The All New Alexei Sayle Show 2 – tape 2036

This tape opens with the end of Rab C Nesbitt.

There’s trailers for Rock Family Trees and Grace Under Fire.

Then, The All New Alexei Sayle Show 2. We’ve seen a couple of excellent trailers for this series, so here’s some episodes.

“Jim Davidson isn’t a nasty, racist comedian, he’s just ‘differently funnied.'”

I do like the abusive press photographer character. Drawn from life?

Here’s Tessa Peake Jones

I’m trying to get my politically correct brain around the politically correct Tonto sketch with Sayle playing a native American.

I have similar reservations over the old Japanese soldiers still running a prison camp in a suburban house. At least the two other Japanese soldiers who aren’t Sayle look Japanese.

But I already love the Time Tunnel sketch where the heroes are two drunken Englishmen, just from the perfect opening.

Then I see that Peter Capaldi is playing one of the drunks

The titles are perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

Oh God, there’s Alfred Marks as Whit Bissell

And Jenny Agutter as Lee Meriwether, complete with the gratuitous keylight in her eyes.

And Jim Carter as the Emperor Hadrian

Stephen Lewis has a small cameo as Bobby Chariot’s writer.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 7th July 1995 – 21:30

Before the next episode, the end of Rab C Nesbitt.

There’s a trailer for the British Grand Prix.

Then, another episode of The All New Alexei Sayle Show 2. There’s a sketch about audiences thinking comedy shows use canned laughter – these shows are co-written by Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, and Linehan is forever having to explain that audience based sitcoms and sketch shows don’t use pre-recorded laugh tracks at all. And here he is, in 1995, already having to explain it.

I like Bobby Chariot’s number plate.

Jim Carter plays Genghis Khan in another Drunk in Time sketch.

“We’re Lesbians!” Arabella Weir there, who doesn’t appear in the credits.

Is that James Dreyfuss in the Waiting for Godot sketch?

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 14th July 1995 – 21:30

There’s another bit of Rad C Nesbitt before the next episode.

A trailer for Shadow Makers, Roland Joffe’s drama about the Manhattan Project which I always think of by its original title Fat Man and Little Boy.

There’s also a trailer for Nagasaki Journey, so the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs is clearly here.

Then, the last in this series of The All New Alexei Sayle Show 2. The show predicted the coming of portrait mode on mobile phones with the new film format, Periscope.

Impressive exploding milk float

Bobby Chariot’s RRRRunabout is brutal.

More Drunk in Time with Jim Carter as Herod this time.

It’s curtains for Bobby Chariot

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 28th July 1995 – 21:30

After this, recording switches to the end of Rock Family Trees. Look, here’s Manfred Mann.

There’s a trailer for The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos.

And for Monday night on BBC 2

Then, The Saturday Night Armistice. I really wish they were still doing this.

Armando is joined by a fourteen year old work experience boy.

The news starts with the Conservatives not doing well in an election, specifically a by-election, which is appropriate for the time of writing, still only a few days since the General Election. I still find it freaky how little the news seems to change.

Paddy Ashdown is working on appealing to the under 12s with his new game show.

Mr Tony Blair has a motorcade.

The ‘Let’s Kick Violence in the Face’ campaign gets animated.

The Jack Straw supporters aren’t nearly as good (or funny) as the Jeremy Hanley fan club. But meeting Roy Hattersley was funny.

And Straw himself joins in the fun.

It looks more intimidating than the Jeremy Hanley fan club.

He even shakes hands with Mr Tony Blair

I still love Hunt The Old Woman.

Sally Phillips is part of the Bristol Old Vic lottery machine selection.

And here’s the whole show.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 29th July 1995 – 21:55

After this, there’s a trailer for Fourteen Days on May. And a trailer for a season of Summer Dance.

Then, Seinfeld and an episode called The Limo. I started watching this episode on Amazon Prime rather than my rubbish VHS copy, and noticed that the establishing shot of the airport featured two Trump jets. Here’s a screengrab from Amazon Prime.

Usually, I take my grabs directly from the VHS rips, as I feel this is all about the authentic VHS experience, and screengrabbing Amazon or Netflix (or DVD for that matter) would be a cheat, so I looked at that scene on my VHS rip, and this is what I found.

