1992
Compiled by Steve Williams, Ian Jones and Jack Kibble-White
First published November 2002
Debuts
January …
Dominik Diamond fronted computer games shop-window Gamesmaster … documentaries from around the world were aired in Global Image … while Class Action investigated the state of British education.
February …
Frank Muir welcomed viewers to TV Heaven … US sitcom Evening Shade starred Burt Reynolds as a veteran football coach … and observational sideswipes littered The Jack Dee Show.
March …
Big budget drama The Camomile Lawn attracted headlines for its supposedly high level of sexual content … acclaimed American drama Northern Exposure debuted … while Israel: A Nation is Born traced the course of 20th century Middle Eastern history.
April …
Sean’s Show saw the titular Irish comedian finding his flat turned into the set for a sitcom … and Laurie Pike and Bill Judkins returned to host Made in the USA.
May …
Tony Slattery hosted the risible Music Game … and Female Parts broke new ground in its frank treatment of women’s issues.
June …
Late night satirical discussion show A Stab in the Dark featured David Baddiel … while comedy pilots of varying quality, including The Weekenders starring Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, were aired in the anthology series Bunch of Five.
August …
Cult Australian spoof comedy Let the Blood Run Free charted life in St Christopher’s Hospital.
September …
Classic archive editions of The Steve Allen Show were aired for the first time in Britain … The Big Breakfast became C4′s new breakfast service … while Bill Cosby drawled his way through the first of many rounds of You Bet Your Life.
November …
The status of modern business and industry was profiled in High Interest.
December …
Jonathan Ross explored kitsch cultures of the US in Americana … nothing very much happened in A Paul Morley Show … and Peter Cook provided the voice for Roger Mellie.
Finales
The Channel Four Daily
“We researched it carefully and promoted it widely,” concluded Michael Grade, “the only problem was that virtually nobody watched it.” Mindful of how Channel 4′s financial status was shortly to change – it would be selling its own advertising for the first time – Grade conceded a programme like The Channel Four Daily was not going to be profitable to keep on the air in the long term. For all its peculiar appeal, eccentric mix of features and charismatic presenting team (now based around Dermot Murnaghan and Caroline Righton), in the end its ratings of roughly a quarter of a million meant the axe had to fall. Its appeal had been curious. Those who watched The Channel Four Daily always watched it. It was an addictive experience, made all the more enticing by the knowledge that you were one of a relative tiny minority tuning in and enjoying it. It made way for The Big Breakfast, a show that, during its initial 18 months at least, was one of the best things on television; nevertheless, despite being gently mocked to this day, The Channel Four Daily still pulled in on average a larger audience than that of current C4 breakfast service RI:SE.
Misc …
The Brain Game came live from Canary Wharf, was hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, and featured hundreds of celebrities competing against each other for charity … to celebrate the opening of Documenta IX, the world’s largest exhibition of contemporary art, an eight-hour sequence of programmes under the banner D-Night was broadcast on 13 June … the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in South America was commemorated in Goodbye Columbus from 8pm to 4am on 10 October … and the history of TV’s “god slot” was celebrated on 26 December in God on the Box.
On Screen
Tony Slattery
1992 was the peak of Tony Slattery’s particularly grating ubiquity. He’d already replaced John Sessions as the sole surviving, never-changing member of the Whose Line … team. His high-profile but hollow spin-off venture with fellow contestant Mike McShane, S & M, had ended the previous Christmas. Now there was even a move onto the big screen in the shape of Peter’s Friends, a film graced by the unwelcome appearance of his bare arse. But the more projects he became involved with, the less tenable and bearable Slattery’s “act” became. This process accelerated dramatically during his tenure as host of The Music Game, a role that seemed to mostly involve quizzing Steve Wright about Rimsky-Korsakov and making gags about ejaculation. Almost at the same time he popped up in the slight ITV comedy That’s Love, a desperately unfunny effort flung out by a cash-strapped TVS months away from losing their licence. This ascent to a dizzying summit of irritation was surprising in its verve and remorselessness; but even more surprising would be how quickly it all unravelled. After an attempt at big-time ITV sitcom stardom – Just a Gigolo – registered little impact, Slattery would rapidly lose his predominance on C4, and come ’97 he would be reduced to trotting out knob jokes on Channel 5.
