TOTP, EastEnders and I Woke Up One Morning are all tempting on BBC1. EastEnders is still in the middle of the who fathered Michelle’s baby saga, so sparks look likely to fly – especially when the normally mild-mannered Arthur finds his dander is well and truly up.
I Woke Up One Morning is one of those programmes that seems to have totally slipped from view – despite a first-rate cast and sharp scripts by Carla Lane. The series’ theme (it’s centered around the travails of a group of recovering alcoholics) doesn’t look like it promises merriment but it manages to be wryly amusing (although bleakness is never too far away).
I might catch the repeat of Star Trek on BBC2 whilst bemoaning the lack of Karen Kay’s show online. Rounding things off with an episode of Kojak on ITV that’s a pretty full evening.
Archive Television Musings 
I can only remember watching EastEnders – at the absolute peak of its popular teen appeal in 1986 – on this day. If I were watching now, my viewing would go: Crossroads, Top Of The Pops, EastEnders and then two of BBC2’s crown jewels, a Bookmark (on the angry young men) and 40 Minutes (I never saw a bad 40 Minutes).
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The Importance of Being Ernie left a bad taste in the mouth, but yes generally 40 Minutes was worth watching.
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The profile of Ernie Wise was shown in the nineties. Why did you say it left a nasty taste in the mouth?
I remember Eddie Braben said that if Ernie had died first Eric would have been even more lost without a straight man.
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There were lots of bad 40 Minutes. The Guardian tv listings page said that 40 Minutes could be either “a fascinating look at human life” or “a boring collage on a facile theme”. And more often than not it was the latter.
One of the most boring editions of 40 Minututes was Page 3 Girls. It was a boring documentary about boring people, not least the page three girls themselves. But it was also a very disturbing programme. The girl featured in the programme was only fifteen when she applied to do page three. The minimum age to appear on page three of the Sun was sixteen and they did sometime print pictures of half naked sixteen year olds. (The other disturbing thing was that her father was unemployed, and his daughter’s modelling would be the family’s main source of income.) No wonder a few months later Claire Short did her anti-page three campaign.
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I would have thought that ‘boring’ and ‘very disturbing’ were mutually exclusive categories.
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The Brothers McGregor is one sitcom I wouldn’t mind re-visiting. It seems to be largely forgotten now. It starred Paul Barber (Denzil from Only Fools & Horses) and Philip Whitchurch as two Liverpool Spivs. As a child I recall it was one of three Scouse comedies gracing the box at the time (the others being Bread & Watching).
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What was the series that Paul Barber made where he played a policeman and his brother played a Rastafarian?
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The profile of Ernie Wise was shown in the nineties. Why did you say it left a nasty taste in the mouth?
I remember Eddie Braben said that if Ernie had died first Eric would have been even more lost without a straight man.
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Which newspaper is the cutting from? (It’s the same paper from yesterday’s article.)
Living Doll by Cliff Richard and the Young Ones was at number one. So they survived the bus crash at the end of Summer Holiday. A month later Spitting Image would be at number one.
But once again it’s not a particularly inspiring line-up. It possibly proves that I didn’t watch as much tv as I thought I did. (If you’d picked out a Friday from 1992 I could have told you what I watched in BBC2’s cult slot.)
But I don’t think this has been a particularly successful experiment. Less successful than the look back at Christmas programmes.
Whose eyes were they?
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it’s the Daily Mirror.
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Ah the days when Question Time had only four panelists, something it should go back to.
ITV had a school holidays children’s morning offering but the BBC had ended Roland Rat’s Easter Extravaganza at the end of the previous week. A sign that even the two channels couldn’t work out when most children were off?
And absent from the BBC schedules is that old favourite – Pages from Ceefax.
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