17:57 – Sheepy’s opening music.
18:00 – Thames TV morning start-up music.
18:05 – The Tomorrow People S01E10 – The Vanishing Earth (Part 1/4) – The classic 1970s ITV children’s series about a group of teens with paranormal abilities, who use their special gifts to battle evil. This week, the Tomorrow People investigate a series of natural disasters which are threatening the entire planet. Meanwhile, Ginge and Lefty take a day trip to Clacton and encounter a sinister pier attraction. First broadcast on Mon 9th July 1973 by ITV.
18:27 – Shadows S01E02 – After School – a British supernatural television anthology series produced by Thames Television for ITV between 1975 and 1978. This week, two school boys get locked in their football coach’s office after hours. When they pass time by filling out a class questionnaire, something tries to contact them by making them write identical answers to the questions. First broadcast on Wed 10th Sept 1975 by ITV. With a guest appearance by a pre-Blake’s Seven Gareth Thomas. Also, one of the lads, Rhys Powys, looks incredibly familiar, but his only other IMDb acting credit is for How Green Was My Valley, which I don’t think I saw. I’m pretty sure he was in a big advertising campaign at the time (Birds Eye?), and/or maybe he starred in a PIF. Any ideas?
18:50 – Star Trek (The Original Series) – S01E11 – The Menagerie (Part 1) – This week, Spock abducts his wheelchair-bound former commander Christopher Pike, locks the Enterprise on a course to the forbidden planet Talos IV, and turns himself in for court-martial where he presents an elaborate story explaining his actions. The two-part story was positively received and won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. First broadcast in the USA on Thu 17th Nov 1966 by NBC.
19:40 – …And Mother Makes Three – S02E05 – Once a Year Day – More gentle middle-class Thames sitcom, starring Wendy Craig as the newly-widowed Sally Harrison, doing her best to bring up her two boisterous sons, Simon and Peter. This week, Sally tells Auntie that the boys don’t need reminding about her birthday, a promise from Simon leaves her looking forward to an Italian meal, and talk about going to the cinema leads to a number of rather blatant hints. First broadcast on Thu 30th Dec 1971 by ITV.
20:03 – Brass – S01E09 – More Granada-made northern-drama-satirising comedy, starring Timothy West. This week, Morris is ashamed at Lady P’s affair with Matt and so decides to shoot himself but instead takes it out on Hesketh, his bear. Bradley and Austin discuss the fate of George and the SBD sugar lumps. Dr McDuff uses a stomach pump to get the SBD out of George and finds lots of strange things that George has been swallowing. First broadcast on Mon 18th Apr 1983 by ITV.
20:29 – Van der Valk – S02E06 – Rich Man, Poor Man – More Thames-made Amsterdam-based crime drama, starring Barry Foster. This week, an explosion almost kills a worker at a tractor factory, and a poor immigrant barber is bludgeoned to death in a luxury apartment that he shouldn’t have been able to afford. Van der Valk looks for a link between the two apparently unrelated crimes. First broadcast on Wed 3rd Oct 1973 by ITV.
21:19 – Get Lost! E02/04 – The Vicar Did It – A four-part drama by Alan Plater, starring Alun Armstrong as Neville Keaton and Bridget Turner as Judy Threadgold. This week, with some bits of wire and a radio phone-in programme, Judy and Neville find their way to a vicarage with no vicar. First broadcast on Fri 19th June 1981 by ITV.
22:11 – Snub TV S02E04 – This week featuring:
• Happy Mondays “Hallelujah” (Live)
• Revenge “Seven Reasons” (video)
• The Fall: Mark E. Smith interview, “Telephone Thing” (video), “Bill is Dead” (SnubTV video)
• Depth Charge “Bounty Killers” (video)
• The Sundays “Joy” (video)
• Happy Mondays: Shaun Ryder interview, “Wrote For Luck” (Live)
Or as the Radio Times inaccurately puts it: “This week’s programme includes exclusive live footage from the recent Happy Mondays shows, plus an interview with singer Shaun Ryder. There are items on the dub dance of Depth Charge, the heavy Germanic beat of KMFDM, and out of New Order, Peter Hook’s new outfit, Revenge. Also, an exclusive performance by the Fall of Bill is Dead from their forthcoming album, plus an interview with Mark E. Smith.”
From 1st generation off-air VHS > Panasonic HD recorder > DVD-R > MPEG Streamclip > MPEG4
Video compression: H.264, 352 x 288, deinterlaced
Audio compression: AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz, 192 kbps
First broadcast on Mon 5th Feb 1990 at 6.40pm by BBC2; it skipped a week due to coverage of the Commonwealth Games.
22:39 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Original Radio Series) – Fit the Twelfth – The fifth and final episode of the then-five-episode second series that went out stripped across a single week in Jan 1980, and the last episode for 24 years. Original Radio Times listing: “Fit the fifth: In which all is resolved, everyone lives happily ever after and pigs fly.“
First broadcast on Fri 25th Jan 1980 at 10.30pm by BBC Radio 4. This is not the version as originally broadcast, which was completed with just 20 minutes to go before transmission and was biked across London to be spooled up just in time. Instead, it’s the re-edited version that was used for subsequent broadcasts and on the CD. Details of the differences can be found on the excellent – and very hard to find – blog page here: https://www.jwhitham.org/magrathea/ep12.html
23:07 – COMMENTARY TRACK VERSION of The Tomorrow People S01E06 – The Medusa Strain (Part 1/4) – More interesting, amusing and sometimes scandalous DVD commentary featuring Nicholas Young (John), Peter Vaughan-Clarke (Stephen) and Philip Gilbert (TIM), moderated by Nicholas Briggs. To recap: this is the classic 1970s ITV children’s series about a group of teens with paranormal abilities, who use their special gifts to battle evil. This week, after floating in space for nearly five-and-a-half centuries, Jedikiah is recovered from space by Count Rabowski, who is already holding prisoner Peter, a young telepath who is one of the Time Guardians. Jedikiah tricks Peter into transporting them to the 20th century so he can get his revenge on the Tomorrow People. Featuring Dave Prowse as an android. First broadcast by ITV on Mon 11th June 1973. DVD Commentary recorded c. 2002.
Seeing as the schedule seems to be running unexpectedly short this week (most shows are a minute or two shorter than usual, by a bizarre coincidence), here’s some bonus content:
23:32 – SHORT FILM: The Red Balloon (1956) – the famous French fantasy comedy-drama featurette written, produced, and directed by Albert Lamorisse, starring his son, Pascal, and also featuring his daughter, Sabine. It follows the adventures of a young boy who one day finds a sentient, mute, red balloon, and was filmed in the Ménilmontant neighbourhood of Paris.
The film won numerous awards, including an Oscar for Lamorisse for writing the Best Original Screenplay in 1956 and the Palme d’Or for short films at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. It also became popular with children and educators. It is the only short film to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
It felt like it was always on TV during my childhood, but in fact I could only have seen it twice. The BBC first showed it on Sun 29th Oct 1961 at 4.40pm, with repeats on Tue 26th Dec 1961 11.22am, Tue 18th Dec 1962 5.05pm, Fri 26th Dec 1969 12.50pm, Wed 27th Aug 1975 6.20pm all on BBC1, and finally Tue 2nd Jan 1992 12:00 on BBC2.
00:06 – Closedown music.
00:10 – Closedown.