And welcome to another Creamguide, with only two more to go until the Christmas Double Issue, and we’ve haven’t even started writing it yet! Post early for Christmas via creamguide@tvcream.co.uk.
SATURDAY
4th DECEMBER
BBC1
17.40 Superman and Lois
Here’s a bit of a novelty to start things off, the return of the US import that was such a familiar part of Saturday teatimes for so many years. This was the home of the likes of The Dukes of Hazzard, Buck Rogers, The A Team and Kung Fu which all happily filled the gap between Grandstand and the Gen Game for many years, which later gave way to marathon runs for the likes of Baywatch, before a parade of flops on ITV like SeaQuest and Time Trax rather put paid to the whole thing. One of the most popular occupants of this slot, with Radio Times covers and everything, was The New Adventures of Superman in the nineties – assisted by a smartly scheduled repeat run on Saturday mornings before Live and Kicking – and presumably the Beeb are hoping that this new series will have a similar impact. Bit different, mind, as this is a semi-retired Clark and Lois bringing up kids, but seemingly it’s a likeable enough series – part of the Arrowverse, if that means anything to you – and it’s certainly a welcome addition to the mix on a Saturday night.
BBC2
22.00 Phil Lynott: Songs For While I’m Away
23.30 Sight and Sound in Concert
In many ways Phil Lynott is the ultimate cliched rock star – an imposing figure with no little ego who played a reflective guitar on stage so all the spotlights would be on him, a composer of no-nonsense rock anthems, and who died early in a haze of drink and drugs. But there was a more complicated man behind all that, not least as he was black and Irish and in the seventies that could bring about many disadvantages. He seemed a pretty intelligent guy too, and though always happy to rock out he was keen to move with the times, embracing punk – performing with Paul Cook and Steve Jones on Top of the Pops – and electronica, most obviously with the majestic Yellow Pearl. So this should be a fascinating biography, and then it’s followed by Thin Lizzy, slightly past their prime in 1983 but still playing all the hits, though sadly without a stereo simulcast on Radio 1 VHF.
CHANNEL 5
21.40 Sinatra: King of the Crooners
Two rather different singers being profiled tonight. No arguing with the title, probably, given Bing Crosby’s famous, though perhaps apocryphal quote about a singer like Sinatra coming along once in a lifetime, but he wished it wasn’t during his lifetime. He was also the only person Parky wanted to interview who always turned him down, but he did enough interviews to make this two hour show work.
ITV4
10.30 The Big Match Revisited
We don’t often get the main match from Anglia but we were pleased to see it, not just for Mick Mills co-commentating alongside Gerry Harrison and a debut for one Ian Rush, but also because Anglia were still using an old analogue clock to denote the time of the goals, a pleasingly quirky bit of old football coverage, whereas LWT have now dumped theirs in favour of a primitive digital one. We’re sure the sequence of Keith Burkinshaw and John Bond listening to the FA Cup draw will have brought back some memories as well. Last show before Christmas this week – that’s Christmas 1980, not 2021 – which usually means a bit more levity than usual, and our extra special present is we think our first jaunt in this series to Division Three for Sheffield United vs Hull, though that’s very much the supporting feature.
BBC Radio 2
13.00 Pick of the Pops
Well, here’s a bit of a novelty – 1965! Surely the oldest year we’ve had for a long, long time, as we’ve barely been in the sixties much this year and even when we have we’ve been very much at the arse-end of them. Of course, as records were shorter in those days, it’s one of the rare occasions where Gambo can play the entire chart, which has its pros and cons, the latter possibly connected to the fact Ken Dodd has two records in the top ten. Then it’s a preview of what we’ll be seeing on BBC4 in about six months, 1992, which was always say was a terrible year for pop but there’s some quite fun stuff in among the dross.
