Imagine, if you will, a quiet summer evening at home; you're minding your own business when suddenly, and without warning, your doorbell rings. You open it to reveal Channel 4's very own fashion fascists Trinny and Susannah, who invite themselves in and go straight to your wardrobe, criticising your dress sense and snipping bits off your hair. Appalled at the intrusion, you ask them to leave and return to your armchair, when seconds later the door goes again. It's "Doctor" Gillian McKeith, who barges past you, turning out the contents of your fridge and replacing them with macrobiotic wood shavings and goats' yoghurt. And who's this? Jeremy Kyle and Vanessa Feltz waiting in the wings, hurling insults at your dysfunctional family. Alan Titchmarsh! In your front garden, dotting it with nasty little water features and Welsh slate chippings. The cheek of it! Having persuaded the unwelcome intruders to leave, you batten down the hatches, only to hear a shrieking cackle from your kitchen; Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins, the party guests from hell, have set up camp in your house for the week, with cameras following their every non-event.
I mean, you just wouldn't stand for any of it, would you? So why do millions let television's freakshow into their homes every night, making people feel so inadequate and so insecure about their dress sense and their weight, what to buy, what not to buy, what to think, and generally making life a misery for us all?
Well, once again I find myself turning to the more genteel days of television - material which I have recovered from old VHS tapes, old shows commercially released on DVD, or old British programmes which can be freely downloaded online if you have the knowhow. These days, I watch what I want, when I want it, but it's nothing you'll have seen in the last week - I'm more interested in the programmes that time forgot, the shows which never got repeated to death. You see, in a more innocent age, the television companies had better budgets with which to make diverse and entertaining comedy, drama and light entertainment programmes. In these days, the television industry is much less tightly regulated, which has allowed the budgets to be stripped bare in order to deliver the maximum return to shareholders. Add to the mix the fact that hundreds of channels are having to share out both the advertising revenue and the raw talent that used to belong to a handful of broadcasters, and you should start to realise why quality television has gone to the dogs.
So here are ten recent examples of what's been playing chez moi from the golden age of steam television over the last week or so. It's not all good - some of it is atrocious rubbish, in fact - but at least it's not loud, brash, in-yer-face, self-consciously post-ironic, interactive on the red button, in Dolby Surround, available in HD on the Plus One channel, and crucially, not made by a bunch of braying media students who might otherwise have made excellent doctors, plumbers, chefs, skilled tradespeople...
1) Crown Court: An Upward Fall (December 1977)
From the early experimental days of colour broadcasting comes Crown Court, a thrice-weekly courtroom drama played out by actors, with members of the public making up the jury. Usually, it was compelling drama, with occasionally hammy acting and lots of men with funny beards, but Christmas 1977 saw the production team enjoying a definite end-of-term joke in the form of "An Upward Fall". Written by absurdist playwright N.F.Simpson, this does for TV drama, more or less what Picasso did for clocks. It follows a fictional 73-day libel case concerning a comment made about an old people's home in the Cairngorms, which, bizarrely, has its only toilets sited 3,000 feet down at the foot of a mountain. Quite unlike the average Crown Court story, which would deal with a more run-of-the-mill case, the story introduces surreal elements into the plot along with a host of increasingly irrelevant witnesses, including a Sherpa forced to abandon his party in the Himalayas in order to travel to the UK to testify, and a bizarre appearance by a pre-EastEnders June Brown (Dot Cotton). Quite what the general public (and the studio jury) made of it is really anyone's guess.
Crown Court is shown daily on Red TV, Sky 186.
2) Nearest And Dearest (July 1968)
Hylda Baker and Jimmy Jewel play the hapless sibling pickled onion magnates in this rather vulgar sitcom from the dying days of black-and-white television. It's very much of its time; the unreconstructed humour is bawdy and occasionally sexist when viewed in a modern context, and much like "On The Buses", the actors literally bellow out their dialogue (Baker and Jewel were veterans of the music hall, and came from a background where they had to raise their voices to be heard over a guffawing audience.) In its favour, the warm Northern humour is infected with a certain charm, even if you can see the jokes coming a mile off. It even made me laugh out loud occasionally, which is more than you could say of, for example, the BBC's current top-rated sit-com "My Family".
Full series available on Network DVD
3) The Avengers: Mission: Highly Improbable (1967)
"In Color", naturally. This was the final proper Emma Peel-era episode, starring the perennially-stylish Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee as the duo who keep 1960s London swinging. In this delightfully madcap adventure, our heroes investigate a mad professor who has invented a machine which shrinks people to the size of dolls. It's sheer, unadulterated, harmless escapism, and the special effects surprisingly good for their time. It's especially noteworthy to see a young Nicholas Courtney playing the role of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to type, several years before the character had even been created.
The Avengers shows each Friday night on BBC Four.
4) Lucky Ladders (1991)
Downloaded purely for the novelty value. No, honestly. Lucky Ladders was a daily staple of the six months I spent out of work after leaving school, and the latest in a line of cheaply-made quiz shows screened by ITV as part of the behemoth daytime schedule that brought us Richard and Judy, weatherman Fred Talbot on a floating replica of the British Isles, and, later, the insultingly-lowbrow Supermarket Sweep. Anglia TV's top-rating word game was hosted by a balding Lennie Bennett from inside a succession of hideous golfing sweaters, with tacky prizes (the contestants' souvenir Lucky Ladders wristwatches are not as much Tag Heuer as Poundland) and a visually-distressing pastel-coloured set with neon trim which could cause you to physically vomit yourself all the way back to the 80s. But strip away Bennett's cheesy demeanour and you have a totally harmless parlour game requiring an element of skill, and one which all the family can play at home. A superb format; television will not see its like again.
