Not a lot that’s sourceable on BBC1 today. I might watch tune into Doctor Who and the Monsters for nostalgia’s sake – even though Earthshock is one of those stories that really grates on me these days (the plot, such as it is, is full of holes that I find hard to ignore).
BBC2 is a happier hunting ground. There’s tea-time Laurel and Hardy whilst later a repeat of The Paul Daniels Magic Show will definitely go on the list. Today Paul welcomes Reveen the Impossiblist with his Chess Magic, Mr Electric (the magician who beat the Energy Crisis) and Ray Dondy with his crazy diving skills. If that’s not entertainment then I don’t know what is.
Moving to ITV, an afternoon Van Der Valk repeat is a possible. VDV is a series I’m always surprised to find that I don’t enjoy more – all the building blocks are there (good central performance from Barry Foster, the usual roster of familiar faces guesting) but often the stories are just a little humdrum. Maybe today’s effort will surprise me though.
The blurb for this evening’s Coronation Street (courtesy of Stan Sayer) sounds intriguing. Alf Roberts off to watch a blue film? I’m in.
I’ll round off the evening with Arthur Lowe in A.J. Wentworth B.A. Broadcast after Arthur Lowe’s death in April 1982, the series always had a melancholy feel for that reason. It’s certainly not Lowe at his best, but I felt obligated to watch it forty years ago out of respect, so I think I’ll honour that feeling again today.
(And for those wondering, the eyes belong to John Alderton).
Archive Television Musings 
In the newspaper cutting it looks as if Hong Kong Phooey is part of Open University. But actually the morning line-up of children’s programmes id better than what was on in the afternoon. Jackanory was Rionald Pickup reading The Faithless Lollybird and Other Stories by Joan Aiken. (The faithless Lollybird was originally published in the Puffin Annual.) There was Why Don’t You? of course, and another chance to see Johnny Ball’s Think Backwards. Heyy, It’s the King was clagg.
Interesting sumo wrestling is featured on Crazy World of sport, about six years before Channel 4 took it more seriously.
I should have watched The Interview (tips about job interviews) on BBC2. I do remember watching Walzing Policemen.
I remember The 6.55 Special with Sally James. I might have caught the end of an episode of Best of the West once. Does anyone remember a sitcom called Bootle Saddles. Kenneth Cope and Anne Carrol play a couple who used to run a seaside boarding house who open up a wild west holiday resort in the middle of Yorkshire. There was only one series, but they couldn’t have made another one as Gordon Rollings, who played the elderly gunslinger the Kid, died not long after.
One show I definitely did watch on that day was Doctor Who. I do like Earthshock, and I like Attack of the Cybermen.
Welcome to Wodehouse was originally shown on children’s television and was a spin-off of Jackanory. Jackanory did another spin-off with actors telling ghost stories. It wasn’t popular because the put it on at the end of children’s tv instead of the animated programme and people wanted the puppets back.
I’ve seen magicians do card tricks, but not chess tricks. There were more variety acts in Turns in which Jimmy Perry presented film clips of music hall acts from the thirties and forties. In the Radio Times article he said that he wasn’t taking a rose tinted view of the past, there were some dreadful acts in those days. He went on Radio 4 to promote turns and paid tribute to Arthur Lowe. Before Dad’s Army he was a regular in Coronation Street, and Jimmy Perry like Coronation Street because he felt the characters were so real.
You mentioned Van Der Valk. Barry Foster was on ITV later that night in the underrated Alfred Hitchcock film Frenzy. (A film which I’ve seen on tv but would like to see at the cinema.) Other familiar faces from tv in Frenzy include Bernard Cribbins, Michael Bates, Jean Marsh, Clive Swift, Billie Whitelaw and Rita Webb.
And lastly, whose eyes were they?
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Doctor Who and the Monsters deserves a special mention.
Following the success of The Five Faces of Doctor Who (the best vintage Doctor Who season in the same way that Festival 77 was the best general archive tv season) the BBC decided to do another one in the summer. According to Doctor Who Magazine the BBC decided to only show colour episodes because showing old black and white programmes opposite Coronation Street wouldn’t be a good idea. Motre likely they didn’t show any black and white episodes because so few Patrick Troughton stories with classic monsters were available.
Doctor Who and the Monsters comprised Jon Pertwee and the Ice Warriors in The Curse of Peladon. Tom Baker in Genesis of the Daleks, and Peter Davison and the Cybermen in Earthshock. Genesis of the Daleks was a heavily edited version, a six part story edited down to the equivalent of four episodes. The next time Genesis of the Daleks was shown in its entirety was on BBC2 in early 1993.
During the seventies and early eighties BBC showed some repeats of Doctor Who during the summer holidays. During the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras it was usually two or three serials from the previous series. After the first Peter Davison series we got repeats of one story from the previous season, and two stories with earlier Doctors, in the summer of 1983 they repeated three stories from the 1982 series, and in 1984 they repeated the two part story from the 1983 series, the two part story from the 10984 series and The Five Doctors in serial form.
The Five Doctors repeat was the last repeat of Doctor Who for some years. When Michael Grade too Doctor Who off the air for eighteen months we not only got no new Doctor Who for eighteen months, but we got no repeats either. (And they should have put on repeats to keep the viewers interested.) The next repeats of Doctor Who were the pilot episode shown as part of Lime Grove Day on August Bank Holiday 1991, and the Resistance is Useless repeats season shown from January 1992.
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