Perhaps Richard’s scholastic pursuits stretch also to the history of his own berth on British television, for he chooses to close this last-ever edition of Richard and Judy with precisely the same valedictory address he wielded almost exactly eight years ago on This Morning: “As they say, we’ll see you around”.

Then, it was true. Then, enough people were bothered to want to see such vapourish vows materialise into something tangible. Now, evaporation beckons. Richard and Judy’s journey beyond terrestrial television has been the most inconsequential celebrity-hued pilgrimage since Simon Bates tried to voyage around the world the wrong way in 67 days.

“Everything’s going to be digital in a few months time,” vowed Richard in September 2008, and he knew this because he said it. “That’s how everyone’s going to be watching television.” But it wasn’t and we aren’t. Richard and Judy’s New Position, a name that sounded like it had been brainstormed by Richard Curtis, attracted 100,000 viewers on its debut in October. This was a twentieth of those who enjoyed their show on tired, unwatched and unloved terrestrial Channel 4. The new position the pair found themselves in turned out to be burgeoning professional failure.

A patsy was needed. Richard came up with one: every single programme on every other channel on television. “Viewers have been telling us they are torn between watching us and their favourite soap,” he blustered when the show got moved to another new position of 6pm in January 2009. Except this was rather too close to their old slot on Channel 4 to be called a new position, so rather than acknowledge they were assuming any kind of position, the show became simply Richard and Judy – precisely the same title as their old slot on Channel 4.

Then came another new position when the show moved to 4pm in April. This was a tautological assault course of diminishing returns, both for the English language and Richard and Judy’s preferred taxi firm. With the programme pared back to a humiliating once-weekly outing, the pair had only marginally greater cause to find their way to and from their place of work as viewers had to the show’s home on their digital TV menu.

Ratings touched, or rather pitched camp, at 8,000 in April 2009. A month later, marching orders were served.

Exhibiting not only a remarkably elastic interpretation of destiny but also prophetical timing to rival that of the soothsayer in Carry on Cleo, Richard insists this very review you are now reading is “being written about a disastrous moment in our careers when it’s not. It’s just a project that hasn’t worked.”

The word ‘project’ implies a degree of order and determinism the show’s nine-month lifespan has singularly failed to display. A project is something that has pre-conceived aspirations and a methodology, and which seeks to get from a to b, thereby proving c.

In addition, Richard is blinding himself with a potently self-delusional brand of science. He speaks as if he and his wife are somehow personally independent of ‘the project’, when ‘the project’ has their names in the title.

The couple won their £2m contract with Watch on the basis of who they were – two of the most popular presenters of mainstream television – and not on what they would be doing when they got there. They took the money; they have now taken the hit. The last time this writer switched on his TV, Watch was still on air. Richard and Judy were not.

“Welcome to the last of our weekly shows,” whispers Judy at the start of this final communion. There is a Sispyhean air to proceedings. The pair are trapped in a cycle of greeting and fleeting. They labour in the foothills to establish a rapport with a guest, edge upwards towards a plateau of conviviality, only for conversation to be terminated after a few minutes, sometimes mid-sentence, for a sting or commercial break. When our hosts return, a new guest has arrived and they are back at the foot of the mountain to begin all over again.

They are never allowed to reach the summit. They are never permitted to poke their heads inside the clouds of rarefied chat that knit themselves around the peak of a well-planned, sympathetically-timed TV feature. This is a shame, for there is two decades’ of evidence that the pair can prosecute fruitful small screen conversation, but only when they are given enough time to do so.

They need a format that can breathe, and for Richard and Judy this has always meant live television. This is not what they were given on Watch, yet it’s worth pointing out it is not what they asked for either (more evidence, need it be given, of their responsibility for the ‘project’ and its downfall).

If the sort of stunts Richard enjoyed pulling on Channel 4 – waving his fist at the camera while berating the mugger who had just “jacked” his daughter – were now no longer possible, he cannot say he was innocent of collusion. He and Judy are architects of this edifice, one they tried to build from the top down.

With no foundations, there are no floorplans. Not only can you not get from a to b, it’s scarcely possible to get beyond a.

Instead guests are shuttled on and off like trains being signalled ineptly though sidings. For one segment an unidentified man sits on the guest sofa. He is never addressed, he never speaks. Yet he remains on camera for five minutes.