You’ll notice that the Trump logos have been removed from the planes. I wonder if this was done by the BBC, or by the US broadcaster for overseas sales.

Jerry is coming back from Chicago, and George’s car has broken down, so they decide to take the limo for someone called O’Brien Jerry knows was bumped from the flight.

Things get awkward when the driver goes to pick up the other two members of their party, a man and a woman. She’s a big fan of O’Brien’s newsletter.

I love the way this episode builds, until they find out the whole truth – that O’Brien is a Neo-Nazi. And, surprise, the other two people in the car look exactly like Trump’s entourage.

George ends up on TV.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 29th July 1995 – 22:30

There’s a trailer for Timewatch Special. 

Then African Political Broadcast with Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 29th July 1995 – 22:55

A trailer for The Great Rift follows, then recording continues with African Sanctus Revisited. An updated version of a programme shown 20 years ago.

My wife, who was born in Zambia and grew up in Liberia and Saudi Arabia, was listening to this, and getting crosser and crosser with the composer. She felt that he had no idea what the African music he was using represented for them, nor particularly cared, and just wanted them to fit within his idea of the Latin Mass, and his idea of what he would find in Africa. Particularly disturbing is his co-opting of music from Islamic worship for his Christian mass.

The soloist in the performance of the Sanctus is Wilhelminia Fernandez, also the star of the French Opera Thriller Diva.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 29th July 1995 – 23:00

After this, another trail for Nagasaki Journey.

Then, the tape runs out during a film, Le Cri du Coeur.

The New Adventures of Superman – Bugs – Chicago Hope – tape 2030

Saturday Nights in the 90s, and Jim Davidson is hosting a game show featuring children. It’s Big Break stars of the Future, in which he insists a young girl give him a kiss. Ugh.

There’s a trailer for International Match of the Day, And for the new series of The Steve Wright People Show.

Then, The New Adventures of Superman, and Bronson Pinchot returns as the Prankster in an episode cryptically titled The Return of the Prankster.

Cliff de Young plays a Secret Service agent.

I don’t believe this is a genuine pressure gauge. Partly because they’ve misspelled ‘gauge’ but mostly because no industrial designer would choose that font for the numbers.

I think I might have dozed off during this one.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 3rd June 1995 – 18:30

Afterwards, there’s a plug for the BBC Radio productions of Superman, by Dirk Maggs, which were a lot more fun than this series often is.

There’s also a look at programmes for Sunday.

And a trailer for Eureka! which seems to be some kind of popular science show, fronted by Matthew Kelly.

Then, the start of The Steve Wright People Show. Still baffling. Nigel Benn is the first guest.

After a few minutes, recording switches to the end of the National Lottery Live show, always a thrill. Su Pollard releases the balls.

Sadly, I seem to have missed her playing a tuba. You read that right.

There’s a specially made Due South trailer announcing its move from Tuesday to Friday Nights.

There’s also a trailer for The Vet.

Then, an episode of Bugs. Ed is teaching a masterclass in Karate. It’s part of some kind of surveillance, and his first opponent almost has the better of him, then collapses suddenly.

Ian McNeice is Peter Hunter, head of sports medicine, and the woman running the sports academy thinks he’s using illegal substances.

Ros is chased by a man in a ponytail, and for some reason heads to the roof. Doesn’t make any sense at all, except to make a dramatic location for her pursuer to have a seizure and fall from a great height.

Sometimes, Bugs photography isn’t half bad.

The illegal drug programme is being run by a maverick ex-army person, who’s planning a military coup. And he’s going to test the latest batch on Ros.

She’s put on a treadmill, given the drug, and has to keep her heartrate about a certain level otherwise the owner of the sports academy would be crushed by a weight machine. At this point, I had rather hoped Ros would be transformed into a superhero, but no such luck.

They even use a ball bearing clock as some kind of countdown mechanism.

There’s a slightly unlikely ending as the head bad guy gets into a lift to make off with the formula, and doesn’t notice there’s a big homemade bomb already in there until it’s just about to explode.

I do have a soft spot for Bugs, but I do sometimes wish it didn’t always look like it’s being shot entirely in a half-completed office complex in Canary Wharf.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 3rd June 1995 – 20:15

There’s a trailer for Chicago Hope before the start of an episode of Birds of a Feather.

