I’m feeling slightly trepidatious, as we embark on another new phase of this stupid blog. I do fear the unknown.
But I’ve run out of DVDs, and there’s still no sign of the missing tapes, so now I’m starting to look at all the TV I recorded and archived with my Windows Media Centre Edition (MCE). We used Media Centre as our primary TV-watching method for quite some time, and I would save a lot of programmes on external hard drives, so we could watch programmes again – this was quite important as we had young children, who did like watching things over and over.
Media Centre files also have the advantage that they have metadata which tells me exactly when the programme was recorded, so I don’t have to guess based on clues in the adverts and continuity.
I’ve decided to try to review the programmes in the order they were recorded, trying to do one day per entry. Sometimes that might not be possible if there’s a lot of programmes on a particular day – some days are just packed.
It does also mean that I might have days that just have a single programme, so I apologize in advance for the blog getting a bit samey sometimes.
We start at the earliest day for which I’ve found recordings, 30th October 2005, and with a programme that was very popular with our children.
It’s SMart – an art programme that definitely channels shows like Vision On or Take That or the more recent ITV show Art Attack.
The titles are a lovely example of early 2000s CG titles.
The show is presented by Mark Speight and Kirsten O’Brien.
Kirsten’s first project is to create an abstract picture of flowers, which she does by looking at the flowers and not looking at the drawing she’s making.
Mark visits a gallery to see some of Eduardo Paolozzi’s tactile artworks, in an exhibition specially aimed at vision-impaired people. (When I was writing this, I wanted to check the spelling of Paolozzi’s name, but I actually searched Enrico Pallazzo – the Italian opera singer that Frank Drebin impersonates in The Naked Gun, preventing the Queen being assassinated. I think you can see where the weight of culture sits in my brain, and it’s not with Art History.)
I love watching people draw cartoons. I wish I could draw like that.
Kirsten makes a parrot outside a garden centre.
They do some painting with spices.
As an old person, I did appreciate them still using the classic Vision On gallery music.
Morph still appears, although from the quality of the film, I suspect these would be ones from Take Hart in the 80s.
There’s a large floor painting.
After this episode there’s a trailer for The Basil Brush Show.
Then another episode of SMart starts. Mark and Kirsten do some rubbing.
Painting Stones.
Mark does a glass painting to de-urbanise his view.
Kirsten demonstrates how vanishing points work.
Kirsten goes out to the lakes.
Mark makes a Space scene with chalk.
Then they both make a space picture on the floor.
Recorded from CBBC Channel on Sunday 30 October 2005 12:58
In theory, this would link to the page with Genome details, but it looks like Genome has a bit of a gap here, on CBBC particularly. I hope it’s not widespread. And I was hoping Genome linkage would be easier now…
The next programme today is Lost – Hearts and Minds. I was hoping, by doing these in chronological order, that I wouldn’t be diving into programmes in random orders, but no, the first show we hit and we start in the middle of the first season.
But before this episode there’s the end of another programme. I’m not sure, but judging by the presence of Robert Llewellyn, and it seems to be a race around an ice rink on a home-made, fan powered vehicle, this must be Scrapheap Challenge.
Now Lost. I barely remember who any of these people are, despite watching at least the first two seasons. Boone doesn’t like Sayid paying attention to his sister.
He’s also worried about keeping secrets from her. He and Locke have been going into the jungle to investigate a hatch in the ground, and he wants to tell her.
I forgot how Lost marked the start of the decline in TV title sequences.
Hurley has been having digestive issues.
Kate and Sun have been making a garden.
We see some of Boone’s flashback to before the crash. He travels to Australia when he gets a panicked call from his sister who sounds like she’s being beaten up. When he gets there her boyfriend is obviously tall and suspicious, but she’s still with him and doesn’t look like she needs his help, except for a noticeable head bruise.
Hurley asks Jin for fishing tips.
Boone tells Locke that he thinks they should tell everyone about the hatch. So Locke knocks him out, ties him up and leaves him there.
Back in Australia, Boone pays off the boyfriend to leave his sister.
Kate learns that Sun can speak English, a fact she’s been keeping from her husband Jin.
Hurley steps on a sea urchin, and Jin helps him, although he doesn’t pee on his foot like Hurley is begging him to.
Sayid is making a compass. He runs into Locke in the jungle, and Locke gives him his compass.
Boone is still tied up, when he hears his sister Shannon’s voice shouting for help nearby. He manages to get free, finds her, frees her, when there’s the sound of a huge monster coming for them, and they hide in some trees. This being Lost we don’t see what’s chasing them, because Mystery is cheaper than CGI.
Sayid shows Jack the compass Locke gave him. He’s curious why it shows North a long way from where the direction of the sun suggests it should be. Why did Locke give him a faulty compass?
Flashback Boone comes to get his sister, but the boyfriend is still there. Shannon was manipulating Boone to get him to give the boyfriend money, because she’s been cut off by their mother. Nice one, Lost, having a woman lying about being abused.
Jack talks to Locke about the drop in boars. He blames their presence for the Boars moving on.
Making their way back to camp, Boone tells Shannon about Locke’s hatch. Almost immediately, they’re chased again by the unseen monster, and this time if catches up to Shannon and pulls her up in the air (we still don’t see it).
Back to Flashback, and Shannon turns up at Boone’s hotel telling him that the boyfriend has left with all the money. Shannon tells him “You brought the money because you’re in love with me.” Then they start snogging. I know it’s not strictly incest, but they were brother and sister since he was about 10, so this is still icky.
But back in the ‘present day’ he finds Shannon’s broken body.
Back to the camp, and Boone attacks Locke with a knife, which doesn’t get him very far. When he tells him he held his sister’s dead body, Locke asks him why there’s no blood on him. And shows him that Shannon is still safe and well at the camp. “She… She was dead.” “Is that what it made you see?” “What made me see? That stuff you put on my head? You drugged me?” “I gave you an experience that I believed was vital to your survival on this island.” God this show is mostly bullshit isn’t it?
After this, the recording continues for a bit, with five minutes of Channel 4 news, leading with the Earthquakes in India and Pakistan.
Recorded from Channel 4 on Sunday 30 October 2005 18:28. This seems pretty early in the evening for a show like Lost. Were they aiming at the equally stupid 6pm slot the BBC used for Buffy? Although I remember Babylon 5 having an equally early slot, so I guess it’s fantasy in general is really for kids. As a result, I think this episode had a few cuts.
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OK, I promise that today’s disc is definitely the last one I’ll be looking at. Unless another box turns up, which it might do because there are still gaps in my numbering.
Today’s programme is Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters and Marvels. It’s recorded from one of the Sky movie channels, and it’s a documentary which is mostly an interview with Stan Lee, Editor In Chief of Marvel Comics through the Silver Age of superhero comics, co-creator of many of the great characters, and, frankly, a significant influence on my childhood.
I get the feeling this is cobbled together from another source, as it’s divided into parts called ‘Feature 1’ etc. It sounds like bonus material from a DVD.
He’s being interviewed by filmmaker Kevin Smith, a huge Comic Book fan.
It’s interesting that Smith brings up the issue of who is the creator of a comic character, and Lee is pretty honest here that he feels that the person who comes up with the idea is the creator (as he did for Spider-Man) but he says, of Ditko, Kirby and the other artists, “I have enough respect for Steve and for the other artists that I am very happy and very comfortable to call myself the Co creator of all of these things”.
Smith gets to visit Stan’s house, to see all his memorabilia.
Just in case it seemed like Stan was taking all the credit, there’s even a message at the end.
If you’d like to watch this video, I’m sure Google will take your money.
Here’s the TiVo details: Saturday 10th January 2004
After this, the recording continues with the start of Star Trek Generations. I hope to
We’re still looking at DVDs, with another one that wouldn’t play all the way through, but I think at least the first episode is complete. which is good, because it’s fascinating.
This is a drama documentary series called Seven Wonders of the Industrial World and this episode is on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The programme is based on the scrapbooks of Emily Roebling, who documented the whole story of building the bridge.
The man who initiated the project was John Roebling, played by Steven Berkoff. He designed the bridge, was the chief engineer, and was the person who secured the investment and got permission to build the bridge.
But three days after the permission had been granted, before any construction has started, Roebling was on site, when a ferry crashed heavily into the pier, and Roebling’s foot was crushed. Two of his toes were damaged beyond repair, and had to be amputated.
Roebling believed he could cure himself by pouring water over his foot, night and day, and refusing any other medical advice.
He’s still discussing the bridge, and won’t discuss his case at all. There’s Donald Sumpter, off of Game of Thrones.
After ten days, Roebling dies. His son Washington is left to continue his work.
There’s another familiar face, Thunderbirds‘ Shane Rimmer.
Washington took over the project, because he was the person most familiar with his father’s plans.
“His first task was the most daring and dangerous. To sink heavy foundations into the riverbed for the two colossal towers. He planned to use airtight caissons – giant upside down wooden boxes 160 feet long by 100 wide. They will be pushed down through the mud and rocks by the weight of the tower being built on top. Made of thick timber with a sharp iron cutting edge all the way round, the caisson chamber where the men worked would be pumped full of compressed air to keep water out. As granite blocks piled on above their weight would force the caissons down into the mud, inch by dangerous inch till they reached bedrock. Then they will be filled with concrete to make the solid foundations.”