BBC Radio 4
20.00 It’s Not How You Start
One thing that seems to have changed in recent years is how much TV shows are happy to go on for many years. In the past comedy shows especially often used to prescribe to the Fawlty Towers approach and finish after only a handful of episodes, but now the writers of even the most unsophisticated sitcoms pipe up to say they’ve come up with at least a three-series arc. It’s perhaps a bit of a shame because we do love a good ending, and in this programme Kate Weinberg will discuss the concept of endings in fiction, and what makes a satisfying one. And then she’ll go to bed, tired but happy.
SUNDAY
5th DECEMBER
BBC1
18.20 Doctor Who
And so we come to the final chapter of this series, which we think has been pretty good on balance – the cliffhangers have been really well done, the weeping angels episode the other week was a cracker, Dan’s been quite a likeable character and it’s zipped along at a pleasing pace. But then we’ve also had various scenes that didn’t really offer much in themselves and which we hope will all be adding up to some spectacular conclusion tonight. That said, last series ended up with the reveal that Doctor Who wasn’t the mysterious alien from space you thought they were, but a slightly different mysterious alien from space which is not, perhaps, the most jaw-dropping ending. We’ll just have to wait and see what we get this time, but whatever it is, they’ll be back in a few weeks.
CHANNEL 5
20.00 Britain’s Favourite 70s Toys
A new low in the weird world of social media nostalgia groups the other week when you were invited to like and retweet if you remember the Sky+ EPG. This show is certainly manna from heaven for that kind of thing – not like us cool kids, droning on about Saturday teatime telly – and its retro air is presumably increased by the fact it’s presumably made up of re-edits of numerous other programmes. Keep an eye on Twitter for the umpteen posts about how these things would never be allowed these days because of PC going mad, even though they’re all still clearly available.
21.00 Michael Crawford: Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
Michael Crawford was always the kids’ comedy fave of the day, winning Swap Shop awards for funniest man on TV, although his comedy credits aside from that are pretty sparse, the unsuccessful Thames sitcom Chalk and Cheese being his only real other major comic venture. Other than that it’s been an array of serious roles on screen and most obviously on stage, which is one way to avoid typecasting at least. Will probably make for a fairly all-over-the-place profile, mind.
BBC4
22.30 Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle
Well, what can you add to that? Surely that’s the ultimate BBC4 programme title, knocking The Incredible Story of Marie Antionette’s Watch with Nicholas Parsons into a cocked hat. And if, despite its great length, that title may as well be in Swahili for all the sense it makes to you, it’s the story of the anarchic art collective of the seventies who, in Hull and then London, created artwork and music that was, depending on your perspective, fascinating and thought-provoking or an absolute racket.
MONDAY
6th DECEMBER
BBC2
19.30 Mastermind
Apologies for the cock-up in last week’s Creamguide, giving you a bit of a glimpse behind the smoke and mirrors as we accidentally left some of the template in. It was supposed to be a Billy Connolly doc on Channel Five but we’ll hold off sharing our wisdom on The Big Yin until they repeat it. In the meantime, Louis Theroux’s always seemed a top Creamer, what with his pop cultural adventures with his mates Adam and Joe and being one of the few people to come out of talking head work on I Love The 80s with credibility intact, and so we’re interested to see the round on him here tonight. Alongside that are rounds on Rebus, Hamilton and everyone’s fave, Viscount Craigavon.
BBC4
22.00 The Signalman
And so to 1976, and the first of the ghost stories not to be adapted from an MR James book, but one that’s seemingly considered the best of them all, and indeed one of the best Dickens adaptations there’s ever been on telly. On adaptation duty was Andrew Davies and the success of this went on to lead to his glittering career in literary drama, while Denholm Elliott’s immaculate performance and some hugely atmospheric direction play their part as well.
This week’s instalment of this series has been greatly enlivened by the fact someone appears to have been uploading the entire series onto YouTube over the last few months, but how long they’ll stay there heaven knows. While they’re still there, though, here’s a jaunt through a memorable series which is probably the most mythologised show in TV history but was clearly quite something. It’s...