Recording switches to the end of this episode, there’s a trailer for Men Behaving Badly.

There’s also a trailer for the John Hannah drama Out of the Blue.

Then, and episode of Chicago Hope. There’s a heart transplant, which doesn’t start well when the heart is dropped on the floor.

There’s a sexual harassment subplot with EG Marshall.

BBC Genome:  BBC One – 3rd June 1995 – 21:35

There’s a trailer for International Match of the Day.

After this, a whole News and Sport bulletin.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 3rd June 1995 – 22:20

Then a trailer for Eurovisions – not a fun singing competition, but a programme about Britain’s view of Europe, to show that Europe has always been a hot button issue.

There’s weather with Suzanne Charlton, a trailer for The Vet, and one for Out of the Blue.

Then, International Match of the Day featuring England v Japan.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 3rd June 1995 – 22:40

After this, a Radio 5 Live trail, and that Due South trailer again.

Then, the tape ends just after the start of Robert Wise’s reincarnation movie, Audrey Rose.

A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies – Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More – tape 2026

This is part three of Martin Scorsese’s documentary about American film, as part of the centenary of cinema.

Scorsese is the ultimate Movie Brat. He was part of the new wave of American directors who came to prominence in the 70s, a group which also included George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma and Francis Coppola. Scorsese doesn’t have the populist touch of Lucas and Spielberg, but he’s undoubtedly the intellectual of the group.

The Movie Brats were called that because they were really the first generation of filmmakers for whom movies had always been there, and they grew up immersed in movies. Scorsese in particular, and these documentaries really show his breadth of knowledge. For example, the first movie in this episode is a B-Movie Western called Silver Lode, virtually forgotten, which he uses as an example of how movies in the 50s were full of subtext, in this case the McCarthy hearings and the Hollywood blacklist.

A more well known movie is All That Heaven Allows in which Jane Wyman plays a woman who shocks her local community by embarking on a love affair with her gardener.

I once took a film studies course at my local college. It was while I was still at school, I think, and I didn’t bother with the exam, I was mostly taking the course because it meant I would get to see lots of films. At the time we didn’t own a VCR, and our local cinema only showed one movie a week, and was only open Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, so this was a great way to see lots of films I wouldn’t normally get to see.

One of them was All That Heaven Allows, although we only watched clips, not the whole movie, and our lecturer wanted to use it to illustrate a point about ‘mise en scene’, or what’s actually on the screen. He showed scenes where the two main characters were ‘divided’ by string vertical lines in the background to emphasise their different social strata, things like that. Nothing unusual, and it’s the kind of thing people like Robert McKee take about at length in film theory classes.

But our lecturer had one illustration that irked me. In a scene where Jane Wyman is talking to her daughter, he points out the colour palette of the film – very brown, and autumnal. I can accept that. But then he excitedly points out that just as the scene is finishing, the colour of the scene suddenly goes even browner. This, he told us, was the director subliminally telling us that the character is entering the autumn of her life.

Except it wasn’t. I knew exactly why the colour of the scene changed abruptly, and it wasn’t a creative symbol at all. If you watch any film made in the 50s, you’ll see exactly this colour jump a lot. And it always immediately precedes a cross fade between two scenes. It happens because unlike a straight cut, which is done simply by cutting the film up and sticking it together with sellotape, a fade has to be done in something called an optical printer. This is basically a projector attached to a camera, and allows you to take various bits of film and combine them in various ways onto a new piece of film. But because it’s an optical, analogue process, the new film will inevitably contain more film grain, and the colours won’t perfectly match, because the photochemical process isn’t 100% perfect.

So what you’re seeing when the picture suddenly goes darker, and grainier, is the point at which the original negative stops, and the optically printed film starts, which will always have a noticeable change in quality.

And that’s what we were seeing in the clip from All That Heaven Allows, not a subtle, subliminal message from the auteur director.

And that’s the point at which I lost a lot of faith in Film Studies.

Here’s director Douglas Sirk telling you I’m right.

Another great director of the time was Nicholas Ray, who looks like a pirate. Where’s today’s auteur that can pull off an eyepatch?

