Still on Sky One, here’s a few episodes of Saturday Night Live.
Remember when an unstable billionaire ran for president against a Clinton? Yeah, he didn’t win that time.
“Got my own plane, don’t need Air Force One.” I wonder if that’s a line from Perot’s campaigning, or from the writers? Either way, Trump used the same line.
Host of this episode is Tom Hanks, apparently a last minute replacement for Joe Pesci, whose movie was overrunning.
This leads to a couple of sketches which is basically Tom Hanks doing actual scenes from Goodfellas (starting, obviously, with the ‘You think I’m funny?’ scene).
Musical guest is Bruce Springsteen
In the bit at the end where they say goodbye we learn that Jay Leno was a special guest in the show – not that this edited version contained his bit.
The next episode features host Dennis Quaid
Music from the Neville Brothers
The Weekend Update segment gives the date of this first broadcast, but definitely not the date of this Sky repeat.
Jon Lovitz does Annoying Man
The next episode takes place when the Gulf War was just about to really get started. The host is Kevin Bacon, complete with 80s hair.
Visionary opens with Chief O’Brien receiving treatment from Bashir after an accident in engineering. So there’s a chance this whole episode will turn out to be a dream he’s having.
Some Romulans arrive on the station for an intelligence briefing on the Dominion.
It’s a seminal episode for the series, though, as it’s the first episode where Chief O’Brien plays darts. But while throwing a dart, he appears to have a vision of the future.
There’s a couple more visions, the last one causing O’Brien to call to himself, just as he’s hit by a blast from a maintenance panel.
This is a neat episode, and while the time travel might not stand up to close enquiry, I like the ending, switching future and past O’Briens to save everything.
The next episode is Distant Voices. It’s Bashir’s birthday, but instead of a present he gets his head zapped by an alien stealing stuff from the sickbay.
When he wakes up, it seems like there’s nobody around. The station is a mess, and the alien who attacked Bashir is somewhere on the ship, and only Dax, O’Brien, Kira and Odo are around. And Bashir is getting older.
He realises this is all in his mind, and he’s in a coma from the attack. But he has to fight back against the alien to save his mind from dying.
There’s some sleuthing with Odo, some dead ends, until they end up meeting Garak’s old Mentor with the Obsidian Order, Enabran Tain, who seems to be working with Romulans.
They’re planning to enter the wormhole and attack the Dominion, and at the end of the episode, Garak agrees to join them, leaving us with a cliffhanger.
After this episode, there’s the start of an episode of Renegade, the action series populated solely by long-haired male models. The tape ends shortly into this episode.
OK, this is a long tape. A rare LP recording, but it was rather a long evening, as BBC2 looked back to Live Aid on the 10th anniversary.
I regret not having recorded the original concert. At the time I was very sniffy about pop music, so I was only really dipping in to it. It was early on in my VHS recording life, so I didn’t have the same sense of TV history that I later developed.
But, this one is to make some small amends, and opens with the very end of The Nun’s Story.
There’s a trailer for Big Science. And a trailer for Tim Westwood’s Rap Show.
Then, the Live Aid Tenth Anniversary. Astonishingly, according to the continuity announcer, this is the first time since the original broadcast, that the concert footage has been seen. I know music rights are a nightmare to deal with, but you’d think this would have been exploited to death, given how much money might have been raised.
As well as the concert footage, there’s also some post-concert interviews for some behind the scenes stories and context, which is always nice.
But I really don’t like the ‘pop facts’ style captions they’ve chosen. Really tacky.
The same treatment is used for the interview captions. Yuck.
I’m going to get sad about the number of people on stage who have died since. Most of them in 2016, of course, including Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt.
At least Francis Rossi is still with us.
The BBC Presenting team was pulling out all the stops. Here’s Richard Skinner.
Paul McCartney talks about not wanting to do the show, as he didn’t have a band, and wasn’t touring at the time.
Midge Ure talks about Geldof’s ability to bullshit to persuade all the big names to take part.
The next act on stage is Paul Weller and The Style Council. I never really felt the Style Council. I always preferred the angrier music of The Jam. I once stood behind Paul Weller in an immigration queue in an American airport. He didn’t get an VIP treatment.
We only get one song from the Council, and the BBC have opted for ‘You’re The Best Thing’ and not the rockier ‘Walls Came Tumbling Down’ sadly.
