And so we come to the end of my week in 1982. It’s certainly served as a reminder that August was a month of repeats, old films and cheap fillers. You could usually find something of interest, but the stations did tend to feel like they were in a holding pattern until the new season launches in September.
I can’t source today’s edition of The David Essex Showcase on BBC1, but this half-hour studio tape (from, I believe, the following week) might be of interest to some.
For me today it’s repeats all the way – Kelly Monteith on BBC1 plus Space 1999 and Catweazle on ITV. There’s also another chance to see Early Days by David Storey, starring Ralph Richardson, also on ITV.
Archive Television Musings 
I didn’t watch any television that day or for the next two weeks as I was on holiday in Scotland. I told you it was a good summer.
I don’t know who was on the cover of the new Radio and TV Times, although I remember the following week’s edition had Hywell Bennett in the restoration comedy The Critic.
I thought Saturday Picture Show was the first of BBC’s Saturday morning summer shows, but before that Mark Curry did Get Set which appears to be closer to the Saturday Scene format than the Swap Shop format.
I can’t make out whhay ITV’s Saturday morning show was because the cutting has been cut off. And who wrote the blurbs? He’s so sarcastic.
The Sun in a Bottle was the first episode of Catweazle.
Late films on BBC2 were La Femme Infidele by Cluade Chabrol, and I Confess by Alfred Hirchcock. I saw I Confess at the cinema when it was rereleased just after a Canadian film called The Confessional which is partly set in Quebec in 1952 when Aldred Hitchcock was making I Confess. Aldred Hitchcock was played by Rin Buage who also played Hitchcock in the quasi-documentary Double Take, and a Hitchcock lookalike in the Rear Window episode of My Life in Film.
I know what you mean about slim pickings on tv at this time of year. At bleast the children’s tv slot was better than the insipid line-up four years later. Sometimes there’s an Olympic or Commonwealth Games in August or a royal wedding. But I don’t like sport or weddings, so that would be less interesting for me. There were some very good programmes on BBC televsion during the summer of 1979, particularly on BBC2, but ITV were on strike. There are sometimes some good films of theme nights on the bank holiday weekend. Movidedrome use to run in the summer.
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And Ron Burage played a Hitchcock lookalike in a Bob Geldof film I am Bob. Two years after making I Confess in the second largest country in the world, Alfred Hitchcock made To Catch a Thief in in the second smallest country in the world where Grace Kelly met her husband.
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I’ve got a couple of queries about What Was on TV So Many Years Ago This Week articles in general.
What would be the earliest year that you would look back at, and what would be the most recent?
I would prefer it if instead of telling us which celebrity’s eyes appear in the cutting in the main article, you could let us have a guess and tell us the answer the following day.
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Roughly mid sixties to late eighties (any earlier and it’d be hard to track many programmes down, much later and we’re into the 1990’s where – out of choice – I have far fewer programmes to hand than from the previous three decades).
A good point about the eyes – if I dip back into this era I’ll do thar.
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