Sam Fuller talks about the time that Hoover objected to a line “Don’t wave the goddamn flag at me”. It wasn’t the ‘goddamn’ he objected to. I presume this was J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.

Inevitably, the programme looks at Orson Welles. I could listen to him talking about his career for hours, and have.

Scorsese favourite Elia Kazan.

Arthur Penn talks about the violence in Bonnie and Clyde.

Indie filmmaker and actor John Cassavetes

I like this personal approach to film. It doesn’t try to prove some great theoretical point, it’s just about the films that mean something to Scorsese.

After this documentary, an early Scorsese movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. This is a familiar title to me, despite never having seen it, because it was nominated for lots of Oscars at the 1975 ceremony, which was one of the earliest Oscar shows I can definitely remember watching, mainly because of this film’s title. It’s funny what things stick in your head.

The titles are interesting, clearly meaning to invoke the 50s and 60s both with the music and the title design. The large border around the titles is deliberate, perhaps to invoke the experience of watching old films on TV.

There’s an interesting credit – Production Executive Larry Cohen. Cohen is mainly known for his genre work, like It’s Alive or The Stuff or the classic Q The Winged Serpent. Both he and Scorsese worked with Roger Corman early on, which is where the connection started, I would presume.

The movie’s style is continued into the opening scene, showing Alice as a young girl. The square framing (known as the Academy ratio, 4:3, the same shape as old TVs) the saturated colours and the soundstage backdrops directly invoke the great technicolor epics like Gone with the Wind.

The little girl has a line “I can sing better than Alice Faye, I swear to Christ I can” but her mouth is most definitely not saying “Christ”.

Strangely, “they can blow it out their ass” wasn’t an issue.

After this brief opening, deftly painting Alice’s character, action moves to 27 years later, and Alice has a young son who listens to Mott The Hoople at full volume, and her bowling shirt wearing husband is an angry, abusive boor. It’s not a happy home life.

But Alice is immediately glorious. When the boy loading her groceries asks if all the meat is because she’s got company coming she says “No, my husband hates me, and I’m trying to get him to chase me round the bedroom” leaving the boy nonplussed.

She’s with a friend, fitting a homemade dress, and telling her she’d be just as happy without a man around the house. Then the phone rings and she’s told her husband has died in a road accident.

She and her son Tommy pack up the car, after a yard sale to sell most of their stuff, and leave town, intending eventually to get to Monterey.

They stop first in Phoenix, where Alice gets a job singing in a bar. Harvey Keitel chats her up, and in the background, you can hear Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ – I thought that was a slightly more modern song.

She’s worried about the age difference – she’s 35, and he’s a mere 27. Which is weird because he always looks like a proper grown up to me.

More worrying is when his wife turns up at Alice’s door. And it gets much much worse when Keitel appears at Alice’s door, and he’s going full-on Keitel, threatening his wife with a switchblade and threatening to hit Alice. He leaves, telling her he’ll pick her up when she finishes work that night. So Alice and her son pack up the car and leave town.

The movie has plenty of pop songs on the soundtrack, a Scorsese trademark, but I wonder if it’s at all significant that the main ones used as soundtrack (rather than source music in a scene, like Dolly Parton) are all from the UK? Mott The Hoople, Elton John, now it’s T-Rex.

Their next stop is Tucson. This time, rather than singing, she has to take a job as a waitress. On her first day she’s terrified. This time, there’s Kris Kristofferson chatting her up, asking her for a big smile.

She doesn’t get on with the senior waitress there on her first day.

Her son takes guitar lessons, and meets Jodie Foster.

Kristofferson seems like a nice guy, but I’m waiting for him to turn, like Keitel.

She goes for Sunday lunch with him at his farm. There’s a beautiful little scene where she’s doing a bit of washing up, and she needs a tea towel, so she just instinctively opens a drawer and there they are. She pauses for a moment, looks at another drawer, says “cooking utensils” before she opens it, and she’s right. So is Kristofferson a new man, or is she detecting a woman’s touch?

The truth is that he’s divorced, two years ago. Oh, God, please be a decent man.

Alice even starts bonding with the snippy head waitress over a shared love of profanity.

