1989
Compiled by Steve Williams, Ian Jones and Jack Kibble-White
First published November 2002
Debuts
January …
Norman Beaton starred as the eponymous barbershop owner in Desmond’s … Fragile Earth focused on ecological issues …hit US drama thirtysomething reached British screens … as did the first of 220 episodes of Roseanne.
February …
Out on Tuesday explored gay and lesbian culture … and global sounds were showcased in Big World Café.
March …
Guests were alternately patronised and humiliated in Clive Anderson Talks Back … while Go For It profiled activities for families and children.
April …
Breakfast television began in the shape The Channel Four Daily … celebrities were cross-examined by an anonymous snooty female computer in the “interactive” Star Test … the press industry was investigated by Raymond Snoddy in Hard News … and Club X laboured to mix youth TV and experimental art.
May …
Mark Chase hosted youth consumer show The Survivor’s Guide … while Gordon Kennedy led the ensemble comedy Absolutely.
June …
Cherie Lunghi headed the cast of The Manageress … and Bill Patterson starred in the award-winning drama Traffik.
August …
Swedish curio Xerxes charted the exploits of a group of Scandinavian teenagers … while Fred Savage debuted as Kevin Arnold in the superior US series The Wonder Years.
October …
Cooking With Mosimann promised refined kitchen experimentation … Michael Wood surveyed the Art of the Western World … and contestants were humbled in Sticky Moments with Julian Clary.
November …
Melvyn Bragg introduced a unique story of triumph and failure in Norbert Smith: A Life … while audiences were invited to spend One Night with Jonathan Ross.
Finales
Club X
In terms of expense and airtime alone, Club X turned out to be one of Channel 4′s biggest disasters. Attempting to marry pop culture with contemporary art in as ambitious a manner as possible, both Charlie Parsons – its editor – and C4 fatally overreached themselves. In an intriguing interpretation of focus groups, Parsons cited the English National Opera – “it’s packed with 16 to 23-year-olds!”- as proof that “there is a young arts educated audience to be catered for. By putting the fun back into art Club X is more than equipped to extend this audience even further.” But there was nothing fun about Club X. Each edition lasted a sprawling 90 minutes; the plethora of features never gelled; its lofty pretentiousness clashed with its often somewhat seedy content; and chief presenter Murray Boland struggled gamely to link it all together against a studio background of deafening noise and crowds wandering all over the place. Unbelievably, it was initially repeated on Sunday afternoons at 2pm – until protests about sketches poking fun at Dickie Valentine and Eric Morecambe woke C4 up to just what was going on. A second series was never commissioned; out of the ruins, though, emerged The Word and youth TV for the 1990s.
Misc …
Audiences got a chance to see a pre-Neighbours Kylie Minogue when C4 aired The Henderson Kids in April … five films inspired by H.G. Wells’ fable The Invisible Man were run back to back through the night of 26 August … and Alfred Hitchcock was celebrated in the season Hitch on 4.
On Screen
Carol Barnes
After spending most of the 1980s fronting high-profile ITN productions, Carol Barnes might have been forgiven for initially thinking her latest job – reading the news bulletins for Channel 4′s new breakfast service – almost a demotion. The truth was that, given the nature of The Channel Four Daily and its patchwork of separate strands, whoever was reading the news would by default become its most prominent and recognisable face. So it was that she ended up occupying the role, more or less, of the show’s chief “presenter”. It was she who cued in the link-ups with Michael Nicholson in Washington and James Mates in Tokyo in their respective world news “bureaux”; she who trailed everything from Countdown Masters to the consumer feature Streetwise; and she who had to fill for 90 seconds during the very first programme when a BT line supplying the first edition of Business Daily went down. Intimate yet authoritative, stern yet prone to the odd bizarre pun, Carol Barnes only stayed with the programme until the end of 1990, yet made her role very much her own.
