This film has been specially ruined for television
26th June-2nd July 2021
Hullo there!
Welcome to another Creamguide, navigating its way through Schedule A and B for the pick of the week’s broadcasting. As ever, we welcome your correspondence to creamguide@tvcream.co.uk.
SATURDAY
26th JUNE
BBC2
20.00 Eric and Ernie: Behind the Scenes
Kicking us off this week is this documentary which was initially made to show alongside Victoria Wood’s drama about Eric and Ern’s early days, ten years ago now. We’re not getting that this time, but this works perfectly well in its own right, as Victoria narrates a tribute to the lads themselves, with a stellar line-up of friends and family alongside the archivery.
BBC Radio 2
13.00 Pick of the Pops
As far as a juvenile Creamguide was concerned, the most important events of the summer of 1986 were the Broom Cupboard in the morning, the centenary of Heinz Beans (which was promoted incessantly in Whizzer and Chips) and, most of all, Wham splitting up, Mike Smith on Radio 1 having convinced us that it was the most momentous occasion in pop history. We can relive that period as part of a pretty ace chart in the first hour, then it’s 2001 where we don’t hold out much hope for the preponderance of UK garage and nu metal in the chart getting a spin.
21.00 The Sound of 1996
It’s Summer of 96 season on Radio 2, although much of this will be nostalgia for nostalgia given how much looking back there was at the time, including Simon Mayo playing 1966 on the Golden Hour on the day of England vs Germany. Some interesting programmes to come, mind, in addition to the consistently baffling Sounds of the 90s (which takes any opportunity to play records from other decades). To kick it all off is this repeat outing from the 2012 series Sounds of the Century, a sort of radio Rock’n’Roll Years with a collage of news, sport and music from the year.
BBC Radio 4
10.30 Rewinder
Official Nicest Man On Radio Greg James is back to supplement his work on the Radio 1 breakfast show with his Saturday job on the Home Service, where he rummages around in the archives to make humorous and ingenious connections and unearth items requested by listeners. This one seems to include Gerald Priestland’s finest hour and a bit, BBC2’s opening night.
20.00 The Woman Machine
We had the documentary about Delia Derbyshire the other week, which is still available on iPlayer, and now here’s Elizabeth Alker to talk about other pioneering women in electronic music. There’s plenty to go at as well, from Daphne Oram to a whole host of modern composers, and one of the aspects this programme will discuss is how working in this field allowed women to remain pretty anonymous and hence give them the chance to avoid the rampant sexism that dominated much of the music industry for many years.
SUNDAY
27th JUNE
BBC4
22.00 Fela Kuti at Glastonbury
There’s a load of Glasto archivery on both BBC2 and BBC4 this weekend, though this is probably the most interesting as it’s a performance that has never been seen on TV before. That’s because it’s from the 1984 festival, long before it became the multimedia, multichannel behemoth it is now and when there wasn’t any regular coverage, just the odd film crew popping by for some colour pieces or the odd set for later broadcast. Happily Alan Yentob and the Arena team were there to capture this performance from the Afrobeat pioneer, interspersed with interviews.
BBC Radio 2
21.00 The Beatles Anthology
The 1996 season begins in earnest with a look at one of the year’s biggest bands... er, The Beatles. Well, in addition to being an inspiration for many Britpop acts, they were actually one of the biggest-selling acts of the year, thanks to the Anthology project, which spanned a book, a high-profile ITV series (which they rather booted around the schedules in the end) and some “new” material, although the biggest splash that made was when Radio 1 refused to playlist them because they considered them irrelevant to the nation’s pop kids, and they were probably right. But it wasn’t an entirely wasted project because Pete Best, as John Peel suggested surely the Beatle we can all relate to, got a load of money out of it, and it introduced some people to the Fabs for the first time, as mega Beatles boffin Geoff Lloyd will discover.