Next on stage, Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats. Isn’t it really odd that the most famous song ever written about a mass shooting was written about one of the only mass shootings by a woman?
They also perform ‘Rat Trap’, and it looks like we lose Geldof’s mic halfway through the performance.
After this, the programme has an interlude, going back to 1984 and the original Michael Buerk news report that triggered Geldof to organise the Band Aid single that eventually led to Live Aid.
Bob Geldof returns to the location of the report for the first time since he came with supply trucks.
Back to 1985, and it’s Adam Ant, who chooses to do Vive le Rock.
Concert Promoter Harvey Goldsmith talks about the third leg of the concert, from Australia.
Their concert, which started 6 hours before the UK leg, featured Michael Hutchence and INXS, another one no longer with us.
Next on stage in the UK, Band Aid co-composer Midge Ure, with Dancing with Tears in my Eyes. He also does Vienna, of course.
Waitress Rita Gilligan was part of the catering backstage. All the food was free, but you were expected to make a donation, so everyone ended up paying much more for the food, because they didn’t want to look stingy.
Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet talks about the lack of ego.
They’re next on stage, opening with True, of course.
Here’s Elvis Costello.
He does All You Need is Love. “I didn’t have any songs that would be recognised internationally” has says. Elvis Fucking Costello. Now that is a lack of ego.
I particularly like the way that audience provides the horn section bits of the chorus, because it’s just Elvis on a guitar.
I’ll be honest here. I’m starting to think I’ve seen enough of Bob Geldof’s return to Africa. He’s now reading from the story of the Queen of Sheba meeting King Solomon. We could be using this time for another song.
Next on stage, Nik Kershaw. I really liked Nik Kershaw, particularly his first album, Human Racing. Of course, he does Wouldn’t It Be Good? but I would have preferred Dancing Girls.
Noel Edmonds tell the amusing story of how the closest place to land a helicopter, to ferry the stars to and from the stadium, was a cricket ground, and the cricket club point blank refused to cancel the game that was scheduled to take place that day, so every time a helicopter arrived the players had to leave the pitch.
Blues legend BB King appears live by satellite from the Netherlands.
It’s Sade’s turn next.
Here’s Noel Edmonds describing Phil Collins as one of the finest ambassadors of the British music industry.
He even manages to screw up the intro, as he introduces Phil Collins, but it’s Sting first. Haha. He does Message in a Bottle.
Phil Collins does the two songs he can play on the piano (a joke he himself makes later in the concert).
Here’s Howard Jones saying that some of the keys on the piano (it was Freddie Mercury’s Steinway) were a bit sticky. He performs Hide and Seek, not one of his biggest hits.
Phil Chilvers, the BBC director, explains what happened when they cut to a feed from the Soviet Union of their top band Autograph. They could hear the band, but the pictures were of a group of young people picking cherries in an orchard. At first they assumed this was the video for a song, but when people on screen were interviewing other people with a microphone they realised they’d got the wrong video feed, and had to get on the phone to Moscow to get the right feed patched in.
There’s a brief clip of an unnamed Japanese band broadcast from Tokyo. performing their big hit, probably the theme song to an anime about collectible card games. We’re never told.
At least the Austrian contribution has subtitles.
As does Yugoslavia’s entry
The German Band Aid single is cheery and uplifting as expected
Nice to see the Old Grey Whistle Test represented in the presenters, with David Hepworth
Sweden’s entry is performed on a beach.
Back to the concert proper, with Bryan Ferry, who does Slave to Love.
You can’t quite see from this angle, but he’s carrying two microphones. I presume this is to prevent a repeat of Bob Geldof’s dead mic.
Looks like Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour on guitar for Ferry.
Oh good, it’s Paul Young. I hope he does Toast.
No, it’s Come Back and Stay. It sounds like the drum machine is slightly malfunctioning on this.
Perhaps this is the reason they never did any commercial releases – because it wasn’t possible for the bands to ensure the best possible result, so they were happy to do it for a one-off, but didn’t want those performances to hang around.
Joining Paul Young is Alison Moyet, and they sing That’s The Way Love Is.
And that’s the end of part one of the programme.
There’s trails for African Footsteps and British Grand Prix.
And, because there’s nothing great that can’t be made shitter by sport, an hour’s highlights of a cricket match.
