“THERE HAS always been a disparity between the critical attention paid to plays and feature programmes on the one hand, and series and serials on the other. Yet it is the series and the serials that are, for most people, the staple diet of television viewing.”

The quote comes from this year’s report of the Independent Television Authority. I presume this means that in the Authority’s view critics get more fussed about This Week or Armchair Theatre than about such long-running, immovable dinosaurs of the TV scene as Emergency – Ward 10 or Coronation Street.

Since inertia is the most prevalent occupational disease in TV, it could be that critics are also in danger of catching it.

Disgust

I suppose there is a limit to the amount of times you can go on expressing disgust, resentment, annoyance or irritation with programmes like Double Your Money or the Eamonn Andrews Show without being accused of conducting a personal vendetta against their producers, their stars or the company’s board of directors.

In other fields of art or entertainment, there are other sanctions backing up or rejecting critical opinion. The most powerful, of course, is financial.

But the BBC with its monopoly licence position and ITV with its monopoly advertising position are immune to almost any sort of pressure – with the possible exception of a discreet nod from someone on Cabinet level.

As long as they play safe, do not shock, subdue life to the lowest level of receptivity, they can thumb their noses at both critical and public opinion in the sure knowledge that their annual income will not be affected.

Worst

A programme like Crossroads, for instance, if it were made into a film would empty the most undiscriminating flea pits in the land. If it were put on the stage, it would be about as popular as Epilogues at the Atheists’ Convention.

Yet there it is, spread across the nation, not once a week like The Power Game, or twice a week like Coronation Street, but no less than five times a week.

When I first wrote about Crossroads over a year ago, it was an afternoon programme. “In this environment,” I said, “life is shrunk to the dimensions of a dried pea being pushed into a small hole by a lazy snail. Nothing is generated; nothing is achieved; nothing is finished. The nation is reduced to the status of watchers at a construction site where the workers are on strike.”

The result of strictures like this – most of my colleagues have been even more abusive and derisive than this relatively kind assessment – has been that Crossroads has been promoted to an evening spot just on the edge of peaktime.

Thus, one of the worst programmes on the air now gets over two hours per week of screen time – more than twice as much as any other adult programme on British TV.

Masquerade

As a series, its most unique feature is the total forgetability of most of its characters. With the possible exception of Marilyn, the Cockney barmaid, they are ciphers masquerading as people and they fade out of one’s conscious and one’s memory with the credit titles.

The plots have the sameness of pub conversation and not since the age of four when I was confronted with a crisis about sugar on my semolina have I been asked to occupy my thoughts with such trivial and mundane issues.

The Flying Swan, a better series on the same theme, was quickly smothered by the BBC when presumably they realised what it was doing to their reputation.

The post The time has come to smother Crossroads appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

I extended this time travel trip to one week and one day so I could arrive early to catch an edition of my regional news.

18th May
ATV Today
ATV Midlands

Today the Midlands’ local news programme is taking us around Birmingham’s Wholesale Markets. It’s an early start for the reporter who begins in a local caff. It’s all toast, tea and fags. We see one old fellow taking a couple of jugs out and back across to the impressive Smithfield Market building. Inside, you can see the names of all the traders over their pitches. Interviewees play over footage of the going-ons of the markets. They really make Birmingham sound fantastic. Fish caught in Torquay the day before can be in Birmingham before the shops have opened in Torquay. In fact, fish come to Birmingham from various countries and the punters rate the quality. In a time before motorways became so widespread, this seems quite an impressive feat for the Midlands.

There’s also affection for the jovial atmosphere of the place, with one young man commenting, “I love working down here – it’s fantastic. I wouldn’t work anywhere else now.” The interviewees are a mixed bunch as some have local accents while others are much more RP. It’s great to hear them as though regional accents are becoming more common, the Midlands still feels underrepresented. It would have been nice to see what they all looked like but there isn’t the time on this short seven minute feature.

19th May
The Avengers ‘Room Without a View’
Rediffusion

The first half of series 5 has recently finished so Rediffusion has decided to repeat random episodes from series 4, although next week they will take a break for the Ice Skating World Professional Championships. While I had seen the odd episode, the True Entertainment channel’s decision to show ABC’s The Avengers from the beginning last year gave me the chance to become properly acquainted with the show. I grew fond of the charming, beautifully dressed Steed and the arse-kicking Cathy Gale. I’ve only seen as far as series 3 though, making this a step forward for me.

I hope 1960s’ audiences were able to appreciate the switch from videotape to film because for me it’s a huge difference compared to the earlier series. Not only is the picture better but the sound is clearer – I had had to strain, often struggling to hear some of the speech before.

The plot has people being kidnapped and brainwashed, believing they are somewhere in Manchuria. In fact, it’s a tape player and a couple of oriental guards through the back of a wardrobe in a London hotel. Steed plays the part of a food critic wonderfully, mentioning that a meal was ruined by the use of salted instead of unsalted butter. Mrs Peel is far too efficient a receptionist though and draws suspicion, resulting in her being gassed and waking up in ‘Manchuria’. When Steed discovers the false back to the wardrobe, he soon finds her cell but first must wrestle the two guards.

