Some topical fun, with Deayton-era Have I Got News for You. First episode features John Sessions and Griff Rhys Jones, who look frighteningly alike in this episode.
Following this episode, we switch to Sky Movies Plus for The Hitcher. C. Thomas Howell picks up Rutger Hauer on a quiet road, and quickly regrets it.
After the movie, there’s a trailer for American Kickboxer.
This recording stops, and underneath, an older recording where the first thing we see is someone asleep in a chair, with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom playing on a TV behind them.
Following this, there’s a BBC news bulletin, unscheduled, because of the crash of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
News reports like this starkly illustrate how different our world is now. In a fairly lengthy bulletin, with experts and people on the scene, not once was the word ‘terrorist’ used. ‘Sabotage’ is used once or twice, but even the expert thinks that structural failure or some other catastrophe is far more likely.
It was a different world. I think I prefer it.
After this, Barry Norman introduces The Cruel Sea, and because he does believe in ethics in film journalism, he admits up front that his father produced the film.
The tape finishes during the movie.
Adverts:
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The Adult Channel (this was Sky Movies, after all)
Before the first programme on this tape, Lenny Henry trails Comic Relief 1992: Behind the Nose.
Then we have a good-looking BBC drama, A Masculine Ending, based on the novel by Joan Smith, adapted by Alma Cullen and directed by Antonia Bird. It stars Janet McTeer as a linguistics professor who, on a trip to Paris to attend a symposium on ‘The Masculine Ending in German and French’, finds evidence of murder, but no body, in the flat she’s borrowing from a professor at another college. This is the start of a low-key, very well behaved mystery which has much the same feel and rhythm as an episode of Inspector Morse, with many of the same trappings – colleges, porters, dysfunctional professors and lovelorn students.
It’s a nice film, which does its best to amp up the odd scene with shrieking violins, but which has very little incident, and also, it seems, very little detecting from the lead. In fact, the mystery is entirely revealed by the murderer themselves, who willing tells all to McTeer. It’s actually her friend, Imelda Staunton, who discovers about the only clue, too late to benefit McTeer.
But it has a very good cast – Bill Nighy plays McTeer’s ex husband, Kevin McNally plays an extremely shifty professor who only really needed a moustache to twiddle to make him look more suspicious, while Greg Wise plays a youthful love interest for McTeer.
After the programme, recording switches to ITV and The South Bank Show on the making of David Cronenberg’s fim of Naked Lunch. I’ve enjoyed many of Cronenberg’s films, but I have to admit, Naked Lunch didn’t really do it for me. Drugs in films have always really bored me, and this was no different. The programme contains interviews with Cronenberg, producer Jeremy Thomas, and William S Burroughs himself.
Following this there’s a trailer for another South Bank Show on Rudolph Nureyev. There’s also a trailer for Hale & Pace.
Then, the start of The American Match, some American football.
Recording stops shortly after this programme starts, and underneath is something a little more highbrow – A symphony orchestra playing something I’m not familiar with, possibly at the proms, since it’s definitely at the Albert Hall. It sounds vaguely Wagnerian.
Nope – it’s apparently Scriabin. This is Omnibus at the Proms, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lothar Zagrozek.
Before the programme, there’s a trailer for Hill Street Blues.
Then, an episode of Lost In Space, one of the later series, in colour. It’s The Prisoners of Space.
After this, a trailer for This is David Lander.
There’s also a trailer for Look Back in Anger.
Then there’s the beginning of The Big Parade, a silent movie with a score by Carl Davis.
After a couple of minutes of that, recording switches to BBC1 and The Clothes Show.
Then, episode 1 of The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. A brave attempt to do justice to C.S. Lewis’ books with 1980s TV technology. It could, perhaps, have done with slightly better child actors – always a problem.
After the programme there’s a trailer for Simon and the Witch.
Then, the start of Spelling It Out, an adult literacy programme featuring Don Henderson.
After a couple of minutes, recording switches to Channel Four, for an episode of Testament, John Romer’s documentary about the historical basis for the bible. This is the episode Chronicles and Kings.
Following this programme, there’s a trailer for the Paul Newman film Hombre.
Then, in a changed to the scheduled programme, The Television Revolution is a studio debate on the future of television, given the recent changes in legislation (which would result in major upheaval in the ITV landscape). As Sissons outlines, the changes include:
A fifth commercial channel, more satellite channels in addition to those already in the pipeline, a move towards subscription instead of licence fees for the BBC, and the auctioning of ITV franchises.
