Hello. Welcome to my blog about British archive television. This will highlight programmes I’ve been watching whilst my Twitter feed – embedded in the blog and also directly accessable via @archivetvmus71 – contains many more archive treats.
The posts are broken up into categories (by decade and type – comedy, drama, etc). You can also explore via the tags lower down the page. Many of the programmes which have multiple posts can also be accessed via the top of the main menu (BBC/ITV/Christmas TV/Doctor Who/Grange Hill).
These top menu options have the posts re-arranged from oldest to newest (WordPress blogs display the newest posts by default). So if you’re looking to read about, say, The Day of the Triffids episode by episode, then selecting it via the BBC button next to the Home button is the best option – since the posts will be in the correct order!
If you notice any broken links or have any comments or suggestions then please leave a message on the relevant post or drop me an email at archivetvmusings@gmail.com
I also have a theatre related blog at Theatre Musings.
Archive Television Musings 
I enjoy your reviews… journeys down nostalgia lane. Hope one day to see Quatermass added to your impressive list.
Ian Duerden
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Thanks, happy to hear you’re enjoying my ramblings!
Quatermass is ceetainly on the rewatch list, so keep an eye out.
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Good site you’ve got here. When do you think you will be posting more Grange Hill eps?
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Cheers. I’m going pick up GH again in the next month or so, probably around the end of October.
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What do you think of this?
http://www.avclub.com/article/take-a-look-at-the-unearthed-pilot-for-emdays-like-100482
The article talked about an attempt to make a UK version of “That 70s Show” called “Days Like These”.
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Not sure if that episode was unaired, since IMDB (who I know are hardly the bastions of accuracy) have it as the first transmitted episode.
There are several unscreened eps though, so a DVD release would have a certain curiosity value, even if the entertainment value was low.
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You can see some episodes of “Days Like these” on Youtube
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Hi,
I run an official “Are You Being Served?” site at:
http://www.aybscentral.com
I would be very interested in using the pictures of Alfie Bass and Ferdy Mayne from the following page:
https://newlandofwelinton.wordpress.com/tag/alfie-bass/
on my site at:
http://www.aybscentral.com/abass/aybsalfiebass.html
http://www.aybscentral.com/fmayne/aybsferdymayne.html
Please let me know of I can do this or not and if so, how you would like to be credited.
Thanks,
Elina M. Lampart
http://www.aybscentral.com
areyoubeingserved.tv
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Hi, would love any reviews with any stars from TVs #Dallas
https://weegiemidget.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/announcing-the-darlin-dallasers-blogathon/
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In the early series of Grange Hill, was there just a single sixth form rather than a lower and upper sixth>
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Yes, seemed to be. The concept of an upper sixth form wasn’t seen until the 1990’s.
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The sixth form storylines in Grange Hill were clagg
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Also according to this website
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/grange-hill/44059/grange-hill-revisiting-12-memorable-school-trips
There were to have been two more episodes of Series 3 of Grange Hill which were abandoned due to cutbacks at the BBC. The completion of the outdoors centre would have been the GH Series 3 finale
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Huge fan of The Sandbaggers. Thanks for your insightful reviews!
Greetings from Peru
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Great site, do you take requests?
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Thanks! Feel free to suggest a few programmes and if any are the sort of things I’m interested in they may surface at a later date 🙂
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Have you covered “Within These Walls”? It was a 70s prison drama featuring Denys Hawthorne as Dr Peter Mayes
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Haven’t got that one, although I’ve thought in the past it might be something worth checking out.
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Will you be doing Series 12 of Grange Hill soon?
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It’s on my to do list, I’m hoping to tackle both S12 and S13 before the end of the year.
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Do your tweets about Adam Adamant Lives! mean that we can soon look forward to some reviews of the series?
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At the moment I’m just tweeting, but it might be a good series to write a little about. Watch this space ….
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Have you done any Blackadder?
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Not yet, maybe one day ….
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Do your recent tweets of “The Champions” mean that we can soon look forward to seeing a review of this series here?
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I’ll probably get round to blogging about it eventually – although one of the plusses of tweeting regularly is that I can briefly cover many more series than I’d ever be able to if I was blogging an episode by episode overview. Maybe once I’ve gone through the whole series I might do just a few posts, looking more briefly at the individual episodes whilst taking an overview of the whole series. Something to mull over 🙂
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True. Having just (re)watched “Carnival of Monsters” I now know the source of the quotation on your Twitter page!