I described both the guards as ‘oriental’ because who knows what the one is supposed to be. 1960s’ television has shown me some dodgy make-up and blacked-up characters but this is the absolute champion. With a name like Romo Gorrara, the actor may not be of British heritage but he is definitely a white man and whatever they have done to his eyes does nothing to convince me otherwise. The production team were clearly struggling to find enough stuntmen because putting Gorrara next to Anthony Chinn, who is actually half-Chinese, makes it look all the more terrible.

20th May
George and the Dragon
ABC

I’ve seen ATV’s George before during my first visit to 1968. In this episode George and Dragon argue over the evening’s entertainment with George dismissing Dragon’s old fashioned records. Dragon protectively says they were her mother’s and she loves them. In a tussle, George tries to wrench them from her and they smash on the floor. There’s an audible intake of breath from the audience who were clearly as pained as this viewer. Dragon announces she’s leaving and we next see her at a bus station cafe.

A truck driver attempts to chat her up, only for each male member of the household to appear – George, Ralph the gardener, and their employer, John le Mesurier. The truck driver is astonished that she isn’t married to any of them and is increasingly impressed. As they convince Dragon to come home, he realises he doesn’t stand a chance so steps away and wishes her well.

21st May
I Spy ‘Bridge of Spies’
ABC

Unlike The Saint and other shows, I Spy doesn’t need to put a caption up at the beginning of the episode to tell us we’re in Venice because they’ve actually gone and filmed there it seems. The locations in this episode look fantastic. We are actually proper abroad! It’s so nice to spend some time out of a studio set for a change and they are such beautiful locations. The show really makes the most of them.

Kelly and Scott are a couple of agents playing at being tourists. Kelly is a tennis player, giving the pair reason to travel to various place but in this episode all their spy contacts keep dropping dead before they can speak to them. They struggle to figure out how the enemy is staying one step ahead. Well, maybe Kelly should have spent less time shagging tour guides who make deception plans with lines like, “I will combine high-level socialism with a low cut dress.”

I won’t skip mentioning the one thing that I Spy does, which is that Scott is black, played by Bill Cosby. It’s wonderful that it does go unremarked with no bearing on anything in the episode because the 1960s is not a great time to be black in the US. Only next month will the US Supreme Court will decide that state laws forbidding interracial marriage are invalid. Yet here he is in a starring role! Scott is very much Kelly’s equal and they’re genuine partners. They get on well and I enjoyed watching them together onscreen.

22nd May
Trumpton
BBC One

A lot of things about Trumpton seem familiar; the theme, the animation-style, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub. Yet I have no memories of watching Trumpton as a child and a crawl through BBC Genome says it was last repeated several years before my birth. In fact, the only source I can pinpoint for a definite contribution to my familiarity with any of Trumptonshire is Life on Mars. The BBC drama about a police officer trapped in the early 1970s promoted its second series with its lead characters of Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt in Trumptonshire form.

I thought Trumpton was terrific, something I hadn’t expected to find myself writing about a fairly simple young children’s programme. But it’s just so lovely. It reminds me of other children’s shows like Noddy, Postman Pat and Thomas the Tank Engine, which also exist in their own pleasant little towns. I want to get to know the townsfolk. I love that the carpenter is called Chippy. I love that the town has its own rag and bone man. This episode revolved around an old rocking horse that was going to be burned but the carpenter’s son rushed around to save it as he had hidden his savings inside. What a wonderful small drama for the day.

The Invaders ‘Moonshot’
ATV Midlands

Granada are also screening this show tonight, though they are a few episodes behind ATV Midlands. I’d been looking forward to The Invaders for some time as the TVTimes’ synopses always make it sound fantastic and several people had recommended the show to me. Aliens have invaded Earth but as they can shape shift to look like humans, hardly anyone knows about them. David Vincent saw them arrive though and attempts to thwart the threat, struggling to get people to believe him. In this episode, the invaders have infiltrated the space programme, replacing an astronaut with a copy. This was so tense, so exciting – it was just so brilliant. I will definitely be watching more.

24th May
The Baron ‘Countdown’
Granada

While I try to avoid repeating myself across the years, I’d been impressed enough with 1966’s episode of The Baron to want to come back for more, crossing the border into Granadaland after finding it in their schedule for this week. Both ATV London and ATV Midlands have finished their runs of The Baron, broadcasting the episodes in different orders after the first episode. For ATV London, this was the final episode, while ATV Midlands put it as the penultimate one. Granada have placed it as episode 22 out of 30. None of this actually matters as most episodes of ITC programmes stand completely independently and it’s rare to find any continuity woven in.

It was a strong start for me as the guest stars caption appeared with Edward Woodward and Philip Locke. Over the last couple of years I’ve become a big fan of Callan, the spy drama starring Woodward, and haven’t seen him in much else so I was looking forward to his appearance. This episode of The Baron was filmed shortly after he had finished an episode of Armchair Theatre, ‘A Magnum for Schneider’, that was also the pilot for Callan. Philip Locke’s name was also familiar to me, as he appears in the James Bond film Thunderball as a henchman who ‘got the point’ of a spear gun.