It’s a shame there’s only a few minutes of this programme, as it might have been interesting to see more than just Peter Sisson’s summing up of the current state of the television landscape.
First on this tape is a Channel 4 showing of Scorsese’s Mean Streets. as part of their DeNiro season.
Following Mean Streets, recording switches to the end of The King and I. Then there’s a trail for The Addams Family, then another trailer for programmes for Holiday Tuesday.
Then there’s a trailer for Soldiers for Peace about the UN.
Then, a Screen Two presentation of Midnight Movie, starring Jim Carter, Louise Germaine and Brian Dennehy, and written by Dennis Potter. It was the last film written by Potter before he died.
I’ve tried to like Dennis Potter’s stuff. I really have. I quite enjoyed Pennies from Heaven, but mostly because I was young at the time, and it was a bit rude. But Potter’s work always seems to boil down to middle-aged men having sex with beautiful young women. And not much else. Midnight Movie fits that mould perfectly. If movies and TV haven’t been lying to me all these years, I seem to be the only middle-aged man who doesn’t fantasize about having sex with attractive young women, so Potter’s endless bonking just bores me.
Following the movie, there’s a trailer for a drama starring Emma Thompson (who, coincidentally, would be one of my fantasy dinner party guests) called The Blue Boy.
Now we have the first tape recorded off Bravo. Remember Bravo? The satellite channel that really didn’t know what it was, and seemed to change its identity (and target audience) every six months.
Before the programme, there’s a trailer for Master of the World.
Then, we have an episode of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. A sitcom that’s not afraid to admit it’s a sitcom, and which has removed the fourth wall entirely.
In this episode, following the Writers’ Strike, Garry has had to take a job in a travel agents.
In the next episode, Garry’s family and friends start advertising their products and companies on his show.
It gets even more meta when Ian Buchanan, who plays Nancy’s boyfriend, also appears on the set of General Hospital as the character he plays on that show.
Before the next episode, there’s a clip of Lulu, from the sixties by the look of it, performing Shout.
The next episode opens with credits over black, in silence. It’s a strange episode where Garry reminisces about playing ping pong when he was young, ending in a terrible injury that ended his ping pong career. 18 years later he’s asked to play in the condo ping pong tournament.
The next episode is a live election special. Much fun is had with Garry calling the 1988 election for Michael Dukakis.
Following this, a switch to BBC1, and there’s a trailer for a magic show I’ve never heard of, The Rudy Coby Show.
Then, an unlabelled treat (for me, at least) with Jonathan Ross Presents David Copperfield. It’s mostly a compilation of his TV illusions, with some conversation between Ross and Copperfield. But his TV stuff is usually pretty good, if you can handle the mullets and baggy jackets.
This looks like a repackaging of a previous Copperfield special, the one where Claudia Schiffer ‘interviewed’ him, and some parts of that are included. Among the illusions presented here are:
Vanishing the train carriage – a very good effect where he appears to levitate, then vanish an entire carriage from the Orient Express
Graffitti – a lower-key illusion where he predicts things that are shouted out from the audience
Passing through the Great Wall of China – not one of my favourites. Too much of the illusion relies on shadow effects, which I never find too impressive, and there’s a moment where it’s supposed to look like Copperfield is reaching out through the other side, pressing into a sheet, which is fairly obviously just the hands of the two assistants holding the sheet.
Death Saw – One of my favourites. It uses James Horner’s music from Aliens, which I love, and it’s set up as an escape, which goes horribly wrong. But mostly because it’s an exquisitely constructed illusion that really does look impossible. Frankly, even if it’s done in the most obvious way, it means that Copperfield must be pretty limber to fit into a space that just doesn’t look like he’d fit.
Flying – hands down my favourite of his illusions, and possibly my favourite illusion ever. OK, when all is said and done, it’s a man flying on wires, albeit incredibly cunningly designed and disguised wires. But what makes this a great illusion is not the pure mechanics of it, superb though they are, it’s the whole presentation. He starts by talking about the dreams he used to have as a child, of pushing against the air and flying, and when the illusion starts, he doesn’t start from a standing position – he’s lying down. He performs the flying well, really selling the idea he’s flying under his own power, and the narrative of the illusion works to reinforce that. First, there’s the rotating hoops, a classic way to ‘confirm’ there are no wires, then he’s ‘trapped’ in the glass box, which can’t prevent him flying. Finally, he takes a member of the audience and flies with her in his arms. The show finishes with him flying offstage, as a hawk flies to his arm. It’s just beautiful, and I can’t watch it without crying – I’ve had those dreams too.
