Teachers

Too much booze is bad for you. Well of course it is – too much of anything is bad for you, that’s what “too much” means. But Simon is worried. “I haven’t had sex… for three days!” he slurps during another evening of bevied-up brainstorming. “My girlfriend’s done it… everywhere!” There’s a pile of marking to be done, he’s living on a sofa with two mates obsessed with a colleague’s arse, and he’ll be late for work in the morning. “I just think it’s bollocks,” he sniffs, and goes to get the beers in. Read more

The RDA

Still there exists this unceasing desire to produce a British television equivalent of The Late Show With David Letterman. BBC Choice’s The Recommended Daily Allowance though, (back for a second series) is rather strange and amateurish, and all the more endearing as a result. Read more

Witness: Surrendered Wives

Viewers watching this episode of the Channel 4 documentary series Witness could have been forgiven for thinking that the whole thing was a glorious April Fool’s Day joke; rotund, American woman writes a self-help book for women who want to save their relationship, the crux of which, dictates that the woman should surrender completely to the whims and wishes of her partner. Read more

Ellen MacArthur: Sailing Through Heaven and Hell

It’s all in the title; here was 50 minutes of extremes in ecstasy and terror, exultation and exhaustion, equatorial heat… and icebergs. But we could also find a contrast in terms of the post-production work, with Ellen MacArthur’s professional performance on camera rather showing up the uneven and often intrusive narration from Charles Dance. Read more

I Love 1989

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

Celebrity Big Brother

At the end of the summer last year, as we considered the preceding 10 weeks of Big Brother, suddenly the high times seemed all too distant and we began to wonder just what it was we’d been buying into. Read more

I Love 1988

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

Comic Relief Night

We had to wait just 45 minutes for Lenny Henry to start screeching. Read more

The Men Who Changed Football

I had to tape part one of The Men who Changed Football, because Manchester United were playing in the Champions League on ONdigital that night. It wasn’t easy finding time to watch it the next day either, because Arsenal were on ITV, Leeds were on ITV2 and there was a big Nationwide League game on Sky. Three matches in one night? It’s hard to imagine there was ever a time when there were just three live matches on television a season. 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

Popstars

Hear’say are hard at work in the studio, penning their first song. “Pop music is full of these,” cracks Noel, gesturing towards a book of lyrical clichés. So’s British telly, of course, but Popstars has become the one of the most original shows on TV. 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

Adrian Mole – The Cappuccino Years

I too wrote a diary aged 13 and ¾. It was hardly state-of-the-nation stuff, as you might expect; mostly me calling my biology teacher a bitch and writing down who I fancied in school.

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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

In a Land of Plenty

This time last year BBC2 were in the middle of screening their much-hyped adaptation of Gormenghast. It ended up falling way short of expectation. The supposedly breathtaking special effects just looked ludicrous on the small screen, while too many dreadful celebrities turned up to mutter one sentence before dying. It was an attempt by the Beeb at filming a supposedly unfilmable text just for the sake of it. One year on and we’re almost half way through the transmission of another supposedly unfilmable book on BBC2, but this time the results are blissfully different. 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

Gillette Soccer Saturday

Given the hand wringing, wailing and general gnashing of teeth over Sky Sports plundering of traditional televised sporting events from ITV and (especially) BBC, it is refreshingly ironic that their flagship programme, Gillette Soccer Saturday, centres solely on football. With the demise of World of Sport and the reduction of Grandstand to a cruel parody of its former self, the battle for the hearts and minds of committed Saturday afternoon sports viewers has been fought for, and won, by Sky. Read more

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