Inevitably (this is Martin Scorsese, after all) Kristofferson starts behaving like an authoritarian, and it gets to a head when Tommy gets bored with Kristofferson teaching him guitar and puts Jeepster by T-Rex on the stereo. Kristofferson pulls the record off and throws it across the room, then smacks Tommy when he swears at him.

One the way home, she and Tommy start arguing, and she loses her temper with him and tells him he can walk the rest of the way home. Instead, he goes to friend Jodie Foster’s house, and they end up drinking a lot of wine, shoplifting, and ending up at the police station.

Back at the cafe, Alice doesn’t know what she’s going to do, that maybe she can’t live without a man. So I guess it’s lucky that Kristofferson comes in later, ready to make up, and ready to do whatever it is that Alice wants, even move to Monterey.

OK, so I would have preferred Kristofferson to not have acted like a dick at all, but at least he was willing to admit he was wrong. And the film ends with Alice and Tommy deciding it might be OK to stay in Tucson for a while.

I’m not surprised Burstyn won Best Actress for her performance here. She’s the whole film, and she’s brilliant. But I particularly love her relationship with her son, which is so strong and unconditional.

What a great film.

After this, the recording continues with the start of The Public Enemy, a gritty gangster movie which nevertheless opens with the credits including the actors themselves. Is this gritty enough for you?

The tape ends during this film.

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The Outer Limits – Boyz n The Hood – tape 2028

Sometimes I worry that I might have messed up with the digitising of a particular tape. This one is a case in point. It ends abruptly, in the middle of the second item listed, Boyz n the Hood, so I don’t know why I have that listed in my database.

I can only assume that the recording was interrupted, or I programmed the wrong time, and I’d never checked it to see if it had recorded.

But there’s still an episode of The Outer Limits to watch. It’s called Sandkings. It’s based on a novella by George R R Martin.

Beau Bridges is some kind of scientists, working with dangerous organisms, creatures he created that can survive on Mars. One gets loose, and he thinks he’s the only person who can stop it, despite all his coworkers trying to stop him. He’s horrified when they incinerate it.

Lloyd Bridges plays his father. He’s always been second best to his father, something which drives him.

When his project is shut down, he takes his samples home with him. Things don’t go well. The ‘Sandkings’ can build structures, and when one of them bites him, they build something rather more sinister.

It all gets a bit Arachnophobia at the end, but doesn’t really have that film’s heart. This is very by the numbers.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 8th May 1995 – 21:00

There’s a trailer for the Friday Night Comedy Zone, and for The Absence of War, a trailer which starts “Years of Tory Government. A surprise general election. John Thaw is the Labour Leader facing his only chance of power.” I looked at this programme a while ago, but this trailer came up today, June 8th as I write, while we’re waiting for the polls to close, and for the inevitable Tory landslide. Edit to add: I guess my pessimism over the state of politics wasn’t entirely warranted, as evidenced by this tweet from Britain Elects, a polling tracker, just after the first exit poll was published.

Holy shit.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) June 8, 2017

Enough of the politics, though, and back to 1995.

Then, the start of the aforementioned Boyz n The Hood. The recording ends before the film finishes. It’s a short tape today, I’m afraid.

Friends – Earth 2 – tape 2130

This tape goes straight into the pilot of Friends. If you haven’t watched it, you should. The opening scenes are full of good jokes, but they also tell us so much about the different characters. It really does hit the ground running.

I wish the fashions had held up as well, particularly Joey.

Monica’s coworker is Clea Lewis – Audrey from Ellen.

After this, recording switches to Sky One and an episode of Earth 2. Day 72 according to Clancy Brown’s voiceover, and it’s winter. That would make this episode Grendlers in the Myst. The colonists are tracking the alien Grendlers to see if they can find supplies stolen from their camp.

They start picking up a signal from a woman they don’t know.

There’s a search for her, lots of running through caves, another person who’s also after her, and it turns out to be a 20 year old recording, and the stranger chasing them is the son of the woman.

We also find out that Clancy Brown’s wife contracted a terminal disease while pregnant with his daughter, and he kept her on artificial life support – despite her presumably being brain dead, long enough for his daughter to be born. And I might have misunderstood the ending here, but it seemed to suggest that he’s kept her on life support since that time, so that when the time came (as it did this episode) he can show her to his daughter. I must have misunderstood this because this seems monstrous.