After a couple of minutes of that. recording switches back to Bravo, with a trailer of The Mind Benders, and The Wild Affair, and a trailer for a season of films from ‘the wild generation’.
Then, another episode of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, with the second part of the two part story – I’m missing the first part on this tape. Leonard is marrying a girl in Las Vegas, so Garry is on the plane when the episode starts.
After the show, there’s a trailer for 9 1/2 weeks.
After some ads, recording switches to BBC2, and a trailer for programmes on Bank Holiday Monday.
Then, another unbilled programme – an episode of Michael Moore’s TV Nation. In the first segment, they try to find out how suspicious a neighbour has to be before the neighbours notice something wrong.
They try to find out if you can buy small sized condoms. And Merrill Markoe looks at the national talk show guest registry.
Michael Moore tries to get tax breaks by threatening to move the show to New Jersey.
And Louis Theroux looks at the war in Mexico between Coke and Pepsi.
There’s a trailer for a new series looking at technology, White Heat. Then, a very short episode of Video Nation with a young girl from Cardiff receiving her exam results.
There’s then a trailer for War Babies, looking at the generation of children in Northern Ireland who grew up during the ‘troubles’.
And Northern Ireland is the lead story on Newsnight, which closes out the tape with 3 minutes of this episode.
The 90s. For a brief, shining moment, Chris Evans was the most powerful man on television. And Dont Forget Your Toothbrush was his prime-time Saturday Night Channel 4 entertainment show. This was the first of a new series, and the first episode in 1995.
It’s hard to believe that Channel 4 even had a prime time Saturday Night.
Jools Holland’s big band provide the music, and former Grange Hill and Eastenders star Michelle Gayle performs Say A Little Prayer.
One of the stunt challenges is for a member of the audience to change a duvet – on her own bed, on a platform in the middle of the Thames. She wins all her rent paid for 1995 – only £2100, remarkably.
It’s all very shouty, a bit laddy, though not quite as bad as it might have been, and Chris Evens even insists on singing.
Only in the 90s.
After the show there’s a trailer for Ride the High Country. Then a trailer for Classic Trucks.
Then there’s a trailer for Murder in the Heartland, a miniseries starring Tim Roth.
Then, there’s 5 minutes of the beginning of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, at which point the recording stops. It’s a very short tape, this one.
The tape opens with an episode of Drop the Dead Donkey, Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton’s newsroom satire.
The staff go on strike (well most of them) when Sir Royston sacks all the technicians, so Gus has to run the newsroom with only Sally, George and Damien, and a group of Russian technicians, whose English skills are suspect, but their taste in magazines is exemplary – it looks like one is reading Doctor Who Magazine.
After this, there’s an episode of Equinox. “If you’d like to follow the programme live via the Internet, please mail the code shown”
This episode is Cyberville. Look at how big a VR headset used to be. It probably had CRTs in there.
Douglas Trumbull talks about huge screens, high resolution and subwoofers.
Lots and lots of talking heads, with lots of theories. Some of them were even close to the truth. Enjoy it.
Following this show, recording switches to BBC1 and The Wimbledon Poisoner. Robert Lindsay, Alison Steadman, Ian MacNeice in a film of Nigel Williams novel, directed by Robert Young, who also directed Lindsay in GBH. It’s a whimsical, genteel, terribly middle-class comedy about wife murder. Well, intended wife murder, as the titular poisoner isn’t actually very good at poisoning his intended target, but rather good at poisoning everyone else. It’s a two part drama, and this is the first part.
In part two, things get rather more manic, as the plot twists, and it all culminates on an angry mob marching on a windmill. It even almost has a happy ending.
Following the second episode, there’s a trailer for Christmas One Foot in the Grave. Then a trailer for Christmas Worship.
Then, the start of an episode of Everyman, Mary’s Miracle. A woman in Co. Wicklow claims that her statue of Jesus is weeping blood. There’s about ten minutes before the tape stops.
