704 The Last Place On Earth

First  viewed  : March  1985

Again,  I  just   dipped  into  this  ITV  serial, perhaps  only  the  last  episode.  It  was  a  dramatisation  of  the  race  between  Scott  and  Amundsen  for  the South  Pole  in  1912 It  was  made  by  Central  Television  alone  although  it  featured  all  Norwegian  actors   for  Amundsen's  party  with  the  unknown  Sverre  Ankar  Ousdal  playing  Amundsen. Martin  Shaw played  Scott  and  the series  gave  him  that  crucial  opportunity  to  escape  from  his  Professionals  persona  that  would  always  elude  Lewis  Collins.

The  series  had  an  excellent  cast  ( including  a  young  Hugh  Grant  in  a  minor  role )  and  high  production  values. Given  the  setting  and   how  well  known  the  eventual  outcome  was, it  couldn't  evade seeming  a  bit  gloomy  but  it  was  impressive  TV  nonetheless.

703 Cover Her Face

First  viewed : March  1985

Another  partly-glimpsed  serial  from  the  first  half  of  1985, Cover  Her  Face  was    ITV's  third   P.D. James  adaptation  with  Roy  Marsden  as  poetry-loving  detective  Adam  Dalgleish. This  one  had  a  particularly  convoluted  plot  shifting  from  the  murder  of  a  Cypriot  drug  dealer  that  Dalgleish  was  already  investigating  in  London  to  the  country  mansion  of  the  Maxie  family  living  a  highly  anachronistic  lifestyle  for   the  1980s. The  connecting  link,  or  one  of  them  at  least , was  Sally  Jupp   ( Kim  Thomson ) a  single  mother  and  scheming  minx  who  doesn't  make  it  to  the  final  episode. Life  On  Mars 's  Philip  Glenister  had  an  early  role  as  her  bumpkin  patsy.

I  came  in  about  halfway  through  and  was  intrigued  enough  to  see  it  through  to  the  end  where  the  murderer,  as  usual,  turned  out  to  be  the  least  likely  suspect.

702 Wogan

First  viewed : Uncertain

I'm  sure  I  must  have  caught  some  of  the  earlier  iterations  of  this  show  that  went  out, usually  on  a  Saturday  night,  in  1982-84   following  the  success  of  his  encounter  with  Larry  Hagman. However  what  I'm  really  talking  about  here  is  the  thrice-weekly  show  that  went  out  at  7pm  from  February  1985  when  Michael  Grade  re-vamped  the  schedules.

Wogan  lasted  half  an  hour  and  was  unashamedly  a  plug  show. Everyone  on  it  was  selling  something. It  normally  got  through  three  guests,  interviewed  separately,  with  a  musical  break  though  these  were  much  reduced  and  restricted  to  established  acts  in  later  years. I  remember  my  mum  being  enthused  by  an  appearance  by  The  Flaming  Mussolinis  early  on.

This  was  Terry  Wogan  at  the  height  of  his  fame  but  crucially  not  at  his  best. As  the  Victoria  Principal  interview  referred  to  a  few  posts  back  proved, he  could  not  be  as  irreverent  as  he  was  on  radio. All  guests  had  to  be  accorded  a  certain  amount  of  deference  and  the  strain  showed. At  the  time  I  thought  the  squirming  in  the  chair  was  part  of  his  act  along  with  the  regrettable  mugging  and  sideways  glances  at  the  camera  but  after  a  thoughtful  interview  he  gave  to  Smash  Hits  I  realised  that  he  was  genuinely  uncomfortable  with  representing  the  Establishment.

He  had  some  breaks  with  guest  presenters   coming  in  like  Derek  Jameson  and  Sue  Lawley  who  disgraced  herself  by  allowing  the  audience  to  mock  Vivienne  Westwood. Bruce  Forsyth  took   that   opportunity  to  re-launch  himself  as  an  all-round  entertainer  after  years  of  crappy  game  shows  and  a  dire  sitcom  on  ITV.

As  the  decade  turned , the  totemic  eighties  shows  - and  this  was  undoubtedly  one  of  them -   started  shedding  viewers. I  didn't  see  the  infamous  George  Best  interview  in  1990  (and  still  haven't  seen  the  whole  version  which  apparently  contained  some  very  libellous  remarks  about  Tommy  Docherty )  but  it  certainly  didn't  do  the  programme  any  favours.