After this, more Friends, and we’ve skipped all the way to season two and The One Where Ross Finds Out. Ross is with Julie. Rachel’s delighted.

But Rachel is also dating, and she has dinner with Arye Gross – another Ellen alumnus.

And, because Ross does find out, it has a crowd-pleasing ending.

Before the next episode, there’s a Friends-themed Channel 4 Ident.

I’ve no idea what order these episodes are being shown in, as we’re back to the start of season one for The One with the East German Laundry Detergent.

Chandler wants to break up with Janice, but can’t find the right time.

And Rachel faces off against a bully in the launderette.

Next, and at last, an episode that follows sequentially from the last on, The One with the Butt. Joey’s in a play called Freud!

I’m slightly cheating, and watching these episodes on the extended DVDs, and on those there’s a whole extra scene where Joey meets Estelle his new agent. It’s totally missing on this version.

Rachel appears to have joined the red cross.

Joey gets a job as Al Pacino’s butt double.

After this we just back to season two and The One With Russ. Joey gets some bad reviews for his new show.

Monica is going out with Fun Bobby.

But the gang are a bit worried about the amount he drinks.

Rachel has a new boyfriend, Russ.

Joey has an audition for Days of our Lives, but he gets the feeling that the casting agent wants him to sleep with her. He checks with his agent, Estelle (after her no-show in the earlier episode).

Ross and Russ meet.

The next episode is a few episodes after this, and is the second part of a two parter, The One After the Superbowl.

This one is chock full of cameos including Julia Roberts

And Jean Claude Van Damme

Ross has discovered that Marcel the monkey was stolen from the zoo he was given to, but is now appearing in commercials and movies. He’s filming Outbreak 2: The Monkey Takes Manhattan.

 

Roberts plays a girl who went to school with Chandler, and they hook up.

But she just wants to humiliate him for something he did to her in fourth grade.

After this episode, recording continues with an episode of Roseanne. The family is going to the airport to welcome Dan back home.

I have no idea why he was away, so I checked on wikipedia. He’d been in California visiting his ailing mother.

It’s also Christmas, and Roseanne gives Dan their mortgage and a lighter.

After this, there’s the start of Under the Moon in which portly middle-aged men talk about football. The tape ends during this

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Proms 95 – The Outer Limits – tape 2047

This tape opens with the end of Natural Born Footballers on Paul Gascoigne.

There’s a trailer for African Footsteps. And for The Royal Tournament.

Then, Proms 95 beings us a live performance from the Royal Albert Hall, with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

The first piece is Concert Music for Brass and Strings by Paul Hindemith. It’s not a piece I know, and it’s modern (ish) so it could be awful.

It’s not awful, but it didn’t particularly make me want to listen to it again. It sounds like soundtrack filler, mostly.

The next piece is Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, played by Leif Ove Andsnes.

This is much more my kind of thing. Although my tastes run more to the late romantics (Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov) than the late classical of Beethoven, he can write a good tune.

For the interval, there’s a look at the orchestra, and their residency in Paris. Basically, an extended segment from Wish your were Here?

For the second half, and talking of great tunes, it’s Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The slow middle variation, Nimrod, is the most famous part, but the whole thing is lovely.

Conductor Leonard Slatkin gives the audience an introduction to the piece.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 24th July 1995 – 19:00

After this, there’s a trailer for Africa’s Big Game.

Then, an episode of The Outer Limits starring Leonard Nimoy.

In the teaser, a scientist is killed by the robot he’s working with.

There’s a nod in the name of the company to the origin of the word Robot – a play called Rossum’s Universal Robots.

This story is called I Robot, but if you’re expecting an Asimov story you’ll be disappointed, as this is based on a short story by Eando Binder. It’s directed by Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard.

The robot, Adam, might have to be dismantled, but the daughter of the dead scientist wants Nimoy, a retired lawyer, to defend him. She grew up with Adam, and doesn’t believe he’s dangerous. Nimoy has to prove in court that Adam is sentient and deserves an actual trial.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 24th July 1995 – 21:15

Recording switches, and we get the end of a very depressing programme about the likelihood of a nuclear attack from terrorists. It’s called Lucky People.