The Baron is on his way to meet a man called White who has some information for him. After he falls for the classic fake diversion trick, he’s trapped in a tunnel and gets kidnapped. In a marvellous twist on convention, it’s his female companion, Cordelia, who has to come to his rescue. Philip Locke as Compton poses as the Baron to go meet White but our hero turns up and smacks Compton, giving White the chance to make a run for it. Unfortunately White cops it anyway and the police tell the Baron that he had recently been working for Arkin Morley. The Baron knows Morley, who is a filmmaker as well as a fellow antique dealer. “Morley’s about the largest antique dealer in Europe, isn’t he?” says Codelia. “Yes and about the crookedest.” replies the Baron, which turns out to be a somewhat slanderous statement as the policeman says Morley has never been convicted of anything.

The Baron heads off to see Morley and I find it incredibly strange to hear Woodward (who’s taken 27 minutes to turn up) being so well-spoken. Throughout the episode, when he’s spouting particular venom, the refinement slips for a moment to reveal a much dirtier character beneath. Morley and Mannering exchange some banter and Morley gives away that this is all about a valuable sword, which previously fetched a quarter of a million dollars.

Everything starts to move a lot faster as the Baron and Cordelia head off to a house in search of the sword, but Morley and Compton have followed them. It feels like they have cheated a little by turning up with guns. They lock the Baron and Cordelia up for a bit. Yet it all goes terribly wrong for Morley after he asks Compton to shoot Mannering. Despite having a perfectly clean line of sight with his victim cornered, for reasons we will never know Compton decides to walk within a foot of the Baron, who takes the opportunity to knock the gun away. Morley legs it.

Steve Forrest has several inches on Edward Woodward and once the latter’s poorly-aimed bullets run out, it isn’t looking good. “I’m taking you in,” Mannering tells Morley, though I’m not entirely sure what for. Morley has committed unlawful imprisonment and attempted murder, but the Baron has no evidence of any of this. Also, the Baron knocked Compton about a fair bit before leaving his body on the floor underneath a large stone coffin lid so he could easily be up for manslaughter himself. I’d started to quite like Morley, who has far more witty lines than Mannering and had been a rather cool, cold villain. This last section of the episode has flown by and while I’m enjoying The Baron, I don’t find John Mannering a particularly compelling character – there just isn’t much to him. So far, it’s the plots and the guest cast that are bringing the quality to this show.

25th May
Danger Man ‘The Outcast’
ATV Midlands

I last saw Danger Man back in 1962 and like then this is a repeat from two years earlier. Though I have seen a number of the 25 minute episodes, this was my first of the later 50 minute ones. I’ve enjoyed the half-hour episodes because the action moves so quickly, yet there are some episodes where I’ve felt the plot would benefit from being drawn out. There is a new title sequence too but I really don’t like the music. The other change is that someone has stolen John Drake’s American accent. Maybe he had just spent too long away.

Drake heads off to Spain to befriend a sailor who has gone AWOL from Gibraltar. He is suspected of murdering a WREN who gave away signals intelligence. The sailor, Leo, is played by Bernard Bresslaw and oh gosh he’s just so lovely that I can’t believe he’s done it. Drake pretends to be a slightly dodgy character who is planning to leave for South America, that favourite lawless land so beloved by Nazis and criminals the world over at this time. To show just how awful he is, Drake stages a shooting so that Leo believes he’s murdered a guard. Leo is absolutely horrified but it works as Drake uses it as leverage to get Leo to confess. When Leo finds out who Drake really is, he confronts him with a gun. It soon becomes clear he won’t use it though and it’s rather a sad, pitiful ending.

What you could have won – missing and unavailable

Here are some of the listings that intrigued me but I was unable to watch this week.

MISSING Those Two Fellers – After several years of writing for other people, Dick Hills and Sid Green have their own series with different guest stars each week. Two comedians they have written plenty for over the last few years are Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, who are among the guests this week. Only one series was made and no complete episodes exist.

UNKNOWN Wheelbase – The world of motoring. This episode explores how to manage abroad with the limits of taking currency out of the country, which at the time was capped at £50. While not an insignificant sum, after travel and hotel costs, it probably didn’t leave holidaymakers with a great deal of spending money.

MISSING The Likely Lads ‘Friends and Neighbour’ – Although several episodes of The Likely Lads do exist, this repeat isn’t one of them, making it your last ever chance to see it. I first met Terry and Bob through the radio adaptations of the sequel series, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, before moving on to the same TV series. I’d love to get to know the earlier incarnations of the lads.

MISSING Armchair Thriller ‘The Snares of Death’ – The details given in TVTimes about this episode, starring Alfred Burke, are tantalising. An undertaker’s business is struggling and he ponders what can be done about it. He ‘thinks he has solved his troubles but the plan takes a macabre twist’. There are some colour promo photos with Burke posing over a coffin. His slightly offbeat expressions intrigue me even more.

The post Back in time for TV: 18-25 May 1967 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

It takes a masterpiece of manipulation by her cheerful little Tunisian keeper to prevent Noele Gordon and I, dubious passengers both, from ending up in the lazily-lapping Mediterranean.

Honestly, there’s simply no holding Lotus since she became a star!

Talk about tantrums. Until now she has been perfectly happy with a dollop or two of cactus feed a day and a gallon of water a week. But the Crossroads team have moved in on her native island of Djerba, 197 square miles of date palms, olive trees, sun and scorching sands off the coast of Tunisia.

