Panic is clearly in the air. After only three months of operation the new look in commercial TV is being relentlessly driven back to the old look.

Harassed by newspaper reports, falling ratings, impatient advertising agencies, bewildered manufacturers, the independent companies have the frightened glazed look of a fox being surrounded by ravenous hounds.

Having assumed for so many years that they had the magic formula for popular appeal, that they alone could unerringly supply what the public wanted, they are now faced with the fact that Auntie BBC has acquired a mini-skirt and a come-on leer, and can dish out friviality, [sic] vulgarity and triviality as expertly as their show biz rivals.

Catastrophic situation

The statistics for October viewing make very depressing reading for executives on Channel 9. According to JICTAR, which has replaced TAM as the source of TV ratings, the BBC acquired 53% of the total audience last month against the ITV’s 47%.

The BBC’s own statistics, which have always marginally differed from those of TAM and JICTAR, claim that in October the BBC had 60% of the viewers against ITV’s 40%.

Accompanying this decline has been the words of woe tumbling out of the mouth of advertising agency executive – “A catastrophic situation,” said one. “The present state of things cannot continue beyond two or three months,” said another.

If these signs of discontent are designed to get the programme companies to change their schedules, put out different programmes, revise the quality of their product, then one must ask in which direction they want the companies to go and ought they to have the power to force the companies to comply.

Already it is quite clear that no one has interpreted the dissatisfaction of the advertisers as a call for better quality programmes, more serious drama, more committed or involved or responsible programmes

Such news as has been forthcoming about the company reactions to their falling ratings indicates that a return to worse, less demanding, more familiar and more orthodox entertainment programmes is now being planned for the New Year.

Classic examples

We are promised a return of variety along the lines of the Palladium Show. Back in the London area Thames TV will bring back Crossroads and Peyton Place – both classic examples of what TV can do worst.

Crossroads, the epitome of serial drivel and a perfect example of chewing-gum for the eyes, is coming back, we are told, partly because of heavy viewer demand.

The actual number of letters received by Thames TV when Crossroads went off the air inquiring or requesting its return were 480 in August, 75 in September and only 34 in October.

Whatever these figures show, they hardly indicate that some millions of viewers should be condemned to this kind of TV junk for months, and perhaps years, because of the demands of a few hundred viewers.

Judging by the decline in letters received, it seems even these viewers have now settled down to the loss of one of their favourite shows without any undue repercussions on their emotional well-being.

More comedy

Even London Weekend, which was one of the few companies making slight genuflections towards the goal of more mature viewing, has assured us that more new comedy shows are on the way to cheer up their audiences and, presumably, their advertisers.

But when we speak of Channel 9 returning to more popular shows, we have to ask ourselves what are they really returning from? Why only popular shows!

The truth is that hardly anything much has changed, in terms of peak-time viewing, over the whole ITV network since the new companies have taken over.

The basic reliance on serials like Coronation Street, variety shows like Opportunity Knocks, comedy shows like George and the Dragon and hours of old films has barely been questioned.

Can anyone have watched London Weekend’s fare on Saturday and Sunday and truly say they were in anyway affronted by anything remotely highbrow or unpopular or adult during its peak-time hours?

Yet, in spite of all that is being done to provide more and more popular programmes, the BBC still seems to be clobbering ITV mercilessly in every region but Lancashire.

In the London area the BBC shows that have reached the top spots — seven out of 10 — have nearly all done so against opposition that was once considered impregnably popular.

Marked change

What, then could possibly have happened? If the ITV is producing much the same diet before against the BBC’s very similar menu, why has the taste of the public shown such a marked change in a matter of a few weeks?

Could it possibly have something to do with the manner in which the taste of viewers is measured? Is there any likelihood that some of the mystery may reside in the way in which ratings are now acquired compared to what had taken place previously?

The fact is that when the new companies came on the air so did a fresh audience measurement system. TAM, the previous company gave way to AGB and JICTAR.

