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THE LITTLE WORLD OF DON CAMILLO to LYNN'S LOOK-IN
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BEFUDDLED BUFFOON driving instructor BRIAN MURHPY, playing himself, struggles to teach residents of A Quirky West Country Town the difference between mirror, signal and manoeuvre. AMANDA BARRIE, LINDA ROBSON and RICHARD "STARTIBARTFAST" VERNON among those failing to engage clutch, brain or viewers.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...FAIL
"ALL RIGHT, which one of you bitches is my mother?" Teeth'n'tinseltown trolloping from the typewriter of SHIRLEY "TERENCE" CONRAN. PHOEBE CATES got to swear in trailers, while ANGELA LANSBURY, HONOR BLACKMAN and TREVOR EVE looked discomfited.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...TITULAR GARMENT USUALLY OFF-SCREEN, HAVING JUST BEEN RENT ASUNDER
BRIAN DRAKE (do you see?), who is JOHN DUTTINE, finds himself playing mother hen to bunch of mildewing misfits including LORRAINE CHASE, a hitch-hiker, and TONY MILLAN, an ex-postman attempting round-the-world trip on top of giant inflatable ball. BRIAN MURPHY, again playing himself, tries to fathom point of their existence. He fails. So do we.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...FROM THE RIDDLESOME PEN OF PJ "SAPPHIRE AND STEEL" HAMMOND
LANCELOT LINK - SECRET CHIMP
(1960s)
ITV
OVER HERE we had the PG Tips chimps ("You hum it son, I'll play it"). Over there, however, dwelt secret agent Lancelot Link, an ape - with attitude! Beast was assisted by Mata Hairy (ho fucking ho), striving to rid the world of its most evil villains, which ran to a count, a duchess and others.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...IS THERE AN AMERICAN RSPCA?
LAND OF THE GIANTS
(1968-72)
IRWIN ALLEN
DOWNSIZED DERRING-DO from the Infernomeister, wherein Steve, Dan, Mark, Betty, two obnoxious kids (de rigeur in all US fantasy series) and the devious Fitzhugh crash their spaceship onto a planet which might be Earth where for no reason at all everyone is about 20 times bigger. GARY CONWAY and DON MATHESON were those warding off the big safety pins, buttons and pencil sharpeners, besides trying to escape the ever-present, ever-unconvinving "hand" which invariably scooped on or other of them up every episode.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."I'VE HEARD OF BEING CUT DOWN TO SIZE BUT..."
ROTTEN SPIN on the above, as a forest ranger (now there's a readymade hero figure for you) and his boring family somehow contrive to wander into a boring polystyrene prehistoric world with blokes in suits who reckon they're monsters.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...CO-STARRING RICHARD "JAWS" KIEL, A LIZARD, A "PYLON" AND A MONKEY BOY. NEXT!
LANGLEY BOTTOM
(1986)
YORKSHIRE
THE SAINTED BERNARD CRIBBINS took the reins for this short-lived rural rumpus as SETH RAVEN, cantankerous and interfering odd-job man in the titular "amusingly named" village.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...CO-STARRED LOTS OF CHOMPABLE EARS OF CORN
LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE
(1973-FOREVER)
BBC
OH LOOK, Compo tries to catch a glimpse of Nora Batty's night attire and then ends up in a bath on wheels careering down a hill. To the casual viewer, LOTSW seemed to take place half a mile down the road from the similarily libidinous fuelled antics of Arkwright in OPEN ALL HOURS. Indeed both series began transmission in the same year and both sprang forth from the pen of ROY CLARKE. Yet while only 27 episodes of 'HOURS were ever made, this has notched up about 127,556 editions, seemingly causing greater and greater offence each passing year, thanks only to its longevity. While the programme's occasional forays into philosophy were mildy entertaining (usually Foggy - a dapper BRIAN WILDE who quit when his name slipped down the running order in Radio Times - spouting forth about something to do with the eternal nature of the landscape, only for the moment to be ruined by Compo making some ill-timed gauche comment), pretty much the best thing about was its ace mournful harmonica theme tune, beloved of all university students in shared accommodation who've just blown their Student Grant on a harmonica as a means to demonstrate their "fashionable" non-conformity.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...WRINKLY STOCKING FETISHISTS START HERE
THE LATCHKEY CHILDREN
(1970/1980)
THAMES
THOSE DEPENDABLE boys down at Euston Road had two pops at this, the first a two-parter under the BOOKS TO ENJOY banner of adaptations. "A group of children, living in blocks of flats near the Thames Embankment, discover that their favourite tree is in one of the playgrounds attached to the flats is to be removed by the Council workmen. In its place they plan to construct a "simulated locomotive." The children organise a protest meeting." Ten years later came a six-part series of this blusterous statement about failing inner-cities peopled with ethnically diverse lanky teens whose parents were never home and who stole cars in-between kicking dirt off a thousand unwashed kerbstones. Good intentions perhaps inevitably compromised by endless finger-pointing, and crap acting.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...ALL-TOO HANDY PLOT RESOLUTION INVOLVED DISCOVERY OF...A THAMES TELEVISION CREW!