My recording skips most of that, thankfully. There’s a trailer for Big Science and for more African Summer programmes.
Then, back to the concert. American joins the fray, late as usual, and they lead with a Canadian, Brian Adams, and Summer of 69.
Back to London, and, in the words of Tommy Vance, “here are a band from the Republic of Ireland with international respect and appeal. Ladies and Gentlemen, U2.” Was that written with an eye to the US viewers? Were U2 big in the US at the time?
To appeal to the American audience, they do their crowdpleaser about a massacre of Irish protesters by British troops, Sunday Bloody Sunday.
They also do Bad. But not the Michael Jackson one. I often can’t tell the difference between U2 and Simple Minds. It’s not a problem I worry about too much.
On the American side, they have the Beach Boys, but I think this was without Brian Wilson. They’re doing Good Vibrations, tying in with A Very Peculiar Practice just a couple of days ago.
Another African interlude is followed by Dire Straits (and Sting) doing Money for Nothing.
They also do Sultans of Swing.
From Philadelphia, George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
Here’s Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.
They were there to introduce Queen.
Let’s face it, Queen won Live Aid, and it’s easy to work out why. First, Freddie Mercury can work a crowd like nobody else. Second, their hits are all footstomping, hand clapping anthems, and third, their songs are so good that they can open their set with their greatest hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, and yet it goes up from there.
The sight of the entire crowd doing the synchronised hand claps above their heads is amazing. This isn’t a crowd of Queen fanatics, this is a cross section of music fans, and yet every person there, it looks like, is dong the handclap gesture for Radio Gaga. It’s quite spinetingling.
They were also very canny in not doing two or three songs at full concert length, but they squeezed in six numbers. Unfortunately, this broadcast omits Hammer to Fall and Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
After the video for Dancing in the Streets, and a digression about Geldof swearing on live TV, it’s over to Philadelphia for Simple Minds.
And in London, David Bowie.
Bowie takes the time to introduce his band by name, including Thomas Dolby on synths. Bowie really looks like he’s enjoying himself.
This is followed by the video of famine victims set to The Cars’ Who’s going to drive you home. Blimey, it’s strong stuff.
It’s followed by an interview with the editor who put it together, Colin Dean.
Back to the music, and in Philadelphia, it’s Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, with Stop Your Sobbing.
Next, it’s The Who singing My Generation. At the point at which Daltrey is singing “Why don’t you all F-F-F-F-Fade Away” the power went out at the Stadium, due to a fuse blowing. Given that this was the first time the Who had played together in a long time, this was more than a little unfortunate.
Another comedian doing an introduction – much less pretentious than Tommy Vance’s ludicrous intros. Here’s Billy Connolly.
Introducing Elton John.
The programme chooses to open his set with Bennie and the Jets rather than his actual first song, I’m Still Standing which I vastly prefer. I’ve always found BatJ a little dull.
Noel Edmonds tells an ‘amusing’ story about Elton John, and how they had to shut down the helicopter when it landed with him, so the wind from the rotors wouldn’t blow his ‘particularly dodgy’ wig away.
Elton then does Don’t Go Breaking My Heart with Kiki Dee, a guaranteed crowdpleaser.
After another Geldof African story, Elton is joined by George Michael, who sings Don’t Let The Sun Go Down. He was still part of Wham! at the time (and, indeed, Andrew Ridgeley also came on stage, seemingly to Elton’s surprise) and I think this performance did a lot to set the foundations of his solo career.
Bob Geldof’s PA tells the story of being backstage, with Tony Hadley and George Michael, “and Tony Hadley saying ‘My God, look, Paul McCartney’s just walked in, don’t look now’ and of course 50 heads all go to have a look at him and George is like ‘Oooh, Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney’ and I’m thinking ‘But you’re George Michael.'”
From Philadelphia, Bette Midler introduces Madonna.
Madonna asks the crowd “Hot enough for you? I’m sympathising by keeping my coat on.” and when some of the crowd actually boo that remark she says “No, I ain’t taking shit off today. You might hold it against me ten years from now.”
Then, it’s Paul McCartney, and the most famous dead mic of the night. For the first two minutes, nobody can hear his vocal, and (according to Geldof) the crowd are getting a bit angry. McCartney, the Pro, just keeps going, sure that someone backstage will sort it out. And when it does, the cheer from the crowd is incredible.