Although the methods of gathering the ratings are much the same – electronic meters attached to a sample of sets which record the programmes switched on – the actual people having the sets have been changed. In other words, there are now in the London area 350 different homes equipped with these special sets: 350 other homes had them when TAM was in business.

Although the method of selection of these homes, designed to represent a cross-section of the London audience is the same, could it be that with such a small sample changes of three or four per cent in the sample taste could account for the statistical switch of hundreds of thousands of viewers?

Accurate reflection

Could it be that the fresh group of viewers now being asked for their preferences is a more accurate reflection of the nation’s taste than the old sample that had been used by TAM?

Is it possible that commercial TV never had the long lead over BBC that they had claimed over the past number of years, and that nothing has really changed with the advent of the new companies but a different standard of measurement?

And on such uncertain statistical evidence is it right that the standard of TV programmes should be pushed even lower than they now are?

The post The case of the vanishing viewer appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

SINCE this year began I have written 20 weekly pieces on television. Looking through them the other day to answer a reader’s letter I was surprised to find how much they concentrated on BBC programmes and how little on those seen on commercial TV.

In 1968 I have only written three columns which concerned themselves primarily with ITV programmes. Two of them dealt with the ethics of certain discussion techniques on The Frost Programme and The Eamonn Andrews Show.

Contracts

The other was an attack on the Government and the ITA for the arbitrary method by which they made certain people rich through their handouts of commercial TV contracts.

The BBC, on the other hand, has been pushed through the critical sieve with a vengeance. I have vigorously questioned its obsession with sports; its current policy of attracting viewers by plumping for peak-time mediocrity; its curious view that no more jokes about Mr. Harold Wilson should be permitted on light entertainment programmes.

The individual BBC programmes I have discussed have included At The Eleventh Hour, Dr. Barnard Faces His Critics, Talkback, Man Alive, Till Death Us Do Part, the Val Doonican and Rolf Harris shows, the Smothers Brothers, Don’t Count The Candles, Dee Time and a Spoonful of Sugar.

Now the only thing that these programmes have in common is that none of them has been consistently on TV for over three years. Even Man Alive, which is the oldest, has recently undergone a face-lift which changed much of its style and approach.

By comparison programmes on Channel 9 tend to cling to schedules like desperate limpets. It now requires on my part a fierce effort of will to switch over from the BBC to the independent network.

Circus

The general impression of the commercial channel is that of a grey, unenterprising circus where the ringmaster announces the same old acts – year after year — because there are always enough customers to fill up the tent.

Searching for a fresh idea, for a programme that hasn’t been grinding on for six years or longer, for something that isn’t an almost exact replica of a hackneyed formula, is a task that has long ago exhausted my patience.

Although the ITA has never divulged its reasons for demoting Rediffusion as a programme contractor, one of the factors that they must have considered was the tenacious manner in which they stuck to programmes like Double Your Money, Take Your Pick and No Hiding Place for something like 12 to 13 years.

Now that Thames TV has decided that it will not be taking Double Your Money after July of this year, Mr. Hughie Green has said that he is shocked that a minority of people should be able to take off a programme which is so popular with the majority.

One would think that after having had the longest run in TV — a run that has seen him mature from youth to middle-age with his grinning bon-homie as glacially intact as ever— Mr. Green would have bowed out gracefully with a few grateful words about the powers of tolerance and resignation of the British public.

Instead, Mr. Green is now arguing that, since some 6,000,000 homes still tune into his programme, that it is almost anti-social for a “minority” to take him off.

Who this “minority” might be and how they managed to get their views to Thames TV, is not explained by Mr. Green. Since decisions of this kind are usually taken by minorities of one, two or three men who control programmes in the various companies, does Mr. Green think there ought to be a “majority” of 6,000,001 executives before anyone dare drop Double Your Money?

Justified?

Ot course. Mr. Green will claim that the mere size of his audience justifies its continued existence. That is evidence of “what the public wants” — and who dare defy the will of statistics?

But if the public is offered no choice, how do we really know what it wants? If Double Your Money continues to occupy a prime slot for 13 years, how do we know that there is not a better panel or quit game in somebody’s imagination that would not be more popular than Double Your Money?

