Did anyone see The Best Of Bad TV - The 70s yesterday? If not, you can catch it here for a few weeks.

As the Christmas schedules creep on to Britain’s EPGs, expect the annual parade of pundits pining for TV’s 1970s golden age. While there may have been Morecambe and Wise, Fawlty Towers and Porridge, there was also room for rampant racism, sickening sexism and competitive disco dancing on Britain’s three channels. Time for a showcase evening promoting the very worst the decade had to offer. A trawl through the decade's programmes, featuring clips of car-crash interviews, terrifying children's dramas, hoaxes and baffling game shows. Limited technology and low budgets led to memorably poor special effects in sci-fi shows, while soaps tried to escape the grim realities of strikes, unease and civil unrest, while there were memorable clashes between music stars and TV presenters, from David Bowie to the Sex Pistols. Contributors include Gareth Thomas, Paul Darrow, Jane Rossington, Tony Adams, Paul Henry, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton
I've only seen the opening 10 or 15 minutes of this so far, but even though I'm all too aware of budgetary limitations of the sci-fi series of the period (and if I'm truthful, watching them often raises a smile) and although the effects and costumes may seem dated and amateurish by todays standards, I have a healthy appreciation of the hard work and effort put into bringing these series to life. Something which this programme doesn't appear to have, at least in its opening scenes in which it ridicules and laughs at Doctor Who, Blake's 7 and UFO. Hopefully as the programme progresses, an appreciation of some of the output of the era will show through (I'm not holding my breath, though!)

The question I have to ask though is simply, do the 1970s series which many of us grew up with and love really deserve the derision and ridicule they seem to be getting here? They may be cheap and tacky at times, but does that make them any poorer than todays output?

I admit that I may be jumping the gun by getting annoyed at this before watching the episode in its entirety (I'll be going back to it shortly, so may be backtracking later), but why do people seem to get their kicks out of mocking things just because they're old and made on a shoestring? And why are they given almost 3 hours of airtime to do so?