Followed by another huge cheer a minute later, when Geldof, Pete Townshend, Alison Moyet and David Bowie come onstage to busk with McCartney. It’s all a bit of a shambles, really, but I don’t think it matters at this point.
Then, the whole ensemble shuffles onstage to do Do They Know It’s Christmas and that’s it for London.
Bob Geldof tells of going out to find that all the cars have gone, so some random person in a volkswagen gives him a lift home.
Cut to Philadelphia with The Cars, and Who’s Going to Drive You Home?
Next, incongruously for the American stage, it’s The Thompson Twins. Were they huge in America?
Another British act, Eric Clapton
(supported on drums by Phil Collins, newly arrived from London).
The story of the corporate sponsorship of the event is interesting. No, it really is.
Phil Collins does his songs again, this time in America. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I quite like Against All Odds.
There’s a shot in his set where the camera is trying to get an arty closeup, and the cameraperson’s hand sneaks into shot trying to get rid of the scarf that’s on the piano. Smooth.
The British theme continues with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page doing the Theme to Top of the Pops.
At last, an American act, in the shape of Tom Petty.
But it’s back to the Brits with Duran Duran, who do A View To A Kill. Simon le Bon recounts the moment when his voice cracks rather badly on one of the notes.
And Hall and Oates doing Maneater
Back the the BBC here’s Mike Smith presenting.
He introduces Mick Jagger and Tina Turner.
Another Geldof African film, and he’s wearing a Biker Mice from Mars jacket.
The programme ends with the US contingent singing We Are the World and some reminiscences from the people involved with the whole concert.
Yep, that does look like Mick Jagger and Joan Baez just rocking out at the back.
After the end of Brookside, there’s an episode of Ellen.
After an opening in which Ellen is driving at night, falls asleep and wakes up in a field full of cows, Ellen is part of an anti-fur protest.
It doesn’t end well for her.
After this, there’s a trail for The Big Breakfast. Remember when Robbie Williams almost had a career as a Breakfast TV presenter?
There’s also this nice trailer for a Sci Fi Weekend.
Then Friends and The One With All The Poker. Rachel is mailing out resumes as she’s looking for a new job, sick of being called ‘Excuse me’.
The boys agree to teach the girls how to play poker.
They don’t do well, so Monica gets her aunt Iris in to teach them how to play, and how to bluff.
Next on this Friday Night, it’s Frasier. I’m still mortified at how often I misspelled it Frazier in my database.
This is Adventures in Paradise part 1. Frasier sees a woman in a magazine and decides to ask her out on a date. She runs a sportswear company, and is played by JoBeth Williams.
The relationship is going well, so they decide to go on holiday to Bora Bora, where he discovers a familiar face in the cabin next to theirs.
Then, recording switches, and we’ve got another episode of Ellen. Ellen lies to her mother so she can go on a ski trip. When the ski lift malfunctions she’s wracked with guilt about lying, and tries to make it up to her mother.
After this, more Friends and The One Where the Monkey Gets Away.
In the ad break there’s the Flora ad with John Noakes. It’s less than 3 weeks since he died. I think that might fall inside the blog’s death-watch range. Sorry.
Next, back to Frasier, and the second part of the two parter. Frasier is rather disturbed by having Lilith next door, with another man, so his holiday doesn’t go as planned.
At the end of the episode, he plans to return with Madeleine to Bora Bora to make up for the first aborted visit, which gives us a completely brilliant ending.
Writer Ken Levine tells the story of how that ending wasn’t seen by anyone at NBC until it was actually on the air, to prevent the network’s marketing geniuses spoiling the surprise by trailing the hell out of it.
After that, recording switches to BBC2 and the end of War Correspondent.
There’s a trailer for The Death of Yugoslavia, and one for Blue Velvet.
Then, Seinfeld and The Keys. Jerry revokes Kramer’s key privileges after he uses them once too often.
Kramer gets upset and decides to move to California.
Jerry and George discover that Elaine is writing a script for Murphy Brown.
Then, when watching the show they see that Kramer has got a part on the show.
First on this tape, Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Defiant.
Kira is getting overworked, so Dr Bashir tells her she’s off duty. He prescribes some fun in Quark’s. Which she might get, as she has an unexpected visitor.
It’s a crossover episode. Riker is visiting on leave, popping in on DS9 on his way to the sex tourism planet Risa.