Working deep underwater, in the caisson pumped full of compressed air, many workmen suffered from severe muscular pains and paralysis, which became known as Caisson Disease. Washington Roebling himself, while fighting a fire in the timbers of the caisson, suffered a severe bout.
The fire is still burning. They drill into the timbers, to reveal an inferno of burning embers. It takes 30 fire engines, and several tugs, to flood the caisson, and nearly five hours to finally put the fire out.
The second caisson, on the Manhattan side of the river, would have to be sunk even lower than the Brooklyn side, which led to even more severe cases of Caisson disease, now including some deaths. Doctors still didn’t understand the causes, except that it was caused by working under highly compressed air.
When the second caisson is finally sunk, Washington himself has been working so much in the caisson that he is very badly afflicted by Caisson Disease – which is what we now know as The Bends. He has to rest and recuperate.
To keep the project on track while her husband recovers slowly, Emily Roebling teaches herself higher mathematics, and the details of engineering.
The first rope is suspended between the two towers. Farrington, the chief mechanic, travels across the river on the rope, to demonstrate that the ropes can support a person’s weight.
Roebling’s company was one of the major manufacturers of steel cable of the kind that the bridge would require. But the Board of Trustees of the bridge refused to grant the contract to his company on the grounds that it was a conflict of interest. Instead the contract was given to a Brooklyn contractor with close financial links to the board members.
When one of the wires snaps, killing three workers, Roebling has his inspectors bring him samples of the wire being used to braid the cables. He finds rotten wire was being smuggled through for twining into the cable. “It’s as brittle as glass.” He orders double the number of inspectors, who discover that after their inspections, carts full of good wire are exchanged for the substandard wire on the way to the bridge. It’s too late to replace all the defective cable, but John Roebling’s original designs had a very large margin of safety built in, and Washington concludes that it’s still enough to successfully complete the construction.
Stories appear in the paper of how Roebling has lost his mind. There’s a move among the Trustees to replace Roebling as chief engineer. Emily mobilised support for Washington. She became the first woman to address the American Society of Civil Engineers. And in the end, there’s enough support for him to retain his position.
The bridge is finished, and its opening is a huge celebration. Emily gets a specific mention for her role in ensuring the project was completed.
The second episode is The Bell Rock Lighthouse. Bell rock was a reef 11 miles off the east coast of Scotland that was the cause of hundreds of sinking. “In one storm alone, 70 ships were lost off the East Coast of Scotland.” Do they mean the whole coast, o were 70 ships wrecked because of the Bell Rock?
Roberts Stevenson is a junior engineer working at the Northern Lighthouse Board of Scotland. He believes a lighthouse can and should be built on the Bell Rock. His superiors don’t believe it’s possible to build a lighthouse in the open sea, on a rock that’s submerged under the waves for hours a day.
He’s basing his design on the Eddystone lighthouse, with some improvements. The angle of the base has to be correct, able to withstand violent seas.
Stevenson builds a model of his design, and tests it by dropping a large amount of water down a slope at it. The model collapses. His plans are shelved.
But there’s a huge ship wrecked on the rock during the next year, so the Board is under pressure to do something. They bring in the most eminent engineer of the day, John Rennie, despite him never having built a lighthouse. You just know he’ll be the villain of the story. Incidentally, since this programme was based on Robert Stevenson’s diaries, it might possibly be a little biased towards his point of view.
Rennie is made the chief architect, and Stevenson his assistant. But while Rennie works on the plans, Stevenson is in charge of recruiting men to work on the rock. The first step, to save time travelling to and from the rock when high tide comes, is to build a beacon house, a structure that stands above high tide, where the men can live and sleep, rather than having to row back to a safely moored ship a mile away.
Stevenson asks the men if they would work on the sabbath. In those god-fearing times, this is very contentious, even though Stevenson says they’re doing God’s work, and will be saving many lives. Some of the men refuse to work on the sabbath. “The Lord will punish those who work on his day.”
Not long after, it looks like God’s retribution has come. One of the boats they use to get to the island has drifted away. The remaining boat will only hold six of the twelve men. The men are gathered around the boat, none of them will climb in (except one who panics and is held back). “Stevenson records in his diary: ‘all this passed in the most perfect silence. And the melancholy solemnity of the group made an impression never to be effaced from my mind.'” But happily, the supply boat arrives shortly, and all the men were able to leave safely.
Their first year’s work ends with the successful raising of the Beacon’s legs. They can only work for a few months in the summer when the weather is calmer.
During the winter, work continues on land, with stonecutters cutting tons of Aberdeen granite according to Stevenson’s plans.
Stevenson demonstrates the lights he has designed for the lighthouse.
The next season arrives, and they return to the rock to find that the beacon legs are still standing. Now they start laying the foundations stones.
There are casualties. One man is lost at sea during the second season of work. And in the third season, another man, Mr Wishart, has his legs badly damaged when a pulley breaks. But as Stevenson recalls, “So attached is Wishart to our lighthouse that he asked that he might be made keeper. I promised to put a word in for him.”
By the end of the third season, work has progressed well.
In February 1811, the Lighthouse is completed, and the light is lit for the first time.
One of the first keepers of the lighthouse was Mr Wishart, the man who was injured during the construction.
Here’s another DVD which wouldn’t read properly. It’s the launch of Britain’s Best Sitcom.
I like the graphic design of the titles.
It’s presented by Jonathan Ross, who will take us through the top 50, chosen by poll earlier on the year. But the top ten will be voted on by the public.
So here’s the rundown, with contributors.
50: Goodnight Sweetheart
Creators Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran.
49: Rab C Nesbitt
Star Gregor Fisher
and Elaine C Smith
48: Gimme Gimme Gimme
Creator Jonathan Harvey
Stars James Dreyfus and Kathy Burke.
47: The Brittas Empire
Harriet Thorpe played the perpetually tearful receptionist Carole.
Evan Davis describes it as the comedy of useless management.
46: It Ain’t Half Hot Mum
Melvyn Hayes says that Jonathan Ross once told him he loved the show, because he was in one of the last episodes.
Sure enough, there he is.
Windsor Davies defends his character’s use of the word ‘poufs’.
Film Critic Peter Bradshaw has find memories of it.
Jimmy Perry was also shocked by the charges that it was racist. “What we wanted to do was show the history of the British Empire on its last legs.”
TV Critic and liker of 1983 Andrew Collins. “It was about the British in India. Of course there was an element of racism in the very fact that we were there, and the fact that we were lording it over the Indian population.”
Mina Anwar thought it was a bit offensive, but not as offensive as Love Thy Neighbour.
Jimmy Perry also defends casting Michael Bates, a white actor, as the main Indian character, because Bates was born in India, served with the Gurkhas, and spoke fluent Urdu.
45: Bottom
44: 2Point4 Children
Belinda Lang played Bill.
Writer Andrew Marshall. Also writer of Strange and the inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
43: Just Good Friends
Star Paul Nicholas
Writer John Sullivan.
42: I’m Alan Partridge
Writer and Producer Armando Iannucci
Felicity Montagu as the long suffering Lynn.
Victoria Coren: “He is a little bit monstrous and at the same time, incredibly poignant.”
David Schneider: “At the core of Alan Partridge, tragically, is enormous self belief.”
41: The League of Gentlemen
Steve Pemberton thinks that if you make it through three episodes, “we’ve got you”
It’s only in things like this that we get to see the non-performing Gentleman Jeremy Dyson.
40: Hi-De-Hi
Jeffrey Holland explains that Hi-De-Hi was set in a fictional holiday camp. His emphasis on ‘fictional’ suggests he’s always being accosted by people asking where they can book to stay at Maplin’s.
David Croft obviously didn’t want to have to defend It Ain’t Half Hot Mum so he kept his powder dry for this one.
Ruth Madoc, whose character Victoria Coren thought was very sexy. Edit: I was very saddened to see that Ruth Madoc has just died. It’s been a while since I restarted the blog, and it seemed as if I’d finally seen the end of the curse of the blog, but no, this entry was published just a couple of hours after I read the sad news. I’m so very, very sorry.
Christine Hamilton. Celebrity. I think that says it all.
39: Bread
Writer Carla Lane explains the genesis of the show. “There sitting in my car in Kensington and this young man walked up Kensington Church St. And he just stood out from all the rest. He was tall, he was straight, he wasn’t particularly good looking, but he had a dignity. And that one word set me up, I thought. Scouser, dignity, what a wonderful combination.”
Jean Boht played the matriarch. She tells of the initial reaction of the people of Liverpool. “They hated it.”
Craig Charles expresses the reasons. “I think it went a bit overboard on the scrounging and thieving.”
38: Birds of a Feather
Linda Robson was puzzled at some of the things that caused controversy.
Lesley Joseph enjoyed playing Dorien.
37: Waiting For God
Stephanie Cole: “The middle-aged wanted to be like Diana, the elderly were fighting to be like her, or had already become like her, and the young just love it when they see older people really kicking over the traces. They just love it. Anarchy! Yeah!”
36: Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights
Jim Bowen: “Peter Kay was very clever when he titled that, because he brought the working men’s club back out of the ashes, where we made a living in the 70s.”
Peter Kay talks about finding the right club to shoot in. They didn’t need to do any set dressing at all, it was all there in the real club.
