The Season 14 contemporary TV thread
As I stated in an earlier post I have a Radio Times for the week beginning September 4th 1976. I may have others too, but not to hand.
The cover of the magazine features Gemma Jones as The Duchess of Duke Street, an Edwardian serial following the fortunes of Louisa Trotter, cook to the famous and owner of the infamous Bentinck Hotel. The series also stars Christopher Cazenove and June Brown.
New and returning series this week include series two of The Good Life starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin starring Leonard Rossiter as the titular bored businessman who strives to release himself from his mundane everyday life at Sunshine Desserts, going to extremes in finding extraordinary ways out. One of the funniest scenes in this is where he imagines his mother in law as a hippopotamus.
The Two Ronnies also return, as does Parkinson for another series of his popular chat shows.
Saturday nights at this period came to be known as a "Golden Era" for popular, light entertainment with it's great line up of shows from around six in the evening to late night, from Doctor Who, Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game, The Duchess of Duke Street, The Two Ronnies, Starsky and Hutch and Parkinson. A fantastic line up of shows which certainly held their audience.
Late night viewing on BBC2 in this week featured "The Masters of Terror" film season, this week featuring John Barrymore in the classic 1931 film The Mad Genius, and Vincent Price in 1961's The Pit and the Pendulum.
As we go through the week we find on Sunday a new five part adaptation of Lorna Doone in the children's serial slot at five o clock. Later on Sunday evening the popular series The Brothers returns. Page 15 has a feature on this show and shows a picture of Colin Baker and Liza Goddard as their characters are married in the series. This series is followed by repeats of series one of Fawlty Towers.
Monday sees the return of popular medical series, Angels, following the lives of trainee nurses in fictional St Angelas hospital.
Tuesday's early evening viewing features The Ellery Queen Whodunnit, a new series of The Dick Emery Show and the return of Mastermind.
Wednesday includes a new series of detective show Softly Softly, starring Frank Windsor, while the aforementioned Reginald Perrin begins his show at 9:25.
Thursday evenings include the obligatory Top of the Pops, this week presented by Jimmy Saville, a new series of comedy Happy Ever After starring Terry Scott and June Whitfield, a new series of Kojak, starring Telly Savalas as a tough cop in a tough town, New York. The nine o clock nes is followed by documentary Sailor, about life on board HMS Ark Royal, this series used as its theme Rod Stewarts Sailing, resulting in the track racing back up the charts to number two a year after it had originally been number one.
At 9:55 a new series, Gangsters by Phillip Martin begins. This series deals with gang wars, drug smuggling, immigrants and the prostitution racket, which Martin feels is symptomatic of any British town.
Friday evenings in comparison seem a little low key with loads of regional opt outs. The highlight of Friday however is the new series of The Good Life.
I'll try and dig out some more Radio Times, I'm sure I have some, and I'll report back with some more schedules from this period of 1976.
OH! I almost forgot, the main reason I kept this particular issue was because of the Doctor Who feature on page 9 heralding the start of the new season. Phillip Hinchcliffe talks about how he feels the traditional Doctor Who monsters have become out-dated, and about how he and the cast and crew enjoyed filming in Portmeirion in North Wales.
It started with Swap Shop
At 9.30am on Saturday, 2 October 1976, the face of Saturday morning television changed forever as the BBC launched The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.
Compared to the normal Saturday morning kids shows Swap Shop was new and radical. A live three-hour programme with pop music, cartoons, live phone-ins to its guest stars (many of which came from Dr. Who, Tom Baker and Lis Sladen appeared on the very first edition, a clip of the interview and subsequent phone in can be found on the Hand of Fear DVD), an outside broadcast and much more was ambitious and brave - but the BBC pulled it off and a new type of television was born.
Originally planned for 6 shows, little did we know at that point that Swap Shop would run for 6 years and a total of 146 editions. It would spawn it's own awards show, two supergroups, several specials, four books and a top twenty hit single! It would also test the 1970s technology to the limits with, for example, music duets played in different parts of the country and live EuroSwaps from places such as Bruges.
With the Radio One Breakfast show host Noel Edmonds in the presenter's hot seat, a young and enthusiastic Keith Chegwin (best known by thousands for his Children's Film Foundation outings) out on the road with the 'Swaporama', and the Newsround front man, John Craven, brought in to add a little gravitas (and some awful jokes!) - the combination was perfect.
To balance things out just a little bit Maggie Philbin joined the team as the fourth presenter, debuting on the third programme of the third series (14 October 1978). She had a floating role, being either out with Keith on in the studio with Noel and John. Maggie was the butt of many of Noel's jokes, but she took them in her stride.
The show itself also had a number of characters - Posh Paws the purple dinosaur who sat on Noel's desk, Igor who's hairy hand we only ever saw, Lamb who popped up from under the desk in the last year of the show during a technical fault, and of course, Eric a mysterious never-seen person who lived up in the studio's roof and operated the large clear-plastic ball that had the competition entries in. The best look that anyone got of Eric was by artist Tony Hart who managed to sketch what he saw, but even then it didn't reveal that much.
The main concept of the show was based around swapping, and by brilliantly introducing an interactive element to the show, children could ring in and 'make a swap' - the idea being that they offered something they had for something they wanted. The best of these would go onto the 'Top Ten' Swap board. Or they if they were lucky enough to be in the area of the 'Swaporama' they could go along in person and swap something there. The third 'swap' was actually something that the celebrity guests would bring in as a prize - probably the most unusual swap was a huge cut-out camel that Mike Batt (who wrote the show's original theme) brought in!
Swap Shop ended after six years of swapping and fun on 27 March 1982. The show played out rather appropriately with Brown Sauce's I Wanna Be a Winner. For many children, Saturday mornings were just not going to be the same ever again.
