Live With… Chris Moyles
Monday, September 23, 2002 by Ian Jones · Comments Off
It was somewhat discourteous, not to mention downright inaccurate, for Chris Moyles to welcome us to his new show with the announcement “It’s seven o’clock”, when it was already at least five minutes past. Read more
Ali G Before He Was Massiv
Wednesday, March 27, 2002 by TJ Worthington · Comments Off
Cheaply made unlicensed cash-in merchandise has existed pretty much since the dawn of celebrity, but the shoddy “100% Unauthorised” video is a more recent innovation. Read more
Election coverage – week three
Sunday, June 3, 2001 by Ian Jones · Comments Off
Ratings continue to tumble. Viewers are switching off their sets in protest at relentless footage of vain, bickering groups of people struggling to survive in increasingly hostile, desperate circumstances. Read more
Election coverage – week two
Sunday, May 27, 2001 by Ian Jones · Comments Off
When Baldrick stood for election in the constituency of Dunny-on-the-Wold, his campaign manager Edmund Blackadder proposed a strategy to win that focused wholly on “issues, rather than personalities”. It helped that the entire population of this rotten borough were three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named Colin and a small hen in its late 40s, but as Blackadder and a bewigged 18th century Vincent Hanna discovered, the strategy paid off. Read more
Election coverage – week one
Sunday, May 20, 2001 by Ian Jones · Comments Off
It’s the end of the first full week of the TV election campaign. Read more
You Can’t Take it With You
Tuesday, October 3, 2000 by David McNay · Comments Off
After the fun of Keith Chegwin’s genitals and locking people in a prison, comes one of Channel 5′s less well-publicised pieces of home-grown tat. And a rum one it is too. You Can’t Take It With You is C5′s answer to Antique’s Roadshow, but with a fraction of the time spent on it. Read more
Doomwatch
Tuesday, December 7, 1999 by Graham Kibble-White · Comments Off
Channel 5 isn’t where you would expect to encounter challenging, quality TV. Doomwatch proved an unsuccessful attempt at subverting that assumption. It’s not that this programme was intrinsically bad, there was the essence of some fine aspirations faintly palpable somewhere within the thing, but ultimately it proved an ugly, uncomfortable spectacle. Let’s go back to the ’70s, again. Read more