He also talks about playing the second role of the club bouncer, Max, and how nobody realises it’s him as well. And he talks about his fellow bouncer. “Patrick, who plays the other doorman, he’s Patrick my friend. And I called him, he never done any acting. But I called him Patrick, same as he’s called Patrick, because I didn’t want to throw him by giving him a character name. And he’s just playing himself. I mean anyone who’s ever met him. And that’s exactly how he is.” Kay is talking about broadcasting colossus Paddy McGuinness, now legally required to present every single BBC light entertainment show ever.
35: The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin
Writer David Nobbs.
Sue Nicholls played Reggie’s secretary Joan.
John Barron as CJ, one of the greatest sitcom characters.
34: The Thin Blue Line
Mina Anwar as PC Habib. “When I watch it now I sometimes wish she’s shut up, because she had an opinion about absolutely everything. She was Ben’s voice really, I think, trying to get in some kind of satire, or a dig at the Police.”
Ben Elton: “Rowan really wanted to do an ensemble piece.”
James Dreyfus: “To me it was very much Arthur Lowe and Pike. ‘You Stupid Boy’.”
33: Butterflies
Wendy Craig says her friends still make jokes when she cooks for them, because her character Ria was a terrible cook.
Carla Lane explains why. Because she’s a terrible cook herself. “I can’t cook. I can’t get it right, and it’s mainly because I hate it. And so did she because her mind was elsewhere.”
32: Till Death Us Do Part
Una Stubbs: “In a way you pitied him for being so stupid.”
Warren Mitchell: “Bloke came up to me at football once, said I love it when you have a go at the coons. I said actually, we’re having a go at idiots like you. What? He didn’t know what I was talking about and he never would.”
John O’Farrell: “He was one of the most extreme sitcom characters and yet you believed him.”
Eric Sykes: “What he did in the early days was sometimes step over the bounds of saying words that you shouldn’t say for black people and things like that which is not very good but that was how outrageous Alf was.”
31: The Young Ones
Jeremy Vine: “Everyone had been through a rebellion period, and now we wanted to rebel again, safely.”
Lise Mayer: “We wanted to do a sitcom in which all the characters were unredeemably horrible, and we thought who is more horrible than students?”
Nigel Planer: “Everything was rather home-made and… crap. And that make it quite radical, I think. It looked like people who shouldn’t have been allowed on television and couldn’t really hack it.”
Cliff Richard was pleased to have been mentioned.
30: Hancock’s Half Hour
Writers Galton and Simpson: “There was this idea started forming in our minds that we would like to do a character driven comedy uninterrupted by music or singers, anything like that and just a storyline all the way through.” Did they actually have to invent the situation comedy?
Beryl Vertue (Steven Moffat’s mother in law) talks about how they got rid of Sid James’s character, and the show became Hancock. Then later, he even got rid of writers Galton and Simpson.
June Whitfield played the Nurse in The Blood Donor.
Michael Grade quotes a line, and gets it slightly wrong. “A pint? A pint’s a whole armful.” instead of “A pint? That’s very nearly an armful.” It’s the ‘very nearly’ that makes it perfect.
29: As Time Goes By
28: dinnerladies
Shobna Gulati: “dinnerladies is Sex and the City… in tabards.”
Maxine Peake on the lower case title. “People kept putting a big D, she said ‘No no, it’s a little d’.”
27: Rising Damp
Alison Graham: “There’s something ageless about it. It’s just set in a horrible grotty house, and there are still grotty houses like that, there are horrible landlords like Rigsby.”
Eric Chappell on star Leonard Rossiter: “He got laughs by reactions, just by looks. I thought I’ve only got to write this half well to get a good show. I mean I wrote the words, but he did the punctuation.”
Robson Green: “The beauty of that relationship between Miss Jones and Rigsby, you’d follow it till the sun set, really.”
26: Drop The Dead Donkey
Writers Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton on the meaning of the title: Hamilton: “A lot of journalists insisted that they knew what the title was about and we just made it up. The first title we came up with was dead. Kuwaitis don’t count. Luckily we went past that because it was just at the start of the first Gulf War, wasn’t it?” Jenkin: “We could have gone to air with that title and then the Gulf War would have happened out of nowhere.”
Richard Whitely: “I worked in a TV newsroom for twenty five years, and goodness gracious I recognised so much of that scene in that newsroom.”
Robert Duncan on Gus’s media speak: “A lot of businessmen used to say I’ve used it in a brainstorming session.”
Stephen Tompkinson on Damien: “I think one of the quotes was Like a vampire working in a blood bank.”
25: The Office
Stephen Merchant: “He’s a tit. He’s a twerp. He’s a nob.”
“Apparently, American TV is planning to remake The Office with, rumour has it, David Brent to be played by one Brad Pitt” says Jonathan Ross on the voiceover. I love the stupidity of these early casting rumours.
24: My Family
Writer Fred Barron talks about the writing process. The show used the American ‘writer’s room’ where a team of writers would work on all the episodes.
Zoe Wanamaker: “The bed scenes became the most successful scenes. There was something about them. The chemistry between Robert and I is… I can’t understand it. Really. [laughs] No, I do. I understand it.”
23: The Likely Lads
Writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais: “We were very influenced at the time when we started by the British films of the time that suddenly were grainy and northern and working class. So that’s what we’re really going for.”
Rodney Bewes: “One person said to me in the street. You were the boring one. I mean, I thought I was the handsome one.”
22: Some Mothers Do Ave Em
Writer Raymond Allen: “I saw him rather like a child trying to cope in in an adult world and and he never really made it, did he?”
21: To The Manor Born
Penelope Keith: “She was certainly living in the past. It’s a bit of a throwback of a life that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Peter Bowles: “These women created the empire and she represented that type of strong woman who could beat men.”
At this point the programmes looks at some of the sitcoms that didn’t make the list. Most of these are perfectly good, a couple, not so much.
20: Are You Being Served
Frank Thornton: “I used to describe it as Seaside Postcard humour.”
Mollie Sugden: “I suppose then it was very saucy. Compared with some of the stuff they do now, it was Andy Pandy.”
Wendy Richard: “It’s proper British Humour, with no regard for PC whatsoever because that was the worst thing to ever happen to British Comedy.” She seems genuinely angry about that.
David Croft on Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy: “As far as she was concerned she was talking about her cat. Any other reference to pussies or any other meaning of pussies is entirely in your mind.”
Was Mr Humphries gay? John Inman: “It never ever entered my head. I just did a lot of walking about and wearing wonderful outfits.”
19: The Royle Family
Ralf Little demonstrates the sum total of everything his did in the programme. He puts a spoon into the food, looks up as someone says something, and sighs with exasperation. “That’s what I got paid for for three years.”
Ricky Tomlinson: “Nothing Happens.”
Sue Johnston: “You’d think you might be watching reality television. Nothing much happens.”
Geoffrey Hughes: “I think the references to the toilet gags were something that we hadn’t really seen in such graphic detail on television before.”
18: Red Dwarf
Craig Charles: “It was a bit of a spoof of of things like Doctor Who and Star Trek. You’d find yourselves in strange storylines.”
Robert Llewellyn: “The actual science behind a lot of the maddest stories has some bearing in physics.”
There’s an amusing clip of Craign and Robert at an American convention, at which a little 11-year-old boy goes up to the microphone and asks “What does Smeg mean?” Both Craig and Robert grimace, then proceed to crawl off stage to escape.
17: Absolutely Fabulous
Although the show was an expansion of a French and Saunders sketch, the character of Patsy was inspired by an episode of The Full Wax which had Ruby visiting Joanna Lumley at home.
16: Men Behaving Badly
Leslie Ash: “People said it was sexist rubbish. But it wasn’t because it’s actually women were having a laugh at the men.” True, but they were sexist men.
Writer Simon Nye: “Neil brought, to me, a rather obvious sort of matinee idol looks, you know?”
Producer Beryl Vertue talks about how the show was cancelled by ITV, and she took it to the BBC. “Which nobody had ever done, I have to say. Moving a programme from one broadcaster to another.”
15: Steptoe and Son
Writers Galton and Simpson on the situation in the comedy: “This was a situation that is was traditionally associated with women’s good quality. So to give it just a little twist, in fact, that the bachelor son had to look after, not his mother, but his father”
14: Last of the Summer Wine
Kathy Staff: “Well I think even when it started 31 years ago it was old fashioned. It was talking about our childhood in a way.”
Frank Thornton: “Last of the Summer Wine is really about three old men in their second childhood.”
Peter Sallis: “Every year, we’d shake hands, and go home. And then a bit later the phone would go. They want another series.”
13: Allo Allo!
Writer Jeremy Lloyd: “Allo Allo sells in about 60 countries. It’s on as we speak, day and night.”
Vicki Michelle: “The French are randy, the Germans are kinky, and the English are stupid.”
Sam Kelly explains his unusual form of salute. All the other Nazis are saying “Heil Hitler.” He says “Tler”. “What it was was the second half of the word Hitler. Because Hans couldn’t be bothered to say Heil Hitler.”
12: Keeping Up Appearances
Geoffrey Hughes: “Women especially always say, oh, I’ve got a friend who’s just like that. But within 5 minutes of talking to them, you realize that they’re raging Mrs Buckets themselves, you know, they never see it in themselves.”