And Lotus has been discovered. She will be appearing on British television, as part of the background scenery as Meg Richardson, Carlos Rafael, Marilyn Gates, and Geoffrey Steele reconnoitre the possibility of setting up a new motel headquarters for Crossroads on the island.

Until now it’s been quite an event if Lotus has ended up on a holiday snapshot. Now she’s in the big time, and the other 250 camels on the island are very proud of her. So please excuse her star temperament…

The “Sheik” who nearly ended up among the waves is me, Lanning of Arabia, all dolled up in Arab gear.

Not my normal travelling gear; but when you join this free-wheeling Crossroads excursion into the exotic, their astonishing enthusiasm becomes contagious. You just can’t help getting with it.

Consider the activities of the four “regulars” from the daily adventures in Crossroads, which until that buried bomb brought disaster, was set in the not-nearly-so-exotic Midlands of England…

Noele Gordon (Meg Richardson) is developing a tan while you watch. This isn’t far off her own idea of paradise. She’s a fitness fanatic; and this is the place for the outdoor life. With only 50 yards of white sand between her chalet and the sea, she’s in swimming before breakfast every morning.

There are majestic Arab horses on the beach for her to ride. And, as an enthusiastic gardener at her impressive Ross-on-Wye home, she’s going into ecstasies about the abundant, purple bougainvillaea and roses which magically appear out of the sand.

Lew Luton (Geoffrey Steele) has gone sartorially overboard for Arab clothing. His personal wardrobe is straight out of swingingest Carnaby Street. But out here he isn’t seen without his loose-flowing djibba.

Tony Morton (Carlos Rafael) is all wrapped up in Tunisian food, which is only what you’d expect from the famous Crossroads chef. I didn’t know, but Tony is an accomplished cook.

In the series, he concocts most of the dishes and recipes himself. Refuses to take short cuts or use substitutes. If he’s got to make an omelette, he makes an omelette, not something that looks like one.

Here he spends most of his time in the kitchen, engaging in wild bouts of gesticulation and translation, trying to find out exactly what goes into brik, a local delight, which is an egg done in herbs, and wrapped in a huge potato crisp.

His comment: “So all the hens on the island are brik-layers!”

Sue Nichols (Marilyn Gates) is lapping up the sun (a mere 85 degrees today) in her coral pink bikini. She wears a flamboyant, Arab-looking beach coat, too.

But not purchased in Houmt Souk (market quarter) down the camel track. Oh no. She found it in a Birmingham boutique, where it was advertised as a way-out mini-skirt and has “sort of adapted it, luv”.

Sue has been posing Twiggy-like under the palms for local cameramen, giggling virtually non-stop, and wondering why some Rudolf Valentino-type hasn’t galloped up on a stallion and whisked her away into the desert…

In between all then fun, games and frolics, they’re working conscientiously on the first programme of Crossroads in Tunisia, starting on your screens this week.

Me? I’ve winged into the happy-go-lucky set-up from still-chilly London, not knowing quite what to expect. And certainly not anticipating making a true pal in Lotus the Crossroads camel, who has been following me around the beach (where she plies for hire) like a puppy, ever since the word got around that I could get her name in the paper.

Noele explains: “Camels don’t get much limelight here. After all, Dave, you can buy one for about 75 dinars (£50) [£890 in 2018 allowing for inflation]. They go on working for 20 years. They’re very common and there are only about 20 cars on the entire island.”

So a motel in Djerba, it would seem, is something of a misnomer. Crossroads “cam-tel”, perhaps, would be more appropriate? But who wants to split hairs, up here on a camel’s back? Enough to admit that Djerba is the ideal venue for any sort of caravanserai, ancient or modern.

What of the food? Well, Carlos is mightily impressed and that’s good enough for me.

He recommends the schakouka, which appears to be a vegetable chop suey; or fish-wise, poisson complet, grey-blue mullet or sea bream, dished up with peppers, tomatoes, eggs and various salads. All this… and local wine at about four bob a bottle. [20p in decimal; £3.50 in 2018 allowing for inflation]

By day, my Crossroads friends are filming — on the beach, among the sheltering palms, at a medieval fort, built by the Spaniards in 1284, and — a snorting nudge between the shoulders reminds me — with long, tall Lotus, who, for connoisseurs of camel behaviour, rises from her haunches back legs first, and lowers front legs first!

Downright awkward, both ways; both manoeuvres almost have you headlong over her wickerwork muzzle!

Crazy, busy, fascinating. Like Sue Nicholls says: “Crossroads has never been like this before!”

Tonight we have a rendezvous at the glamorous, white-domed Hotel Tanit, where an Italian group play Beatlesquc music until midnight, and where Sue and Lew have promised to teach me an extrovert new dance they’ve invented, aptly called “The Hump.”

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll slip out of my Tunisian gear, grab a shower, don a conventional suit, and prepare for the evening festivities.

The only problem is Lotus. She’s become rather attached to me. Won’t let me out of her sight. And you simply can’t take a camel to a dance, not even in Djerba. I’ll just have to shake her off, somehow.

Pssst! Wanna buy a camel?

The post Lanning OF ARABIA at Large… gets the hump at the Crossroads appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

1962

We have one of those lovely years where Sunday here is Sunday there etc. It’s nice when the days of the week match up.

This week all my ITV programmes are coming from ATV. I’ll be in the Midlands all week before finishing up in London for Saturday night. First though, I’ve been lucky/unfortunate enough to embark on a trip abroad.

