I Love 1999

Was it really only 16 months ago? In July 2000 BBC2 screened I Love 1970, the first instalment of what turned out to be a 30-part series – and whilst it’s almost too neat to refer back to this first edition as I Love reaches its climax (at least within it’s current format), it is instructive to measure how far the series has come (or fallen) since then. Read more

I Love 1998

Do you remember I Love 1998? It wasn’t that long ago, but don’t worry if you’ve forgotten stuff because part of the fun is half-remembering something, then humorously recalling what really happened while wondering what you could’ve been “on” to generate such side-splitting amnesia. Read more

I Love 1997

A few hours before watching I Love 1997, I went on Friends Reunited and sent an e-mail to a mate from college I hadn’t seen since, yes, 1997. As I was writing the e-mail, it struck me how much has changed which I wanted to tell him about – since I last saw him I’d been to university, made a bunch of new friends, started full time work and had at least three different haircuts. Read more

I Love 1996

1996 was a fantastic year for me. I was in the first year of the Sixth Form, enjoying the new-found freedom of free lessons, going to the “biggest fee-paying concert in Britain”, laughing with my friends about the Brit Awards incident between Michael Jackson and Jarvis Cocker, falling in love with wonderful bands like Kenickie, watching Animaniacs, and listening to Radio 1 religiously between the hours of 7pm-12am. Read more

I Love 1995

On 31 December 1995 me and a few mates decided to commit ourselves to a suitably non-hedonistic activity. We sat down and made some lists. The last 12 months had been the midpoint of the decade. What had it told us about the 1990s so far? What records and films would we rate and which would we rubbish? Would we still think the same in another five years time? Read more

I Love 1994

Saturday night, Saturday night… and I’m sitting in front of the television, recalling a conversation with a colleague at work. “Everything came back in the ’90′s, so the decade never really had a style of its own,” I was informed. So I Love the Nineties was always destined to be problematic. Read more

I Love 1993

I love 25 August 2001. I remember it clearly because I was stuck on a bus. Read more

I Love 1992

1992: the year of Europe, the Single European Act, the Treaty of Maastricht, Black Wednesday and the Barcelona Olympics. In short, one of the most momentous years in recent European history. But, wait a moment, this isn’t 1992 – it’s I Love 1992. Read more

I Love 1991

I have always wondered what nostalgia was. Sure, I can look it up in the dictionary any time I want, but what does it actually mean to me? Read more

I Love 1990

With the clip show format arguably starting to go off the boil, if we need anything at the moment we need a sense of strangeness, otherness, distance, among programmes of this genre. I Love the Nineties therefore seems rather unnecessary and pointless, and to have come too soon. Read more

I Love 1989

Nothing really special happened in 1989 until after it finished. Read more

I Love 1988

Alright, let’s start with that assumption. Do I love 1988? Read more

I Love 1987

I’m just rummaging round the back of the fridge for a lager. There we go. Getting ready for I Love 1987.

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I Love 1986

1986 was the year when my family finally decided to buy a video recorder. My dad suggested to my mum that she could record the recipes off Pages from Ceefax and have herself a kind televisual recipe reference cassette. My mum suggested that a better option might be to simply purchase a cookery book. Not long after my parents separated. Read more

I Love 1985

1985 – the year my voice broke. Well, not quite, but definitely the year I started to feel the first pangs of pre-pubescent lust, indulging in clandestine kisses with Louise Meadows under the oak tree in the village cricket green.

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I Love 1984

What’s a TV producer to do? They put together a fairly harmless package of easy-going nostalgia for a Saturday night, and suddenly they’re accused of being part of a conspiracy, hellbent on undermining this country’s shared heritage. Read more

I Love 1983

Unlike other reviewers, I singularly failed to recall any significant memories from 1983. So it was with empty head that I sat down to be entertained by I Love 1983. Read more

I Love 1982

Before sitting down to watch this programme, I made a conscious effort to recall 1982 as best I could. What did 1982 mean to me? What could my faltering memory recollect? Read more

I Love 1981

The year 1981 will be remembered for some of the greatest and most visually striking pop music ever to have ascended to the highest peak of the charts. It was entirely appropriate that a key exponent of this – Adam Ant – should have fronted this show; like Marc Bolan a decade earlier, he was a teen idol from the unlikeliest origins, the leading subculture at the end of the previous decade (hippy for Bolan, punk for Adam). Read more

I Love 1980

Almost with indecent haste Saturday nights on BBC2 have resorted again to nostalgia. After the summer success of I Love the Seventies, it somehow feels appropriate that the altogether murkier ’80s are relived on cold, winter nights. Despite the seasonal change (and the increase to 90 minutes per episode) bedding in for a night of archive footage and talking heads felt rather familiar. In fact, rather too familiar thanks to Sky One’s spoiler series TV Years (focusing on a scatter-gun of years from the ’80s) which covered a lot of the same ground. One of the points of interest here, then, will be to see exactly where I Love the Eighties dovetails and where it diverts from TV Years. Read more

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