If the BBC had not taken off some very popular comedy shows, how would we ever have known that Steptoe and Son or Till Death Us Do Part would be more popular?

And has Mr. Green ever considered that stultifying effect that programmes like his, with their unchanged routines year after year, has on the creative talent that has to put them out?

And has he ever thought of what these long-running programmes do to audiences? It cocoons them in a world of routine where their ability to make an individual choice is eventually atrophied.

Conditioning minds to be unselective, undemanding and unadventurous is hardly the purpose of TV. Yet that is what its end result would be if programmes were never changed, never altered just because they were preferred by millions too lazy or mentally unequipped to do anything but enjoy what they enjoyed before.

Eamonn

Now every commercial company has had its share of programmes that have on too long for anybody’s eventual good. ATV had Emergency Ward 10. ABC looks like turning the Eamonn Andrews Show into another runner in the eternity stakes.

But the company that has displayed the most resistance to change on the commercial network is, surprisingly enough, Granada.

I say “surprisingly” because Granada has always had a reputation as an aggressive, social-conscious, vigorous programme company. It is a reputation that needs some drastic re-justifying.

Granada’s main contributions to the network include Coronation Street (over seven years old). What the Papers Say (12 years old). All Our Yesterdays (seven-and-a-half years old). University Challenge (six years old). Cinema (tour years old) and World In Action (five years old).

Individually, there is nothing much wrong with any of these programmes. They all tackle their particular subjects with reasonable professionalism and skill.

But to have any company content with a schedule in which over 80 pc of its main programmes are between four and 12 years old indicates a smugness or apathy which is somewhat disturbing.

The dynamic Sidney Bernstein who will, unbelievable as it may seem, be 70 next January, may be preparing the end of some of these hoary programmes when the new contracts are taken up in August [Actually the end of July – Ed].

Whether Mr. Bernstein will be leading his company into the new TV era remains to be seen since, according to the new 1TA regulations, all company directors must retire at the age of 70, unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify their staying.

A positive demonstration of his continuing youth and vigour would be the drastic pruning of some of the ageing programme vines that are now choking his TV schedules.

The post The dreariness of the long-distance runners appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

THE TELEVISION SERIAL – the nearest thing man has yet devised to talking opium is proliferating like an ugly weed across all channels.

Coronation Street. Crossroads. Weavers Green. The Newcomers. United. Emergency-Ward 10. Mrs. Thursday – together they add up to a massive indictment of the TV hierarchy whose collective intelligence can find nothing more imaginative with which to hook its millions of undiscriminating viewers.

It is bad enough that companies like ATV and Granada should confess to the sterility of their creative machine by clinging so desperately over the years to the formulas of Coronation Street and Emergency-Ward 10.

Tolerated

In no other country in the world is it possible to find audiences that have tolerated popular serials for so long or TV executives who have not felt ashamed that they have not been able to come up with something fresh and different after so years.

Even more worrying is the prospect that the pummelling the public have received by these long-running serials will lower their receptivity to any thing more demanding that plots and characters of an even lower standard will have to be devised in order to keep them happy.

There are signs that the present deplorable state of American TV is due to this fearful escalation in moronic taste. If a nation is brought up on a diet of pap it is not surprising that it never develops either the teeth or the stomach for something better or stronger.

Similarly, it seems, that in the serial field bad begets worse with Crossroads, Weavers Green, Mrs. Thursday and United! all aiming at targets lower than Coronation Street. The Newcomers is the only one with a slightly more ambitious standard.

It is clear that these increasing hours of drivel and gush can only have long-term deleterious effects on the creative abilities of all those writers, directors and actors who have to pump the stuff out.

But what is it doing to the nation? We are spending increasing millions on raising the educational standards of the young. And if education means anything it means, in addition to gaining knowledge, an opportunity to widen experience, to stretch imagination, to cultivate judgment, to sharpen sensitivity, to exercise observation and to stimulate energy.