Dialogues are rushed, fractured. Nothing is allowed to be interesting, because this would take time. Jimmy Carr says “the expenses thing…quite a boring story.” “It is actually,” begins Judy. She never finishes. Questionable assumptions go unquestioned. “Everybody’s larynx is pretty much the same,” asserts Jan Ravens. There are few female impressionists because of “the same old boring thing”, i.e. sexual discrimination and gender inequality. Twitter is “banal” says Carr. A book is reviewed. A few bits were “rather good”, especially, for historian Richard, “the war bits”. Quentin Letts compares it to “supermarket chicken: slips down very easily, not necessarily a strong flavour”.

You can tolerate a programme that is lazy, so long as you feel the same. But you can’t tolerate a programme that tries to pass off boredom as entertainment, no matter how bored you are.

At one point Judy waves her white flag. “TV is the main source of our conversation these days,” she sighs. Unlike her husband, she doesn’t know this because she says it. She knows it because it is true.

Madeley and Finnigan do not need a format that has Roland Rivron ripping off Play Your Cards Right or a champagne bar boasting a dozen audience members made to look like fiftysomething housewives let out for the first time in 30 years. They do, however, need enough self-awareness to concede they need enough of the right kind of format to build an empire upon, rather than merely take themselves into exile and assume the masses will follow.

Their show’s production company, Cactus, shares its name with something that can flourish in the harshest of conditions, deprived of all the staples most other varieties depend upon to survive. After trashing the laws of chemistry, Richard has now junked the principles of botany. He and his wife may still be welcomed back to terrestrial television, but only once they learn to adopt one last new position: supplication.

R&J

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan’s chatshow on Watch is to move to a 6pm slot in January.

Writing about the shift, Madeley has said: “…Talking of EastEnders, both it and Coronation Street – television’s biggest hitters – dominate the 8pm-9pm slot and our viewers have been telling us they are torn between watching us and their favourite soap. Rule one of telly is always listen to your audience so we’ve decided to test out the 6pm-7pm slot after Christmas. (We’ll still be repeated twice next day, both on Watch and Watch+).”

Robin Ince meets Richard Bacon

This is a grab from tonight’s episode of Richard and Judy’s New Position, on Watch. Robin Ince! Richard Bacon! Together at last!

In fact, R&J are saluting Blue Peter‘s birthday by welcoming Bacon in to the studio along with three gold badge winners (Lee Benson, Johnny Lynch, Sarah Frith).

Plus there’s the presentation of a BP-themed birthday cake and some patented sofa chat.

And in return for publishing grabs, I have to tell you this: Richard and Judy’s New Position airs on Tuesdays at 8pm, exclusively on Watch. (SKY 109 / Virgin 124) To find out more go to www.justwatch.co.uk.

A blazer glory

Will there be a cake for the pets too?

Revealed today to the press at – yes – this afternoon’s UKTV launch, the First Couple of Television spoke about why decided their time was up at C4.

“About a year ago,” said Richard, “we’d finished the last series of the Channel 4 show, and signed a new one year contract. Judy looked at me and said, ‘What if they’d given us a two-year contract, would you have wanted to sign that?’. My first reaction was, ‘Yeah’, but then I thought, ‘Hold on…’

“Then we had a week’s conversation,” he continued, “and we realised that actually we’d done This Morning for 13 years, and we’d done the Richard & Judy show for C4 for six years, at that point, with another one to go. And that format – it’s a magazine format, not a chat show – well, we couldn’t really take it anywhere else. We phoned C4 and gave them lots of notice that we were thinking of moving on.”

Having turned down an offer from ITV to go to the south of France for a year to run a vineyard for a reality show, the duo then opted for a deal with UKTV and their new channel, Watch, which launches on October 7.

Richard again: “This UKTV thing began to emerge. It seemed like the very best offer on the table, for two reasons. We’ve never really done a chat show, only a magazine show. We tried a few on ITV some years back, but they were only half-hours, and you need an hour. UKTV offered us an hour, and 8pm, a brilliant slot. But the main thing was, as far as we’re concerned – and we’re not trying to be political here – everything’s going to be digital in a few months time. That’s how everyone’s going to be watching television.

“I think, and Judy thinks, it’s a good move at the right time.”

Have a look at the brilliant R&J trailer on Watch’s official website: www.justwatch.co.uk

R&J dispensing leaden death - click the image for more!

Nope, it’s not a marketing campaign for Richard and Judy’s new prime time series on UKTV’s soon-to-launch Watch. Instead it’s a (presumably unofficial) cameo in issue one of Alan Grant and Simon Bisley’s new comic book The Dead : Kingdom of Flies, published by Berserker Comics .