18th March
Grand Prix Eurovision 1962
NTS (Nederlandse Televisie Stichting – Dutch Television Foundation)

I have never watched the Eurovision Song Contest. Modern talent contests hold little appeal for me and, even though the ESC seems different, the cries of ‘but Terry Wogan!’ and ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ have never managed to convince me. I’ve seen clips. It’s been enough.

The entire presentation was in French – CLT in Luxembourg were the hosts – although BBC viewers had commentary from David Jacobs. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the BBC and was stuck with the Dutch commentary. I was able to identify some words throughout the programme and take a good guess at others but most of it remained a complete mystery.

1962’s Eurovision was a much more static affair than its modern-day version. One of the acts decided to take a comedic turn and ran about the stage and among the orchestra, which proved a nightmare for the cameras, whose operators must have been grateful no one else wanted to do this. Every act was accompanied by an orchestra and a different conductor each time, so I presume they represent the country as well as the singers.

I’d hoped some of the artists might be familiar but even the UK’s entry of Ronnie Caroll with Ring-a-ding Girl didn’t ring any bells (sorry). I did get an interesting surprise when the German act appeared. I did a couple of years of German evening classes and I realised that our teacher had played us this song. This made it one of the only songs where I actually knew what half the lyrics meant.

While initially intrigued, my interest began to wane about 50 minutes in. There seemed to be a good 20 minutes afterwards that consisted solely of the voting results coming through, with a giant scoreboard getting updated. I was ready to fall asleep. To top it all, France won and I thought their song was rubbish.

19th March
Bonanza ‘Vengeance’
ATV Midlands

I managed to avoid the prolific Westerns during 1961 but knew it was inevitable I would encounter them again. This is the second season of Bonanza and I am really surprised to discover that the UK is only about five weeks behind the US run.

It was, well, Western-y. A fellow got shot so his brother decided to try and shoot the fellow who shot him, whose family decided they would probably have to shoot the brother. This seemed less action-driven, with plenty of high emotions and animated discussion.

I realised I had no idea when most Westerns are set and my general stab in the dark has been ‘before widespread US car ownership’. They all dress as cowboys and ride horses. As far as I’m concerned, a 20th-century cowboy probably doesn’t look that different to a 19th-century one.

20th March
Cannonball ‘Shock’
ATV Midlands

This late 1950s’ series is among several repeats this week. Two truckers are asked to give a lift to a guy who they quickly guess is related to the boss. Their passenger is also an alcoholic. They aren’t keen on him but when they encounter a traffic accident, it’s clear the alcoholic is also a doctor.

My medical knowledge is minimal yet I became sceptical about the programme’s realism when the doctor snapped a man’s rib, cut him open, reached a hand in and started pumping the heart. All of this is slightly out of shot, saving the production team the need to show any bloody improvised surgery and saving me from having to endure it. We are supposed to buy that the doctor managed to keep this manual heart-pumping up for over an hour until the ambulance arrived (for a fellow who he had initially pronounced dead) and then, inspired to believe in himself again, would be allowed to return to practicing medicine. Time to get firmly back to reality.

21st March
Coronation Street
ATV Midlands

I am an occasional viewer of Granada’s modern-day Coronation Street. Ever since the show’s 50th anniversary in 2010 when ITV repeated the first episode, I have wanted to see more of the show’s early years. Marvellously, a selection of episodes from each year of the show’s history has been released on DVD. Having watched Coronation Street‘s first few weeks from 1960, I am familiar with most of the characters from tonight’s episode.

Jack Walker has been faking an illness and his wife Annie, The Rovers’ landlady, has found him out. Ena Sharples (my favourite character) declares laundrettes are for lazy people but does then decide to go along to one with Minnie and Martha. I love the dialogue between them here and Coronation Street‘s humour is one of the main reasons I enjoy the programme. The three ladies agree to go to the pictures that evening but Ena never shows up and the other two are annoyed that she has stood them up. The final shot shows us Ena, collapsed on the floor.

British Actors’ Equity Association had been staging a strike since November while trying to negotiate better pay with the ITV companies. The result was an increasingly limited number of new programmes and existing ones, including Emergency – Ward 10 and The Avengers, had their production affected so started to drop out of the schedules. Several months in, the effects are evident in this week’s schedule, which contains numerous US imports and repeats.

However, Coronation Street fared rather well. Although some actors only had short-term contracts and therefore quickly disappeared from the programme, several of the regulars were on long-term contracts so remained onscreen throughout the strike. This did limit the storylines but a little over a year after it started, Coronation Street was consistently featuring in the top ten programmes each week.

22nd March
Midland Montage
ATV Midlands

As far as I can gather, this local programme consisted of various film clips that covered local stuff for local people. I was delighted to find that a clip from this day’s episode was available from the BFI. Our young interviewer begins by interviewing various Irish people, sat on a plane, about to head back home. There is a nurse who came over to train and others who miss family. We then go to see various English people being interviewed. The Irish people were asked how they found England, Birmingham and the English, so likewise the Brummies are asked what they think of the Irish.

You get the feeling the reporter is hoping for a bit of variety, quite possibly a touch of controversy. Unfortunately for him, there isn’t that much from the Irish, who speak positively or just don’t find that much to say.