Kira takes him on a tour of the Defiant, and there’s a weird moment when he meets Chief O’Brien. “I’ve nothing to say to you O’Brien. I think you know why.”
Soon after this, when Kira has released the security lockout, Riker stuns her with a phaser, then fakes a core breach so that the station will release docking clamps. He beams two strangers on board, then peels off his fake beard,so that he conforms to the ‘evil twin’ protocol of having a goatee.
Regular ST viewers will have twigged, but Odo lays it out for us. It’s Thomas Riker, Commander Riker’s transporter duplicate from an earlier TNG episode, and he’s apparently joined the Maquis, the anti-cardassian group.
The Cardassians are naturally upset that the Maquis now has the most powerful warship in the fleet. To avoid a diplomatic incident, Sisko has to work with the Cardassians in hunting down the Defiant. We get a nice Matte painting for Cardassia Prime.
Riker is going after a secret Cardassian base where a Cardassian sect is covertly building up a military force. Kira is sceptical as to whether Riker is genuinely a terrorist, as the Maquis are generally seen.
Meanwhile on Cardassia, the Obsidian order, Cardassia’s creepy secret police, orders Gul Dukat not to send ships to where Riker is heading, so they’re the ones building up the secret fleet.
Kira thinks Riker doesn’t care about the Maquis, or the Cardassians, she thinks he’s just trying ti prove a point that he’s just as good as the other Riker.
In the end, Dukat makes a deal, that he’ll get the Defiant’s sensor logs, showing the military buildup by the Obsidian order, and in return Riker’s crew will get safe passage. Riker will have to be tried and imprisoned on Cardassia, but he won’t get the death penalty.
Kira promises that they’ll try to break him out, and they share a moment before the end.
After this, recording continues for a bit with the start of Entertainment Tonight, and a look at the merchandising of the summer blockbusters, in this case Pocahontas, Casper, and Batman Forever.
Shortly, though, recording switches, and The Simpsons starts. In Homer The Vigilante there’s a burglar working Springfield. He even steals Lisa’s Sax.
Homer is elected as head of the Neighbourhood Watch. There’s a gratuitous Dr Strangelove reference.
The cat burglar sounds like a lot like he’s voiced by Sam Neill. (It is he.)
Recording continues a bit, with Beverly Hills 90210. Then is switches to UK Gold for the end of an episode of A Sense of Guilt.
There’s a trailer here for the BBC Rabies drama The Mad Death which starts off like a Robin Asquith sex comedy before lurching into pure horror. Just as terrifying as I remember at the time.
Then, another episode of A Very Peculiar Practice. This is still on series 2, and it’s episode four, Bad Vibrations. The nuns in the opening get a rare close-up.
The university acoustics group is running an experiment that may or may not be finding an acoustic weapon. The students taking part in the experiment are reporting a lot of adverse symptoms.
Professor Middling of the Electroacoustics department is David Bamber, in his usual, unctuous persona.
Bob Buzzard is taking the breakdown of his marriage in his stride.
The action culminates at a disco where the acoustic student unleashes his band, and the audience are strangely affected by the frequencies. Except the two nuns, just visible here.
The student is played by a young Paul Higgins, most recently seen as Hilton in Line of Duty.
After this, recording switches again, to an episode of ER on Channel 4. It’s called Men Plan, God Laughs.
I had either never known or totally forgotten that Michael Ironside was on ER. Only in seven episodes though according to iMDb, so not surprising I missed him. I was a sporadic watcher.
Richard Herd guests as a psychologist.
After this, recording continues with the start of an animated film, part of the Secret Passions strand, and introduced by Bob Godfrey.
He first introduces his film United Kingdom.
The main voice for the film is Chris Barrie.
There’s another brief appearance for the late, much missed Roger Moore.
This is followed by an introduction by Jason Stalman talking about ‘the appeal of drag’ for his film The Fairest of the all.
Voices for this film included Lily Savage.
The final film here is Oh Julie, by the team of Frances Lea, Michele Howarth and Jayne Bevitt.
This tape opens with the end of The Rock and Roll Years.
There’s a trailer for Saturday Night on 2.
Then, the First Night of the Proms. There’s a bit where a young boy shows a picture of the rehearsal for the first Proms concert 100 years ago, and he looks spookily like the young man on The Saturday Night Armistice. But I don’t think it is.