There’s more on the publication here. And click the image on this page for a proper look at R&J in action.

I wondered whether this sort of thing may be of interest to the OTT blog and readership. The head of daytime at C4 has given The TV Show website an update on what’s happening at daytime, asking viewers what they’d like to see replace Richard and Judy.

It’s sparked a good discussion in the C4 forums.

Tonight’s show was potpourri telly at its most conquering. With a rather engaging absence of shame, the pair opened with an attempt at a comedy routine. “Women may talk more than men,” Judy announced, “but they’ve got twice a big a vocabulary.” Richard retorted, “I don’t know what you, erm, what you, erm …” “Mean, Richard?” cooed Judy, with perfect timing. Neatly laying out the foundation of the show, Richard instantly struck up the pace. “Now let’s get down to it,” he barked, and already they’d moved to a new part of the set. All this energy expended in maintaining such an urgent and bucolic atmosphere, however, was at their expense; never once did we really feel out of breath or buffeted by the grand formation of features that now began to glide briskly by.

So along came the obligatory consumer item, rooted as ever around another piece of quirky research – “apparently absolutely true” Richard stated piously – backing up the idea of women holding more words in their head then men. And as ever – familiarity being the watchword here, and all the better for it – it was going to be tested live in the studio in a duel of the sexes. “Judy and I,” blurted Richard, “will be going head to head, to take the head – to take the test, I’m sorry!” “You’re playing right into my hands,” cackled Judy with relish, at which Richard predictably looked off camera and sighed, “That didn’t work at all.” A hackneyed payoff, sure; but unlike, say, Chris Moyles throwing a similar comment to an invisible lackey, Richard always gets away with it because you know he’s not just doing it for effect, he really is looking intently at a member of the production team and relaying what’s on his mind with the utmost concern.

After some banter with a sofa of experts, Richard brandished a piece of paper at the camera, presumably the aforementioned research, and decided it was time to “check it out”. Brilliantly, the adjudicator enlisted to supervise the ensuing experiment was Countdown‘s Suzie Dent. Acquitting herself with a suitable mix of sternness and whimsy, Suzie refereed a series of jousts between some students over who could think up the most alternatives to any given word. “Go on, go on!” bawled Richard across the studio, egging on the blokes. The entire item was a triumph of charm over circumstance, though it’s a pity there was no time for the much trailed showdown between the hosts themselves.

“As you may know, we’re looking for new untried reporters for this show.” Now this is what we wanted. In a resolute, doing-what-the-big-shows-do-but-on-a-tiny-budget display of aplomb, Judy explained how they’d been holding various regional auditions, and today it was the turn of Birmingham. A motley selection of contestants paraded across the screen, while back in the studio three finalists were sequestered on the sofa; but as one timidly waved at the camera Richard rasped, “Don’t try to suck up to the viewers.” Such sudden explosions of fury are the necessary punctuation marks that continue to beautifully shape every edition of Richard and Judy. Meantime to decide which of the three would go through to the grand final, random assignments were handed out “which you’ve never seen before”. The first contestant opened their envelope and promptly exclaimed, “Oooh, I was hoping to get this one.”

The day’s theme of the virtues of vocabulary had by this point become a simple prop that both Richard and Judy leant upon for support. “And there’s another chance for you to take part in You Say, We Pee,” slurred Judy at one point, confirming that for all the conjecture over either presenter’s predilection for contriving verbal gaffes there’s still a healthy streak of authentic and spontaneous clumsiness at work in both of them. A live interview with a boy suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome and his mum also proved the pair past masters of the slightly over personal and intrusive interview. While there was no interrupting a poignant anecdote to self-consciously stir the tea this time, Judy was on hand with the tears, lolling on the sofa and confessing in a husky voice, “Half of getting by in life, y’know, is sort of just saying the right things.” The boy, who earlier countered, “People with Asperger’s are more honest, and usually have an obsession; mine is computers” blinked repeatedly.

It really was a packed programme, because in-between this and a cosy interview with none other than Michael Palin there was even room for some magic tricks. Needless to say Richard was in his element, being slightly too eager to take off his jacket when simply asked to roll up his sleeves, and summoning up a ready anecdote about when they met The Great Soprendo – “do you remember, Judy?” – who is one of Richard’s heroes. In this instance it was a good-natured American guy who asked Richard to bare his arms and demonstrate some tricks involving the power of the mind. Lively, perplexing, dazzling, this was really good stuff, especially when he offered up a trick you thought had gone wrong but in fact had turned out better than you ever imagine. Richard and Judy were enthralled, and you couldn’t help but feel the same.