The tape starts with a trailer for a documentary, The Visit, not the BBC version, but an ITV show.
Then a trailer for Finney, which features both Andy Serkis and David Morrissey.
Then, Cracker, Jimmy McGovern’s crime psychodrama, with episode 3 of Men Should Weep. Robbie Coltrane and the police are on the trail of a serial rapist. But Penhaligon has also been raped, and not by the suspect, but by one of her colleagues, leading to a huge cliffhanger in this, the final episode of the second series.
Recording switches to BBC1, and the end of South East news. There’s weather from Michael Fish, and a trailer for The Addams Family. There’s also a trailer for Devil’s Advocate, starring a young Lena Headey.
Then, Mel Smith stars in a comedy drama about “a solicitor whose life appears to be a bit of a shambles”, Milner.
Rather oddly, John Hannah turns up early in what looks like a walk-on part. But he was a fairly established actor at the time, so does that mean he’ll be more important to the plot? Seems unlikely, as he’s credited as ‘Window Washer’.
It’s ‘based on a story by Peter Fincham’ who became the head of BBC1 until he had to resign over a controversy involving the Queen. At this time he was head of Talkback, the production company that made this programme. A company founded by Mel Smith.
There’s also a blink and you’ll miss it appearance from Catherine Tate.
It’s a pleasant enough show, with low level skullduggery being rooted out by the dogged solicitor. But didn’t really have anything much to distinguish it.
After the programme, there’s a trailer for The Godfather part III. Then, a trailer for Boxing Day programmes on BBC1. Nice to see 2 point 4 Children getting a good Christmas slot.
Then, the recording continues into the Gene Wilder mid-life-crisis comedy The Woman in Red. There’s 30 minutes of this before the tape finishes.
Before the movie, there’s a trailer for Sky One’s showings of Star Trek The Next Generation.
Then, Groundhog Day, one of the greatest comedies of all time. Directed by Harold Ramis, who makes a cameo appearance in the movie.
It’s a beautifully written and performed movie – even Andi Macdowell isn’t as annoying as she usually is.
Not only is the comedy very funny, but the plot cares enough about the situation it’s created to thoroughly explore its premise, finding as many variations and choices the character could make as possible. It’s not afraid to go in the darkest directions as well as the eventual feelgood resolution.
In essence, Bill Murray’s character is living his day like a videogame, trying out all the different options to find the winning route through the adventure. It allows the film to go to wildly different emotional places, but never feel false.
It’s just lovely. Clever and lovely.
Right after the movie, it switches to another film on The Movie Channel, John Badham’s remake of Luc Besson’s Nikita, called The Assassin here but in the US it was called Point of No Return. Bridget Fonda plays a violent young girl who is saved from death by lethal injection by Gabriel Byrne, who works for a shadowy organisation, and who trains Fonda to be a super killer.
I can’t remember much about the French original, so I can’t say how this compares, but it’s another film of its time. The recording here is pretty poor, looking very dark and mushy. It looks like they were aiming for a Tony Scott look, but haven’t quite got there.
Fonda falls in love with a slightly boring artist, and Byrne gives them a present – a trip to New Orleans. Of course, he doesn’t know what she does, or why she’s really there, which leads to a scene which is probably supposed to be tense and emotional, but just comes across as dumb, as she locks herself in the bathroom in order to train a sniper rifle on an unknown target while he, outside the bathroom door, decides on a whim to propose to her.
Through a locked toilet door.
And then, to make matters worse, when Fonda doesn’t immediately respond – because she’s concentrating on being a ruthless assassin whilst simultaneously having emotions about the sudden question – he says, rather petulantly, I thought, “I asked a question. Don’t you think I deserve an answer?”
The obvious answer is “No, you idiot, you just proposed marriage through a locked bathroom door, to someone who might well be on the toilet. Are you a total idiot?”
Luckily, Room Service interrupts – looking suspiciously like the director of the film, John Badham.
Later, when a job goes wrong, a cleaner is called in played by Harvey Keitel – pretty much the same character as he played in Pulp Fiction a year later.
So will she escape the clutches of the organisation? Will Gabriel Byrne turn out to be on her side or not? Either way, here’s a picture of Mr Byrne just for my sister.
The film has an early Hans Zimmer score, sounding like a transitional work between Going for Gold and Gladiator.