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I was curious about the source of your OTD postings on Twitter. BBC Genome is a good resource for jogging the memory, but I haven’t found an equivalent resource for the ITV regions.
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I use the British Newspaper Archive for gathering these listings, an excellent resource, albeit one that you have to pay for. But a year’s sub isn’t that costly (works out at about the cost of an average print magazine each month).
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From your Twitter posts:
“Prepping for my next blog project – an episode by episode trot through The Champions.”
Looking forward to seeing these!
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What do you think of reality TV like Geordie Shore?
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Not the sort of programme I’d ever watch. I’ll stick with the likes of The Plane Makers and Public Eye …
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Can I interest you in a radio review?
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Maybe! Please drop me an email with some info.
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I’ve done the reviews
Where can I send you an email?
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archivetvmusings@gmail.com. Thanks 🙂
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Love your Corrie section! You don’t happen to have anything on Emmerdale Farm? The 1975-1989 episodes are quite rare and also not as near as sleepy as the press made out.
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Not tackled the 1970’s and 1980’s Emmerdale Farm on the blog yet, but from what I’ve seen of the Network releases it’s very much up my street, so I’ll probably get round to it eventually 🙂
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Thanks! My favourite era was 1983-1986. There were three main villains and a few minor villains throughout this time. The show also became a bit darker, and the creator hated the amount of violence, blood/gore and how the show had been sexed up a bit, however it saw it’s peak ratings in 1985. Unfortunately, this is also the time with the least amount of available episodes. Storylines included Harry Mowlam’s hate campaign against the Sugdens (he knocked Jackie Merrick off his motorbike and fled in January 1984), Derek Warner, Tom Merrick and Kevin Haynes poaching at the Home Farm Fish Farm with explosives in March/April 1984, Jack Sugden’s affair with his step-daughter’s friend/co-worker in late 1984, some sort of fire or incident in February 1985 (not enough info to know what happened), Jackie’s serious vehicle accident after colliding with Alan Turner’s land rover on his motorbike in April 1985, Harry, Derek and Keith Johnson committing armed robbery, also with explosives (episode isn’t available online but from later episodes it sounds like Derek killed someone during the incident), Dolly Skilbeck’s miscarriage caused by Harry, the Who Killed Harry Mowlam storyline in January 1986, in which the assailant wasn’t revealed until April, when Derek took vicar Donald Hinton hostage.
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Do your recent Twitter posts on Department S mean that we can soon look forward to some reviews here?
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I’ve a hankering to do some more ITC blogging, so it’s certainly on the list. Finding the time is the problem, but it’ll happen sooner or later 🙂
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Does anyone else remember a series called Mother Nature’s Bloomers?
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Am I the only person who thinks bringing back Crackerjack is a really ****** idea?
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Does anyone remember a series from 1983 called The Old Men at the Zoo?
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I was interested to see your recent tweets on State Of Emergency with Patrick Mower and William Gaunt. I remember seeing this 1975 and it made a strong impression. Do you know of any available recordings of this ? I haven’t come across any.
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Hi Dennis. Drop me an email at archivetvmusings@gmail.com and I’ll point you in the direction of a download 🙂
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Further to my reviews of 25 Years of Rock, Radio 6 have just started another rerun of the series
Rather bizarrely they’re showing the first twenty-three series on twenty-five consecutive nights, then a twelve day gap before the last two programmes from the original series, and they’re not playing the eighties episodes until the second week of January.
The previous reruns would be on thirty consecutive nights, and it would be timed so that the last episode, which finishes with Band Aid, would be on Christmas Eve.
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I notice from your Twitter posts that you are watching the 1960’s Batman. Does that mean that we can soon look forward to some reviews here?
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Maybe! I’ll see how I go with them ….
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And what about “The Invaders”?
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Did anyone celebrate Patrick Troughton’s centenary this week?
I watched Enemy of the World, and Web of Fear on the following evening
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I toasted him with The Krotons and his Colditz episode. Not a bad double-header 🙂
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And this morning I watched The Dominators
I think the Krotons was the first episode of Doctor Who saw. I was only four years old then so my parents usually didn’t have it on. And of course it was shown in 1981 as part of The Five Faces of Doctor Who.