MONDAY
28th JUNE
BBC2
21.30 Victoria Wood: The Secret List
Tonight and tomorrow there’s another outing for these two programmes from Christmas, which take as their starting point Victoria’s personal selection of her favourite sketches that she submitted for a never-made compilation show in 2009 (although they actually did do a compilation show in 2009, so we’re not sure what happened there). The good news is that we see loads of those sketches, and there are some good people like Russell T Davies contributing, but the bad news is that some of the other talking heads are less welcome, with comments that could fill up several issues of Pseuds Corner, and once you’ve heard someone mention how her sketches represented Northern women, you probably don’t need to hear it over and over and over again. Victoria would have been thoroughly amused, we’re sure.
CHANNEL 4
14.10 Countdown
For a while it looked like we were going through Countdown presenters at a rate of knots, but Nick Hewer has been in the chair for nearly a decade and, while the show is nowhere near the national talking point it used to be, he seems to have been the best replacement for Richard Whiteley yet in terms of his enthusiasm for the game, respect for the contestants and his often inadvertent humour. But now he’s retiring and, in his place, comes a familiar daytime quizzer in Anne Robinson. We know a lot of people, probably quite rightly, have trouble with Anne but back in the eighties we would genuinely have said Anne was one of our favourite people on telly for her helming of Points of View, and as this is a suitably gentle show we do hope she gets the opportunity to show off her lighter side and not her, cough, robust opinions.
BBC4
22.05 Face to Face
Given it only lasted a few years, The Late Show seems to have a pretty decent legacy, what with Later still running nearly three decades later, and BBC4 getting plenty of mileage for the series of interviews Jeremy Isaacs did for them, and though they’re obviously not anywhere near as iconic as the famous ones by John Freeman, they’re interesting enough as they’d been shown far less frequently. We can’t see any particular reason for a couple of programmes on David Hockney, but that’s what we’re getting, an Imagine doc from a few years ago followed by this interrogation from 1993.
This week we’re featuring a programme that was a part of the schedule, albeit notoriously quite a marginal one, for nearly fifty years, and while it carried on for some two decades afterwards it never really came out of the shadows of its most famous presenter. It’s...
FILM... (1971-2018)
The Film programme was a production of one of the Beeb’s most fascinating outposts, Presentation Programmes, an offshoot of the department responsible for continuity and trailers that specialised in low-cost programmes, with an eclectic portfolio that included The Old Grey Whistle Test, Points of View, Children’s BBC and the weather forecast. It had sprung out of the ashes of Late Night Line-Up, and producer Iain Johnstone thought the Beeb could do with a regular film review programme. Film 71, for it was that, was only shown in London and initially the plan was for the presenters to change on a regular basis. First up on 16th November 1971 was the journalist Jacky Gillott, and while there seems to be no record of those early programmes, we think the theme tune was in place.
There had been film programmes on TV before, such as Granada’s Cinema, but it was pretty much the convention that they would always suggest all the films they talked about were brilliant, lest the distributors get upset. Film 71, though, wasn’t going to be like that, and hence when Jacky Gillott hated Straw Dogs, she was able to say that on air, starting a reputation for the show featuring independent, but always honest, reviews. Other presenters in the first few years included Frederic Raphael, Joan Bakewell and the novelist Irma Kurtz, who welcomed her replacement on Film 72 by saying “Television’s awful. You’ll hate it.” Said replacement was Barry Norman, a print journalist who had stints on the Daily Sketch, Mail, Guardian and Observer and specialised in showbiz, and had impeccable movie credentials as the son of film director Leslie Norman. His initial contract for Film 72 was for three weeks, with the possibility of another three weeks if things went well.
That first stint went well enough for Barry to be invited back again, and again, and by 1974 he became the full-time presenter - which was certainly a welcome gig for Barry as just before he started he’d been made redundant by the Mail. Although very much a newcomer to television, he proved to be perfectly relaxed in front of the camera, with his dry wit and honest and thoughtful opinions making him an engaging presence and one certainly worth listening to. By this point it was still only broadcast in London, though, but it was finally shown across the UK from March 1976, alternating every other week with Melvyn Bragg’s Read All About It late on Sunday nights, and finally went weekly from September 1979, albeit still in a late slot, and it would continue to haunt the witching hour for the rest of its life.