Following this movie, there’s a trailer for some football, then a trailer for George Sluizer’s remake of his own, far superior original The Vanishing starring Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges. The tape stops there.
Have I written about the X Files yet? Doesn’t look like it. Looks like this is the first of many tapes following the wacky misadventures of mismatched duo Mulder and Scully.
Before the programme starts, there’s the end of what looks like an episode of Top Gear, but not the laddish, controversy-baiting Top Gear we’re used to today. And, from this evidence, also not the William Woollard, Raymond Baxter, string-backed driving gloves Top Gear of the distant past.
This looks like an uneasy hybrid of the two. Jeremy Clarkson is the presenter, but he’s not putting a Renault 5 through its paces, he’s in Vietnam. But he’s not winding up the locals and incensing people on twitter with schoolboy jokes. He’s looking at the transport system in Saigon, and is actually impressed with a predominantly motorbiking population, and fearful of what will happen when the western car companies start selling into the country.
“Trouble is the car companies are coming now, with their clever advertising and their shiny hubcaps… and they’re going to wreck it.”
Clearly, young Clarkson isn’t quite the reactionary that he seems to be today.
In fact, this isn’t Top Gear at all, it’s a programme called Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld. And Clarkson and current Top Gear supremo Andy Wilman are associate producers. I think it’s a definite indication of how Top Gear would change, after the BBC cancelled it, and Wilman and Clarkson revived it.
After this, there’s a trailer for Hanif Kureshi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and for Situation Vacant.
Then we have The X Files. This is the episode Young at Heart which means nothing to me, although I’m pretty sure I will have watched it.
A supposedly dead man from Mulder’s past seems to have reappeared. Could there be a rational explanation? Of course not, it’s the X Files.
At one point, his quarry leaves an envelope of 8×10 glossy pictures of surveillance of Mulder. What’s the modern equivalent of that? A USB key filled with mp4s? Postings on Vine?
I’ve always found David Duchovny rather a dull hero. I wonder if that’s because, more often than not, he’s standing next to Gillian Anderson?
This is an episode with lots of angst, but very little incident until the very end, when Scully gets shot (bullet proof vest, though) and Mulder has to relive an even from the past. It seems very slow paced. Even the obligatory weird science doesn’t really spice it up.
Before the next episode, another slice of Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld, this time on more familiar ground, with Clarkson in Detroit, driving a Dodge Viper to a rockin’ soundtrack.
Then there’s a trailer for Friday Night Comedy.
Next, back to the X Files for an altogether jollier episode. UFOs buzzing jets in Iraq, attacking truck drivers, and Mulder introduces Scully (and us) to The Lone Gunmen, his friendly UFO conspiracists who were so popular they got their own spin-off show.
The episode is E.B.E. Mulder is desperate to prove that UFO evidence exists. Scully plays the skeptic, and at one point tells him a photo is faked because the shadows are wrong.
The pair are under some kind of surveillance, because Mulder is getting too close to something important, so this episode is filled with hidden devices and paranoia. Much more of what we enjoyed about the X Files.
EBE, incidentally, stands for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. Because clearly, ET was taken. These shows always have to invent new acronyms for aliens, and it’s never convincing.
Cut to another slice of Motorworld, this time from Iceland, and it’s looking more and more like nuGear. It’s in Iceland, and they attempt to drive to the top of a glacier. 26 January 1995 20.30
There’s another trailer for Buddha of Suburbia, and a trailer for Signs and Wonders – a programme I’m amazed I never recorded, because it looks right up my alley. (30 January 1995 21.30)
Another X Files episode follows, Miracle Man. mysterious shenanigans involving faith healers.
No Clarkson before the next episode, Shapes, which includes a transformation that looks suspiciously similar to the classic transformation in Joe Dante’s The Howling.
Next, is the episode Darkness Falls where loggers release a swarm of unconvincing CGI insects. And oddly, it has an extended ‘Next Week on The X FIles’ segment at the end. Perhaps it’s because it’s for Tooms, a sequel to an earlier episode, so they felt they had to remind the audience. Or maybe this episode was running short.
After this, there’s a trailer for the little-loved Glam Metal Detectives, and for The Mrs Merton Show.
Then, we have the start of an episode of Situation Vacant, which looks at applicants for the post of Store Manager at Toys R Us. After 15 minutes, the tape stops.
VHiStory 