11: Father Ted
Ardal O’Hanlon: “I suppose the engine of the entire series is Father Ted’s desperate attempts to get off the island, but of course that’s never going to happen because of his sidekicks.”
Writer Arthur Mathews: “He lies because he’s a coward and he can’t face up to things.”
Pauline McLynn: “His nose should grow in every episode, and the more he gets caught up in a lie, the worse it gets. It starts small and then it just becomes huge and there’s no way out.”
Graham Linehan on Father Dougal: “We always wanted a stupid character because we liked Baldrick in Blackadder and Trigger in Only Fools and Horses, so that was where Dougal came from.”
Now the programme is into the top ten, but rather than present a simple list, the programmes are presented in no particular order, because this is the start of a public vote on Britain’s Best Sitcom, and there would be programmes putting the case for all ten. Each programme has a celebrity putting the case for their favourite, and of course there’s a premium rate phone number to go with it.
So these are the programmes in the top ten, in the order they were presented in the show.
Dad’s Army
Phill Jupitus is the advocate.
Chris Ryan was a fan as a young boy.
Surely Ann Widdecombe’s presence in favour would be a disadvantage?
Frank Williams didn’t expect the programme to still be being talked about 30 years later.
One Foot in the Grave
Representing the show is Rowland Rivron
Richard Wilson: “I won’t be saying ‘I Don’t Believe It’ ever.” “You just said it.”
Eric Idle has no such qualms.
Angus Deayton: “One of the reasons it was so popular was that it highlighted areas of life that people are genuinely irritated by.”
Annette Crosbie: “Well I would think it’s Britain’s Best Sitcom. But I am biased.”
The Good Life
Ulrika Jonsson puts the case.
Richard Briers: “I just think we hit a pulse with people who were thinking about going green.”
Charlie Dimmock was presumably asked to support the programme because she also wears wellies.
Alan Cumming: “Penelope Keith became this megastar because of Margo.”
Penelope Keith: “If there’s a joke, there’s a butt, and Margo was always the butt of the joke.”
Janet Street Porter: “You feel comfortable with it, and you care about it.”
Fawlty Towers
Jack Dee presents his case
Prunella Scales: “Sybil and Basil is a sort of potty marriage, isn’t it? Very painful.”
Andrew Sachs: “Three questions I get regularly. What’s it like working with John Cleese? Are there going to be anymore, really, and did it hurt?”
David Quantick: “It’s about British characters. It’s about that small British obsessive world. It’s about class embarrassment. And it is surreal.”
Open All Hours
Clarissa Dickson Wright explains it all
Ronnie Barker: “We never stopped laughing. All the way through it. It was wonderful.”
David Jason: “When I was working with Ronnie, I refer to him as the guvnor because he’s the best.”
Eric Sykes: “You know, a lot of actors think in order to do comedy, they have to be funny. No. In order to do comedy well, you have to be real.”
Lynda Baron: “The till sort of built its part, really. It had a very minor role in the series started.”
Blackadder
The case is put by John Sergeant.
Writer Richard Curtis: “The fanciest thing I’ve ever written.”
Co-writer Ben Elton: “I don’t exclusively dwell in the nether regions, but my comedy has plumbed a lot of orifices.”
Tony Robinson: “In a way that was the bonding. Other people slash their wrists and mix their blood, but we talk about what we’ve just done in the lavatory.”
Stephen Fry on Blackadder’s character in the second series: “Suddenly he’s suave, he’s debonair, he’s witty, he’s charming and it’s quite believable that the Queen would go all girlish in his presence.”
Gabrielle Glaister: “Ah, Baldrick. You just want to cuddle him, don’t you really?”
Hugh Laurie on the end of Blackadder Goes Forth: “Technically and dramatically I think it’s beautifully done.”
Yes Minister
Represented by Armando Iannucci
Writer Jonathan Lynn: “What we did was reveal to the public that it’s largely the civil service that runs the country.”
Nigel Hawthorn’s partner Trevor Bentham: “It changed the way we think of politics. Suddenly all the double speak was being quickly got out the way because it was being ridiculed.”
Derek Fowlds: “It used to go on an on and on, and Paul would just say ‘What?'”
Sir Bernard Ingham. What a horrible man he was.
Only Fools and Horses
On the block with David Dickinson.
John Challis: “I think Del is the ultimate hero.”
David Jason: “The family, in Derek Trotter’s eyes, is the number one thing.”
Nicholas Lyndhurst: “There’s always been a battle of wits between Del and Rodney.”
Roger Lloyd Pack: “It’s probably the most popular sitcom.”
Sean Locke: “It’s a very funny show and it has achieved a legendary status in this country, hasn’t it?”
Paul Barber: “To be a part of it, one of the gang – it’s a great honour.”
Linda Smith: “It’s just a pretty damn near perfect sitcom, I’d say.”
The Vicar of Dibley
Carol Vorderman puts the case.
No surprise Cliff Richard was a fan.
Richard Curtis on the character of Alice: “Alice was, you know, she’s meant to be a holy fool. I think that she’s part of a serious and Grand English tradition of people without brains.”
Porridge
Literally making a case, Johnny Vaughan.
Ronnie Barker: “Fletcher was selfish. He was definitely on his own side.”
Pater Vaughan: “I only ever did three episodes, but far as recognition is concerned, as I’m walking down the street, you know it’s hello Grouty.”
And that’s it for the rundown. They push the vote pretty hard – I wonder if this was before or after all the revelations about how premium rate numbers were being used by the TV stations. Don’t call now as your vote won’t count and you may be charged.
Welcome, dear reader to a very special day for me and the blog. It’s a day I thought I might never see. And in a way, it’s a loop right back to the start of everything this blog is about.
Because today, we’re looking at the programmes from Video Tape number 1 in my collection. It’s one of the tapes that I’ve never found, and it was the first tape that I archived on recordable DVD. But when I found all my DVDs, DVD Number 1 happened to be one which I couldn’t read at all on my computer. It wouldn’t even register it had a disc in.
Dammit! (channelling Jack Bauer there)
But there was hope. Although my PC couldn’t read it, when I tried it in my Blu-Ray player, it recognised it as a DVD, and was able to play some, but not all, of it. So, I thought, maybe I could capture the output of the DVD player from the HDMI.
Like many things, this was put on hold while I copied all the working DVDs, ran software to extract the video into more useable formats, rewrote my Tape Database library software to cope with DVDs as well, then I got started blogging the DVDs I’d done, I wrote an app to let me automatically transcribe dialogue from a video in short bursts, which also let me grab screenshots easily, then I wrote another app to grab subtitles from online services like Disney+ and Britbox, added subtitles into my transcription app so I could more easily grab dialogue without having to transcribe them… I do like to make my life easier by spending a large amount of time writing software.
But as I was approaching the end of the working DVDs, and I’ve already started preparing to look at the post-DVD Media Centre era of recordings, I figured I shouldn’t leave the DVDs without giving it one last shot at recovering Tape Number One.
So here it is.
Actually, this DVD had programmes from my first two tapes, but tape 2 was never lost, and I looked at it back in 2020.
It’s the first four programmes that were on the fabled Tape One, and, rather wonderfully, they’re almost all intact when I played the DVD. Which is great because the first programme, at least, is a great piece of 80s history if, like me, you were coming of age in the 8-bit micro era.
It’s an episode of a series called Commercial Breaks, a documentary series about business, and this episode is The Battle for Santa’s Software. It follows two high-profile software companies as they gear up for the Christmas market, and look for the big hit they need. I remember playing on the computers that were set up in WH Smiths or Rumbelows.
The first company profiled is Imagine Software, based in Liverpool, who were possibly the most high-profile games company of the early 80s. They generated a load of headlines featuring words like “Whizz Kids”.
The programme paints Imagine as high-flyers, who would probably be called Tech-bros today. Lots of flash cars in the company car park.
Sponsorship of a TT Bike team.
They win industry awards, like the Golden Joystick. Here’s Imagine director Bruce Everiss receiving DLT’s joystick.
And, of course, huge offices.
The other company featured in the programme is Ocean Software. Only formed a year ago, Ocean published software submitted to them, as well as developing games in house. They were very successful, but their publicity wasn’t remotely as self-indulgent as Imagine’s. David Ward is the founder.
“16 year old Jonathan Smith has just walked in with Pud Pud, a game that he wrote at home.” He’s been programming for about a year, and the game he’s showing has taken 7 weeks of work so far. He’s offered £1000 for the game, and a job at Ocean, but Ward is still looking for the game that will be the big seller come Christmas. As he says, 70% of sales are between September and January.
Imagine, too, are working on their big new games. and they’re aiming high, telling the world that they are working on a new kind of game, a Mega Game. Mark Butler thinks that the existing home micros have reached a plateau. He doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of the variety of games on the market. “So you’ve got 480 software houses in Britain producing the same version of the same game, although it looks slightly different, they call it another name. It’s still all the same.” The bow tie is certainly a fashion choice. I wonder if that’s what he usually wears to work, or did his mum insist he dress up for the TV cameras?
Imagine have (very publicly) decided that their next big games will be Mega Games. And the programme gives a glimpse of the first title, Bandersnatch. This was the first time anything of the game had been seen in public, so it was interesting because of that.