By the end of the seventies, Barry Norman had established himself as the most popular and trusted film critic of them all, and a good review by him was much sought after by the movie industry as it was usually the guarantee of boosted box office receipts. This led to various spin-offs including The Hollywood Greats, a much-acclaimed, and indeed much repeated, series of biographies of some of the biggest movie stars of all time, with Barry’s boss Will Wyatt suggesting they only cover people who had died so the interviewees would be more willing to spill the beans.
Now very much the face of film on the Beeb, the Film programme remained Barry’s bread and butter, but after Film 81, he was offered the presenters’ role on a revamped Omnibus, moving from a single documentary strand to a live magazine programme, allowing Barry to expand his range across all aspects of the arts. Filling his chair in Film 82 was initially Iain Johnstone, the creator and original producer of the programme and no slouch when it came to knowledge of films himself. But he wasn’t quite as engaging as Barry, although it didn’t help exiling him behind a desk as opposed to Barry’s armchair. Throughout the year, other hosts took a turn, including Tina Brown and Maria Aitken, but in the end Barry didn’t really enjoy his spell on Omnibus and he was back in harness for Film 83. There were a few other periods when he took some time off to do other things, though, with extended spells in the hosts’ chair for the likes of Russell Harty and, in 1986, boring old Parky.
The early eighties were a bit of a low point for British cinema, not just because the film industry was down the toilet, but because cinema attendance was at its lowest level since the war. Not that it meant the Film programme was no longer required, and indeed audience research regularly revealed that most of its audience hardly ever went to the cinema and just watched it to keep up to date and enjoy Barry’s reviews, without ever feeling the need to watch the films themselves.
By the end of the decade, the Film programme was running nine months of the year from September to June, and there were regular fixtures in the calendar, like a jaunt to LA for the Oscars in March and a sojourn to Cannes in June, although less regular was the programme’s start time, which would flit any time between ten o’clock and near midnight in any given week. But the show had plenty of clout and could attract the biggest stars to be interviewed by Barry, knowing that the programme was never going to gossip and was interested in the films and nothing else. Not that it gave the stars an easy ride, with a seasoned journalist like Barry at the helm, and indeed the interview with Robert De Niro up there ended with a stand-up row with De Niro not liking his line of questioning. Michelle Pfeiffer was so nervous her rumbling stomach was picked up by the microphone, while a, cough, “tired and emotional” Richard Burton fell asleep during his interview.
Another regular fixture was Barry’s rundown of his favourite films of the year every Christmas. While his opinions were still hugely valued by the audience, by the nineties there were suggestions he perhaps wasn’t as incisive as he used to be, was a bit grumpy and was getting a bit old-fashioned, with people like Alex Cox on Moviedrome and Jonathan Ross on The Incredibly Strange Film Show exhibiting more catholic tastes and embracing new developments in cinema, while magazines like Empire catered to younger audiences frequenting the new multiplexes. But Barry was on BBC1 and playing to a much wider audience, and even if it now wasn’t the only source for movie news and reviews, it was still something film fans was rather there than not.
But it was still a huge shock in 1998 when Barry announced that, after 26 years, he was off! Much like Des Lynam, who quit the Beeb not long after, it was suggested Barry’s dissatisfaction with the Beeb seemingly taking him and the show for granted and booting it around the schedules had something to do with it, although the fact Sky offered him a truckload of money was probably the biggest factor. In any case, his final show was in June 1998, ending with a nice compilation of some of his finest moments and a nice little montage, although you’ll note the shot from Film 82 is just Film 81 zoomed in because he didn’t do it that year.
