The Season 1 contemporary TV thread

After some research on this I've found some TV shows that ran concurrently with season one.

We'll start off with Ready Steady Go which was a contemporary music show, ITV's precursor to Top of the Pops if you like. With its slogan "The weekend starts here" RSG was presented by Keith Fordyce and Cathy McGowan, herself a teenager plucked from the streets to present the show. The show ran for three years from 1963 to 66. The edition of 22nd November '63 featured Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Rolling Stones.

That Was The Week That Was, was a satirical show lampooning the politicians of the day, TW 3 made household names of David Frost and Millicent MArtin, who sang the theme tune.
For the edition broadcast on Saturday 23 November 1963, the day after the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, TW3 produced a shortened 20-minute programme with no satire, reflecting on the loss, including a contribution from Dame Sybil Thorndike and the tribute song "In the Summer of His Years" sung by Martin with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. This edition was screened on NBC in the US the following day, and the soundtrack was released by Decca Records. BBC presenter Richard Dimbleby, who broadcast the president's funeral from Washington, said that the regular programme was scrapped when news of the assassination was received and that the programme was a good expression of the sorrow felt in Britain

The Avengers, well I think we all know this one. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry) and his assistant John Steed (Patrick Macnee). And was a spin off from Hendry's own series Police Surgeon, Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. Steed's most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women usually clad in leather: Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), Emma Peel (Diana Rigg), and later Tara King (Linda Thorson). Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity. The Avengers ran from 1961 until 1969, screening as one hour episodes its entire run.
The episode that aired on 23rd November 1963 was The Medicine Men in which Steed and Cathy Gale discover that somebody is flooding the market with cheap imitations of medical products being manufactured by the Willis-Sopwith Pharmaceutical Company. Furthermore, there is a plan to distribute poisoned medicines in an oil-rich Middle Eastern country to start a revolution and drive out the British companies there. This episode was written by Malcolm Hulke and also featured Peter Barkworth.

Other shows that aired around this time were the obligatory ITC shows like The Saint, still in its black and white era, Dixon of Dock Green, Doctor Finlay's Casebook and Sunday Night At The London Palladium.
American imports included the top sixties series The Fugitive starring David Janssen as Richard Kimble, a doctor wrongly accused of the murder of his wife, he escapes custody and must stay ahead of the police to find the real killer, a "one armed man" who he saw commit the killing. This was a pot boiler of a series which kept sixties audiences enthralled until 1967 when the real killer was revealed.

I invite your comments on contemporary TV, and I'll do some more research on this and see if I can find some more.

Interesting stuff, well done Steve. I remember seeing David Frost interviewed once, in which he mentioned the TW3 of that week - I'm paraphrasing, but he said something like, their initial plan was to deal with the shooting of JFK at the top of the show, and then move on to the rest of the news in the usual way. But it soon became apparent that, really, there was no other news, the assassination was so 'big'.

Two other shows that were running alongside season 1:

Over on the other side later on the evening that Marco Polo finally twigged that Tegana was a bad guy, Morecambe and Wise were starting their third or fourth series of Two of a Kind (there is some disagreement on whether what is generally listed as series 1 was in fact a different series: either way it no longer exists and can't be checked, it seems). For the next thirteen weeks viewers were treated to some classic sketches. Though they were some way from the legends they became on the BBC some years later, these shows are still brilliant. Of particular note was episode 3 of this series, on which the guests were some boy band or other called the Beatles...

The night that Tlotoxl challenged Barbara: 'if you are Yetaxa, save him...', the BBC began what was for the time an unprecedented series, and which even today remains one of the absolute highlights of their documentary output. The year was 1964, fifty years since the start of the first world war, and the series was The Great War. For the next six months the country saw some amazing footage from the period, not just of the conflict itself but of life at home and in the other nations involved. There were interviews with people who were there. The depth of coverage was incredible, and would not be equalled in any documentary series for almost ten years, when Thames TV made The World At War.

Excellent stuff Jason :clap, this is what we want. If we can keep digging like this we can make a great file of contemporary TV.

I've just found an image of the BBC schedules for the night of 23rd November, so I present to you that evenings TV.

5:15 Doctor Who.
5:40 The Telegoons, BBC's world famous Goons in a new puppet version for television. Starring Peter Sellers Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan. Thise episode is titlled The Canal.
5:55 The News and Weather.
6:05 Juke Box Jury. A new disc, hit or miss? in the chair David Jacobs. This weeks panel, Cilla Black Sid James Don Moss and Anna Quayle. Only two editions of this classic show survive, this is not one of them, Neither is it the show from 7th December 1963, that one featured The Beatles as panellists and formed the first part of a Beatles evening alongside a 30 minute concert from Liverpool's Empire Theatre.
6:35 Dixon of Dock Green, classic police series starring Jack Warner in an episode titled The Switch.
8:10 The Saturday film starring John Wayne in Santa Fe Passage
9:35 Comedy Playhouse The Chars written by Harry Driver and Jack Rosenthal and starring Elsie and Doris Waters former stars of variety radio.

This programme was followed by the late evening news.
Can't see what was on between 7:20 and 8:05 as the PDF file I found was partly obscured, but I believe the full PDF of that evenings schedules are on the An Uneartly Child DVD. At a guess I'd say it was a variety show the likes of The Billy Cotton Band Show, but I might be wrong.

ITV's schedules for that evening included popular music show Thank Your Lucky Stars at 5:50, featuring this week Cliff Richard and the Shadows, followed by Comedy Bandbox, The Sentimental Agent and comedy show The Larkins. At 8:55 The Avengers episode The Medicine Men was shown.

The Telegoons. Funny stuff. :)

Well done Steve, good work.

I believe the Daily Mail TV Critic, reviewing An Unearthly Child the following week said, of the last image of the police box on a prehistoric landscape, that it would have "delighted the hearts of the Telegoons who followed".

I certainly hope that's right, because I say it whenever our wheely-bin is at an angle on our bumpy lawn... :hide

Great research there, Steve. I was wondering, though, where exactly you get your information from? I'm planning a project for the very near future, which will probably appear on Facebook initially and I wanted to find out what was on UK TV and cinema screens during the week of each 'Doctor Who' episode from 'An Unearthly Child' onwards. I know places where I can find a few details, and I've got several books where I can look up key programmes; also, I've found a site with opening dates for films in British cinemas, but frustratingly, I've not found a site which gives film top tens for each week, which is what I really wanted. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thank you! :)