TV Heaven
Nostalgia telly was the last boom genre of the 1990s, spawning a cycle of I Love, Top Tens and The 100 Greatest …. Yet their antecedent lies back at the start of the decade, in the shape of the illustrious TV Heaven. This was a masterpiece of programming, excellently sequenced and researched, that stood out like a welcoming hearthside fire amongst an icy wilderness of post-’80s light entertainment and variety. Writing in the NME, Andrew Collins cannily observed how it should’ve been “no surprise that recession-hit telly has turned to its own back catalogue for a morale boost.” Yet the opportunity to see 13 consecutively weekly Saturday nights brimming with archive classics and obscurities was still a rare and nourishing treat. Frank Muir hosted – a perfect choice, and who struck just the right combination of wry detachment and sincere passion at the shows he was introducing. And what a line-up, from The Strange World Of Gurney Slade to World In Action. TV Heaven was a celebration of historic television for what it was, not for what it represented in contemporary world; and it was a tribute accessible to all.
Off Screen
• It was hoped that Channel 4 would be able to start showing programmes in widescreen as early as 1995.
• In June Sir Michael Bishop was announced as the new C4 chairman, replacing Sir Richard Attenborough.
• The channel joined forces with BBC2 to screen 24 hours of the opera Tosca in July at the locations and times stipulated by its composer Puccini. Costing £3.8m, the production it had a potential worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
• C4 and Box Productions were fined £75,000 for contempt of court in July in a case brought against them by the RUC over their refusal to name the source of allegations made in the Dispatches programme “The Committee”.
• In August the channel defeated the first libel action the station had taken to trial in its history. Jani Allan had claimed that Nick Broomfield’s documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife had depicted her as a “woman of easy virtue”.
Four-Words
“November 1992 may be a time for celebration at Channel 4, but I prefer to look forward. We are not denying the chance to mark the tenth anniversary with a few of our friends, but our main aim is to succeed in our new financial and constitutional status from 1 January 1993. Enough celestial time-travelling for one year already. We are proud of our reputation as one of the most efficient broadcasting operations in the world. We do not intend to lose that reputation. Channel 4 is the best channel to watch, the best place to work and the best place to bring your projects – that is our continuing ambition.”
- Michael Grade, 02/11/92
“During its first ten years Film on Four may not have produced a renaissance, but it has played a major part in ensuring the continuation of a British film industry by commissioning and helping to finance work that might not otherwise find sufficient funding in these beleaguered times.”
- Geoff Andrews, Time Out
My Favourite Channel 4 Moment …
GBH (1991)
The arrival of GBH in the summer of 1991 almost passed me by. Doubtless, The Guardian was full of it, devoting two or even three pages to its imminent arrival, however all I recall is hearing something about the fact that the main character – Michael Murray – was supposedly based on Derek Hatton. The name “Alan Bleasdale” meant nothing to me then. Boys from the Blackstuff was not the kind of programme my family would have watched, and The Monocled Mutineer was probably scheduled against something really good so we missed it. Besides there was nothing in my life back then to tell me that Bleasdale was Britain’s greatest television playwright. Episode one of GBH was at first glance nothing more than a drama with a curiously long duration, and so I didn’t tune in.
But then, just days after the first episode had screened Channel 4, began screening a trailer that included press reaction to that opening night. Quotes from newspapers were intercut to turbulent scenes from the first episode, the net affect was that a veritable revolution appeared to be unfolding across our screens. The trailer was riveting. Whilst all the hyperbole and anticipation had passed me by, here in the space of 30 seconds, a television advertisement managed to impress upon me totally the quality of its product. I knew then irrefutably that I had to become a GBH consumer.
John Birt recently lamented “how few programmes over the whole life of Channel 4 are really going to go down in the chronicle of British broadcasting”. Whilst one might debate the validity of his observation, you can be assured that GBH will be one of those few celebrated and remembered. It may be debatable whether or not it surpassed every television drama that went before it (many would still point to The Singing Detective as the ultimate British television drama), but it is clear that since it’s transmission over 10 years ago it has yet to be surpassed by anything that has followed. Our Friends in the North, Hillsborough, Holding On and In a Land of Plenty have all won critical acclaim, but none of them have been able to match the visceral thrill of that big white text in inverted commas on a black background, cutting to it all kicking off and then to the voice of an announcer informing us of the date and the time of when the next episode of GBH will begin.
- Jack Kibble-White
| <1991 |
