- Piers Morgan coming in to take on Ian Hislop and being completely destroyed, with a little help from Clive Anderson
I have watched it since then but it stopped being appointment TV once Deayton had gone and I'm hardly aware it's on nowadays.
Wednesday, 9 May 2018
1000 This Week
First viewed : Uncertain
I'm sure I must have seen some of this series before 3 October 1991 but that's the first episode, about the plague of joyriding or "twocing" , that I'm definite about watching. This Week was Thames TV's long-running alternative to Granada's World in Action, a half hour documentary about current affairs. However the two programmes were usually both networked, World in Action on a Monday and This Week on a Thursday.
By far and away, This Week's most infamous episode, for which they were given an hour, was Death on the Rock, an investigation into the shooting of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltat by the SAS which dared to question the official government version. Thatcher was apoplectic about it and the 1990 Broadcasting Act's abolition of the IBA, which sanctioned the programme, was thought to be an act of revenge. The Act also introduced the controversial franchise arrangements in which Thames lost out to Carlton. That's also been put down to Death on the Rock although the linkage is less obvious. This Week ceased when Carlton took over.
Tuesday, 8 May 2018
999 The Men's Room
First viewed : September 1991
I only dipped into this campus drama which became the Bouquet of Barbed Wire for the nineties although not written by the same author. It was based around an affair between two academics, the previously faithful Charity ( Harriet Walter ) and philanderer Mark ( Bill Nighy ). I only knew Nighy previously as the voice of Sam Gamgee in Lord of the Rings but this role set him up for a long career playing over-sexed middle aged men.
The series pushed the boat out with its love scenes including oral sex. The only bit I really remember is Mark's dalliance with Kate Hardie who gives him a lecture on why older men long to wear Y-fronts rather than boxer shorts.
Monday, 7 May 2018
998 WBO Championship Boxing
First viewed : 21 September 1991
I'm not normally a boxing fan but I did see this seminal encounter between Chris Eubank and Michael Watson for the vacant WBO super-middleweight title. It was a re-match, the two having fought each other three months earlier, a fight I'd seen on either Sportsnight or Midweek Sports Special . That one went the distance and against all expectations, the judges gave it to Eubank.
In common with most casual viewers, I'd come to detest Eubank for his pretentious verbosity and bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you comments on the sport. In the ring he was sloppy and often looked only half-interested, though not easy to beat. Watson, a calm, likeable guy, with no love for his opponent, was incensed by the decision and came into the ring with an intensity that was obvious from the word go.
Watson dominated the fight with sustained aggression and finally got Eubank down in the eleventh round. Eubank however was up at four and caught Watson off guard with an uppercut that floored him in turn. Watson couldn't recover and the fight was stopped early in the twelfth.
Watson of course suffered a near-fatal brain haemorrhage lying prone in his corner while Eubank prattled on about how he must have been on drugs. It was only right at the end of the programme that presenter Jim Rosenthal realised that something might be amiss. Watson's subsequent battles to regain his facilities and compensation for the appalling ringside neglect are well-documented.
Sunday, 6 May 2018
997 L.B.J.
First viewed : 14 September 1991
This was an excellent four part biography of the famously flawed U.S. President made by the P.B.S. company and broadcast on BBC Two. It charted his rise, through his notoriously dodgy election to the U.S. Senate, his leadership of the Senate and Vice-presidency under Kennedy to becoming president in the worst possible circumstances. It then went on to his visions of a Great Society torpedoed by the war in Vietnam. Contributors included his widow Lady Bird and friend ,Governor John Connally.
Saturday, 5 May 2018
996 Granada Goals Extra
First viewed : 17 August 1991
Granada made a rod for their own backs with this one, a compilation of that day's goals from the region that went out at 5.15 pm on a Saturday. I could barely make it home from Spotland to catch the start.
The first programme was a complete and utter shambles as the technical challenge became apparent. The luckless Bob Greaves had to try and hold it together as the video tapes were edited while on air. Bob clearly had no idea which one was coming next and had to try and work out what game he was watching on the spot, which unsurprisingly led to a large number of mistakes - "Here's Tranmere Rovers .. oh no it's Bury" and so on.
At the end of the show, they ran out of footage with a minute or so to go and Bob had to improvise a soliloquy on Oldham's first day in the top division that ran something like this, "Well that's the first day of the season,,,Memories for me ? .. Oldham's first game in the top flight...they went to Liverpool... some people thought they had a chance... it wasn't to be" etc.
It did improve over the season but not by that much. Poor old Bob soon made way for Rob McCaffrey then Elton Welsby took over for most of the show's seven year run. After the first season, the denial of any Premier League footage no doubt made the show rather easier to put together.
Friday, 4 May 2018
995 The Deliberate Stranger
First viewed : 6 August 1991
This was a two part mini-series about America's most notorious serial rapist, necrophiliac and murderer, Ted Bundy. It was broadcast in the U.S. in 1986 but not shown here until 1990; in the intervening period Bundy had gone to the electric chair in Florida. According to his lawyer, Bundy had shown no interest in the film.
Bundy was played by TV movie king Mark Harmon. The series understandably couldn't show the detail of Bundy's crimes and, indeed, couldn't fit them all in, so it concentrated on his modus operandi of chatting up young women on bogus pretexts and the long hunt to catch him. It was pretty good with Harmon's habitual shiftiness deployed to full effect.
Thursday, 3 May 2018
994 To Each His Own
First viewed : 5 August 1981
There's scant trace of this on the web, not even an imdb entry. It was a feature length drama on ITV going out both sides of News at Ten. Based loosely on a true case, It starred Julia Watson from Casualty and Hilton McRae as the middle class parents of twins who don't look much alike. When they discover one of them was mistakenly swapped at birth with the son of a single mother , Watson's character Fiona is determined to correct the mistake, whatever the cost.
It was thoroughly absorbing with Fiona's disregard for Alex , the cuckoo in the nest -"he never smelt like mine" - making her utterly detestable. Eventually, it breaks up the marriage facilitating a rather too neat ending with each parent ending up with one of the children. McRae's character Don goes away with Alex and the real twin Billy then opts to stay with his "Mum" because he wanted a dad rather than his real mother and brother. As my work colleague Alison put it though, "that woman shouldn't have ended up with any of them !"
Wednesday, 2 May 2018
993 Trespass Against Us : Power, People and the British Landscape
First viewed : 27 July 1991
This was a one hour documentary on Channel Four about land rights in the UK presented by the octogenarian Benny Rothman, one of the leaders of the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout in Derbyshire. I had seen Rothman in the flesh a couple of years prior to this when he recounted his adventures, including a spell in jail, at a meeting organised by the Littleborough Peace Group. Rothman was a lifelong Communist - an association that's always made me want to keep the Ramblers Association at arm's length - and the programme reflected that with Rothman reserving particular venom for the Dukes of Sutherland and their role in the Highland Clearances. He died in 2002 aged 90.
Tuesday, 1 May 2018
992 Richard Digance
First viewed : 20 July 1991
After two decades of guest slots and warm-up roles, the comedian and folk singer got his own show on ITV in the Sunday night slot usually occupied by either Spitting Image or Hale and Pace. Richard's material was neither satirical nor scatological; he was a fairly mainstream comedian somewhere between Michael Barrymore and Mike Harding with a strong nostalgic streak. His guests tended to be fairly seasoned performers like Brian May, Suzi Quatro and Elkie Brooks. I thought it was good entertainment before turning in on a Sunday and was sorry there wasn't more of it.
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