Advantages

But these programmes are tugging the young in exactly the opposite direction. They shrink experience, limit imagination, blunt judgment, dull sensitivity, discourage observation and stagnate energy.

These serials are naturally favourites of TV executives because, from their standpoint, they have certain built-in advantages. Scripts, sets and actors are relatively cheaper than other forms of TV drama. And because of their innocuousness and puerility these programmes are seldom subject to the complaints of pressure groups.

But none of these factors matter if would really these programmes did not justify themselves by appearing regularly in the top echelons of TAM ratings.

How accurate, then, are the TAM ratings? For it is their guidance and inspiration that undoubtedly decide whether or not we will get more and more of the drip serials.

TAM, of course, merely contends that it is recording the sets switched on to a particular programme and not whether anyone is actually watching it or enjoying it.

Disquieting

But in America recent Senate investigations have produced some disquieting facts about this method of assessing public taste and it has been a great national joke that one adventurous public relations man, merely by finding out the names of a few of the watching panellists was able to manipulate his programmes to the top of the charts.

Some five years ago an independent investigation showed that TAM was as reliable a method of assessing the volume of viewers as had yet been devised. Since then TAM has increased the size of its viewing panels so that it claim it is even more accurate.

Yet any reasonable man must wonder about some of the statistics that TAM has recently been issuing. For example, there is decided clash of opinion between it and the BBC about who was watching which channel on election night.

At midnight the BBC claims there were three times as many viewers watching the BBC as were switched on to ITV. TAM claims that viewers watching both channels – about 3,000,000 homes – were almost equal. This is a staggering discrepancy.

Again we have the remarkable fact that the five-a-week Crossroads, easily the worst produced of the present serials, had four of its programmes in the Top Ten in one week in Border, all five in the Top Ten in Ulster and three in the Top Ten in the South West.

Yet not a single programme of Crossroads in that same week was listed amongst the Top Twenty in the National TAM ratings. Nor did it reach the Top Ten in most of the other large regions with the exception of the Midlands where two programmes made it. Now it may be that people of Ulster, Cumberland and Plymouth have lower taste standards than the rest of Britain and just prefer Crossroads most days of the week to anything else TV has to offer.

It may be, too, just a coincidence that three regions have the lowest number of people a their TAM viewing panel – 100 sets as compared to the large regions with 400 set – but surely it is a coincidence that needs some investigating.

Measurements

In America it is being suggested that TV audience measurements should be administered by a government agency. To avoid any such suggestion in this country, it is imperative that the public have absolute faith in the reliability of these figures.

Since the small screen is being flooded with more and more nonsense because it is claimed that it is what the public wants, but isn’t it about time we hear positively that is the public wants.

Five years is a long time in the changing world of public opinion measuring techniques. Isn’t time we had another independent investigation of both the BBC and TAM methods allegedly telling us what we want?

– Milton Shulman

The post The drivel and gush of the television serial appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

WITHOUT current affairs programmes or documentaries, television would be hard put to it to justify any claim to being a serious medium of communication.

It is programmes like Panorama, This Week, World in Action and Gallery that provide the solid bulwark of respectability behind which television channels can cower while peppering us with Compacts, Coronation Streets, Beat the Clocks and Take Your Picks.

They achieve a remarkable standard of consistent, pungent, informed comment and their continued existence and well-being is as essential to TV as the Kremlin is to Communism.

But there are signs that longevity has brought its inevitable toll of orthodoxy, smugness and hardened thinking. This is particularly true of Panorama, where methods of presentation have remained as static and predictable as a pagan ritual.

There inevitably sits the Buddha-like figure of the Great God Dimbleby aura-ting (if the verb doesn’t exist it ought to) resplendent waves of common sense and reliability.

With the slight frown of a benevolent teacher asking a series of hypothetical questions to which he alone knows the answers, he takes us gently by the minds into the confusing maelstrom of such issues as Vietnam, the trade gap or the Congo.

On Monday, with a condescending smile, he showed us the Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Callaghan, defending his latest fiscal statement against the combined scepticism of a BBC reporter, a financial journalist, Edward Heath and ICI’s Paul Chambers.