5) Another Sunday and Sweet FA (Jan 1972)
Another slice of Granadaland in all its majesty, thanks largely to Michael Apted's signature "cinema verité" direction. Jack Rosenthal's tale about a Sunday morning football match is awash with his trademark wry humour, gentle cutting wit and, as you would expect, some extremely well-rounded characters, of which the over-zealous referee is a particular joy; by the end of the programme you can't decide whether you want to hit him or shake his hand. The all-star cast features Fred Feast and Joe Gladwin, while a young Anne Kirkbride (Coronation Street's Deirdre Barlow) puts in an early appearance as the leggy girlfriend of one of the players. It's not laugh-a-minute stuff, but it's strangely heartwarming and a very constructive way to while away an hour.
Available on Jack Rosenthal at ITV (Network DVD)
6) Dr. Who - The Sea Devils (May 1972)
Possibly Jon Pertwee's finest moment as the good Doctor. When prehistoric monsters start climbing out of the sea, the Doctor and Jo find themselves drawn into the investigation. An atmospheric soundtrack (created, of course, by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop on some prehistoric synths) helps to add tension to a fast-paced story with a strangely claustrophobic feel, and the action sequences are well filmed, although Colonel Trenchard's character is decidedly wooden and, frankly, the monsters look a bit silly in retrospect. Harmless '70s fun.
Available on BBC DVD
7) Unplugged with Bjork (1994)
This choice sits rather at odds with all the others on the list. In this hour-long MTV presentation, the diminutive Icelandic tackles songs from her debut album, replacing Nellee Hooper's gleaming techno-influenced production with ethereal acoustic sounds created using such instruments as a row of half-filled wine glasses and a lampshade. Many of the classic songs are radically re-invented, but they lose none of their mystique, and I defy you to not to keep your jaw from dropping during the heartbreakingly gorgeous 'Like Someone In Love'. Brilliant musicianship all round - a low-key spectacular.
8) The Dustbinmen (1969)
More Northern sitcommery from Jack Rosenthal. This often-overlooked show started out life as a one-off TV film about the 'hilarious' exploits of the Number Three refuse collection crew. Rosenthal's four lovable rogues may appear clichéd now (Winston, the football fanatic, is very irritating, while Eric, the dim Welshman, is actually quite an offensive caricature) but the show was an immediate hit with the public, and the programme was recommissioned, this time as a six-part sitcom. The re-casting of militant leader Cheese And Egg, now played by Bryan Pringle, was a masterstroke, but on the downside the humour was made far less subtle, perhaps to appeal to a lower demographic. The Dustbinmen can look and feel laboured at times, but it can still raise the odd smile, and it reveals a grimy snapshot of late-sixties Britain, with the trades unions and working-mens clubs still rampant and plentiful Watney's Red Barrel on tap.
Available on Network DVD
9) Pipkins (1973-81)
Whilst recovering from wisdom teeth surgery last month, I started watching daily lunchtime stories from this DVD, which I have bought for my niece to watch when she's older (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.) Pipkins has dated badly, but it demonstrates perfectly how, two generations ago, quality children's television could still be made on a shoestring budget. Okay, granted the puppets look very scruffy indeed (Hartley Hare is positively flea-ridden) but their characters have genuine depth, as well as a soupçon of humour to keep the adults entertained too. It's highly moralistic without ever being preachy, and topics of relevance, such as a death of a pet, a visit to the dentist or how to break the ice with a new neighbour, are dealt with using abundant humour and charm. My friends' 5-year-old twins love it, particularly the old ATV 'In Colour' logo at the start, which I also used to love at their age!
Available on - you guessed it
10) Sapphire and Steel (1978-82)
More from ATV's archives, and this time it's Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, the big-name stars of a very strange show indeed. Possibly mooted in the pre-planning stages as ITV's answer to Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel had several flaws, not least a microscopic budget for special effects, shaky camerawork and wobbly sets. The production team, however, turned these apparent weaknesses to huge advantage - rarely has television drama looked or felt so creepy. The stories, written by PJ Hammond and generally concerning the titular adventurers' attempts to rectify temporal anomalies in the present day, are very original and intelligently written, although sometimes whole 25-minute episodes pass by without any plot developments, such was the desire to pad them out to six or eight parts. The show's success wasn't helped greatly by 1979's ITV strike, and by the time the final series was shown, ITV had all but given up on it. To the casual viewer, Sapphire and Steel will look hugely dated and overlong (no more than Blake's Seven in my opinion, anyway) and some of the effects are very amateurish (the meat-monster in Assignment Three, in particular, will have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief) but there are as many strong points - the creeping shadows in Assignment Two and the Victorian children escaping from modified photographs in Assignment Four are actually quite terrifying. Best watched alone, in a cold room, last thing at night, with all the lights off.
Available, etc.