Barry’s defection to Sky was part of a wider attempt by the broadcaster to create something they’d long wanted to have, a British equivalent of HBO, and hence Sky Premier was intended to be a souped-up Sky Movies which didn’t just feature films plus also premium drama and comedy, with things like Harry Enfield’s series and David Baddiel’s sitcom Baddiel’s Syndrome also being shown on there, and they snapped up exclusive rights to the Oscars and BAFTA Film Awards to boot. However somewhere along the line they went off that idea and all the drama and comedy went to Sky One - presumably after they saw it and realised nobody would want to pay for it - and Sky Premier was films and nothing but. Barry’s new show Film Night was still on there, in primetime, but after a year that also moved over to Sky One, and for all the moaning about the late slot on the Beeb, ended up flitting around midnight on there as well. After two years of that, Barry retired from the box to concentrate on his writing and, of course, his pickled onions.
But who would replace Barry as host of the Film programme and Britain’s de facto national film critic? It took a while to find someone, but eventually Film 99 made it to our screens in March, with new host Jonathan Ross. A huge star in the eighties, Jonathan’s career had been in a bit of a rut for the previous few years, hosting a barrage of undistinguished shows on ITV, and there was some murmuring that he might not be the most suitable host, seemingly more interested in cult (ie, crap) films than mainstream fare and a bit too flippant and irreverent for the role. But Ross said he loved all kinds of films and that it was genuinely his dream job. The format was going to stay the same too, as was, fortunately, the theme tune, albeit using the more upbeat section of the track.
And indeed Ross turned out to be a pretty decent host of the programme in his decade in the chair. Of course during that period he changed from being a washed-up old has-been to the highest paid presenter on television, and he increasingly become ubiquitous on the Beeb, and increasingly tiresome, to be honest. But the Film programme was certainly his most welcome vehicle as while he did add some more gags, he was pretty restrained and his reviews were usually thoughtful, a world away from him hollering rude jokes on his chat show. Sadly it was Ross’ other side that started to get him into trouble, and when he had to, cough, go away for a bit in 2008, that meant Film 2008 was dropped for several months as well. Finally in 2010, after much controversy, Ross left the Beeb completely, and another new host was required.
Despite the likes of Mark Kermode being suggested, the new presenter of Film 2010 was a bit of a surprise as it was Claudia Winkleman, a familiar face from primetime but not one particularly associated with film criticism, hence familiar cries of dumbing down. But Claudia was much smarter than her ditzy image might suggest, and the new Film 2010 was seemingly just as good as before. There were some changes this time, though, with the show now broadcast live, allowing viewers to comment, and Claudia was joined each week by film critic Danny Leigh. Indeed after a couple of years, Leigh took equal billing and other critics would regularly join them in the studio, the show now reviewing films by way of a debate rather than the views of a single presenter, a different approach but one no less valid. What didn’t change was the timeslot, though, still flung around various late slots. Claudia was a bit too busy to carry on, though, so left in 2015 and it was very much back to the start with rotating presenters filling her shoes, from Charlie Brooker to Paul Merton.
Then at the end of 2018 came the news, seemingly revealed via a reply to a letter in the Radio Times, that there wouldn’t be a Film 2019 as the show had been axed, just shy of fifty years on air and without even a final show to say goodbye. The Beeb were adamant there’d still be plenty of film coverage on TV and indeed Mark Kermode’s programme on BBC News owes plenty to the original Film blueprint with his reviews of the latest movies, but it’s a bit of a shame that great theme doesn’t herald a weekly show on BBC1 anymore. He never said “and why not?”, by the way.
TUESDAY
29th JUNE
BBC4
20.00 Yes Minister
20.30 The Good Life
Another one-series-and-out sitcom rerun comes to an end (if they don’t show the other episodes of To The Manor Born, they do get married, yeah), replaced by another much-loved sitcom which presumably we’ll only get the first series of. Of course it means Penelope Keith is replacing herself, although she’s barely in these early episodes and it wasn’t until later in the run that she became pretty much the lead. And it’s also a double bill of Paul Eddington’s immaculate timing, as Yes Minister moves on to its third and final run.