THE TUBE (1982-87)
In the late seventies and early eighties, Tyne Tees became ITV’s pop specialists with series like Alright Now, The Geordie Scene, Check It Out and, of course, Razzmatazz, which managed to entice numerous acts up to Newcastle, the former even managing to land a rare TV appearance by The Clash who actually asked to appear. All of these were either regional or in off-peak slots, but the new Channel Four provided an opportunity to do something a bit bigger, and so they pitched a new half-hour show based around collaborations called Jamming. Channel Four turned it down, but instead offered a live show, running for ninety minutes a week for six months of the year, and they wanted it from the channel’s first week on air. All Jeremy Isaacs requested was that “it must be live and it must have balls”, and so it exploded onto the screen on 5th November 1982. It immediately made headlines as first show guests The Jam split up a few days earlier and so it became their final live TV appearance, though as you can see, the honour of being the first band live on The Tube went to those rock icons, The Toy Dolls.
It didn’t take long for The Tube to become a big hit. Heralded as a Ready Steady Go for the eighties, and shown in the same Friday teatime slot, the aim was to make it a big event and Tyne Tees did that by not just devoting a studio to it, but their entire building. It also belied the idea that the stars wouldn’t come up to Newcastle to do it, and producer Malcolm Gerrie later said it was a masterstroke because it made sure it wasn’t just another telly show but something the acts would make a day of, so it became a bit of a special occasion for them as well. Hosting the new show were Paula Yates and Jools Holland, whose job was seemingly to introduce the programme while not knowing who or what was coming up next, accompanied by a host of new faces plucked through open auditions. That all meant it was a bit of a shambles, but it was a world away from the likes of boring old Whistle Test, a show with all its musical credibility but the energy and excitement of Top of the Pops.
Here’s the final episode of the first series, one we know quite well because More4 repeated it back in 2007 for Channel Four’s 25th anniversary. And it was a bit of an eye-opener because it was a reminder that The Tube wasn’t just live bands and cocked-up links, but with a hundred minutes to play with there was much else, and the show was always very proud of its filmed items with reports from around the world. Hence in this episode there’s a fascinating film, lasting nearly half an hour, on the music industry in Northern Ireland (or the lack of it, given most of it still operated out of back bedrooms), with performances from half a dozen local bands, all of whom were at the time genuinely unknown outside their home town and getting their first ever national TX exposure. Watch out too for rookie presenter Mike Everitt who, apparently, was delayed in joining the rest of the newcomers because, according to Paula, he’s been in prison.
Over its first six months on air, The Tube had already established itself as the music show to watch and to be on, and so in June 1983 Channel Four were happy to devote the entire evening to a five-hour spectacular known as The Midsummer Night’s Tube, which not only enveloped the entire Tyne Tees building as usual but also seemingly the entirety of Newcastle. This was presumably a bit of an influence on the Beeb launching their Rock Around The Clock marathons a few months later, and they did it again the next year, although a third in 1985 was cancelled at the last minute due to a strike at Tyne Tees.
And so back in came in the autumn of 1983 for a second six-month run, but with no Paula because she was on maternity leave, so Leslie Ash stood in, and her introduction is quite something as Jools introduces her as “bollock features”, before a shambolic handover to Muriel Gray. We also like Jools suggesting they were intending to bring us an exclusive of the new Police video, but it was on TV-am that morning. It’s easy to suggest that quite a lot of the apparent incompetence and adult content was quite deliberately done on purpose, especially when it started to get something of a reputation for it, but given what a complex show it was, how primitive some of the technology was and who was appearing, perhaps the biggest surprise is that there wasn’t more of it.
Here’s a famous edition from November 1984 which sums up all the above perfectly. Numerous comedians passed through The Tube in its lifetime, with poet Mark Miwurdz a regular guest in the early days and French and Saunders among those who made numerous return appearances. This week’s guest is Rik Mayall who makes a particularly striking debut, which apparently convinced a viewer to call the police and demand his instant arrest. Meanwhile later on the show are political punk band The Redskins and, with the miners’ strike raging and the North East particularly affected by it, they take the opportunity to bring a striking miner on stage, without telling the producers. Unfortunately said miner walked to a prop microphone that wasn’t plugged in so nobody could hear him, leading to cries of censorship, although given the show it’s far more likely to have a been a cock-up.