There  was  though  one  huge  spike  in  the  declining  viewing  figures , in  1991 when  David  Icke  called  in. Icke  had  quit  his  successful  TV   presenting  career  in  order  to  become  a  spokesperson  for  the  Green  Party  and  was  at  the  helm  when  they achieved  15%  of  the  vote  in  the  1989  European  elections. He  left  that  position  a  year  or  so  later  and  we  soon  found  out  why. Early  in  1991  he  called  perhaps  the  most  bizarre  press  conference  of  all  time  in  order  to  announce  the  probable  end  of  the  world, his  own  qualification to  be  the chosen  prophet  as  a  son  of  God  and  the  special  properties  of  the  colour  turquoise. The  general  verdict  was  that  he  had  suffered  a  serious  mental  breakdown  and  gone  insane.

His  appearance  on  the  show  promised  to  be  a  real  car  crash,  particularly  after  the  Westwood   experience  and  certainly  the  studio  audience  were  ready  to  turn  it  into  a  bearpit. To   his  credit,  Icke  was  extremely  calm  and  made  his  arguments  very  cogently. Terry wasn't  rude  to  him  and   occasionally   tried  to  pick  at  the  low  hanging  fruit  in  Icke's  rhetoric  with  polite  scepticism  but  mainly  he  just  listened  with  increasingly  visible  discomfort. He  entirely  missed  the  largest  chink  in  Icke's  armour, that  "the  Godhead"  had  told   him  to  move  a  younger  woman  into  his  home  alongside  his  wife,  but  perhaps  that  wasn't  a  suitable  line  of  inquiry  that  early  in  the  evening.

It  wasn't  long  after  that  that  Terry  told  the  Beeb  he  thought  the  show  had  had  its  day  and  he  wanted  to  quit. He  was  persuaded  to  stick  it  out  another  year  before  the  show finally  made  way  for  ill-fated  soap  El  Dorado . Terry  was  moved  to  a  Friday  night  show,  more  focused  on  comedy  with  Frank  Skinner  as  a  sidekick,  but  it  failed  to  pull  enough  punters  away  from  The  Word  and  didn't  last. Terry  retreated  back  to  radio  and  we  soon  fell  in  love  with  him  again.

      

701 Charters and Caldicott

First viewed  : February  1985

Again, I  only  saw  a  small  portion  of  this  comic  drama   serial  at  the  beginning  of  1985. The  original  Charters  and  Caldicott  were  two  cricket-loving  obsessives  used  as  comic  relief  in  the  1938  Hitchcock  film  The  Lady  Vanishes. They  were  so  popular  they  appeared  in  other  films  and  on  radio  until  one  of  the  actors  died  in  1952.  Keith  Waterhouse  decided  to  revive  them  and  place  them  as  old  men  in  the  eighties  played  by  Robin  Bailey  and  Michael  Aldridge. Bailey  of  course  had  form  playing  a  cricket  bore  in  Tales  from  the  Long  Room  which  was  revived  - with  Bailey- on  Channel  4  immediately  after  this  series  finished.

The plot  was  actually  a  murder  mystery. A dead  girl  is  found  in  Caldicott's  flat  and  the  two  old  buffers  decide  to  investigate  the  crime  without  of  course  missing  an  over, much  to  the  exasperation  of  the  police.

They  have  not  been  revived  since.

700 Blott on the Landscape

First  viewed :  February  1985

I  only  caught  snatches  of  this  black  comedy serial,  largely  because  my  curiosity  was  piqued  by  a  nice  Scouse   girl  at  my  hall  of  residence  called  Gaye  McParlin  ( now  a  director  at  professional  services  firm  EY )  who  was  a  big  fan  of  Tom  Sharpe  on  whose  novel  it  was  based. She  was  excited  at  it  coming  to  the  screen  and  was  recommending  it  to  us.

The  story  concerned  an  aristocratic  woman  Lady  Maud  ( Geraldine  James )  whose  treacherous  husband   Sir  Giles  ( George  Cole )  wants  to  allow  a  motorway  through  her  ancestral  lands. His  ally  is  mild-mannered  bureaucrat  Dundridge  ( Simon  Cadell )  while  she  can  call  on  her  dodgy  East  European  gardener  Blott  ( David  Suchet )   to  help  her  thwart  them.

I  didn't  like  it  much; the  humour  seemed  cruel  rather  than  funny (  although  my  wife  disagrees ). The  only  part  that  sticks  in  my  mind  is  George  Cole  strapped  to  a  bed  wearing  only  a  leather  pouch, not  a  pretty  sight  and  staggering  that, at  the  height  of  his  fame  in  Minder , he  agreed  to  do  it.  

699 Miami Vice

First  viewed  :  February  1985

One  of  the  most  iconic  TV  shows  of  the  eighties  began  halfway  through  the  decade.

Miami  Vice  was  something  of  a  successor  to  Starsky  and  Hutch. Both  creator  Anthony  Yerkovich   and  executive  producer  Michael  Mann  had  written  for  the  earlier  show and both  David  Soul  and  Paul  Michael  Glaser  would  direct  episodes. Their  equivalents  were  Crockett  and  Tubbs  played  by  Don  Johnson  and  Philip  Michael  Thomas  two  thirtysomething  actors  whose  careers  hadn't  reached  the  heights  once  expected.