THE LATE LATE BREAKFAST SHOW
(1982-86)
BBC
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BOMBASTIC TEATIME behemoth which sprawled across half a decade before the BBC decided to "cancel this and all future editions of the programme. Tonight, instead of The Late Late Breakfast Show and Every Second Counts, we're now showing the feature film One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing". Noel would helm proceedings from a variety of none-more-80s pastel sofas, introducing, variously: MIKE SMITH on location at the sight of some "amazing stunt, never before attempted on British television", usually involving stock-car racing, fighting the world's tallest fire, or stock-car racing in the middle of the world's tallest fire; The Hit Squad, secret camera stuntery wherein a man's office gets rearranged while his back is turned; The Golden Egg Awards, basically a round-up of all the week's "bloopers" including, one week, the time Phillip Schofield took the whole of the network off the air (Phil, gamely, showed up to collect the award in, of course, jacket and jeans); big guests like The Bee Gees, Duran Duran (who pretended to be commissionaires, so that all the audience members had their tickets signed by the band, only then had to give them in) and Phil Collins; viewers' letters of the standard of "what's that brown cakey slab that seems to float in the sky on Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' video, is it a piece of toast?"; the never-ending search for Mr Puniverse; and of course Give It A Whirl, wherein one poor sod on the other end of a phone would be encouraged to try some zany physical stunt selected by the Whirly Wheel. Usually involving something "never before attempted on British television". Or again, after Michael Lush. JOHN PEEL was involved during the early days, before falling out with Noel after - yup - a stock-car racing stunt went wrong.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...TEXTBOOK EDMONDS TITLES: NOEL IS WOKEN FROM HIS SLUMBERS BY A NOEL-SHAPED ALARM CLOCK, "FLIES" ACROSS BREAKFAST TABLE COVERED IN NOEL-FACED OBJECTS, THEN ARRIVES IN STUDIO VIA CONVOLUTED JOURNEY IN NOEL-BRANDED ULTRA-FAST ULTRA-SHINY TRANSPORTATION INCLUDING HELICOPTER, SPORTS CAR, SPEEDBOAT AND ASSORTED "TELEVISION FIRSTS"
LAUGH??? I NEARLY PAID MY LICENCE FEE
(1984)
BBC
FUNNY HOW anything with the word "laugh" in the title singularly fails to elicit much in the way of such reaction among those it's intended to entertain. That's funny in a not-at-all-amusing sense. Here's you sequel to A KICK UP THE EIGHTIES, with little to redeem its existence save ROBBIE COLTRANE as Edgar Bloodlusten, a rather more gory version of Edgar Lustgarten ("The limbs had been severed from the body and were scattered around the room. The torso had been eviscerated and the intestines draped like so much dripping tinsel on the tree. The head hung by a thin sliver of flesh where, despite repeated blows with an axe, the corpse had not been decapitated. The Police were baffled: murder - or a clever suicide?")
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...DIE???