The game would also come with a hardware add-on, whose purpose is never made clear in this documentary. We see some development systems, which look typical of the way these things are developed – lots of big hand-soldered or wire-wrapped circuit boards with lots of discrete chips, hanging off the back of a Spectrum. At Computer Concepts we would often be developing software on big boards that simulated how our final chips would work, so this is very familiar.
“As the only programmer on the team over 30, John Gibson is known as Granddad, and for the moment, he’s struggling with an animation problem.” A programmer over 30? That’s unthinkable.
I do love the clicky keyboards that everyone uses, although using one myself would drive me mad. My favourite keyboard sound is the one that comes with the Fairlight CMI, by the way/
You can just tell this is the art team. It’s the hair, isn’t it? Plus, smoking in the office. It was acceptable in the 80s.
The company is having to invest around £2m to produce the game, which is more than twice last year’s profits. The finance team sweat over hot (very expensive) Apple Lisas to work how how to get the money.
Meanwhile at Ocean, someone’s getting ready to go to a trade show. The worst we had were matching sweatshirts.
Tony Pomphrey (sp?) is one of Ocean’s in-house developers. He’s only 18. He’s working on the sequel to a previous Ocean hit, Hunchback.
Imagine’s Sales Manager Sylvia Jones is in Birmingham to drum up sales. “t’s never been as slow as it is now. Never. Wasn’t like this this time last year. It slowed down dramatically in the last three months. Not just for Imagine, but for everybody. Probably because there are lot more software houses now producing goods than they were this time last year.” She’s visiting Birmingham’s largest distributor. “He wants to discuss the slow selling old games, but Sylvia would rather interest him in the Bandersnatch mega game.”
She talks about Bandersnatch. But as she describes how many items come in the box, that there will be a music tape, and possibly an LP of the music, it seems as if it might be way beyond anything else, not only in terms of gameplay, but also cost. At the time, games typically cost around £5.99. “Have you got any price points for me? It’s going to retail is about 40 pounds. £39.95.” “Every time I speak to you it goes up.” “You get used to it, 40 pounds.” “But then it’s got to be something extraordinary.” “It certainly it is. It is totally different from anything you’ve ever seen before.” Bear in mind, here, that Sylvia hasn’t seen the game herself.
Back at Imagine HQ, the game has been delayed again, so they have to keep the hype train running. Director Bruce Everiss: “Speaking to the media, we’ve hyped them up so much that unless we actually deliver some goods to them soon, it’s going to come off the boil and this is a way of delivering some meat to them. What we want in our time. So we keep them on the boil until the release because otherwise they’re just going to forget about us soon they’re just going to get fed up.”
“What’s more, financial director Ian Hetherington has not raised his £2 million and sales are so bad that the company is having difficulty paying its suppliers. Their cassette duplicator is waiting for £50,000 that Imagine owes him.”
The marketing manager is pinning up visuals for a possible campaign. Everiss says “I don’t know why you’ve got so many visuals because there’s so little you can actually do with this” “Well, because I’ve been waiting for this meeting for so long, I’ve got to get the studio going on something.”
The finance director has to get strict. “Can I just make one point. We don’t do anything. I mean, we don’t place any orders without my say so, I can’t stress this too greatly. We must not commit to any expense at all, OK?” This is scary stuff.
The programme then tries to suggest that part of the reason for the downturn is software piracy. They take David Ward to a market to see if they can find Ocean software on sale. They don’t but handily, Ward does have an example of counterfeit software to show.
“But it’s doubtful whether Imagine’s problems are anything to do with piracy, schoolboy or professional, and the outlook now looks bleak. The only director left on the premises for the past week seems resigned to a gloomy future.” Bruce Everiss has changed into a comfy sweater, such is his sadness. “As you can see it’s fairly empty. I think a lot of people are going to the pub quite early these days. They’ve had the video cassette recorder playing this morning. They’ve all been watching an American Werewolf in London. And you see, they’ve been making flags and decorating the place generally instead of doing work, because why bother? They all know that, you know, there’s no point.”
Everiss explains: “But this company cannot continue trading for another week unless there’s a cash injection of, I would say, it needs next week, about half a million pounds.” Narrator: “But events take place faster than Everiss predicts. Within hours, he’s resigned. And when some of the staff come back from lunch, there’s an unexpected welcome.” When one of them opens the door, a man inside darts out to pull the door closed, and it looks like there might be fisticuffs, as the employee is blocking the door with his foot. “You will leave the room please. You will get off that.” It’s the bailiffs. They have a very specific way of talking to people, only speaking in direct orders. I wonder if there’s a bailiff school where you learn to talk like that.
The headlines this time aren’t so positive.
Mark Ruffalo has let himself go a bit. It’s the PCW show, one of the bigger UK events. I went to a couple in my time.
There’s Acorn.
David Ward explains how useful it is to get feedback from the potential audience before the game’s release. In those days you couldn’t just release a demo on the internet. A local school computer club is given a special preview of the game, for feedback and playtesting.
There are 200 other games released for Christmas – one of which looks like a Jeff Minter game.
David Ward’s verdict on how to survive in the computer game industry: “This industry has grown from being a cottage industry to being a major supplier in the High Street, and it requires all the skills of business that being a supplier to High Street stores requires, whether you’re supplying them with radios or toothpaste or cornflakes or whatever.”
And let’s kick Imagine while they’re down. “And Imagine? They had the image of the pop record industry, but not the business skills to survive. But the name will. David Ward bought it from the liquidator, and he now employs Granddad and others from the team writing games for Ocean.”
I think it’s hard to overstate how much I love this documentary. Even at the time it was riveting, but now it’s also a perfect time capsule of the era. If you’re even vaguely interested in the old days of gaming and computing, it’s worth a watch. Here’s a very good quality version.
Next, it’s an episode of Film 84, another favourite of the blog. This is the last regular programme before Christmas, and the studio is looking very festive.
The last programme is yet another favourite of the blog. It’s Micro Live which this time is looking at Word Processing (a word that Ian MacNaught Davis always seemed to make a meal of).
The news segment leads with reports that the Home Computer Boom is Over.
Lesley Judd seems a little bit defensive at the idea that the BBC Micro is in a slump. Biased BBC as usual.
Ah, the proustian rush of seeing an old WH Smiths.
There’s a primary school chess competition, and you could watch the games being played live on Ceefax. It’s like text-based Twitch streaming, really.
Mac complains about the UI for the OG Psion Organiser.
There’s a tie-in game to go with Paul McCartney’s smash hit movie Give My Regards To Broad Street. It sounds fairly impressive. “943 scrolling screens, and a complete map of the London Underground”.
The Micro Live bulletin board ran into trouble, as its disks filled up, but they’ve upgraded now to a huge 15 Megabyte hard disc.
Fred Harris and Lesley look at some educational software, and they don’t mince words about the shortcomings of some of the offerings.
The programme checks in with Superstar champion Brian Jacks, who bought a home computer in an earlier programme.
Next, a look at word processing. Which starts with Mac explaining what word processing is, and how it’s much better than using a typewriter.
John Humphreys is one of the guinea pigs, who have been asked to do some word processing tasks having never used one before.
Sadly, the DVD stops working before the programme ends, so there’s just a glimpse of Lynne McTaggart talking about the Which Computer Show.
However, the whole programme is still available on the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project site, so I can see what I’m missing. McTaggart is very critical of the advice Which sought advice from 24 computer dealers for an imaginary business with some specific requirements, and they got the wrong advice from every single one of the dealers.
The next item sees US Reporter Freff looking at some wild and zany telephones. Of particular interest is the brand new Cellular Radio phone, which had only been out for three weeks. Astonishingly, as the salesman explains, it replaces the old style radio telephones, which worked in such a way that only 12 people at a time could be making calls. So Cellular technology was a colossal improvement.
Mac explains (obviously with some BBC Micro graphics) how cellular telephones work.
Cellphones have now been launched in the UK, so the show obviously has to make use of its live nature to make a live transatlantic call to Freff, who’s on the top of a skyscraper in New York, they’ve got a satellite link, but no sound.
Mac: “So by now, Lesley should be a secret location somewhere in West London, ready to make contact. Lesley, did you manage to get yourself a tandem?” Lesley: “I couldn’t get hold of a tandem, Mac. They’re all hired out, so I’ve had to make do with one of Clive Sinclair’s electric vehicles. Mind you, they get you from A to B and in some style as well.” (Eagle-eyed readers will spot she’s actually still at Television Centre.)
The call goes off more or less flawlessly, although it takes Lesley a couple of goes to get the phone to call up Freff’s number from its memory.
There’s more from Freff, as he visits some LA Special Effects houses, including Boss Films, where they were filming for 2010. I wonder if this was separate from the Horizon documentary which also went to Boss Films, around the same time. While there, he talks to Jerry Jeffress, a Star Wars veteran, about the use of computers for motion control photography, where the computers can repeat the same camera move accurately time after time, allowing them to capture multiple images with different lighting, or against blue screens.
Nice to see them giving their computers silly names, it’s a noble tradition. Jeffress reckons the machines they used have about the same processing power as a cheap calculator.