It’s been almost a year since the pair kicked off their afternoon shift on screen, and there’s still a slightly unsettling urgency to the programme – at odds with the laid back demeanour Richard still desperately tries to peddle – that suggests the past is no longer important. The only thing that matters is what’s coming up next. It’s an eerie sensation, but the whole of Richard and Judy seems increasingly obsessed with a point in time somewhere half an hour from now. This manifests itself constantly in the compelling gleam of panic shining out from Judy’s eyes. It’s a look that entertains a tiny drop of confidence awash in a huge dose of comic insecurity. And perversely it makes the programme all the more entertaining.

It helps to explain why the hour the show is supposed to be on air feels half that amount. On this occasion of course the timing went to pieces on a spectacular scale, as numerous items – including the ever-popular You Say, We Pay – had to be dropped and the running order speeded up to a frenetic pace. But again this made proceedings all that more enjoyable, as both hosts battled to resurrect the skeleton of a programme from the rubble of discarded features. Lest we forget, moments of crisis always bring out extreme responses from both Madeley and Finnegan, often – memorably – within the same sentence. Which is precisely what works at this time of the TV day; and which is why by rights Richard and Judy deserves to remain Channel 4′s nationwide teatime fixture for a fair few years to come. Few other programmes are so charismatic and immediate; no other programme is so downright beguiling.

If there was little trace of melodrama or celebration then that seemed to be exactly what Richard and Judy wanted. This was business as usual, no messing. They had less than an hour to play with, not a luxurious 100 minutes. Richard in particular went to great pains to affect a more brusque, managerial tone, hurrying through the menu as if to make everything sound incredibly urgent and frighteningly important. Judy flapped about, already displaying (wholly welcome) signs of drifting into those surreal and heady reveries that typified her last few months on ITV. But there was very little here that was genuinely new. Virtually all the staple features of This Morning showed up, from the defiant celebration of suburban net curtain twitching to the promotion of homespun Madeley kitchen table philosophy. Neither Richard nor Judy appeared concerned about re-treading their greatest hits. This was an exhibition of good-natured arrogance, and consequently remained compulsively watchable.

However there’s a couple of basic problems. One is the set, which is too claustrophobic. The lack of gigantic windows gazing out over waterfront vistas actually worked against the fabric of the show, deflecting everything ever-inwards and re-focusing attention with increasing intensity on the words and actions of our hosts. They might think this personally worthwhile, but in reality it means that Richard’s hectoring bounces off the set’s tiny walls and never seems to disperse, in contrast with Judy’s sappy rejoinders that instantly and eerily fade away into nothing. It also means that visiting guests and experts may perhaps find it harder to interact with the pair and also the fabric of the whole show.

Secondly, little thought seemed to have been given to programme structure. The show had begun promisingly, with a classic This Morning-style take on the world of weird science. Two sportsmen appeared, seated in comfy chairs, wired up to various medical machines to measure their heartbeats and pulse rates. The aim was to test an American theory (it’s always American, of course) that stated it was possible to expend energy slumped in front of the telly by simply imagining you were doing exercise. A doctor was on hand, sporting a lightweight grey jacket, to make it all look official. We looked in on the progress of these “armchair triathletes” throughout the show, a neat device that gave the whole programme coherence and, by returning right at the end to reveal the experiment’s results, some symmetry.

However the various features that filled up the rest of the hour seemed badly sequenced. Rather than lead off with some special guests, Richard and Judy headed straight for one of their favourites: a consumer issue. A man had found his bank account wrongly credited with £250,000, but he wasn’t going to give the money back. What would we do? Judy was tickled by the dilemma. “You can’t get away with it for the rest of your life!” she shrieked. Richard quickly took charge with his usual assertiveness: “You’ve had a bank statement, right,” he began, as he sought to impose his own logic on the situation. It all felt a bit pointless and uncomfortable – both presenters were shamelessly poking fun at what they believed was the man’s foolhardy bravado – until, at last, Richard explained, “You’ve got some brass neck – and it’s given us an idea for a phone-in!”

There had been rumours that the phone-in was to have no place in this new show, which would have denied Richard his chief vehicle for vocalising his many prejudices. Its re-appearance may prove to be a bad decision. When the phone-in took place towards the end of the show, there wasn’t enough time to give as much attention to callers’ problems or queries as they perhaps deserved. While on this occasion the topic was fairly innocuous – moral scruples – darker subjects might end up compromised for the sake of running to schedule. And though it’s always fun to hear Richard’s bizarre interrogations – “Would you give the money to charity?” he demanded of a caller who’s been offered the chance to kiss and tell – even his pearls of wisdom could lose their appeal when forcibly reduced to a 10 second soundbite.

