I’m old enough to remember ITV coming along in 1955. My uncle, who had learned about electronics in the war, had a sideline in supplying and servicing TVs and radios and got us our Bush TV for the coronation in 1953. When a valve went, round he would come to replace it. So….when ITV came along he fitted a new control knob on the outside to enable us to switch from 1 (BBC, obviously) to the new fangled channel 9 with commercials. I can still recall the clunk, clunk of the switch as you turned it round.
Anyway, I digress. Here is a list of 70 shows, one from each year of ITV. I can’t help thinking there is another list of 70 – a list of shame if you will – but these are the highlights. Probably just me, but I watched a whole lot more of the earlier shows than the later ones on this list.
Lots of memories in that list. I remember going down Petticoat Lane as a teenager and seeing a sign on a stall saying “As seen on Police 5”.
Took a further six years for ITV to reach Aberdeen – Grampian Television.
All we could talk about at school were the adverts.. and the cartoons, especially The Flintstones
Put down that decades-past-its-sell-by-date tube of
Gibbs SR toothbaste @NigelT and change the thread
title to 70 years of ITV?
Ha! Posted in haste!!
Really surprised to see the usually pursed lipped Grauniad bigging up On The Buses, especially given its relatively recent article about how Fawlty Towers isn’t acceptable or funny any more.
My own highlights on that list however would be Cracker and possibly Minder. Great stories with terrific acting, even if they’d probably be a little bit slow paced for modern tastes.
Well, the headline does say “unforgettable and unforgivable”…guess “On The Buses” is in the latter category.
Looking at the same Wikipedia page that I suspect Mark Lawson did, 1969 clearly wasn’t a great year for ITV. While the BBC was debuting the likes of The Liver Birds, The Clangers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Play for Today etc, ITV had Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Hadleigh and Bobby Bennett’s Junior Showtime. I was too young for Big Breadwinner Hog but that’s probably the only one I’d want to watch now.
That said, On the Buses may be way out of line with contemporary sensibilties but I can remember every one one of those characters even if I can’t remember any of the plots.
OTB had a very sad after-story when, unable to get acting work as a result of being typecast as Jack, the “ cheeky chappy” conductor, Bob Grant topped himself.
Watched BBH on YT a year or so back. Denounced as a harbinger of the end of Days back in the late 60s, the violence in it now seems almost genteel
For a moment there, I thought there was a ‘Going Straight’-style sequel to ‘On the Buses with a very bleak storyline. The reality is much sadder.
Barry Davies of Mind Your Language and various Doctor series had an even stickier demise. He ended up driving a taxi and getting murdered – still unsolved as of a couple of years ago
Evans
Above
Applause! 👏🏼
@salwarpe I recently discovered that there was an attempt to resurrect On The Buses in 1990. I believe a pilot was made with the originals, who would now be running their own private Bus company. Obviously the pilot did not persuade any TV controller that it was a good idea.
At the time the cast joined Reg Varney on Wogan for a triumphalist “we’re back” interview
That crystal set anecdote was worthy of one of the OTBs episodes.
I hate you Butler
Years later I saw Stephen Lewis paying a Blakey-like ARP warden in Peter Medak’s The Krays. Believe he ended up in Summer wine
There was a sort of follow on from OTB called Don’t Drink the Water. Blakey moves to Spain with his sister, played by Celebrity Squares favourite Pat Coombs. Hilarity failed to ensue.
I ‘ate you, @davebigpicture
I remember that! I thought it was just Stephen Lewis acting rather than him reprising Blakey.
On the other hand Reg Varney was in the underrated but depressing 70s seaside comedy,”The Best Pair of Legs in the Business” (As Jarvis Cocker once said, it starts like a Carry On film but ends up like a Chekhov play).
Coincidentally, here’s the new single from the Bluetones…
Not on the list, but I think should be:
Tiswas – took a while to be picked up by all the regions I believe.
Don’t think it made it to Tyne Tees until the last series in 1982.
Anglia TV had it from about 1980 I think.
It was created as a regional programme by continuity announcer Peter Tomlinson, who is my sister’s husband’s step-father.
It was first broadcast only in it’s home ATV region. Living in the Welsh valleys there were issues receiving TV signals over the air without huge aerials so we had a kind of primitive cable TV (piped) that was broadcast on the VHF band. For some reason we got English Midlands regions instead of Welsh content so I was in from the start. The first series or so was nothing like what it became, just
soberly introducing cartoons and
suchlike from a regular TV studio
I remember that cable service. I have family near Tonypandy and as a child, I was mystified by it as it didn’t seem to turn off. The family just turned the tv volume down I think.
On social media, Tommy Cannon of Cannon and Ball is upset about being overlooked by ITV (not the Guardian). They were not my cup of tea at all, but they were part of the 80s/90s line-up, and I feel a bit sorry for him.
@pessoa There were other ITV double acts – Mike and Bernie Winters, Hall & Pace. Even Morecambe and Wise started and ended their TV careers there.
Don’t think Cannon & Ball really stand out from the crowd.
And Cheese & Onion – a club act who were touted as the next big thing, but who disappeared as soon as they appeared. They had one series on ITV, named Funnybone, which they shared with other forgotten comedy acts. As the show went out on ITV in the early evening slot on Saturdays during the summer holidays, it obviously wasn’t that good. They split soon after.
Hinge and Bracket, Hale and Pace, Randall and Hopkirk, The Thompson Twins.
I remember 1976 (and to a slightly lesser extent 1977) being dominated by Rock Follies. The Guardian says it was something called Bill Brand, which I’ve never heard of. Perhaps the grown-ups were watching it? Rock Follies looks crap now, but it spawned “two of the best albums ever made”, according to the AW intelligentsia.
Bill Brand was about a Labour MP and I remember it as being pretty good. Not sure how well it has worn, but might be worth a look on YT to see if it’s there
@jaygee I did rewatch Bill Brand on DVD during lockdown. It felt like it could have been written this decade, the issues about tensions in the various arms of the Labour Party are still very similar. Nice cameo as well from Arthur Lowe as a Wilson like PM. Highly recommended.
It’s all upon YT – maybe my next rowing machine watch/reeatch after I finish Ideal
Never Mind the Bollocks and “The Clash”?
Dangermouse
The pick of the rodent based kids TV (alongside Roland Rat, Kevin The Gerbil, Errol The Hamster)
Maybe it was only on Yorkshire TV but I remember Michael Bentine’s Potty Time being a great, and slightly unhinged, half hour of kids’ TV. From half a century’s distance it feels like it was a hallucination. Anyone else see it?
I enjoyed his previous series It’s a Square World with the invisible assailants on scale models, some produced by Professor Bruce Lacey.
By the time Potty Time started I was probably a tad too old.