Then he whisked us off to Rome and a short profile by John Morgan on the new British Cardinal, Dr. John Heenan. And finally Derek Hart summarised for us the argument for and against travelling to Spain during the present crisis over Gibraltar.

Everything was impeccably well-mannered and balanced. Mr. Callaghan answered questions from the reporters without being remotely drawn on anything concerning the Budget or anything he had not said in the House.

Mr. Heath and Mr. Chambers made their statements to which Mr. Callaghan listened with firmly closed lips since it appeared obvious that they had agreed not to talk to each other but at each other. The new Cardinal’s profile was friendly – almost obituary-like in tone with John Morgan failing to take up the one issue which non-Catholics might have been curious. The Cardinal said it was the Church’s view about contraception he was supporting and not his own. own. [sic] He was merely concerned with the truth.

He agreed, however, that he would find no difficulty at all in accepting the changed attitude to contraception if the Church decided a different line was valid.

If, then, to-day’s truth can become to-morrow’s lie, how is Cardinal Heenan so convinced that what he supports to-day is the real truth? John Morgan did not ask the question.

Derek Hart’s contribution on Gibraltar, with its efforts to brighten up to discussion with some long-ish sequences of flamenco dancers was, by journalistic terms, a very dated story that should have been scrapped since it had nothing really new to offer.

A typical Panorama week. A dehydrated discussion, a scrappy profile and a tired news story. The programme has been better but, of late, traditional reporting and respectability seems to be clogging its arteries.

This Week, under Jeremy Issacs, has streamlined its format by eliminating the resident compere and being more flexible in the time it gives to any one subject. Lately, indeed, it has tended to devote a whole half-hour to subjects that hardly warrant it.

With James Cameron in the chair, it managed to inject a note of urgency into an analysis of the recent financial dilemma facing the United Nations.

By stopping the story for pressing transatlantic telephone calls to Desmond Wilcox in New York one was given the feeling that Albania’s intransigence was about to smash the United Nations and that we were in an international crisis not far removed from Vietnam.

The programme’s chief weakness is using the same trite techniques – silhouetted, shadowed, masked figures – for probing into taboo sociological problems like homosexuality.

The sight of the crunched face of Magee or Wilcox displaying concern in film reverses (shots taken after the actual interviews) has now become one of the cliches of TV.

World in Action, once Granada’s challenge to This Week, has deteriorated recently in both the artificiality of its anger and the strident, hysterical note of its commentary.

It programme on bronchitis was marred by a sensational lingering on sputum and coughing sufferers as well as a faked-up procession of coffins that jarred, and to some extent nullified, the reality of the problem.

The programme last week on Vietnam was practically all old newsreel clips with a minimal amount of film shot specifically for the programme.

Its best item, seen before – was an evangelical sequence of President Johnson, before he became President, in an unbelievably home-spun and corny frame of mind.

But no one should be allowed to get away with a script that contains lines of such bathos as “This is a civil war… brother set against brother”, or: “This is a battle for the hearts and minds of Vietnam… (the Americans) failed to win friends and influence people.”

Alex Valentine, the producer, should immediately get himself a new scriptwriter or this series will drown itself in its own muck sweat.

All these programmes, exciting and provocative as they sometimes can be, are suffering from an inability to get out of a format rut.

There is no evidence of experimenting with fresh techniques of presentation nor any signs of new thinking about the way in which an old problem can be given a fresh impact.

They all tend, in addition, to see only the ponderous, significant and urgent side of life. It is a long time since any of them gave me a laugh.

Since they profess to be mirroring life surely they must sometimes be tempted to show us what life looks like in a distorting mirror and with its trousers down.

The post Just for a change why doesn’t Panorama etc get out of the rut? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

INERTIA is television’s most prevalent disease. Nothing is more likely to bring on a fit of the vapours amongst TV planners than the suggestion that a popular programme has outlived its effectiveness.