However  the  series  didn't  make  its  impact  through  being  just  another  buddy  cop  show. Yerkovich's  starting  concept  was  "MTV  cops"  and  he  won  a  larger  budget  to  purchase  the  rights  to   use  contemporary  pop  tunes  alongside  the  original  electronic  music  supplied  by  Jan  Hammer  and  inspired  by  the  film  scores  of  Tangerine  Dream.  Phil Collins  was  a  particular  favourite  and  showed  his  appreciation  for  the  boost  to  his  bank  balance  by  becoming  a  guest  star  on  the  show  Both  stars  attempted  to  launch  their  own  musical  careers  on  the  back  of  the  show; Johnson's  was  more  successful.

 Just  as  important  was  the  look of  the  show. Mann  stipulated  "no  earth  tones "  so  everyone  was  in  pastel  colours. Jacket  and   T-shirt combos, rolled  up  sleeves and  wearing  shoes  without  socks  became  instant  eighties  fashion  statements. The  coastal  setting  provided  a  good  excuse  for  a  regular  parade  of  well-toned  bikini-clad  flesh  in  the  background  /Crockett  drove  a  car  he  couldn't  possibly  have  afforded  without  being  as  bent  as  a  nine  bob  note  but  nobody  minded.

In  contrast  to  the  glitzy  presentation  the  storylines  were  quite  dark. Miami  was  one  of  the   drug  capitals  of  the  US  and  the  duo's  adversaries  were  ruthless  gangsters  who  mowed  down  anyone  in  their  way. The  guys'  boss  was  played  by  the  sinister  Edward Olmos  from  Blade  Runner   adding  a  further  neo-noir  dimension  to  the  show.

When  these  two  aspects   to  the  programme  blended  well  the  results  could  be  quite  impressive  but  often  they  didn't . The endless  parade  of  pop  stars  of  dubious  acting  talent  including  Sheena  Easton  ( who  married Crockett )  and  Glenn  Frey  as  well  as  Collins  was  a  distraction and  the  need  to  incorporate  a  montage  while  a  popular  song  played  in  place  of  dialogue  meant  that  exposition  was  often  sketchy.

For  those  reasons, it  never  became  compulsive  viewing  for  me  and  only  two  atypical episodes  stand  out. One  was  an  episode  where  Tubbs  was  kidnapped  by  a  religious  maniac  who  was  killing  prostitutes  and  the  other  was  called  "Stone's  War "  where  the  titular  character  ( surely  a  playful  pop  at  Mann's  contemporary.  Oliver  Stone )  had  to  be  protected  because  he  had  explosive  film  of  American  activities  in  Central  America. That  episode  featured  the  most  bizarre  guest  star  of  all. Nixon's  unrepentant  aide  G. Gordon  Liddy   as  a  black  ops  chief.

The  series  was  cancelled  in  1989  after  a  slow  decline  in  ratings  following  Mann's  departure  at  the  end  of  season  two. He  directed  a  feature  film  version  in  2005.

698 Lace

First  viewed : 9  September  1984

Here's  another  that  slipped  through  the  net  earlier.  Lace  was  a  two  part  adaptation  of  Shirley  Conran's  bestseller.  It  was  necessarily  bowdlerised  , the  Arab  prince's  penchant  for  slipping  goldfish  into  intimate  places  had  to  be   jettisoned  for  instance.  The  story  is  utter  hokum, three  schoolgirls  ( played  by  overaged  actresses ) at  a  Swiss  finishing  school  in  1960  have  illicit  liaisons   with  older  men  and  one  gets  pregnant. They  assume  joint  responsibility  for  this  and  drop  the  baby  girl, Lilli,  in  for  adoption. The  adoptive  parents  are  killed  in  Hungary  and  the  six  year  old  girl  goes  into  a  Hungarian  work  camp  ( in  1966 ? really ? ) . She  eventually  escapes  and  goes  to  Paris  where  she  works  her  way  up  from  whore  to  film  star  remarkably  quickly  then  calls  the  three  successful  career  women  together  to  pose  the  infamous  question "Which  one  of  you  bitches  is  my  mother ?"

  A  young  Phoebe  Cates  played  Lilli   and  certainly  looked  the  part  but  was  in  trouble  the  moment  she  opened  her  mouth. The  three  women  Brooke  Adams, Bess  Armstrong  and  Arielle  Dombasie  were  better  but  only  by  comparison. Slumming  Brits  in  it  included  Nikolas  Grace, Leigh  Lawson, Trevor  Eve  and  Annette  Badland.