Today is the 100th anniversary of the BBC’s first ever radio broadcast from their London station, 2LO. If I’d found that out earlier than 4am this morning I’d be doing something to celebrate it. As it is, you’ll just have to put up with the usual stuff. 🙂
18:00 – Sheepy’s opening music.
18:04 – Thames TV morning start-up music.
18:09 – Michael Bentine’s Potty Time S01E13 – The Mounties – a British children’s TV show, written by and starring Michael Bentine, and directed and produced by Leon Thau for Thames Television. This week, Mr. Bentine and the Potties travel to Canada to investigate the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. First broadcast on Mon 4th Feb 1974 by ITV. No VT clock this week, sadly.
18:20 – Shadows S03E05 – The Man Who Hated Children – a British supernatural television anthology series produced by Thames Television for ITV between 1975 and 1978. This week, Old Man Higgs fights a war of dirty tricks with two boys in his neighborhood. Things take a dark turn when Higgs tries to frame the boys for vandalism. First broadcast on Wed 18th Oct 1978 by ITV. With George A. Cooper and Brian Wilde. This is quite a fun one, if I remember correctly.
18:45 – Clangers S01E13 – Goods – the famous Oliver Postgate / Peter Firmin stop-motion children’s television series about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and inside, a small moon-like planet. This week, a machine that makes plastic items is assembled, but cannot be turned off. First broadcast on Sun 22nd Feb 1970 at 5.55pm by BBC1.
18:55 – Star Trek (The Original Series) – S01E27 – The Alternative Factor – This week, existence itself comes under threat from a reality-jumping madman’s power-struggle with his alternate self, with the Enterprise’s strained dilithium crystals presenting his key to a final solution. First broadcast in the USA on Thu 30th Mar 1967 by NBC. This was the first Star Trek episode to deal with a parallel universe, although not the famous beard-ridden (Gl1nn3r explodes) “mirror” universe. John Drew Barrymore was originally cast as Lazarus, but on the morning filming began he was nowhere to be found. The part had to be quickly recast with Robert Brown. The producers filed a grievance with the Screen Actors Guild, which suspended Barrymore’s membership for six months as a result, preventing him from working as an actor during that time. This is the third(?) of the four(?) episodes that Flouncer played out late one night at my suggestion. It’s quite a good episode, but could have done with better direction/editing IMHO. It’s a rare case of one where I read the James Blish adaptation before I saw the episode itself. The story is thrilling, but when I first saw it on screen they seem to have muddled the plot up a bit and it ended up being perhaps a bit confusing. We still enjoyed it when Flouncer showed it, though.
19:45 – Only When I Laugh – S01E02 – Operation Norman – A sitcom made by Yorkshire Television for ITV, written by Eric Chappell (Rising Damp, Home to Roost). It stars Christopher Strauli as Norman, a rather naive middle-class man who is admitted to a hospital ward and finds that he is sharing it with a working-class layabout called Figgis (James Bolam) and an upper-class hypochondriac called Archie (Peter Bowles). All three of them cause headaches for the hospital staff, led by Richard Wilson with Derrick Branche. This week, Norman has to have an operation for his appendix to be removed but Figgis’s doom-laden description of operations and Dr Thorpe’s tiredness do not give him confidence and he hides in the toilet, having to be coaxed out… First broadcast on 5th Nov 1979 by ITV. I wasn’t impressed by the first episode, but having good memories of it from original Tx (with other viewers reporting the same), I’m planning to continue until at least the end of the first series (seven episodes). Finding the Indian nurse character’s stereotyping painful though – a sharp difference from the way Don Warrington’s character was handled in the same writer’s Rising Damp.
20:10 – Special Branch – S02E01 – Inside – Groundbreaking British police drama series following the exploits of the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police: an elite group of officers tasked with protecting London from spies, terrorists, and subversives. This week, Jordan finds himself in Wormwood Scrubs. What’s he up to? No one is saying – least of all Supt Inman, who believes that time is running out in a situation that could place his department in danger. First broadcast on Tue 11th Aug 1970 by ITV. New series! New decade! New day of the week (was Weds)! New, faintly risible, titles! New, dreadful, theme tune (which is all the more baffling as the same composer did the superb one to Public Eye). A bit of an odd one this week, as I recall, but it soon settles down into the usual kind of stuff.