Reporter: “How do you think Ireland differs from England?”

Irish lady: “Well not much really.”

There was one young lady whose contribution was presumably cut because after the following exchange:

Reporter: “Why are you going back?”

Young lady: “Because I hate it so much over here.”

Nothing is expanded it on and we move on. She did state that she had been living in Coventry so perhaps that was deemed sufficient explanation.

The Midlanders give more of a mixed response.

Man: “I’ve got three mates that are Irish. Alright if they don’t have too much beer.”

One young man with half a tub of Brylcreem in his hair reckons most of the Irish are alright but says:

“The thing I do object to is the way they come to this country to scrounge on us. But I wouldn’t, like, class them all as one. But there are a few that I think ought to be taken back to Ireland where they came from.”

A middle-aged fellow believes sending all the Irish home would be barmy.

“I think Birmingham would come to a standstill.”

Immigration is not a modern political phenomenon but in among the influx from Commonwealth countries like Jamaica, India, Pakistan and, later, Uganda around this time, I think the Irish sometimes get overlooked. The fact this film was made, and that it references another one, demonstrates that Irish immigration to England was considered an important issue. The English people interviewed certainly all have opinions about it and so would the viewers – few as they may be at 11.05 at night.

24th March
Danger Man ‘The Lonely Chair’
ATV London

I’ve seen a number of episodes from Danger Man‘s first series so it is nice to end the week on familiar turf. This episode was first broadcast in October 1960 so it appears it is now getting a late night repeat. Tonight John Drake is assisting a man whose daughter has been kidnapped. The man uses a wheelchair and Drake impersonates him when it is time to meet the kidnappers. Patrick Troughton makes a late appearance as the head villain, using what seems to be his standard foreign accent voice. It is suitably vague enough to possibly hail from a number of countries. I rather like these half-hour episodes because the plot moves so fast. There is no time for your attention to drift else you are likely to miss something.

What you could have won – missing and unavailable

There wasn’t much that grabbed me in the listings this week, although there was one programme that intrigued me.

UNKNOWN
Your Life in their Hands: Depression – ‘More than 5,000 suicides in Great Britain each year – Depression causes a large number of them. Can these tragedies be prevented?; Can depression be cured? From St. Thomas’s Hospital, London’.

Your Life in their Hands normally looked at surgery so this seems like a rather different type of episode. The ‘more than 5,000’ statistic is interesting as, in over fifty years, suicide statistics haven’t varied all that dramatically – in 2016 5,965 committed suicide. I know that suicide was not talked about as much so I was surprised to see this in the listings. This episode would certainly make good viewing, particularly as suicide had been decriminalised less than a year earlier.

Don’t suffer in silence. Talk to someone. Free resources are available via the NHS.

The post Back in time for TV: 18-24 March 1962 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

1961

I’ve found a few things I know this week but most of the schedule is still alien to me.

This week my ITV programmes are coming from ATV Midlands.

4th March
Perry Mason ‘The Case of the Restless Redhead’
BBC Television

IMDB lists this as the first episode of Perry Mason but the BBC have actually been showing the US series for several weeks. Our eponymous lead is a law attorney investigator and this week his client is a woman falsely accused of murder. The plot for this is not overly complex but I felt like I was missing bits until everything all came out in the courtroom near the end. I feel that Perry Mason needs a sidekick so he can explain what his line of thought is during some of the investigation. He has a wife who could take this role but she doesn’t have much to do and we don’t see her away from their home.

I was struck by the huge cars in this. They don’t scream ‘Sixties’ to me so much as they shout ‘America’ – and as this went out in the US four years earlier, that seems more suited. Even considering that though Mason is an attorney, it seems like such affluence, which I just don’t associate with the UK at this time. Some of the blokes in this are huge – both in height and shoulder width. It all speaks of a population well-fed and doing well.

5th March
Elsa the Lioness
BBC Television

This documentary follows Elsa, a lion who was orphaned as a cub. She was raised by humans, George and Joy, who trained her so she could be released back into the wild. The story would become well-known in the film Born Free. Elsa has had cubs of her own and in the documentary we see her visiting Joy and George in Kenya. While she is completely at ease with the humans, her cubs are not and one acts rather protectively.

David Attenborough narrates this and we see him briefly at the start. I’ve previously watched a few episodes of his Zoo Quest series, which began in the 1950s. It’s interesting to see and hear a younger version of someone that you feel you know so well. Attenborough’s voice sounds different yet it is still instantly recognisable.

6th March
Picture Book
BBC Television

The Watch with Mother strand for very young children ran for many years with a different programme each day of the week. Today is Monday so we’re watching Picture Book, although as I’m limited by available choice, this episode is from 1963.

I have written before about how I became familiar with the Watch with Mother programmes. Initially, I didn’t actually remember Picture Book – the title certainly didn’t ring any bells from my childhood. However, with the appearance of a little nodding wooden sausage dog, something tinkled. Then when the lady started making paper lanterns I knew I had seen this before.

I was pleasantly surprised when we got a cartoon, even if it was incredibly basic. Bizzy Lizzy is a small girl with short blonde hair, who wears a dress with a flower on it. When she touches the flower, she can have up to four wishes. She asks for curly hair, then for longer hair, even longer hair and soon it won’t stop growing. She wishes for it to stop but she’s wished too much and it all disappears. I am aware Bizzy Lizzy got her own programme a few years later so I’d be curious to see what that was like.