The concert is Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. It’s very big, with a massive chorus.
In the interval there’s a look at the legend of Faust, which forms the basis of the second part of the piece.
There’s quite a jump after this, as we’re into 1996 for an episode of Film 96. I presume I was looking around for tapes which weren’t yet full up to put the odd episode onto because I’d run out of blanks.
This week, in the first episode of the year, Barry Norman reviews the following releases:
In his review of Devil in a Blue Dress Barry has no compunction at using the N-word. Even though I think he’s using it to characterise the racism inherent in the story, and the racism of the police, it does make me terribly uncomfortable. As Ice Cube said to Bill Maher on his show, “That’s our word now. You can’t have it back.”
There’s a look at Pinewood Studios on its 60th birthday, with Kirsty Young.
After this, there’s a trailer for Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. And for the queasy sounding Filipina Dreamgirls.
Then, recording continues with Omnibus profiling director Paul Verhoeven. Amusing, given the complete drubbing Barry Norman just gave to Showgirls.
“He has no room for political correctness” opines Joe Eszterhas. If Joe Eszterhas has even a nodding acquaintance with political correctness, then I’m a banana.
Other collaborators include Jeroen Krabbe
There’s Paul Verhoeven’s only surviving painting from when he thought he might be a painter.
Verhoeven’s muse, Rutger Hauer
Verhoeven’s cinematographer, Jan De Bont, went on to make Speed.
Renee Soutendijk, an actress who works mostly in the Netherlands, but whom I remember from the early 90s action movie Eve of Destruction.
On to Verhoeven’s US directing career, here’s Robocop producer Jon Davison.
Co-writer Ed Neumeier
He talks about how Verhoeven liked the subtext of Robocop being an American Jesus, and how, at the end of the film, he even used the location of an old steel mill to show him walking on water, something I’d never noticed.
In a way, it’s a shame that this profile was made to tie in with the release of Showgirls. Perhaps if it had come later, they could have been a bit more honest about what a bad film it (reportedly) was. I still haven’t seen it.
There’s a trailer for The X Files moving from BBC2 to BBC1.
Also a trailer for The Gulf War.
Then there’s the start of The Beguiled, the Clint Eastwood movie that was recently remade, before that recording stops.
Underneath there’s the end of an episode of Newsnight. Followed by a trailer for Big Science.
Then, Lisa I’Anson presents The Vibe. I’ve never seen this before, but it looks like a segregated Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Or should that be that it makes Never Mind the Buzzcocks look like it’s segregated. Everyone’s having a whale of a time, though.
Just before the first episode, there’s a little trail for The Saint featuring Roger Moore, which I thought I’d share since he died recently (only a couple of weeks ago as I wrote this. Sorry, Roger.)
Then, UFO. Poor Mr Croxley has a mental problem. He appears to be able to see the future.
Shado are tracking a UFO that’s taking a very erratic course. Mr Croxley has a premonition his wife will have a visitor.
There’s some top UFO house collision action.
Croxley’s wife is killed in the crash, and he knows Shado is involved. He sends a film script all about Shado to Straker,
There’s a tense meeting, during which Croxley is channeling the aliens, then Foster turns up and shoots him. Nice to see Shado have document security under control.
I really wish the Bravo announcer wouldn’t keep pronouncing it ‘Shador’. It’s very annoying.
Another episode follows. SID is unmanned, so why is its interior lit permanently?
Foster has a dangerous re-entry, and he’s affected by an alien voice telling him to Kill Straker!
“I’m saying we should rename the whole thing ‘Straker’s Alien Defence Organisation'” says an angry Foster. Which would make it SADO.
I like a commander who’s not afraid to lead in his dressing gown.
Wow, I’ve been fast forwarding over all the trails on this tape, so I’ve only just noticed that the two golfers in the Cult TV Weekend trail are Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller.
The final UFO episode here is Sub Smash.
Skydiver is disabled at the bottom of the sea, trapping Straker along with the crew.
It gets very tense and claustrophobic when Nina Barry is trapped in a torpedo tube.
After this, recording continues with an episode of Robin Hood in which Robin enters an archery contest. Such novelty.
Then, the start of an episode of The Persuaders. Jean Marsh is murdered before the credits. What a waste.
The episode is written by Terry Nation. The tape ends before the episode finishes.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
VHiStory 