1990
Compiled by Steve Williams, Ian Jones and Jack Kibble-White
First published November 2002
Debuts
January …
Europe Express focused on the state of the continent … while Caron Keating introduced topical science show Fourth Dimension.
February …
Initially hosted by Bernard Falk, Travelog profiled unconventional holiday destinations … Richard O’Brien wielded his harmonica in The Crystal Maze … Cutting Edge was the channel’s new flagship documentary strand … and Robert Lindsay starred as an itinerant security guard in Nightingales.
April …
Cameras rolled live and unedited to show life at London Zoo As It Happens … international arts and cultures were explored in Rear Window … while the ITV comedy drama Brass was resurrected for a final series.
May …
Buzz was a contemporary youth reportage series, co-produced for MTV … consumer issues were debated in Check Out … and audiences were invited along to witness Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out.
June …
Ian Richardson led the cast of Malcolm Bradbury’s acclaimed political satire The Gravy Train.
August …
The fortunes and failings of spoof TV channel Globelink News were told in Drop the Dead Donkey … Hollywood Legends chronicled stars of the big screen … Mark Chase and a handful of guests indulged in Sex Talk … and Terry Christian raised the curtain on The Word.
September …
Independent film and video documentary productions were showcased in Critical Eye.
October …
A host of arts-based formats, presenters and topics took turns in the spotlight in the anthology series Without Walls.
November …
Tonight with Jonathan Ross ran three times a week … the changing conditions of Eastern Europe were plotted in And The Walls Came Tumbling Down … while Down to Earth exposed the world of archaeology.
December …
Your presence was requested at Tony Jacklin’s Pro-Celebrity Golf Challenge … while Wagner’s 14-hour opera cycle The Ring was screened in full on television for the first time.
Finales
Signals
Since its launch Channel 4 had screened countless mini-series and one-off productions covering the arts, but Jeremy Isaacs had never entertained the notion of a recurring strand similar to BBC2′s Arena sitting in his schedules. Michael Grade had other ideas, and within weeks of taking over initiated a £2.5m commission for a regular arts and popular culture programme. The result was Signals, premiered in October 1988 with much fanfare and hyperbole. But due to Grade’s determination to steal an advance on BBC2′s new arts review The Late Show, due on air from January ’89, Signals was rushed out before it was really ready. Despite the credentials of its producers, including celebrated documentary maker Roger Graef, there was never time to properly refine its agenda and direction. The individual programmes – ranging from the history of sex on television to a special photography competition in association with TV Times – ended up too scattershot, and ultimately subjects were covered for no other reason than to fill empty slots. The C4 schedules needed an obvious arts-orientated “brand”, but Signals, though wisely conceived, was poorly executed and never found a clear identity. Its successor – Without Walls – was far more accomplished.
Misc …
A three-hour spectacular commemorated The A – Z of TV on New Year’s Day evening … Soviet Spring was a major season across all genres profiling the state of contemporary Russia … the 1000th edition of Countdown was celebrated on 2 July … and Roy Hattersley delivered the Coronation Street Birthday Lecture on Christmas Day.
On Screen
Clive Anderson
An archetypal “anti-celebrity”, Clive Anderson won his prominence on British TV thanks to two Channel 4 shows that showcased not what he could do but what he most definitely could not. Given his previous involvement in television had largely been in the form of an anonymous writer, it was no surprise to discover he was pretty hopeless in the role of panel game host. In this sense, however, Whose Line … was an ideal platform: the guests ridiculed him (to the audience’s audible delight) but he still won a fair share of screen time and attention in the bargain. Anderson was also obviously poorly cut out to be a proper chat show host (he was a barrister after all), so Clive Anderson Talks Back was perfect for letting him indulge his fondness for barracking – which again got him noticed. In both cases, formats were virtually constructed around him to carefully mask his weaknesses; plus, for either show he was initially assigned a “co-host” (John Sessions and Tony Slattery respectively) as an additional safety net. Once his somewhat objectionable, stuffy and cynical persona was fully established, however, Anderson became very much his own man – and an unusual yet nonetheless useful C4 star for the 1990s.