7th March
The Perry Como Music Hall
BBC Television

The BBC are showing another US programme with a man called Perry. I managed to find an episode from almost a year earlier. In the US, it’s called Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall because Kraft is the sponsor and therefore their adverts suddenly appear throughout the show. The BBC would obviously have taken these out but it gave me an interesting look at why people didn’t want British television advertising to be like the US. There is no clear cut of ‘we’re going to take a short ad break’ or even a title card – it just cuts straight into another Kraft product.

The words ‘Music Hall’ should probably have set my alarm bells off that this was not going to be my thing but I decided to give it a go anyway. An hour of singing and dancing and everything sounded a bit samey to me. The redeeming factor for me was that the host, Perry Como, was excellent. He had a great voice and was wonderfully charismatic. It feels like a big Saturday night entertainment show, yet the 1961 audience is getting it on a Tuesday.

8th March
Saber of London
ATV Midlands

The title made me think sabre-tooth tigers so I was sure this would be an exciting show. The title is also a confusing point as my research shows that the programme has several. Our central character is a detective called Mark Saber and over on TWW, at roughly the same time, they are showing Mark Saber. It may well have been the same episode or possibly not. It doesn’t matter because I don’t know which episode ATV are showing either – I’ve found a random one, first broadcast in the US in 1957.

A man is found dead, from what appears to be a heart attack but Saber eventually figures out that he was in fact murdered with a poisoned dart after a phone call. It seemed so utterly ludicrous that someone could have rigged a telephone to fire a poisoned dart that it kept me watching purely to find out what really happened.

10th March
No Hiding Place ‘The Widower’
ATV Midlands

It wouldn’t matter who I was getting my ITV programmes from tonight because all of them are showing Rediffusion’s No Hiding Place. Over eight years, 236 episodes were made but only 25 exist now, making it something of a minor miracle that this week’s episode happens to be one of them. I’d seen two others in the last couple of years and loved them both so I had high hopes for this.

After a neighbour reports that she believes a man murdered his wife, the police decide to investigate. We will gloss over this first most unrealistic of circumstances because there are enough to come. The police focus on tracking down the husband and it seems he’s got various names and various wives. They keep dropping down dead from heart attacks.

The police manage to speak to a doctor, who describes the man, then adds that he ‘had a thing about tobacco smoke’. The way he says it implies that this is very strange. I’m not particularly trusting of 1961 doctors after this programme though. This doctor offers the policeman a cigarette, a different doctor advises someone to ‘have a good stiff whisky and relax’ but later refuses to accept a chocolate liqueur because he’s driving.

It emerges that the bigamist is killing people with nicotine. In You Only Live Twice, Blofeld allows 007 to light up and says, ‘it won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr Bond’. This always irritates me because the nicotine in cigarettes doesn’t kill you – you don’t ingest enough of it. However, pure nicotine is much more lethal and our man here has been poisoning his wives. He’s been putting it in chocolates and then directly on their skin. Despite managing to get away with murder and maintain multiple identities (one of his wives believes he’s a spy, allowing him to apparently disappear for months at a time without questions!), for reasons never explained, our bigamist/poisoner/amateur tobacco grower keeps a list in his desk drawer of all his wives and the dates he married them. Presumably, he had found it difficult to keep track of all the anniversaries.

What you could have won – missing and unavailable

Here are some of the listings that intrigued me but I was unable to watch this week.

UNAVAILABLE Danger Is My Business – ‘A film series telling the story of people whose work involves physical danger. Major ‘Robby’ Robinson of the U.S.A.F. leads a team of supersonic acrobats known as the ‘Thunderbirds’.’ Well this just sounds incredibly cool.

UNKNOWN Rooms in View: 2: The Kitchen – Kenneth Horne is among the people discussing kitchen planning and what equipment to buy. I’m mostly intrigued as to what items would be deemed essential in a 1961 kitchen.

UNKNOWN On the Spot – The Daily Mail is offering £7,500 to whoever best demonstrates that they deserve it for their business. This listing caught my eye as among the judges is a Mrs John Profumo, also known as actress Valerie Hobson. About four months later, her husband would meet Christine Keeler and set the wheels in motion for one of British politics greatest ever scandals.

MISSING Knight Errant Limited – Only a couple of episodes of this exist and I’ve seen it under various titles: Knight Errant ’59, Knight Errant ’60 or just Knight Errant. A young man sets up a detective agency, displaying the advertisement: ‘Knight Errant ’59. Quests undertaken, dragons defeated, damsels rescued. Anything, anywhere, for anyone, so long as it helps. Fees according to means.’

The post Back in time for TV: 4-10 March 1961 appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

News on television is the greatest journalistic adventure of our time. Every day the television journalist has open to him new and revolutionary methods of carrying out the time-honoured task of getting the news — and getting it to the public.

In the place of the typewriter and the still camera he can use film and live television to let the public see for themselves events as they happen, or as they have recently happened. He can, too, by skilful interviewing, bring the public face to face with the men and women who make news. Under the direct and candid eye of the camera these people, whether they are the great of the land or just ordinary folk who get into the news once in a lifetime, can be seen and studied and understood directly and intimately instead of at secondhand through the descriptions of writers, artists or commentators.

