16:57 – Opening music.
17:00 – Phineas and Ferb S02E60 – The Doof Side of the Moon – A random episode of the charming kids’ cartoon series about two ingenious little boys, their older sister, and the secret life of their pet platypus.
17:12 – The Tomorrow People S01E01 – The Slaves of Jedekiah (Part 1/5) – The classic 1970s ITV children’s series about a group of teens with paranormal abilities, who use their special gifts to battle evil. Wikipedia: “Stephen, up until now an ordinary schoolboy, suddenly collapses on a London street as the mental ordeal of “breaking out” begins. The three existing Tomorrow People (John, Carol and Kenny), aware of his ordeal, manage to make contact with him and guide him through the process, but are unable to keep him from being kidnapped by Ginge and Lefty, two Cockney thugs working for the mysterious Jedikiah, who wants the Tomorrow People for their psychic powers…” Yup, am giving this a go to see how it goes down. This first episode has a cute trailer for next week’s show on it, which I’d never seen before (I think Bravo must have chopped it off when they showed the series.) First shown on Mon 30th April 1973.
17:35 – The Tomorrow People S01E02 – The Slaves of Jedekiah (Part 2/5) – More of the same.
18:00 – Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity – Episode 1: Spark – Radio Times: “Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the electrifying story of our quest to master nature’s most mysterious force – electricity. Until fairly recently, electricity was seen as a magical power, but it is now the lifeblood of the modern world and underpins every aspect of our technological advancements. Without electricity, we would be lost. This series tells of dazzling leaps of imagination and extraordinary experiments – a story of maverick geniuses who used electricity to light our cities, to communicate across the seas and through the air, to create modern industry and to give us the digital revolution.
“Episode 1 tells the story of the very first ‘natural philosophers’ who started to unlock the mysteries of electricity. They studied its curious link to life, built strange and powerful instruments to create it and even tamed lightning itself. It was these men who truly laid the foundations of the modern world. Electricity was without doubt a fantastical wonder. This is the story about what happened when the first real concerted effort was made to understand electricity – how we learned to create and store it, before finally creating something that enabled us to make it at will – the battery.” First broadcast Thu 6th October 2011 at 21:00 on BBC4.
18:58 – The Sixties S01E01 – Television Comes Of Age – A documentary miniseries which premiered on CNN on May 29, 2014. Produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s studio Playtone, the 10-part series chronicled events and popular culture of the United States during the 1960s. In this episode, television experienced major milestones in the 1960s that lead to the changing landscape of television, including The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I Dream of Jeannie.
19:39 – The Day the Universe Changed – 2. In the Light of the Above – A personal view by James Burke in ten parts. Radio Times: “Late in the 11th century a band of marauding mercenaries looted the Spanish Arab city of Toledo. What they found there shook Christian Europe to its foundations. In mountain-top monasteries, the flame of learning had been kept alive in a sea of Dark Age ignorance. But this universe was changed forever by the treasure from Toledo that came across the Pyrenees. In Italy it gave us law and university life; in France the towering Gothic cathedrals. And in the dawn light of the north African desert it showed us how to make a rainbow.” First broadcast Tue 26th March 1985 at 8.05pm on BBC1.
20:32 – FILM: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – Director’s Cut (1998) – an American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. It tells the story of Roy Neary, an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO).
A Special Edition of the film, featuring both shortened and newly added scenes, was released theatrically in 1980. Spielberg agreed to do the special edition to add more scenes that they were unable to include in the original release, with the studio demanding a controversial scene depicting the interior of the extraterrestrial mothership. Spielberg’s dissatisfaction with the altered ending scene led to a third version of the film, referred to as the Director’s Cut, that was issued on VHS and LaserDisc in 1998 (and later DVD and Blu-ray). The director’s cut is the longest version of the film, combining Spielberg’s favorite elements from both previous editions but removing the scenes inside the extraterrestrial mothership. This is the version presented here tonight, and for my money it’s easily the best of the three.
22:48 – Sean Lock Live (2008) – the finale to Sean’s British tour, recorded in front of over 3000 fans at the Hammersmith Apollo. With belated apologies for the horrible trans joke at the end of the set. I had read before that Sean Lock used to have one at the end of his set, but had entirely forgotten about it and had no idea until I saw it go out with the rest of you. Sorry again.
00:07 – Spaced Out (2001) – A sell-through DVD I picked up in a charity shop, have literally watched about 30 seconds of it. From the sleeve: “Sampling NASA footage and remixing it to original beats.”
01:15 – Closedown music.
01:20 – Closedown.