WEDNESDAY
30th JUNE
CHANNEL 5
19.00 Inside Tesco 24/7
This channel won’t rest until it’s profiled every single commercial business in Britain and then re-edited those into numerous other programmes, and indeed given the slot we think this might have been on before in some form. But worth a look in any case, because as well as the nose around the current store, we also examine Tesco in the eighties, where it began its journey from pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap supermarket with a drab presence on the High Street and its Checkout and Weight To Save promotions to its current status as Britain’s biggest retailer by several million miles.
BBC Scotland
20.30 Rewind
It’s onto 1981 here, which you’ll have seen a couple of weeks ago to accompany a screening of Gregory’s Girl, which is also on later tonight as well. Perhaps they’ve got stuck to each other. In any case, here it is in its proper place in the run, where as with much of the series we’ll doubtless get to marvel at a host of revolting Reporting Scotland sets and title sequences.
THURSDAY
1st JULY
CBBC
17.00 Blue Peter
Much like when a comic announced Great News For All Readers, a Blue Peter presenter suggesting they have “some news” is always going to be met with a feeling of impending doom, and this was the case again as Lindsey’s announced she’s leaving. She’s had a good run, though, eight years, especially as she arrived having been chosen by the public so she could have been a bit of a short-lived novelty. But she’s really got it and the kids really seem to like her, so we don’t doubt she’ll go on to even greater things. She’s got a few more left, though, so make the most of it.
FRIDAY
2nd JULY
BBC4
20.30 Top of the Pops
And now an apology to Huw Davies, who says, “I take issue with you describing Ned's Atomic Dustbin as shoegazers. They were part of that West Midlands scene known as Grebo alongside Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff. Shoegazing was more a Thames Valley thing with bands like Ride, Slowdive and Thousand Yard Stare. You were obviously still reading Smash Hits and not the NME or Select in the early nineties.” Well, we were indeed reading Ver Hits at this point, although we were a bit uneasy about labelling them as we weren’t sure if they were part of the short-lived fraggle scene. What we do know is that there’s some top indie and dance stuff around at the moment, and there are more examples here with Definition of Sound and someone we’ve been looking forward to for ages, Gary Clail.
21.00 Top of the Pops
Then it’s Gaz for what wasn’t then but is now a slightly historic episode, as we enter April 1991 and hence mark the fifteenth anniversary of the first repeat, just over a decade ago, from April 1976. And if we ever wanted to do a “how it’s started/how it’s going” meme, surely a clip of Sailor next to one of N-Joi would be perfect, and we did enjoy the suitably hardcore performance of the latter. A few weeks later they’re back again thanks to a speedy re-release of their previous single, while we’ve got another of those tracks which are so ubiquitous you forget they were once a new song, this time from The Mock Turtles.
21.30 Canadian Hits at the BBC
These shows seem to be coming up with the goods in both finding suitably interesting clips and indeed relevant things to hang the shows off, the fact it’s Canada Day being a suitable excuse for sixty minutes of Canuck classics. No doubt you’ll spend much of the programme going “Oh, are they Canadian, then?”, and the selection is suitably eclectic, from Avril Lavinge to Arcade Fire and all points in between.
Sky Arts
20.00 Guy Garvey: From The Vaults
It’s a new series of the programme where your man Guy introduces clips from the ITV archives, which was entertaining last year - but let’s never have complaints about captions on TOTP2 and similar shows in the future if the alternative is Guy actually reading the facts out, during the songs. It’s not so bad as he is a nice bloke and we’re happy to have a bit of context, but he is a bit verbose. The clips themselves are pretty interesting, last time round offering performances from the likes of Granada Reports, The Saturday Show and unbroadcast pilots as well as the familiar likes of The Tube and So It Goes, and they don’t let irremovable end credits or slightly wonky quality put them off either, so there’s usually something worth seeing from a telly perspective, never mind a musical one. Six more years under the spotlight over the next few weeks, starting off in 1980 with such delights as Elvis Costello on Tiswas.
And that's that...
But there’s another Creamguide on its way in seven days.