At the other end of the computing scale, here’s a Cray XMP, at the time the most powerful computer in the world. According to Wikipedia, it could manage 800 MFLOPS (floating point instructions per second). That’s pretty quick. I think last time I looked at Cray performance, desktop PCs and laptops could outpace it, and an iPad could just about keep up. Well now, a phone can do more Flops, with the iPhone 14 managing 1.3 GFlops on some benchmarks. We definitely are living in the future.
And the Cray is being used to generate the CGI for The Last Starfighter. I wonder now if my love for that film was in part inspired by watching all these documentaries that feature it.
He talks to one of the artists at Digital Productions, Stephen Skinner. We learn that it takes about an hour to render one second of film on the Cray.
The next item presents the winners of the programme’s Integrated Software Challenge, where people wrote in to say why their particular line of work would benefit from using the latest in ‘Integrated software’ which at the time meant Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Business Graphics.
Finally, back to the Word Processing segment, and there’s varying levels of success. John Coll was helping the subjects get started, not without struggles. I ended up meeting John Coll when I went to work at Computer Concepts, as he used to be a teacher where our MD went to school, and was actually instrumental in getting Charles into developing software. He ended up writing the manuals for some of our software packages.
Here’s the whole programme (not my upload, obviously).
Well, dear reader, we’ve reached the end of the DVDs I’ve currently found. Apart from a couple which I couldn’t read on my old laptop, but which mostly play fine on my Blu-Ray player, this is it.
Don’t worry, I’ve already started preparing for the next phase of the blog, digging up a lot of old hard drives of old Media Centre recordings, and I’ve already got several years worth of potential blog posts in that lot. More about that soon.
For now, sit back and relax, as I look at the last DVD (and I admit I fiddled with the order of the last few discs just a tad) as we finally get to the end of Season Two of 24 – 7-8am.
Just before the episode there’s a trailer for Spooks. I loved Spooks.
Then, 24. Here’s the previous episode in case you want to go back, but to get us up to date, the important events are:
Terrorists tried to set off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles, but were thwarted by Jack Bauer and a heroic, dying George Mason, who managed to take the bomb to the middle of the Mojave desert before it went off.
The “Cyprus tape” was discovered that seemed to prove that the bomb plot was the work of three unnamed Middle-Eastern powers, and airstrikes were mobilised against them
Jack finds clues that the Cyprus tape was forged, but actual concrete evidence is hard to find. President Palmer wants to hold the bombings, but people within his administration are all gung-ho for bombing. There’s a plot, led by the Vice President, to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Palmer from power so they can go ahead with the bombing
Jack finds the man who made the faked Cyprus recording, but of course he dies because he tries to run, leaving Jack without the proof. Jack also knows that the real man behind the whole bomb plot is Peter Kingsley, an Oil executive who wants to start a war to raise the price of oil.
Jack’s daughter Kim has: kidnapped the young girl who she’s au-pair for after learning the girl’s father was abusing her and her mother; while fleeing Los Angeles with the girl, she’s stopped by police who discover the body of the girl’s mother in the trunk of the car, which Kim had just stolen from the father; Later she was lost in the woods where she’s met by a young survivalist who, when Kim tells him she knows about the nuclear bomb threat, pretends that the bomb has gone off so Kim has to stay in his underground bunker; When Kim learns he was lying, he lets her go, giving her a gun to protect against mountain lions. She ends up in a Kwik-E-Mart, where another man gets her gun and holds up the store. She was last seen back at the house where she was au-pairing, and Kate Warner, who’s sort of Jack’s current love-interest, and was involved in the initial bomb plot through her evil younger sister, has arrived to pick her up at Jack’s request. Last we saw, Kim was pointing a gun at her.
Sherry Palmer has been working behind the scenes, investigating the plot against President Palmer. I’m still not clear if she’s a goodie or a baddie yet. But she was with Jack when he found the man who made the Cyprus tape, was stabbed when the tech guy escaped, and has helped Jack draw out Peter Kingsley with the threat that she has the tech who made the tape, implicating him, and offering to exchange him for the evidence Kingsley has against Sherry. Kingsley agrees to a handover at the LA Coliseum (but he also orders snipers)
While driving to the handover, Jack has a heart attack and the car veers off the road.
All clear now?
So here’s the season finale. It’s 7am.
Jack isn’t dying of a heart attack, but the car won’t start, and Jack’s seatbelt is jammed so he can’t get out. Sherry panics and goes to leave to save herself. Jack pleads for Sherry to stay and help. She walks off, but then returns. “What do you want me to do?”
The counsel assigned to President Palmer has been investigating Peter Kingsley, and he hands Mike Novick (Palmer’s Chief of staff) Kingsley’s folder, which shows he made phone calls earlier in the day to a commando who first sent Jack on the trail of the evidence the Cyprus tape was faked. Maybe Mike will grow a conscience, after going along with the coup against him earlier.
The Vice President (now the actual president) is informed that one of the targets for the airstrikes is within a civilian area, and they can’t rule out civilian casualties. “There’s no way to avoid these?” “I’m afraid not.” “Then it’s something we’re just going to have to live with.”
Novick calls Ryan Chappelle, head of CTU, and orders him to assist Jack in tracking down the evidence against Peter Kingsley.
Kingsley talks to his boss – so he’s not the overall mastermind. I’ve no idea who this guy is. Maybe they’ve just brought him in so that if (when) Kingsley dies at the end (after falling from a great height onto something spiky, I hope) there’s still someone to be the bad guy in Season Three.
Ryan Chappelle reluctantly lets Tony out so he can assist Jack.
Jack carjacks a car from a man who stopped to help them.
Kate Warner and Kim arrive at CTU. At least Kim can’t get into any more trouble. Unless it blows up again.
Kate and her Father go to see her sister who has gone full Hannibal Lecter.
Jack calls in to Chappelle and asks him to set up a live feed to the President, so that they can hear Sherry get the evidence from Kingsley.
Once the link is set up, Sherry goes into the Coliseum. It’s not a safe space for her.
She talks to Kingsley trying to get him to admit what he knows while seeming to negotiate her own safe haven.
Kingsley admits the Cyprus recording was faked, which is the evidence they need. But he doesn’t believe that Sherry has the tech guy. He orders his sniper to take out Sherry. But nothing happens. Then he tells his henchman to kill her, and he’s shot dead. It’s Jack, who’s taken out the sniper and is now picking off Kingsley’s men with the sniper’s rifle.
Cue lots of running round, shooting bad guys, and some rather vicious fighting between Jack and a bad guy. Sherry gets out safely, but Jack is still suffering from the effects of his heart having stopped in an earlier episode while being tortured. He’s on the ground, unable to get up, when Kingsley finds him. Jack’s only gun has no bullets. “Jack Bauer. You caused me a lot of trouble today, Jack.” But before he can shoot Jack, he’s shot himself.
It’s the CTU Strike Team, finally arriving.
Back with the President, with three minutes before the targets are in range, President Prescott gives the order to abort the attack.
The conspirators have really good contacts, as five minutes after Kingsley was killed, presumably in a now secure LA Coliseum, one of them already knows that he’s dead, stopping the war that they were depending on for their oil contracts, so the other says “Well, we’re going to have to do this another way.” “Another way? What are you talking about?” “You’ll find out.” I am not remotely invested in these men, because I’ve checked iMDb and they don’t appear in any other episodes of 24 after this.
The cabinet have rescinded the 25th amendment action, so Palmer is now President again. Vice President Prescott and the cabinet members who voted against him have tendered their resignations. But Palmer is a soft touch, and believes that they need to heal, so he doesn’t accept their resignations.
Mike Novick doesn’t get the same consideration. “You should have been with me to the end. That’s what I expected of you. That’s why I appointed you. I’m relieving you of your post, effective immediately.”
Chappelle is smugly taking credit for the satisfactory resolution. Tony is less happy. “Well, uh… it’s like this. Either fire me or get out of my chair.”
Kate’s brought Kim to the Coliseum for a tearful reunion with Jack. “Dad, I’m gonna take care of you.”
President Palmer reassures a nervous Nation.
But in the crowd there’s a woman who gets spooky music and a close-up. She makes a special effort to shake the president’s hand warmly.
She leaves the crowd to a quiet spot, and peels something plastic from her hand. Then phones the mysterious never to be seen again conspirator Max to tell him “It’s done.”
Back at the car, Palmer looks at his hand, that looks burnt, then collapses to the floor. And the 24 clock counts down to the hour not with the usual beeps, but with heartbeats.
This was a fine cliffhanger, spoiled slightly by being almost completely ignored in the next season.
Today’s disc has something slightly different to our normal run of programmes. It’s a one-off, James Bond – A Bafta Tribute.
It’s a programme to celebrate 40 years of James Bond at the movies, and it’s a star studded affair. There’s a red carpet with some very famous, and other less famous faces. There’s Caroline Munro.
Fiona Fullerton
I’ve no idea who this chap is.
I was wondering why David Calder off of Star Cops was featured, but I checked and he was in The World is Not Enough.
The red carpet looks like it’s been built into the famous gun barrel from the opening of the films, so at first I assumed this was being held somewhere swanky in London, but those columns behind Halle Berry are unmistakeably the ones outside BBC Television Centre, so this was probably all being held in Studio 1.
The event is hosted by Michael Parkinson.
His first guest is the longest serving Bond, Roger Moore. He’s very funny.
This is reiterated by the next two guests, two of Moore’s co-stars. There’s Lois Chiles, who played Holly Goodhead in Moonraker.