Programme paralysis is particularly virulent in commercial TV circles where it would probably need a couple of deaths or retirements in the board rooms before Coronation, Emergency Ward 10, Sunday Night at the Palladium, Double Your Money or No Hiding Place were finally tossed into their well-deserved limbos.

But the BBC, to, suffers from this reluctance to change or abandon a once-successful formula. In their case they tend to cling less to the popular shows than the programmes that give give the Corporation its image of solid, responsible, semi-intellectual respectability.

Speculation

There is much speculation these days about who will fill Stuart Hood’s vacant post as BBC’s Controller of TV Programmes. Proof of the need for some fresh mind in this job is the manner in which To-night [sic], the five-day topical magazine, has been allowed to deteriorate into a middle-class Tit-bits stuffed with incestuous techniques and in-jokes.

Although To-night has been on the air almost eight years, it reach the peak of its creative dynamism about four or five years ago. It then evolved its wry, oblique, irreverent approach to life.

It sought out with a purpose and some effectiveness some of the immoral and ludicrous aspects of British society. And in its imaginative use of film and the ranging quest of its cameras, it recognised the fact that TV is essentially a visual medium.

The quirky

But my recent viewing of To-night shows that irrelevance has been replaced by a falsetto indignation about insignificant and manufactured issues, that its spotlighting of British life is largely concentrated on the quirky and the silly and that its aim to stimulate and titillate the eye has been all but abandoned.

The unexpected was once To-night’s most endearing feature. Predictability is now its most irritating fault.

There seem to be at least three Alan Whickers on the programme and if you exchanged the beard and the Scot’s [sic] burr, who could tell whether it was Fyfe Philpot or Trevor Robertson speaking?

Metaphors

The hallmark of a To-night item is a man in a mackintosh, carrying a hand-mike, walking menacingly down an empty rural lane or across a row of suburban houses towards a camera close-up and in an apocalyptic voice saying something like (my words) “This ground on which I’m standing hides a dream… for some a dream of hope and riches… but for others it has already proved a will-of-the-wisp, a Freudian aberration, a frustrating nightmare.”

In one week such unrestrained, highly coloured metaphors have rolled over a disused lead mine, and abandoned town in Australia, a toy factory, a church in Spitalfield.

Only the picture of an Australian town vacated after the collapse of the uranium boom was worth showing. Fyfe Robertson’s attempt to find a serious social issue in an ecclesiastical decision to spend £70,000 [£1.5m today, allowing for inflation -Ed] on a beetle-infested architecturally-exciting church was contentiously forced. But perhaps it was peripherally acceptable.

There was no excuse at all for including Christopher Brasher’s two contributions from Wales. His playing about with drums was embarrassing and his enthusiasm about some disused lead and zinc mines was inexplicable and even misleading. “A few tax concessions,” he said in conclusion, “and we could be digging our own minerals and cutting our import bill.” And perhaps going bankrupt in the process?

Eccentrics

The programme, too, is plagued with eccentrics and odd inventions. Any foreigner watching it might well conclude that any attempt to drag such an odd-ball nation into the second half of the 20th century is doomed from the start.

There was the working-class home of a printer converted into a baroque, plaster-imitation of a miniature Victorian palace. There was Fyfe Robertson offering to sell us re-painted quarry locomotives for £100 [£2,500] each. There was the man who collected vintage Rolls-Royces, another chimney pots, and the fellow who was using chicken manure as a substitute for petrol.

There is, too, a ponderousness about the so-called funny items that is almost distressing. Magnus Magnusson trying to ridicule Italian politics, pretending to be lulled to sleep by an Oriental device or making up a new calendar were Teutonic and collegiate enough to have been the products of some “vitty shport” at Heidelburg University.

Dullness

It is not only prestige that the BBC is losing with this near-parody of a once-exciting programme. Its dullness and specialist appeal gives the commercial channel and opportunity to pick up its mass audiences for the night.

Double Your Money and Take Your Pick have for years made the Top Ten largely because they were pitted against To-night. Even such relatively serious programmes as All Our Yesterdays and Cinema can reach Top Ten status with To-night as its opposition.

