2006
Compiled by Ian Jones and Steve Williams
First published November 2007
Debuts
January …
Ricky Gervais Meets Larry David was the first of a short-lived series of celebrity interviews … hapless individuals underwent The Carole Caplin Treatment … My Name is Earl was a successful import … Invasion wasn’t … Bodyshock was a series of bizarre medical documentaries … and viewers found out How to Divorce Without Screwing Up Your Children.
February …
Graham Linehan wrote The IT Crowd … The First Emperor was a heavyweight drama set in China … while stories of the Home Guard were told in The Real Dad’s Army.
March …
Art Shock looked at people doing all manner of unlikely things in the name of creativity … Sean Lock asked guests about their TV Heaven, Telly Hell … and glamorous girls and brainy boys teamed up in Beauty and the Geek.
April …
Morgan Spurlock and volunteers tried out a number of experiments for Thirty Days.
May …
Turn Back Your Body Clock was the latest show to improve your life … and All in the Game starred Ray Winstone as a foul-mouthed football manager.
June …
Miracles were re-enacted in Tricks From The Bible … The Play’s The Thing followed budding drama writers … immigrants examined life in the UK in My New Home … former boy band members cross-dressed for success in Boys Will Be Girls … Lauren Laverne hosted new music show Transmission … the story of 20th century military action was told in The War of the Worlds … while Gok Wan instructed women How to Look Good Naked.
July …
Modern Toss brought the anarchic comic to the screen … Liza Tarbuck tried to find Britain’s Top Dog … and celebrities reminisced about their schooldays in The Law of the Playground.
August …
Tony Benn Interviewing The Interviewers saw the veteran politician turn the tables … US terrorism drama Sleeper Cell was screened … the latest war documentary was Nuremberg: Goering’s Last Stand … The War at Home was a US sitcom flop … teenagers got to make their own telly in Whatever … and next in the lifestyle hour was One Year to Pay Off Your Mortgage.
September …
Alexander Armstrong chaired new panel game The Best of the Worst … Friday nights were now home to The Charlotte Church Show … the Men in White carried out pointless scientific experiments … Ian Wright’s Unfit Kids saw the former footballer encourage more sport in schools … Low Winter Sun was the next landmark drama … Star Stories spoofed celebrities … and an unlikely way to engage disenfranchised youths was tried in Ballet Changed My Life.
October …
Hitler’s Holocaust looked at one of the most chilling moments in history … flop drama Goldplated decided what we really needed was another Footballers’ Wives … Death of a President caused controversy … the Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace stars produced Man to Man With Dean Learner … Bill Bailey tried to help Britain’s animals in Wild Thing I Love You … personal finances were sorted in Your Money or Your Wife … the story of Longford was a much-acclaimed drama … and Unanimous the most boring reality show ever.
November …
The spotlight was turned on those Too Big to Walk … Tony Robinson hosted boffin game show Codex … Howard Goodall explained How Music Works … ropey sketch show Blunder began … and The Secret Millionaire saw the wealthy invest their cash in communities.
December …
C4 opened The House of Agoraphobics.
Finales
The West Wing
Since its launch in 2005, More4 had become a de facto dumping ground for anything too cumbersome, too niche or simply too worthy to fit into the increasingly-homogenised Channel 4. Both Curb Your Enthusiasm and The West Wing, two of the greatest American TV programmes ever made, ended up shoved out on More4 to minimal ratings, the latter finally bowing out in the summer to an almost non-existent audience. The show was long past its best, but had been so buffeted around the schedules during its life on British television it was amazing its finale got any viewers at all. Immediately after its demise a repeat run began from the very first episode, giving anybody who stumbled upon the programme mid-run the chance to revel in its splendour from the start.
Misc …
The Paul O’Grady Show moved from ITV1 in March, prompting the third channel to childishly schedule repeats up against new editions on Channel 4 … for the first time in years, Amnesty International held The Secret Policeman’s Ball … Film Four appeared on Freeview from July … and two new breakfast “programmes” were tried, Morning Glory and Freshly Squeezed, to equal indifference.
On Screen
Russell Brand
It had been a long time since Channel 4 had found itself with a genuine rising star on its books, but that’s what happened in the autumn when, after anchoring endless editions of spin-off show Big Brother’s Big Mouth, over-hirsute calculatingly-verbose Russell Brand was suddenly celebrity gold. A massive media presence undoubtedly helped; more column inches materialised because of Brand’s private life than anything he’d done on television. Nonetheless here was a new face for C4, and one for whom they now had to find a vehicle. The Russell Brand Show wasn’t it, but that didn’t matter – his affiliation with Big Brother plus non-stop appearances on chat shows made him into a permanent, if unlikely, ambassador for the station.