21:00 – Eurotrash S01E06 – The legendary late-night magazine show starring Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier, exploring unusual and bizarre topics from Europe and around the world. This week, in the last of the first series (already!), we have Pubic Hairdresser, Eddy Wally, Paul Verhoeven, Naomi Campbell, Folies Bergere, Yvette Horner, Boy George. First broadcast on Fri 29th Oct 1993 by Channel 4.
21:26 – A Very Peculiar Practice S02E07/07 – Death of a University – a surreal black-comedy drama set in the health centre of a British university, produced by the BBC. It was written by Andrew Davies and was inspired by his experiences as a lecturer at the University of Warwick, and it has been interpreted as a commentary on contemporary trends in education. This week, rioting breaks out on campus; unable to control it, Jack Daniels makes a decision that has tragic consequences for all. First broadcast on Wed 6th Apr 1988 at 9.25pm by BBC2. This is the last episode in the regular series – a big thank you to Sploff for showing the first-ever episode and reminding me of its existence, and to Delete for finding the rest of it – however there is one final feature-length episode to go. That will be shown in two weeks’ time in the late night slot after The Norman Conquests finishes.
22:21 – The Norman Conquests E02/03 – Living Together – A trilogy of plays written in 1973 by Alan Ayckbourn. Each of the plays depicts the same six characters over the same weekend in a different part of a house. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and Round and Round the Garden in, well, the garden.
The plays were first performed in Scarborough, before runs in London and on Broadway. This television version was first broadcast in the UK during October 1977 and was directed by Herbert Wise and produced by Verity Lambert & David Susskind.
The trilogy presents a comically fraught weekend from three different perspectives, as family and in-laws gather at the decaying country house of their bedridden mother; the drink flows, and hidden enmities, intimate secrets, and uncomfortable truths emerge through the veneer of jollity and civility.
There are only six characters, namely Norman (Tom Conti), his wife Ruth (Fiona Walker), her brother Reg (Richard Briers) and his wife Sarah (Penelope Keith), Ruth’s sister Annie (Penelope Wilton), and Tom (David Troughton), Annie’s next-door-neighbour. A seventh unseen and unheard character is in the house, upstairs: the bedridden mother of Reg, Ruth and Annie.
The plays are at times wildly comic, and at times poignant, in their portrayals of the relationships among the six characters.
Each play is self-contained, and they may be watched in any order. Some of the scenes overlap, and on several occasions a character’s exit from one play corresponds with an entrance in another. Similarly, noise and commotion in one room can sometimes be heard by characters in another.
The plays were not written to be performed simultaneously, although Ayckbourn did achieve that some twenty-five years later in House & Garden.
The premise is that Annie lives in a countryside house taking care of her demanding mother, and has decided that she needs a weekend off. Reg and Sarah have agreed to come and take care of Annie’s & Reg’s mother while Annie goes on a short trip. However, Annie is secretly planning to meet up with her sister Ruth’s charming, rakish husband Norman for an illicit weekend together (something Annie has never done before, and is unsure about). However, things go wrong when Norman shows up at the house early to pick up Annie contrary to plan, everybody ends up at the house for the entire weekend, and various arguments ensue while the characters have differing degrees of understanding about what’s actually happening.
Penelope Keith won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress for her performance.
This week, “Sarah attacks Norman for his outrageous behaviour towards his wife, but generously concedes that Annie’s life ‘can’t be much fun’; Reg even advises, for one brief, apparently propitious moment, that Norman and Annie make a dash for it and have their fling. Ruth makes her appearance, but this time the emphasis is on the problems dividing and binding her to Norman.” First broadcast on Wed 12th Oct 1977 by ITV.
On a personal note, I watched some of this with my parents on first transmission. They absolutely loved it. My Mum in particular had the hots for Tom Conti, the only time I ever remember her expressing such feelings about an actor. As I was only 12 (and a very naïve 12 at that), although I found bits of it amusing, a lot of it went over my head, and as an adult I’ve wanted to see it again ever since.
23:55 – Closedown music.
00:00 – Closedown.