As It Happens
A real gem of a show, As It Happens was classic Channel 4: slightly over-ambitious, forever prone to failure, but always entertaining. It traded in the simplest of premises: take a camera and microphone to a notable place and transmit the pictures live, or at least unedited. As such, it relied wholly on the charm of the unexpected to deliver results. No-one knew what would happen when the cameras started turning – indeed, if anything would happen at all – but that was why the show was so addictive. The fearless, half-demented confidence of the programme-makers was infectious; the expectation of witnessing something truly memorable on screen, be it good or bad, was gripping. In its first incarnation, As It Happens was a low-key daytime programme with Michael Groth and Paddy Haycocks taking turns to wander round London. It quickly mutated, however, into a trans-global epic, spending 90 minutes each Saturday night in a different foreign city. Now Pete McCarthy and Andy Kershaw alternated as the hosts, the former ambling around like an innocent abroad, the latter forever heading down the first dark alley in sight and swearing profusely. Terrible things went wrong, and more than once a C4 continuity announcer back in London had to virtually take over as pictures and sound were lost. But that just made it all the more fantastic, and why come the show’s end you’d always be wanting more. A superb programme, and much missed.
Off Screen
• C4′s first director of advertising sales and marketing was appointed in September. Stewart Butterfield would be responsible for co-ordinating the selling of the channel’s air-time from 1 January 1993.
• The onset of recession forced C4′s various budgets to be both frozen and cut. Two prospective Film on Four developments were cancelled, while the budget for Business Daily was slashed.
Four-Words
“Fifteen-to-One seems rooted in that most competitive of models for education, the Victorian classroom. The presenter – or teacher – fires a series of questions at his pupils until one by one they are eliminated by failure. William G Stewart, in teacherly fashion, presides over this most competitive and hierarchical of educational forms, and it is ironic that he was also responsible for producing The Price Is Right, in which the cheerfully unruly audience were much more like children let out of school.”
- Garry Whannel, TV critic
“It has an unashamedly American approach, packing every line with gags and pushing the notional plot along with failed-brake speed, neatly tied to the old British comic virtues of satire and late-entry political jokes. C4 has done well to invest so much faith and cash in the production company, Hat Trick, and it is indeed the best trick to be pulled out of the hat so far. Long may it graze.”
- Mark Sanderson on Drop the Dead Donkey, Broadcast magazine
“Again and again I had to insist that it was not necessary to be a towering intellectual to run Channel 4 so long as you could lay your hands on a towering intellectual when you needed one. As Bill Cotton used to say, ‘I may not know the answer, but I know someone who does.’”
- Michael Grade
My Favourite Channel 4 Moment …
The Crystal Maze (1990)
It seems a far distant memory, but Channel 4′s original remit was to provide an alternative to mainstream broadcasting. The moments that stick in my mind could all be defined as an alternative take on what others were offering at the time: the inspired pointlessness of Mortimer shouting to Reeves “What on the end of the stick, Vic?”; an inebriated Oliver Reed admiring a fellow guest’s “tits” (his words) during a live open-ended After Dark discussion, to name but two. But, and I admit the bias, I recall with particular fondness a moment on Crystal Maze.
Picture the scene. A confused contestant (they weren’t all stupid) emerges from a cell early, having failed his primary mission: to find a geodesic crystal. His team outside have been screaming at him for two minutes, because he has in fact solved the puzzle. He knows the number of the box containing the crystal, but simply hasn’t noticed a wall of numbered boxes directly behind him. Instead of commiserating with him, Richard O’Brien breaks all the rules by marching the guy back into the cell and showing him what he’d missed – which was exactly what we, the viewers – wanted him to do with the idiot. Er, contestant. Inspired.
- Justin Scroggie
| <1989 |