And Maud Adams, who played Octopussy, and Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun. Both of them say how funny Moore was to work with. The love scenes were dangerous because she’d laugh so much she’d fall out of bed.
John Cleese, as the current Q, does a bit of comedy. He explains how an teleprompter works with the joke “it was going to be called the auto-prompt, but M finally settled on Autocue. I was rather touched.”
Samantha Bond talks about the importance of Moneypenny, and the MI5 team.
There’s interviews with Judi Dench
And the OG Moneypenny, Lois Maxwell.
Dame Shirley Bassey performs Goldfinger.
Ursula Andress, the first ‘Bond Girl’.
Sean Connery can’t be there because of a ‘hectic filming schedule’ but there is interview footage with him.
His segment also has contributions from Tom Jones (who sang the theme tune to Thunderball).
Honor Blackman
Shirley Eaton who was covered in gold in Goldfinger.
Maryam d’Abo talks about the experience of being a ‘Bond Woman’.
In this segment we hear from Carey Lowell from Licence to Kill.
Jane Seymour
Caroline Munro
The next guest is Timothy Dalton.
There’s a segment on the production design, starting with the great Ken Adam.
His successor, Peter Lamont.
Next it’s the turn of the villains, with Toby Stephens and Christopher Lee.
We hear from Robert Carlyle
And the unmistakeable Vincent Schiavelli.
Then, Richard Kiel steps up for the henchmen. He’s lovely.
Rosamund Pike talks about the stunts.
John Glen, who started out as a film editor before becoming a Bond director, talks about the editing style of the films and how it changed for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Which is a nice intro for the next guest, George Lazenby.
Lulu talks about the Bond Title Sequences.
We hear from George Martin.
David Arnold.
And John Barry.
The next guest on stage is Halle Berry.
We hear from another veteran Bond director, Lewis Gilbert.
Michael Apted
Vic Armstrong
Director of the then latest Bond, Lee Tamahori.
The great Martin Campbell, who directed the first Bonds of both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig (and, of course, directed Edge of Darkness).
But enough preamble, it’s finally time for the main event, Pierce Brosnan. Interestingly, when Parky asks him if he’ll do any more, he does say he’s been invited back for another one. In the end, he was dropped, possibly because he wanted too much money (as some reports suggest) or that the producers wanted to do a gritty reboot. I know Die Another Day wasn’t a great film, but I really liked his Bond, and I think he was poorly treated.
To close the show, what else than Dame Shirley Bassey performing Goldfinger.
Here’s someone else’s upload. I apologise for the aspect ratio. I wish YouTube had a button to fix this.
After this, there’s trailers for Big Toe, Mansfield Park and The Real Jane Austen.
Then there’s the start of The National Lottery – Jet Set.
After the TiVo pause screen times out, there’s part of another programme there, and it’s one that I cannot believe I didn’t record. Actually, looking at the TiVo screen, I was recording it, so why on earth isn’t it in my recorded DVDs? Perhaps there’s still another box of DVDs sitting on a shelf somewhere that has it it. Maybe one day it will turn up.
The programme is Peter Cook: A Posthumorous Tribute, a programme that went out at the same time as the recent Peter Cook documentary. Tragically, I only have fifteen minutes of it here, so what do I have?
There’s some interview clips, first being Michael Palin, as seen above. There’s David Baddiel.
And Ade Edmondson. These interviews look like they were filmed backstage.
There’s glimpses of lots of performers. Here’s Rik Mayall
Terry Jones
Harry Enfield
Angus Deayton
Dom Joly
David Frost kicks off proceedings with some jokes that are so old, they brought down the Macmillan government.
Michael Palin and Terry Jones perform an old sketch. I’d say it’s Python, but half the things I think are Python are actually That Was The Week That Was or The Frost Report.
Next it’s Griff Rhys Jones. I saw him live, recently, and during his show, he mentioned Peter Cook. In this part he plays Stanley Rogers, film composer, who’s playing his theme song for Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi.
Next it’s David Baddiel, who does his bit about the weird medieval Bills of Mortality.
Next, Jon Culshaw does some impressions. His Tom Baker gets a round of applause.
There’s where this recording cuts off. A tragedy almost as great as the loss of Peter Cook, I’m sure you’ll agree.
The first programme on today’s disc is Firefly – Our Mrs Reynolds. Some bandits hold up a convoy and are surprised when the woman on the coach turns out to be Mal.
The town are glad to be rid of the bandits, and there’s drinking and dancing.
But when they leave the planet, there’s an extra passenger. She tells Mal she’s his wife, Saffron, that they performed a wedding ceremony during the celebration. Everyone else thinks this is funny, except Jayne who’s jealous obviously. She seems upset to be rejected by Mal, who’s adamant he hasn’t married anyone. Someone needs to explain consent to her.
Jayne offers Mal his favourite gun in exchange for Saffron. He is absolutely the worst.
But Saffron turns out to be more than she seems. She kisses Mal and he falls unconscious. “Night, Sweetie.”
Next, she’s going after Wash. When he doesn’t fall for her doe-eyed ingenue act, because he’s actually happily married, she just kicks him in the head, then seals him in the pilot’s bay.
Now she’s working on Inara. It looks like her act is working. Inara tells her “Come to my shuttle.” Saffron: “You would– you would lie with me?” An alarm sounds. Inara: “I guess we’ve lied enough.” Saffron: “You’re good.”
She escapes the ship by stealing the shuttle. She’s set the ship heading towards a pair of people who scrap ships.
They’ve set up an electromagnetic net which will trap the ship, and kill the crew.
Jayne gets to use his favourite gun to shoot out the net, saving the ship.
Mal catches up with Saffron. They don’t part on good terms.
Here’s the TiVo details.
The next recording is another episode of 24 – 1-2am. We’ve definitely been jumping around the series in this trawl through my discs. So I do rely on the Previously On to get me up to speed to where we are in the story. This follows what happened to be the first episode of this season that I looked at on these discs, so it’s almost a book-end. The last episode ended with Jack and a Coral Snake Commando coming under fire, with Kate Warner and Yusuf Auda along for the ride.
Jack gets in contact with Michelle, tells her he’s going after proof that the Cyprus recording was faked, and he needs access to infra-red satellite pictures.
Kim is now out of the Kwik-E-Mart in which she’d been held by a man who had taken her gun. She tells the police it was her gun, and now she’s been arrested again.
President Palmer is going to call up troops to help deal with unrest, after the nuclear explosion earlier in the day.
Carrie is still spying on Michelle, this time with Tony’s permission.
Palmer watches as reports of vigilantes threatening muslim communites are broadcast. He doesn’t think there are fine people on both side. “If this is what the people are going to be watching, let’s show them how we’re going to respond. I want them to see how we protect our citizens. We will not put up with racism or xenophobia. If this is where it’s going to start, this is where it’s going to stop.”
Kim is taken to a police station, where an officer tells her that they’ve got evidence about her employer having killed his wife, so she’s off the hook for that, and maybe she should get CTU to pick her up.
She calls Tony, who tells her that Jack is still alive – she still though he’d died in the explosion, since he’d phoned her from the plane, before George Mason took over.
Jack takes Wallace to a medical center, after he’s shot as they were escaping. They try removing the bullet, but when he knows he’s dying he tells Jack that the evidence that the Cyprus tape was faked is on a memory chip. He dies before he can tell Jack where it’s hidden, but Jack spots something on the X-Ray, and gruesomely removes the chip from Wallace’s stomach.
Welcome back, my friends, to the Oscar Night that Never Ends. Yes, today is the final part of Oscars 2003 the 75th Academy Awards. We’re in the endgame now. In the BBC studio, Jonathan is joined by another new guest, Gimli himself, John Rhys Davies.
Denzel Washington is first, announcing the Best Actress award.
The winner is a very surprised Nicole Kidman. Denzel said “The winner, by a nose…” referring to the prosthetic nose she had in The Hours.
Academy President Frank Pierson makes speech, mentions the war briefly in the safe “we all just want peace” kind of way, then introduces the next presenter.
It’s Olivia DeHavilland, who is there to introduce a lineup of 59 past Oscar winning actors.
It’s quite a long segment, so strap in as I go through them all.
Dame Julie Andrews – Mary Poppins.
Kathy Bates – Misery.
Halle Berry – Monster’s Ball.
Ernest Borgnine – Marty.
Red Buttons – Sayonara.
Nicholas Cage – Leaving Las Vegas.
Michael Caine – Hannah and her Sisters and The Cider House Rules.
George Chakiris – West Side Story.
Jennifer Connelly – A Beautiful Mind.
Sean Connery – The Untouchables.
Geena Davis – The Accidental Tourist.
Daniel Day Lewis – My Left Foot.
Olivia DeHavilland – To Each His Own and The Heiress.
Kirk Douglas – Honorary Oscar.
Michael Douglas – Wall Street.
Robert Duvall – Tender Mercies.
Louise Fletcher – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Brenda Fricker – My Left Foot.
Cuba Gooding Jr – Jerry Maguire.
Lou Gossett Jr – An Officer and a Gentleman.
Joel Grey – Cabaret
Tom Hanks – Philadelphia and Forrest Gump.
Marcia Gay Harden – Pollock.
Dustin Hoffman – Kramer vs Kramer and Rain Man.