With the BBC trying to justify a higher licence fee, this almost wilful chucking away of audiences seems either short-sighted or stupid.

What To-night desperately needs is a change of time-slot, approach and editor. Moved to 10-30 p.m., it would be more likely to pick up the kind of audiences to which it is appealing and a fresh zest and look would obviously come with its late-night atmosphere.

Obsession

It must stop living on its former glories and get rid of its obsession with the past and the eccentric. It should concentrate on the urgent, the vital and the genuine absurd. If it campaigns, it must make sure that the issue is really worth campaigning about and it must stop its present breathless, contentious, holier-than-thou approach to all God’s works and all God’s peoples.

It is obvious, on this record, that 29-year-old Derrick Amoore is hardly the Editor to take on such a renovation. Judged by To-night, he seems to be the oldest young man in the business.

The BBC might also stop to consider whether or not their current passion for youthful executives has not already gone too far.

The post Is this the root of the trouble with Tonight? appeared first on THIS IS MY 1960s from Transdiffusion.

My ITV programmes for 1963 are coming from ATV and ABC.
 

1st April
Fireball XL5 ‘Spy in Space’
ATV Midlands

We’ve moved on from Gerry Anderson’s earlier series, Four Feather Falls, and the puppets of Fireball XL5 do have moving eyes, even if they don’t blink. it makes a big difference as they’re considerably less frightening. Fireball XL5 follows Steve Zodiac, scientist Venus, the Professor and Robert the Robot as they travel through space, facing off against various villains. Since first discovering the series a few years ago, I have found it great fun. The various alien worlds and space stations provide plenty of opportunities for superb model work – including blowing them up. The theme tune is also brilliant.

2nd April
Crane
ATV Midlands

Crane is a cafe bar owner/smuggler based in Casablanca. This series is one of the huge victims of wiping and as a result I’m having to watch an episode from 1965 – one of only a couple to exist. Tonight should actually be the opening episode so we’ll just to have to hope and imagine it was as good as this one. It’s the only episode of anything from my time travels that I have actually seen before.

Crane is offered a job smuggling corn flour and is highly suspicious that he is being duped into smuggling drugs. The plot takes numerous turns and Crane can’t be sure who to trust. One person the audience is sure he shouldn’t trust is Peter Bowles, who plays one of the episode’s baddies. I have seen him play a couple of other dodgy characters in drama series and I think he does an excellent job at portraying charming, posh villainy. Crane also comes up against the local police chief, with whom he has an ongoing strained relationship. I suppose this is something of an occupational hazard for a smuggler.

Among the highlights of Crane is the location filming, which surprised me as it can’t have been cheap. Something as simple as footage of boats that are clearly in the water – not simply half-constructed in a studio – feels momentous compared to many other series. It really helps to give the series a sense of place.

3rd April
Coronation Street
ATV Midlands

It’s one year and one week since I last visited Wetherfield. The main event tonight is Christine breaking off her engagement with Frank Barlow. Last I knew, he was still married to Mrs Barlow but presumably she has passed away. I don’t know what drew Frank and Christine together but it doesn’t appear to be much as Frank talks of them giving it a go and hoping their love will grow. Not unreasonably, Christine wants to actually be in love on her wedding day, something that her uncle thinks is absurd. She should take what she’s got offered. Overall, it’s a moving episode as there are no slanging matches, no big fights. It’s just rather sad. To liven things up, the episode ends with Elsie getting a visit from the landlord’s man who gives her threats of the bailiffs if she doesn’t pay the rent. We’ve learned that the landlord has been neglecting numerous housing complaints in Coronation Street and presumably Elsie is withholding payment in protest. She’s a tough one though and the threats don’t scare her. She tells him to bring it on.

