When you've made it your actual job to dissect television, it's clear that most of it's basically the same, with only loose variations on all the standard cliches and structures. That cannot be said of 3-2-1; ITV's Ted Rogers fronted game show which caused baffled audiences to bleed profusely out of the ears for a decade. Based on a Spanish show called – of course – Un-Dos-Tres,...
2021-10-14 23:00:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Starsky & Hutch is the most 1970's American thing that exists, with a wah-wah heavy funk soundtrack, an iconic car, chunky knitwear like what Giles Brandreth would wear to a swingers party, and a jive-talkin' pimp so loveable, he presumably encouraged his ladies to unionise. This is the standard bearer for every buddy cop story that followed, and its pally banter, exchanging smi...
2021-10-04 23:00:59 +0000 UTC View Post
In my role of dissecting 90's TV which seemed fine at the time, but now feels completely unhinged, Gladiators sits as the suspiciously-vascular elephant in the room. On the surface, it's an odd omission, as there's nothing more on-brand, as a hybrid of two regular points of reference; pro wrestling and John Fashanu. But the actual show is too on the nose; too over-discussed. Tabloids pump ou...
2021-09-14 23:00:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Continuing our root around in the Saturday morning shows, it's back to 1984, when Star Wars was still hot shit, so ITV stuck Tommy Boyd in a spaceship. Think The Mandalorian, except instead of Baby Yoda, Boyd's tiny sidekick is Bonnie Langford, who somehow remains endlessly energetic and chirpy in the face of some absolutely dire content. Boyd had been drafted in from TISWAS 2021-09-04 23:00:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Wherein the Keymaster meets the Gatekeeper(s)
2021-08-24 15:14:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Continuing our run of Saturday morning shows, the cursed bog of YouTube has burped up another bone with 1996's WOW!; a true forgotten example of the genre, even carrying the excitement of the Bad Influence! exclamation mark, and with the added urgency of caps implying its title should always be shouted. WOW! was a CITV effort, following the axing of Telegantic Megavisi...
To quote myself in my previous piece on the pair: “Against all good judgement, I'm really curious to what that final series looked like, being that the format wore itself out before episode one was over.”
The leap between seventies comedy and that of the nineties was enormous, and after alternative comedy had swept through the landscape like a flash fire, club comics and traditiona...
2021-08-05 23:00:56 +0000 UTC View Post
There's not been a great history of televised board game adaptations. Over the years, American viewers have 'enjoyed' short-lived onscreen runs of Monopoly, Boggle, and The Game of Life, while Brits were mostly limited to Pictionary rip-off, Win, Lose or Draw; a Rory McGrath-fronted Trivial Pursuit; and a live-action, giant-sized Mouse Trap 2021-07-16 23:00:16 +0000 UTC View Post
"The Lady Corrinne"
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Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
2021-07-07 15:23:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Opening titles of the 1997-98 series have Dominik Diamond asleep on the couch in a filthy living room, dreaming a nightmare sprint down an endless tunnel of GamesMaster settings past, eventually bursting though a door into a tropical island paradise. Two busty models in animal print eye him salaciously, and like he did with series six's mermaids, he gives us a wink and a thumbs up, as if to ...
2021-07-06 23:01:04 +0000 UTC View Post
In part one, we examined ITV's Summertime Special, so now it's the BBC's turn, with Seaside Special. However, I must begin on a devastating note. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, certain footage just refuses to be found. Often – like Backstreet's Back – it surfaces eventua...
2021-06-16 23:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post
When clocks change and the days get longer, it's not called British Summertime for nothing. What's more emblematic of this sceptred isle than humping a load of sandwiches and towels down to the coast on an overly-expensive train, before having to shelter from pissing rain in a theatre playing a matinee bill of terrible variety acts? This most light entertainment of all seasons was celebrated by both ...
2021-06-06 23:00:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Since I made it my business to cover the very worst in pop culture, I've built up a list of Holy Grails, which have so far been impossible to track down. Bobby Davro's Rock with Laughter. Lynne Perrie's softcore/comedy workout video. All 27-hours of each ITV Telethon. An early 2000's Channel 5 show which gave celebrities prosthetic make-up, to help them experience life with a facial disfigur...
2021-05-17 23:00:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Though this series is more recent than the usual stuff on here, it crops up from time to time, as a query from those still awake after 1am with the telly on at the start of the millennium, existing as fleeting, half-remembered fragments, which linger like a buried trauma. Images of flowers and trees; a repeated assertion to “be the small bookcase” – was this a TV show, or a hallucinati...
2021-05-07 23:00:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Having tackled Treasure Hunt, it would be remiss of me not to cover Interceptor, which was very much a sister show; albeit the much less successful black sheep sister, turning up to grandfather's funeral with a wild hangover, and falling into the grave while sparking up a rollie. Like all the best game shows from that era – Treasure Hunt, Crystal Maze, Fort B...
2021-04-17 23:09:07 +0000 UTC View Post
When writing about a certain type of comic performer, there's a phrase all media is obligated to use, or else the Secret Critic Police will kick in the doors and drag them off to the gulags. There's even an ancient proverb about it – “If wild expressions you see, then 'rubber-faced funnyman' they be!” Putting that exact phrase, rubber-faced funnyman, into Google throws up a bunch of na...
2021-04-07 23:04:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Metal Mickey was a notable figure during my time as a small boy, due to his fitting solidly within that best and most formative of all categories – things I liked but was also a bit afraid of. I think it was the voice; clanging and metallic, like a ghost calling to you through the overflow, and a bit too Darth Vader-y for a child whose greatest fear was Luke's aul' fella. Not too coincidentally, Mi...
2021-03-19 00:00:31 +0000 UTC View Post
"William"
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Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
2021-03-17 17:03:42 +0000 UTC View Post
As I try to find my way back home, wandering lost through the ill-lit subterranean tunnels of British variety, it's clear the 1980s were a boom period for puppet sidekicks, and 40 years on, the big boys of felt 'n' stuffing remain household names; Orville and Cuddles, Emu, Basil Brush, Sooty's gang, the lads off Rainbow. Slightly less culturally significant but firmly atop the B-list is Nook...
2021-03-09 00:01:13 +0000 UTC View Post
David Gest first attracted the attention of British audiences through his status as former Mr. Liza Minnelli, as seen in their all-time great wedding photo, where the happy couple stood alongside Liz Taylor, best man Michael Jackson, and Martine McCutcheon. As a nation, we all judged the book by its cover when Gest was announced as a contestant on 2006's I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, ...
2021-02-17 00:05:03 +0000 UTC View Post