The Tube always made a point of featuring established acts, right back to Pete Townshend on the first show. Paula said much of this was Jools’ doing as he was always very excited by “anyone black and a hundred years old”, and indeed later on Terry Christian said he always got annoyed when people said The Word wasn’t as good or exciting as The Tube when all he remembered about the show was “hours and hours of fucking Phil Collins”. But there were plenty of new bands as well, and the most famous debut, as Paula reflects in the 1995 clip shows, was when they took a punt on a Scouse funk band called Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Trevor Horn was watching and the rest is history, and a few months later The Tube mounted one of their occasional after-hours specials to show the video of Two Tribes.
Here’s how the show looked in 1985 – still plenty of cock-ups, of course, although three years on and about a hundred episodes later you got the feeling they should probably have got a bit better at it by now. Certainly some of the excitement of the early days had gone, while after Live Aid (which Bob Geldof initially approached Tyne Tees to cover, before they took one look at his plans and suggested he go to the Beeb), rock was bit more respectable and a bit more boring. By now too Whistle Test had come out of the late night ghetto and onto teatimes as well, and was (relatively) more exciting.
Every rock show seems to have a pretty short shelf-life, as it seems to tire itself out and other shows start being influenced by them so they no longer stand out quite so much, and by 1986 The Tube was starting to sag a bit. Nevertheless, it continued to attract top acts and new talent, and probably the most memorable debut that year was by Vic Reeves, who Jools had seen at the Albany Empire in Deptford and invited him on the telly. Sadly we don’t seem to have the whole clip, just him discussing it on a documentary, but it’s not very good, to be honest, not least because it’s clear about 99% of the rehearsal time was spent sorting out the wires.
Sadly The Tube rather imploded over its last year on air, with many of its long-serving staff leaving, increased tensions with Channel Four over content and budgets and general decreasing enthusiasm about the whole thing. One thing that certainly didn’t help was a disastrous New Year’s Eve show from Tyne Tees, Come Dancing with Jools Holland, which was a complete technical nightmare that saw all manner of unfortunate swearing go out, coupled with some adult material, and worst of all Leon Brittain was there as a guest and lots of his friends in government were watching, the resulting hoo-haa seeing several members of the production team abruptly depart. Would be fascinating to see the whole thing, but in the meantime here’s a clip uploaded by Julia Hills herself. Then in January 1987 came Jools’ moment of madness – surely the most famous and most recent telly moment never to have turned up anywhere since – which has gone down in history as the exact moment it was axed, although seemingly it had already been decided the show was going to end and that was just a convenient hook for the press to hang it on.
And so The Tube came to an end in April 1987, in suitably shambolic style as big guest James Brown can’t be with them, although as Paula points out it’s not because, as they initially thought, he’s been shot but rather because he’s had dental surgery. The very end is here and Paula charitably suggests that “some old poo” will be replacing it.
Straight after The Tube, Tyne Tees tried again with The Roxy but that didn’t last a year and the grand tradition of music TV from Tyne Tees came to an end. But many of its production team went on to make many of the top music shows of the next few decades, with Jools of course on the Beeb and producer Chris Cowey later taking over Top of the Pops, while Malcolm Gerrie’s Initial made shows like The White Room and The Brit Awards. And in 1999 they were responsible for a grand Tube revival. Everyone reassembled in Newcastle for a two-hour special, like the original show mixing live music with comedy and features, and going under the name of Apocalypse Tube, shown first on Sky 1 and then repeated on Channel Four. No Jools and Paula this time, mind, Chris Moyles and Donna Air instead, the latter seen up there trying to get to grips with The Pod. Sadly, the ground was already broken and there didn’t seem to be anything about the new Tube that other shows weren’t already doing, so it remained a one-off.
The Tube still lives on in the memories of all who watched it, and it’s still beloved in the North East, as could be seen on that doc a few years back when one of the producers was doing coach trips to the now-demolished studios. Hard to imagine what an impact it made at the time, but if anything gave music TV a kick up the arse, it was The Tube.