Celeste Holm – Gentleman’s Agreement.
Anjelica Huston – Prizzi’d Honor.
Claude Jarman Jr – The Yearling.
Jennifer Jones – Song of Bernadette.
Shirley Jones – Elmer Gantry.
George Kennedy – Cool Hand Luke.
Ben Kingsley – Ghandi.
Martin Landau – Ed Wood.
Cloris Leachman – The Last Picture Show.
Karl Malden – A Streetcar Named Desire.
Marlee Matlin – Children of a Lesser God.
Hayley Mills – Pollyanna.
Rita Moreno – West Side Story.
Patricia Neal – Hud.
Jack Nicholson – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Terms of Endearment and As Good As It Gets.
Margaret O’Brien – Meet Me In St Louis.
Tatum O’Neal – Paper Moon.
Jack Palance – City Slickers
Luise Rainer – The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth.
Julia Roberts – Erin Brockovich.
Cliff Robertson – Charley.
Mickey Rooney – Andy Hardy.
Eva Marie Saint – On The Waterfront.
Susan Sarandon – Dead Man Walking.
Maximilian Schell – Judgement at Nuremberg.
Mira Sorvino – Mighty Aphrodite.
Sissy Spacek – Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Mary Steenburgen – Melvin and Howard.
Meryl Streep – Kramer vs Kramer and Sophie’s Choice.
Barbra Streisand – Funny Girl.
Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry.
Jon Voight – Coming Home.
Christopher Walken – The Deer Hunter.
Denzel Washington – Glory and Training Day.
And finally, Teresa Wright – Mrs Miniver.
That whole segment lasted ten minutes.
Richard Gere introduces another nominated film, Chicago.
Marcia Gay Harden presents the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The winner is Ronald Harwood for The Pianist.
Ben Affleck presents the Best Original Screenplay award.
Pedro Almodovar wins for Talk To Me.
Harrison Ford presents the Best Director award. It’s won by Roman Polanski, who isn’t at the ceremony because he’d be arrested for rape. Harrison Ford doesn’t mention this.
Kirk Douglas and his son Michael present the Best Film award.
The winner is Martin Richards for Chicago.
And that’s it for the 2003 Oscars. Here’s the bits with Jonathan Ross
This disc does actually have more programmes on it. First there’s Derren Brown Mind Control. Derren starts off with trying to get the audience to guess which card he has in his pocket. I’m not sure how well it works if you’re not actively watching to see how he’s trying to influence your choice, but all the clues are there.
He’s at St Pancras station, and his next trick is one where he stages a bit of a scene, then asks bystanders what they remember. He takes one woman and is able to get her to remember really small details about the person in question. All this is amazing enough, but then he gets her to guess the man’s name – they have the man’s wallet that he ‘dropped’ – and she gets it pretty close. I’m still not sure how she was able to remember all the small details, but the programme does at least let us know that she got the name because he was actually wearing a name badge on his shirt.
He guesses which chat up lines would work on three women in a nightclub.
He plays Rock Paper Scissors with people outside Millwall. This is all surprisingly laddish for Derren.
He gives a couple of amusing demonstrations of pickpocketing. I particularly like the way he can steal a tie from around someone’s neck.
He guesses the PIN of a posh person at a dinner party.
The final trick is, I think, the first thing I ever saw Derren Brown do, and it must have been on the 50 Greatest Magic Tricks programme. He’s in an art gallery, and he gets a random punter to just guess the subject of one of Derren’s paintings, which he does, correctly. I still have no idea how this might be done.
The final programme here is Anglian Lives: Alan Partridge. Ray Woollard presents a profile of North Norfolk’s most popular DJ and broadcaster, Alan Partridge.
Alan reads excerpts from his autobiography.
Some of the material here is from previous shows, or from Comic Relief, but some of the non interview segments might be new, like an interview with a woman and a kestrel (Melanie Hudson).
Peter Baynham is particularly good as Ray Woollard, with just enough slightly wrong phrasing, and all through you can detect there’s a power dynamic in play, with Partridge definitely in the driving seat throughout. I did like his gimmick of having his laptop, “Digital Dave” ask some of the questions.
Someone else has put this on YouTube, which saves me the trouble.
After this, the recording continues with a trail for The Big Read.
Then there’s fifteen minutes of an episode of Doubletake. I don’t know why, but I get slightly angry at this programme, because it’s basically just a ripoff of The Miniaturised Area from The Friday Night Armistice (another Peter Baynham performance) and yet the makers of Doubletake, at the time, talked about how incredibly clever and innovative they were. When it’s basically just a lookey-likey of Camilla Parker-Bowles taking her pants off and pissing in the wood. I wasn’t a fan. Plus all the sketches (if you can call them that) went on too long.
Welcome, film fans, to the second part of Oscars 2003. Thankfully, this disc wasn’t damaged.
Let’s start by answering the question that’s kept you up all night – the winner of Best Animated Short was Eric Armstrong for The Chubbchubbs.
The next award, also presented by Jennifer Garner (Mickey Mouse having left) is for Best Live Action Short, won by Martin Strange-Hansen and Mie Andreasen for This Charming Man.
Mira Sorvino present the award for Best Costume Design.
It’s won by Colleen Atwood for Chicago.
Brendan Fraser introduces a Best Film nominee, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Paul Simon performs his nominated song, Father and Daughter, from The Wild Thornberrys Movie. Not a title I’d associate with the Oscars.
Nia Vardalos presents the award for Best Makeup.
It’s won by John Jackson and Beatrice De Alba for Frida.
Sean Connery presents the Best Supporting Actress award.
It’s won by Catherine Zeta Jones for Chicago. A risky moment, since she’s two weeks away from having her baby.
Matthew McConaughey presents another nominated film, Gangs of New York.
Kate Hudson was the presenter at the Scientific and Technical Awards and presents some clips.
One of the winners was the creator of the 3D modelling software Maya.
Another was joint winners (and huge rivals) Arri and Panavision. I was today years old when I learned that Arri is actually Arnold & Richter.
The Best Original Score award is presented by Renee Zellweger.
It’s won by Elliot Goldenthal for Frida.
Julie Andrews gets a lengthy ovation. She introduces a montage of past Academy Awards musical numbers.
Jonathan Ross is joined by two more guests. Amanda Donohoe,
And Heidi Parker, editor of Movieline.
Salma Hayek presents the award for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s won by Caroline Link for the German film Nowhere in Africa. It’s a shame she’s not there to pick up the award, as Women never win directing awards.
Julianne Moore presents the award for Best Sound.
Winners are Michael Minkler, Dominick Tavella and David Lee for Chicago.
And because the sound community have a great union, there’s also the award for Sound Effects Editing, won by Ethan Van Der Ryn and Michael Hopkins for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. One of them has a string stammer, and I was wondering if the orchestra would be rude enough to start playing them off. Thankfully they didn’t.
Gael Garcia Bernal introduces another song performance, Burn it Blue from Frida.
It’s performed by Lila Downs and Caetano Veloso.
Hilary Swank introduces another Best Film nomination, The Hours.
Diane Lane presents the award for Best Documentary Feature.
Uh Oh, it’s won by Michael Moore for Bowling for Columbine. And he’s definitely not listening to all the ‘don’t mention the war’ instructions. He calls George Bush a fictional president, and the invasion of Iraq a fictional war started for fictional reasons. There’s quite a lot of booing from the audience, and the orchestra strike up, rather stomping over his closing line “Any time you’ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against ya, your time is up.”
The next presenter is Jack Valenti, the idiot head of the Motion Picture Associated of America, who tried to stop VCRs being sold because people would pirate films and never go to the cinema again which is totally what happened. He’s presenting Documentary Short Subject.
It’s won by Bill Guttentag and Robert David Port for Twin Towers.
Julia Roberts presents the award for Cinematography.
It’s won by Conrad L Hall for Road To Perdition, and accepted posthumously by his son.
Next, Kathy Bates introduces a film of interviews with previous Acting award winners.
Colin Farrell introduces another Best Song nominee.
It’s U2 performing The Hands that Built America from Gangs of New York. There’s a point towards the end where Bono is just basically saying ‘America’ over and over again, and I’m reminded of Hugh Laurie’s ‘America’.
Next it’s Geena Davis presenting the Best Film Editing award.
It’s won by Martin Walsh for Chicago.
Uh Oh, it’s Susan Sarandon. I think it was David Letterman who said, when he hosted, about Sarandon and Tim Robbins, “I bet they’re pissed about something.” Will she make a political statement? No, because the Academy cleverly got her to introduce the In Memoriam section, so straying from the script would be rather impolite.
Halle Berry presents the Best Actor Award.
It’s won by Adrien Brody, who comes up on stage and grabs Halle Berry for a snog. But to his credit, during his quite long speech, when the orchestra starts up to get him off, he tells them to stop – and they do.
Dustin Hoffman introduces another Best Film nominee, The Pianist.
Barbra Streisand presents the award for Best Song.
It’s won by Lose Yourself from 8 Mile, which wasn’t performed in the ceremony (and possibly explains why he randomly performed at a recent ceremony). One of his co-writers accepts the award.
Meryl Streep introduces an honorary award.
It’s awarded to Peter O’Toole.
That’s the end of this segment. There’s still more to come, and it’s coming tomorrow.
VHiStory 