The Art of Landscape
Perhaps it was in response to that sudden late-’80s interest in all things green. Maybe it was to plug a hole in the schedules when schools programmes finished for the holidays. Possibly it was just a cheap rip-off of Pages From Ceefax. Whatever the rationale, The Art of Landscape became a Channel 4 fixture for a few years. It was certainly unique, and for a while pretty near unavoidable, yet its true purpose was amusingly never explained. Viewers were simply invited to sample the delights of up to three hours uninterrupted slowly-changing sceneries, animations and landscapes accompanied by a mix of “classical, jazz, rock and electronic new age” music. And that was it. A shop window for innovative contemporary designers and composers, yes, but for the viewer the programme was either a perplexing invocation to stay watching the TV, go out for a walk in the countryside, or both. The Art of Landscape debuted at 9.25am on 11 December; then moved to a half hour slot preceding Channel Four Daily in April 1990. Fans were upset when it disappeared suddenly during the Gulf War; but a surprise one-off re-appearance on the morning of Princess Diana’s death afforded one last chance to enjoy those breathy synthesisers and rolling meadows.
Off Screen
• In March Peter Sissons received death threats after being seen to speak out against the fatwah on Salman Rushdie, but continued working under 24-hour guard.
• Transmission of programmes in NICAM digital stereo began from 11 September.
Four-Words
“My first impression of Channel 4 was amazement at how small an operation it was. The entire staff were crammed into a few floors of an inadequate building in Charlotte Street. There was barely a suit or frock to be seen. It was a noisy, undisciplined and immensely stimulating atmosphere in which to work.”
- Michael Grade
“Channel 4 has been forced for legal reasons to shelve, perhaps permanently, a ‘hard-hitting’ documentary about County NatWest, analysing its performance since the Big Bang. News of the programme leaked out 10 days ago when the name of the Transport Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, was wrongly associated with its findings.”
- The Daily Telegraph
“There never has been any crisis. This is a long, long haul. My view was that we had to place ourselves somewhere between Breakfast Time and TV-am. Our audience profile needed to be far more varied. So for the World News and Business Daily we would expect a higher number of ABs and probably more men than women. Streetwise is a more middle-marked strand appealing as much to women as to men. Countdown is clearly for a far more middle to lower market audience. We haven’t broken into the duopoly as dramatically as I would have wished. But overwhelmingly when people find the service they like it.”
- David Lloyd, C4 Commissioning Editor for News and Current Affairs, on The Channel Four Daily
My Favourite Channel 4 Moment …
Vic and Bob (1990)
It’s hard to think of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer as much more than a pair of catch phrase spouting one trick ponies nowadays, but the first time I saw Vic Reeves Big Night Out at the age of 14 I was absolutely spellbound, despite wondering what kind of televised nightmare I had stumbled into.
Much to my shame I must admit that I saw it by complete accident after watching (on purpose) an episode of The Golden Girls. I had no idea what to make of the slightly sinister characters and nonsensical home-made props, of the pathetically self-aggrandising Reeves and the obviously smarter but downtrodden Mortimer (who was only one step above creepy Les on the food chain). It scared me but I guessed it was meant to be a comedy, although I didn’t find it particularly funny. The one thing I knew, however, was that it fascinated me and I had to see it again.
A couple of weeks later I was a card-carrying fan and knew all the catchphrases (which I dutifully spouted at the telly, whilst wearing my “Help Vic, I’ve fallen!” t-shirt). However sad that might seem in retrospect, it brought me immense pleasure as a naïve high school student to feel that I was in a secret gang of people who were all into something cool and weird that no-one else at school would “get”.
Over time the novelty wore off, the catchphrases got tired and much to my dismay everyone else at school “got it” after all (demonstrating this by playground pratfalls and endless shouts of “What’s on the end of the stick Vic?”) However, for a while it was the most enjoyable programme on TV, allowing you to feel like the daft things you got up to with your mates might really be comedy genius after all.
- Rose Ruane
| <1988 |