TUESDAY
7th DECEMBER
BBC4
22.30 Play For Today: Hard Labour
BBC4 fair churning out the classic dramas this week, as after The Signalman last night here’s another delve into the Play For Today archives. The reason we’re getting this is to pay tribute both to Mike Leigh, who was the subject of this week’s radio-on-the-telly show This Cultural Life, and also Liz Smith, with this screening portrayed by an old Mark Lawson interrogation. This play was pretty pivotal in Smith’s career too, plucked from obscurity after a career in rep and extensive “resting” at the age of fifty to take the lead, while it’s also considered Leigh’s most personal play, not least as it’s set in his home town of Salford.
WEDNESDAY
8th DECEMBER
BBC4
23.00 What We Were Watching: Christmas 1995
It does seem bizarre to see the mid-nineties classed as nostalgia these days, especially as we were cooking up the embryonic TV Cream around that time, but this programme was first shown twelve months ago as part of BBC4’s 1995 night that also included the previously unseen Mike Flowers edit of the Christmas Pops. We’ve not always found this series all that enlightening in the past but this is one of the most entertaining entries in the canon, probably because you get the impression Grace Dent actually remembers many of the shows from the time and so her comments aren’t just based on seeing them completely out of context several decades on. We’ll see a new one in a few weeks too.
THURSDAY
9th DECEMBER
CBBC
17.00 Blue Peter
For some reason the scheduled episode last week was replaced by a repeat, with Lindsey and everything, though we’re not sure why. Should be normal service resumed this week. Meanwhile, on a Blue Peter tip, regarding Richard Bacon’s appearance in these pages last week, Matthew Broad writes “You’re right, he’s a really nice guy. He came into the BMW dealership I worked at in Dorset years ago. Looking to buy a used car. He turned up in a Mercedes SLK. Konnie Huq was in the car although she didn’t get out. They were dating at the time. One thing stuck in my mind was that his trainers were falling to pieces! Oddly enough I didn’t recognise him straight away until I asked for his details and then realised when he gave his name and number. He certainly didn’t have the ‘don’t you know who I am’ attitude.” We like these kinds of stories about celebs being very pleasant, so do share any you may have.
FRIDAY
10th DECEMBER
CHANNEL 5
21.00 1977: Britain’s Biggest 70s Hits
Surely the most over-mythologised year in British rock, it was very amusing when we saw this all again on Pops on BBC4 in 2012 when there was very little in the way of punk and the likes of ELP were having smash hits. But there were some pretty ace songs around as well, with funk and disco at their peak, so this should be an entertaining instalment.
BBC4
20.00 Top of the Pops
Perhaps surprisingly Christmas 91 turned out to be not that bad, actually – playing every top three hit of the year means it was hard to argue with the line-up and there were some nice surprises like Erasure and OMD. Nice to see also two of our favourite things about the Christmas Pops, the appearance of an act long since down the dumper having one final three minutes of fame in the shape of Chesney Hawkes, and one that has changed line-up since their big hit having to perform it, as was the case was Nomad with MC Mikee Freedom absent, although we thought Damon did a decent job at the rapping all told. More jaunts through the archive until January, tonight not too far back as we get 1988, with a pretty similar presenter line-up to 1991 with someone slick but dull, someone trying too hard to be cool and someone getting very over-excited, so for Franklin, Dortie and Simon read Davies, Brookes and Turner.
23.25 The Old Grey Whistle Test
Like so many heritage acts of the past, the Travelling Wilburys seemed impossibly ancient, but Tom Petty was actually only in his late thirties at the time. We do love the story about after the recording sessions, the rest of the band went to see Roy Orbison in concert and Petty spent the entire show saying to the others “he’s in our band!”. Petty was no slouch live either, even if his undoubted success in the US and on stage worldwide never really translated to major record sales in the UK, so this is probably his best showcase, on stage at the TV Theatre in 1978.
And that's that...
But the final Creamguide before Christmas will be with you next week.