Deal or No Deal?
“From an Edmonds perspective, this is really challenging.” So said the man himself, lapsing effortlessly into the third person, when reflecting on his extraordinary rehabilitation in the public eye. Deal or No Deal? made Noel Edmonds suddenly fashionable again, something nobody, not even he, had ever thought possible, and throughout 2006 his name was never out of the tabloids, often on the most spurious grounds (picking a fight with Mike Read, getting RSI in his hand and being unable to use a public toilet for fear of being recognised just some of the “stories”). The show itself – a glorified guessing game – was also a runaway hit, gaining a Saturday night primetime slot in March to add to its weekday afternoon shift, then going seven days a week in June. “I thought with House Party I’d seen popular TV but this is a phenomenon,” Noel added, with his usual grasp of understatement.
Off Screen
• The channel suffered its worst Friday night ratings since Christmas 1998 when its audience share fell to a dismal 3.9%.
• Endlessly hyped cult series Lost is lost to Sky Television after Kevin Lygo decides money is better spent on Desperate Housewives. “We couldn’t really afford both,” he explained. “Desperate Housewives is a better show and performs a lot more strongly for us. It is closer to a classic Channel 4 American programme. Lost‘s ratings have really begun to fall off.”
Four-Words
“I want Channel 4 to be seen to be doing its job of dazzling us with its range, diversity, imagination and the excitement of new ideas. If you place Big Brother at the heart of the schedule for 13 weeks it becomes known as the Big Brother channel.”
- Jeremy Isaacs
“It is an established summer event, like Wimbledon. And like Wimbledon, some years are a bit shit and you can’t remember who won, and some years it’s brilliant.”
- Kevin Lygo on Big Brother
“It’ll come and go.”
- Andy Duncan on the proposed “Wank Week” of themed programmes, later cancelled
My Favourite Channel 4 Moment …
Longford (2006)
Appalling confession time. Prior to the screening of this one-off drama, my sum total of knowledge about Lord Longford was that he – whoever he was – gave either Derek or Clive the horn. Obviously, there was a hell of a lot more to the man than this. As I discovered latterly, he was, in fact, the outspoken Labour peer who spent the last three decades of his life battling to win parole for some of this country’s most notorious criminals. Most infamously, Myra Hindley.
So why did I end up watching this film, written by Peter Horgan (The Deal, The Queen, Frost/Nixon) starring Jim Broadbent in the title role, and Samantha Morton as Hindley? In short, for work. One morning in October, I, along with other journos, trotted along to the Channel 4 cinema – a circular pit in the bowels of the company’s HQ – for a press screening. I was kind of looking forward to the event, in the main because John Snow – who worked for Longford in a youth charity at the start of the ’70s – was to chair a Q&A session featuring the film’s writer, cast (Broadbent, Morton and Lindsay Duncan, who played Elizabeth Longford), director (Tom Hooper) and Longford’s grandson (Tom Pakenham, who, along with Snow, was on the board of the Longford Trust).
But before we even got to that, I was won over by this stunningly well-made drama, one that prodded at a huge issue without ever really showing its hand. Was Longford a naive fool whose religious beliefs allowed him to be manipulated? Or was he blessed with a profound capacity for forgiveness and an admirable faith in humanity? Both arguments were well made in the course of 90 minutes, but whichever side you favoured, it was still a crushing moment when Hindley latterly confessed to further murders, making a mockery of Longford’s support for her. “It must be a nice place,” she says to him during their last meeting. “Where?”. “In your head”.
Following the screening, the press pushed for controversy about the Moors Murders angle, and found none. It was an uncomfortable but fascinating session. The drama’s careful tonal ambiguity had left the onus on the viewer to come to their own conclusion. Does forgiveness have its limits? This was the implicit question we were now trying to deal with. While the man from The Guardian felt the Lord had been portrayed as an idiot, a tabloid journalist attempted to prompt a personal comment from Broadbent and Morton about their feelings for Hindley – and failed. No answer was going to come easy.
A rotund fellow at the back stepped forward: “I met Longford a couple of weeks before he died – around the time Jeffrey Archer had been put in prison. ‘So,’ he’d said to me, ‘what are we going to do about Archer?’. ‘Oh, I’d much rather talk about Myra!’ I told him”. The room was quiet, then Snow harrumphed. It was time to go.
- Graham Kibble-White
| <2005 |