Judy, however, still took up several minutes giving an example of how she faced a moral dilemma back at school over whether to pick up a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover she’d found lying on the pavement. “That’s not a scruples story,” immediately corrected Richard, before he went on to say there wasn’t time for his own personal story about how he once pretended to give up smoking … but then told it anyway. An American female psychologist joined them for this phone-in, but – as with all the guests – wasn’t billed on screen, which was somewhat bizarre and frustrating, though maybe intended to ensure everyone knew they were second fiddle to the real stars of the show.

Other features included the repeated playing of a short videotape they’d obtained from a society called Strange Phenomena Investigations. This pandered to Richard and Judy’s well-worn obsession with anything of a freakish nature. The footage showed an ordinary person – or “Spookman” as Richard instantly dubbed him – whose face ostensibly changed into others as you studied it. The studio crew were convinced, gasping on cue, and Richard was rapt: “Oh man, I could watch this all night” he gushed. But later another expert showed up to rubbish Spookman, so it was a rather meaningless item despite Judy’s attempts to make it sound relevant – “It’s a real-life transfiguration, like in the Harry Potter movie.” Both Richard and Judy also made sure we knew they were experts on this sort of thing, referring back to one time they’d interviewed a man who had denied murder but was later convicted – yet “we knew he had murdered her,” all along.

A dose of outrageous nosiness came in the shape of an item about how Oldham council have been going through people’s private rubbish on behalf of the Government. “I think it’s terrible,” snapped Richard straight away. This was pure That’s Life! territory. Richard relayed to us an account of what the programme had tried to find out, and how, “The bosses told us … well, they would say that.” Another uncredited guest came on who had suffered at the hands of a man that had “stolen his identity” and set up bogus bank accounts. Nothing to do with stealing rubbish then, though it gave Richard the chance to reveal to viewers how he made sure he burns all his unwanted mail rather than throw it away, and that if we had any sense we should do the same.

The proper guests, when they finally showed up, were Les Dennis and Amanda Holden. “Well, we know you’re both very happy,” began Judy, implying that everyone else, including the press, were therefore wrong to doubt the pair’s notoriously rocky marriage. Les had been on the very last edition of This Morning but this wasn’t referred to once. Instead we were treated to a rather distasteful display of ego-massaging, Richard’s face set stern when talking about the tabloids and using the fact he and Judy were close neighbours of Les and Amanda to conclude “it’s obvious that you’re happy.” Both this, and the interview with two cast members from EastEnders (splendidly conducted entirely in character) took place in a special part of the set: a kind of parlour area, with Richard and Judy perched on a lovers-seat and the two guests propped up in thrones. This contrasted with the main area, a sofa and easy chair set-up that was sinisterly reminiscent of early-era GMTV. It was also possible to make out a fish tank built into the wall, and some pots and plants standing self-consciously about. All in all not that impressive.

There was one final element to the show. Not only were viewers able to join in via the phone-in, but also through the memorable quiz game “You Say We Pay”. This has huge comic potential, as callers have to describe to Richard and Judy an object that is projected onto the screen behind them but without referring to its actual name, and the pair have to guess what it is. Amusingly it all went wrong, the lucky caller unable to grasp the elementary concept which caused Richard to leap up and down in his chair like a five year old. It’s “Midday Money” by another name, and just as enjoyably annoying.

So it all ended, and in much haste and confusion as they’d run out of time, unsurprisingly, and we were left with a garbled farewell involving those armchair athletes and rushed goodbyes. It must be a historical first to have a debut TV show end without any credits or proper closing sequence. There had been other problems, mostly of a technical sort (poor sound quality on the phone lines and several jerky camera shots, all fuel to Richard’s fire: “It’s just the first night, we’ll get it all straight!”) The pair also seemed uncertain of how to deal with commercials: when the first break approached, Richard pleaded, “We’re going to take a very quick break, it’s just one minute long,” and Judy echoed “We’ll see you in just one minute,” as if that mattered.

But Richard and Judy is a wholly welcome addition to C4, a station short of really big name signings for too long. In the event The Weakest Link beat it in the ratings by almost two to one; and it seems the show also lost viewers over the hour. Its future cannot be in doubt, though; the bizarre, the titillation, the kitchen table pontificating: it’s all there. Just not in the correct order.