Nuclear War is in vogue, as there’s a trailer for The Moscow Criterion, and main goal of the British nuclear program was to build a weapon that could destroy Moscow.

There’s also a trail for Pulp Fictions.

Then, more Outer Limits, this one starring Rebecca de Mornay, who also directed it.

Frank Whaley plays a man who’s been sacked, so he’s stewing at the bar in his building. DeMornay picks him up, and they go to his office Christmas party, where he shoots several people before being shot himself. DeMornay disappears as if she was an illusion.

He flees, seems unsure quite why he did what he did. The policeman in charge of the case wonders why all three victims of the shooting don’t appear to have names.

Whaley ends up at a bar. He meets John Savage, who appears to know who he is. The episode then turns into an inverted It’s A Wonderful Life. Savage is an alien who gives people second chances. The people Whaley shot were fake people put there by Savage. And in the end he gets a chance to change for the better.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 31st July 1995 – 21:00

After this, trailers for the Richard Gere Breathless and One Foot in the Past.

Then, the start of an episode of Shopping looking at catalogues. The tape ends during this.

Space Precinct – Omnibus – Film 95 – tape 2118

This tape opens with a trailer for Not The Nine O’Clock News.

Then, Space Precinct, with an episode called Deadline.

There’s a bit of a Blade Runner homage at the start with an advertising dirigible extolling the virtues of moving off planet.

A capsule containing a dead body is flying towards an apartment building, so Brogan and Haldane have to knock it out of the sky.

The body is missing some organs, so they investigate transplant surgeons, ending up with Steven Berkoff who, let’s face it, should probably be locked up in his first scene in any story, just to save time.

He uses a robotic surgeon, a bit like that one in Prometheus, but slightly less icky.

It’s amusing to see that in this future, someone still needs to find a public telephone to call for help.

Officer Castle goes undercover to get more information from Berkoff.

Why does Brogan’s wife call him ‘Brogan’?

He’s captured by the organ harvesters. Will they find him in time?

Of course they will. And Berkoff even has a slight change of heart at the end, refusing to kill Brogan and instead turning on the aliens who were supplying his organs.

BBC Genome: BBC Two – 23rd October 1995 – 18:00

After this, there’s a trailer for Have I Got News For You.

And for Saturday Night programmes. Exhibit A.

Then there’s the start of The O-Zone. “What do you do with a band that have been everywhere and done everything?” asks Jamie Theakston. The band in question is Let Loose. I have never heard of this band, and cannot name a single one of their songs. Even as clips from their songs are being played, they are slipping from my memory.

The interview is so Spinal Tap it hurts. “You’ve just compared yourselves to Blur and Oasis, a lot of people look at you and think of bands like Boyzone.” “Show me a comparison.” “Just one comparison.” “I’ll give you a fiver.”

I like the programme not taking them seriously. Theakston’s parting shot. “Good luck to Let Loose with the new single which you might have seen previewed… on Blue Peter.”

There’s Sports News, as Newcastle’s top singing sensation Jimmy Nail joins the Newcastle United training session.

After this excitement, recording switches to the end of Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Scotland.

There’s a trailer for Mad Max II, and for Film 95.

Then, Omnibus looks at Jane Austen. It’s an interesting look at her life, narrated by a host of Austen enthusiasts.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 23rd October 1995 – 22:40

There’s a trailer for Test Tube Bodies. And a trailer for Paul Gambaccini on Radio 3.

Then, Film 95 in which Barry Norman casts his eye upon the following movies.

• To Die For
• French Kiss
• Crimson Tide
• Haunted
• Under Siege 2

He also talks to Crimson Tide director Tony Scott about the film, and his and brother Ridley Scott’s plans for Shepperton Studio.

As part of the celebrations for the centenary of the cinema, Barry looks at 1959.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 23rd October 1995 – 23:30

After this another trailer for Mad Max II.

Then the tape continues with snooker, and David Vine. James Wattana vs Fergal O’Brien in the Skoda Grand Prix. The whole programme is here. I didn’t watch it.

BBC Genome: BBC One – 24th October 1995 – 00:00

There’s a trailer for Backup after this, then John Kettley gives us the weather, and BBC1 closes down with the national anthem.