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And later that day I watch The Mind Robber
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Sadly I’ve just learned that Hamish Wilson, a guest actor in The Mind Robber, died last week
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I’d love to see Patrick Troughton’s Paul of Tarsus, which I enjoyed watching as a child, but as far as I know, it’s lost forever…
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Paul of Tarsus still exists complete, so it may very well surface one day. Given that DVD releases are becoming scarcer, the iPlayer might be its best bet.
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That’s interesting. I didn’t know. Perhaps there’s a hope it will surface somewhere, then. I remember having the tie-in book, which must have been one of the first TV tie-ins I ever owned.
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Have you come across this Professionals website?
http://www.mark-1.co.uk/Professionals/home.htm
I found it is a superb site.
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Yes, plenty of interesting info there.
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I’m thinking of doing an overview of Disney Time. Does anyone know where I can find some information (apart from BBC Genome)?
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zanygang
Try http://www.tvrdb.com
Also if you’re in the UK and you have a library card for your local council’s library service then you may be able to use it to get free access to The Times archive or to another newspaper archive (check your local library service’s website to find out what you have access to). There are also some free UK newspapers on Google newspapers, with the Glasgow Herald being one of the most useful for TV listings (with the obvious proviso that there are some regional variations to the listings because of it being a Scottish newspaper).
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The British Newspaper Archive is a good resource – you can search for free, although if you want to view the results then you’ll need to take out a sub.
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Talking Pictures TV (channel 81) have just started some screenings of The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene and The Adventures of Sir Lancelot with William Russell
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Does the BBC series Michael Bentine Time still exist?
I don’t mean Michael Bentine’s Potty Time which was broadcast on ITV. Michael Bentine Time was broadcast on BBC1 on Friday’s children’s tv slot in 1972. This was the first programme to feature the Potties, but it also featured the flea circus, unusual inventions in Yesterday’s World, and a sketch at the end with two children from the audience. Peter Glaze made a guest appearance in one episode as a vet.
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All gone, according to TV Brain.
https://www.tvbrain.info/tv-archive?showname=michael+bentine+time&type=lostshow
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An interesting site.
It might be more useful if they listed the programmes that did exist as well
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I believe they do (but you have to register and pay for that).
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Hello! Just thought you’d like to know (if you didn’t already) episodes of ANGELS from Series 3-9 are currently available on YT on The Good Old Days channel. Catch them while you can…
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What happened to your Alec Guinness avatar?
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Funny, I was recently wondering that myself! I didn’t remove it, so maybe something happened when I swooped email addresses over. I’ll have to look into it.
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Does anyone remember Cult TV magazine? (It was published between 1997 & 98)
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Does anyone remember a series with the late Frank Windsor did with Francis Matthews and Anna Massey called The Middlemen?
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Doesn’t ring a bell, I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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Does anyone know where I can find the tv listings for ITV on New Year’s Eve 1979?
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Try this link –
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That took me back
Do you remember those little rectangles that appeared in the TV Times listings with symbols for the type of programme? This was the last TV Times to feature those
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A basic listing for the London area can be found here https://tvrdb.com/listings/1979-12-31 You will see more detail for each programme if you join the TVRDB project.
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Most of us could name all the Blue Peter pets, but can anyone name the Play School pets?
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I’ve just learned from you website that Mark Eden has died.
Funnily I always think of him as the actor who played Marco Polo in Doctor, even though I’ve never seen that story obviously can’t see it. It is top of my list of Doctor Who stories I’d like to see returned the the BBC.
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How long has Dad’s Army been running on BBC2 on Saturday evenings? And how many times have they gone through the whole series? It’s been on an endless loop for at least a decade.
A few years ago they got to the penultimate episode of the last series (Number Engaged), and then the following week they showed the very first episode, the next week they showed the final episode, and the week after they resumed the run of the first series with the museum episode.
Last month, just before Christmas they showed the penultimate episode. During Christmas they showed the Christmas specials (Turkey Dinner, Love of Three Oranges etc). In January they showed a documentary about Dad’s Army followed by the 1971 film version, in the last two weeks they showed the first two episodes of the first series, and last night they showed the final episode.
Bizarre
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Does anyone know the broadcast date of the episode of EastEnders where Lofty and Michelle announce that they’ve got married?
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I believe it was Tuesday 25th November 1986, four days before the cast appeared on the Royal Variety Performance
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Here is something from my home country that might interest you…
https://www.nzonscreen.com
It features shows like “Close To Home” (1975-83) “Moynihan” (1976-77) and “Radio Waves” (1978) among many others.
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