This — and the many other methods and techniques which television has developed — are great gains for journalism and a great stimulus to it.

The men and women of ATV’s Midlands News Department and their counterparts the Independent Television News — ITN — can claim to have been very much in the forefront of the fight to create this new journalism.

On the seventh and eighth floors of Television House (a building which housed the Air Ministry during the Battle of Britain) ITN has its newsroom and its offices, its camera workshops and storerooms, its film processing and editing rooms, and a compact news studio fitted with the most modern equipment. Midlands News has a similar set-up in Birmingham.

On September 22nd, 1955, when ITV first went on the air, one major innovation had already been developed—the newscaster system. Under this, the news is presented not by readers but by newscasters — that is, by men of personality and authority. They are not just “personalities”. They are, above all, working television journalists whose authority stems from professional experience and skill, and who do their share of gathering and writing the news, as well as presenting it.

Television writing must, of course, match the story. The big stories must be written with force and authority; the lighter stories with gaiety and ease. And ITN newscasters seek whenever possible a “tailpiece” — some light, unusual, witty item with which to round off the bulletin.

The news which you see on your screens is made up of four components. These are:

1. Direct “live” news, where the news is shown in pictures as it happens. (This can be done by an outside broadcast, or by a studio interview.)
2. News on film or recorded on videotape.
3. News in words, read or spoken by the newscaster, reporter, or commentator.
4. News in diagrams, maps, animated designs and still pictures.

In direct “live” news, television is seen at its peak as a reporting medium. Outside broadcast cameras, stationed in this country, or with their pictures relayed from abroad by the Eurovision link, have been used to put news on the air at the very moment when it is occurring. This system has been used many times to present on-the-spot reports of rescue teams at work at air crashes and other disasters. When the Prime Minister returned from his tour of Africa, his speech at London Airport was carried directly into an early evening bulletin. In the 1959 General Election the returning officers in key constituencies gave, through live broadcasting, the news of the voting in their areas direct to millions of viewers at the same instant as they gave it to the crowds round their Town Halls. Home scenes such as traffic jams on Bank Holidays, the sit-down demonstrations in London’s Trafalgar Square, and the public’s reaction to Budget changes, have been broadcast directly into the news bulletins.

Studio interviews, in which people in the news are questioned in the studio, form an essential part of this live component. They have provided many memorable news moments: Miss Vivien Leigh telling her own story of how she interrupted the House of Lords to protest against the demolition of the St. James’s Theatre; Derek Ibbotson, just arrived from the White City and still in his track suit, watching a film of himself breaking the four-minute mile and then talking of how it felt to do so; Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing talking of the Himalayas; even a runaway monkey which had boarded a bus and the bus conductor who had found him riding on the top deck. Such people in the studio, all very much alive, made television news which in its turn was alive and vivid.

Recordings of live broadcasts rank at the top of the second component of television news — news on film or on videotape. One tremendous news moment after another has been caught and recorded from live broadcasts. Colonel Glenn in his gleaming space-suit climbing into the capsule at Cape Canaveral; Mr. Krushchev reporting to the Russian people after Vienna; Angela Mortimer giving Britain its first Wimbledon victory’ since pre-war; the Derby, followed yard by yard to the finishing post — these and many other news occasions have been captured by the videotape recorder and brought to the screen in news bulletins.

But though the outside broadcast cameras are supreme on the big, predictable occasion, they still take second place to film for day-to-day news coverage.

A foremost tool of the television journalist remains the 16mm. film camera. Small, highly mobile, highly reliable, able to record the sound as well as the sight of an event, these cameras have become the television reporters’ notebook. From its own staff of cameramen in London and Manchester and Glasgow, in Paris and Rome; from its freelance cameramen throughout the British Isles and in more than fifty countries overseas; from the cameramen of the regional news rooms of ITV companies — like Midlands News — and from the newsfilm service of the Columbia Broadcasting System of America, thousands of feet of film pour into the film department of ITN every day of the year.

In addition to the daily news bulletins, ITN staff are also responsible for producing “Roving Report”, a weekly programme dealing with news items and topics of interest from all over the world, and “Dateline”, a late-night review of important events.

When the film cameras can capture the very moment an event takes place they produce news of remarkable power. “See it happen on ITN” was a slogan from the early days of Independent Television.

Very many of these happenings have been breathtaking in their immediacy. Suez, with British tanks rumbling through the dusty streets on their way towards the Delta; a long column of Russian tanks in Hungary, filmed as they thundered remorselessly towards Budapest to crush the rising there; the American landing-craft heading for the Lebanese beaches in 1958, the ramps coming down and the US Marines storming ashore on to the beaches, crowded only a moment before with holidaymakers; Mr. Krushchev pounding a desk with his shoe at the United Nations, or wisecracking with reporters from a Fifth Avenue balcony; seamen being hauled ashore in a breeches buoy from a ship wrecked on the Scottish coast; the catch which gave Hampshire the county cricket championship; messengers sprinting from the Royal Exchange after a bank rate change; the crowd pelting the ground with bottles at the end of the first West Indies v. MCC test in Trinidad… these have been moments when film has brought the news to life
— the true alchemy of television.

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