4th April
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ‘Don’t Look Behind You’
ATV Midlands

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this programme and it seems that Hitchcock’s contribution is simply that of a presenter, with presentation bookending the programme. Some research shows he did direct a small number of episodes but really, he’s here for the undoubted prestige his name brings to the series. I don’t have all that much experience of anthology series but I find it intriguing to see what can be done with a single play. This one is a psychological thriller and there is a killer about. The tension built up during the episode and I was drawn in as more than one of the characters began acting suspiciously. It seems unfair to call this a play as it hardly seems theatre-like. There are numerous sets and some of them are huge.

5th April
Supercar ‘High Tension’
ATV Midlands

It’s puppet time again. Supercar is about a supercar and this week a villain decides to try to obtain it, demanding the vehicle as ransom for a kidnap. Said villain has the wonderful moniker of Master Spy. He is foiled as the good guys trick him because Supercar can be controlled remotely. I’m not quite as taken with this as some of the other puppet series but may still explore more.

7th April
Maverick ‘Triple Indemnity’
ATV London

I last watched Maverick back in 1960 and really liked the lead, Brett. But I was confused when I began this episode and there was no sign of him. Instead, our lead for this episode is Bart and the dialogue later revealed to me that he is Brett’s brother. It turns out they vary who appears in each episode and occasionally team up, which I would now love to see. I soon warmed to Bart too, who wins a game of cards but has his winnings stolen back by a guy who then tries to drive him out of the town he owns most of. Bart eventually teams up with the guy’s own mother to outwit him.

Space Patrol ‘The Swamps of Jupiter’
ABC

Tonight is the very first episode of this new puppet series. This isn’t actually a Gerry Anderson produced series and there are a couple of notable things that set it apart. There is a great lack of incidental music and the series doesn’t open with a distinctive theme. It’s all rather quiet with subtle drum beats and electronic noises, making the opening seem rather ominous. A voice-over explains what Space Patrol is; a combination of men from Earth, Mars and Venus, keeping space safe. We meet some characters and combined with the music I am quite freaked out for a while because, like our old friends from Four Feather Falls, they don’t blink or move their bloody eyes. It’s like going backwards. The sole exception to this is a brief appearance from one female Venusian, who bats her long lashes. The Venusians have high-pitched voices and I didn’t initially realise that one was a male – I just thought this Venusian had short hair.

The plot for this story sees a Space Patrol team sent off to try to contact some scientists on Jupiter, who ceased communications two months ago. This seems a considerably long time to wait before mounting a rescue mission, especially when we then discover it takes several weeks for a team to reach Jupiter from the Space Patrol station. The team consist of Captain Dart, an Earthling, Slim, a Venusian, and Husky, a Martian. On Jupiter, the Captain and Husky discover some invaders have killed all of the scientists. They are also slaughtering the local population, bird-like creatures called Loomi, for their furs, which contain properties that enable them to stay warm. It’s actually a pretty grim thought that someone would be wearing a fur that still contains the warmth of a dead animal. Overall, this is pretty heavy stuff for a children’s programme! To top it off, the two baddies this week come from Mars and in a blatant piece of racism, we discover that all Martians look virtually identical.

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.

UNKNOWN Overkill: Part 1: The Balance of Fear – looking at nuclear weapons, including ‘the precarious balance of terror under which we all live, and at possible ways in which this balance could be upset’. I would be very interested in the tone of a programme that casually drops ‘ terror under which we all live’ into a description., especially as the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred only six months before.

UNKNOWN Sooty: Sooty in the Garden – I’ve had difficultly establishing the archival status of this particular episode and though it’s a mixed bag of which episodes of the show exist, there is a decent amount. I grew up with the later incarnation of the programme, Sooty & Co., which was presented by Matthew Corbett, son of the original writer and presenter, Harry Corbett. I’ve seen a Christmas episode of the original show and still find watching Sooty and Sweep great fun.

UNKNOWN Keep It Clean – I can’t find anything about this programme, which went out late on a Friday on ATV Midlands, yet the title has intrigued that one tiny mucky corner of my mind.

UNAVAILABLE Comedy Playhouse: A Clerical Error – Galton and Simpson, John Le Mesurier and Yootha Joyce. Yes please.

The post Back in time for TV: 1-7 April 1963 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.

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