LAUGHS FROM HER MAJESTY'S
(1986)
LWT
WE'D WELCOME THEM.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...MISSING WORD CERTAINLY ISN'T 'THROAT'
NEVER SAW this one coming. Here's bloody WENDY CRAIG, playing, ooh, plucking something out of the air, a single mother, called Laura obviously, returning to Blighty after extended US sojourn to bring, hey, "disorder" into the life of her son Howard (GRAHAM SINCLAIR). Wisely cancelled after six episodes.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...SCRIPTWRITER WENDY STILL HAD THE CHEEK TO HIDE BEHIND EX-SMITHS GUITARIST NOM DE PLUME, THE SWINE
FOUR-WAY GRIM crime capers, with each hour-plus episode detailing, in sequence, the doings of a police inspector, a lawyer, a felon and a prison officer. Each revealed to be as bent and/or crap as the next man.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...TITULAR TWIN ATTRIBUTES SORELY LACKING
THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD
(1975)
BBC
NEITHER YOUR gung-ho RICHARD GREENE nonsense nor your mystical MICHAEL PRAED codswallop, this was a surprisingly gritty six-parter in the Sunday teatime spot. The scene where young Much is hanged by a lynch mob enraged by a murder for which Robin has been fitted up remains in the
memory.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...EARLY ROLE FOR DAVID "FORD PREFECT" DIXON AS PRINCE JOHN
THE LEGEND OF TIM TYLER
(1983)
MITTEL-EUROPEAN PROFUNDITY adopting the same English-narrator-talking-over-original-dialogue cheat as OSKAR, KINA AND THE LASER about a laughing boy and a rich baron in a castle who tries to steal his laugh. And the rest writes itself. For about 30 bloody episodes.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...VIEWER LAUGHTER ATTRIBUTE SORELY LACKING
LENNIE AND JERRY
(1978-80)
BBC
TWO FOR the price of none! Enervating end-of-the-pier effort from Punchliner LENNIE BENNETT and subsequent doleite JERRY STEVENS. Promoted, if you can believe it, as viable replacement for Morecambe & Wise. Except with one of them - Len - insisting wearing as little as possible for comic effect, such as a lime-green G-string, prompting pre-watershed jokes about "rhubarb".
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...PUNCHLINE ATTRIBUTE SORELY LACKING (OK, WE GET THE POINT - ED.)
THE LENNY HENRY SHOW
(1984-87)
BBC
THE ONE that went "That's right, I'm back, and it's not a repeat" even when it was. Delbert Wilkins, PC Ganga, Joshua "Katanga" Yarlog, old fart Deakus, Theophilus P Wildebeeste, thick bloke from Dudley, spoofs of DR WHO - Lenworth's finest hour.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...BUT A SMALL STEP, SADLY, TO COMMANDER HENRY'S DAY OUT IN DUDLEY TIME-INTERFACE GAME
SUNDAY MORNING positive programming for the disabled, featuring BRIAN RIX and some odd cartoon people.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE SEASIDE?"
LET'S PRETEND
(1982-85)
CENTRAL
ROTTEN REPLACEMENT for PIPKINS, wherein WAYNE JACKMAN and the like took an object regurgitated by a balsa wood whale, rehearsed a musical story around it. Then they performed it. Even though you'd already seen it. "And now it's time for you to watch our play. The story of...The King Who Liked Bananas."
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...NOW "AT AN END"
LET'S READ WITH BASIL BRUSH
(1980s)
ITV
DEFECTING TO ITV in hope of big money, or at least better guests than Our Kid, the fractious fox instead found himself lumbered with this educational gig, itself a hand-me-down from, of all things, another puppet. The ignominy. Still, Basil rose to the occasion by pitching his spiel a good notch above that of his predecessor, besides supplying a memorable theme song detailing precise movements of eager young children gathering at his feet: "I come into the classroom and there's a sudden hush; then all the kids jump up and say - 'Let's read with Basil Brush' Let's, Read, With, Ba-sil, Brush...Boom booooom!"
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...AIDED AND ABETTED THIS TIME BY UNKNOWN "MISTER", HOWARD WILLIAMS
LET'S READ WITH LENNY THE LION
(LATE 1970s)
ITV
VERY MUCH old school cod liver oil-esque educationalism, easily surpassed in entertainment value by the above, with doddery old ventriloquist TERRY HALL and eponymous mangy cat, both of who had already been around for bloody decades, trying to teach ver kids to shape up their vowels. Lion famously couldn't pronounce his 'r's (conveniently enough for Terry), so fat lot of fucking good that was in the classroom.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."NOW, YOU PUT YOUR FINGERS UNDER THE WORDS, AND YOU READ THEM!"
THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A SHE-DEVIL
(1986)
BBC
LIGHTHOUSE-BESIEGING, SURGERY-BAITING, Dr Who-shagging, wart-wielding epic ripped from a Fay Weldon novel with JULIE T WALLACE using powers mortal and otherwise to wreak revenge on DENNIS WATERMAN and PATRICIA HODGE.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...FILM SPIN-OFF FOUND TITLE ROLE TAKEN BY - ERK - ROSEANNE!
THE FIRST of Sir Dave's big budget quests through, under, above and beyond the world around us, which pretty much set the template for everything that followed: ambitious topics, blustering incidental music, breathtaking filming, and sentences which our man would begin while strolling through the parched scenery of one heat-ridden country...
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...ONLY TO CONCLUDE IN THE ICE-WRACKED WILDERNESS OF ANOTHER CONTINENT ALTOGETHER. BUT STILL WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT, NATURALLY.
LIFE WITHOUT GEORGE
(1987-89)
BBC
EPONYMOUS, ER, man buggers off from CAROL ROYLE (as made plain in wistful opening titles). SIMON CADELL tries to pull her before he came back. For three series.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...RONALD FRASER WAS THE SIR DENNIS FIGURE MAKING LIFE "HELL" BACK AT THE OFFICE
LIFT OFF WITH AYSHEA
(1969-74)
GRANADA
THIS IS more like it. Cheap and cheerful TOTP-baiting bonanza on t'other side, initially just called LIFT OFF and hosted by GRAHAM BONNEY and, of all people, WALLY WHYTON. But then, and a warm hand on her entrance please, came AYSHEA "UFO" BROUGH, hair-sprayed, hot-panted and ready to hoof with the best of them. Them, in this instance, being the likes of Sweet, Slade, Lieutenant Pigeon, Gilbert O'Sullivan and, erm, Peters and Lee. Team of dancers, similarly attired and equally attuned, present if not correct.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...AYSHEA ALSO PENNED BREATHLESS POP NEWS COLUMN IN LOOK-IN
LIFT OFF! WITH COPPERS AND CO!
(1987)
BBC
NO RELATION to your rug-cutting frug-promoting Ayshea affair, oh no. This was an appalling sketch shitathon coralled into existence every week by DAVID "COPPERS" COPPERFIELD. Based on LIFT OFF!, an earlier music and variety effort linked by Mat Irvine-style special effects "lift with a mind of its own", except now without the music, variety or indeed effort. The warnings were there: not one but two fucking exclamation marks in the title.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...UNFORTUNATE "CO" INCLUDED WENDY "FAX" LEAVESLEY AND SALLY DEWHURST
ONLY IN the 1980s. Where to start? Basically, a film which purported to ridicule the then-prevalent ligging culture (if culture isn't too generous a term for it), featuring a bloke (who may or may not be in BABYLON 5) who falls into a fountain in London. Swims about to some suitably Brian Eno noodling. And then resurfaces in a weird kind of parallel reality (bear with us) and embarks on a sort of social-climbing "six degrees of separation" type adventure, which involve him interviewing experts on etiquette (erm, FANNY CRADDOCK and APRIL ASHLEY) and embarrassingly gatecrashing social functions (it had all been pre-arranged) including one where BOB GELDOF turned up saying that he'd just seen a documentary about Ethiopia on the TV, and wasn't it terrible, and someone should do something about it. Best of all, it had STING in it. As Machiavelli. There is little more to say. Ends with Babylonbloke falling into another fountain and waking up where he started.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...GLUG
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE LIKELY LADS ?
(1973-4)
BBC
GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR rematch for heroes of scratchy 60s forerunner, both emanating from the knockabout nibs of DICK CLEMENT and IAN LA FRENAIS. The grouchy one (RODNEY "BASIL BRUSH" BEWES) and the cocky one (JAMES "ONLY WHEN I" BOLAM) get back together to find lives/landscape/loyalties all up-ended thanks to intervening years of permissiveness and "prices". Revered, over-fondly, but still a masterclass in sitcom basics. Inevitable film spin-off adopted the inevitable premise of packing everyone off on the inevitable package holiday.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."GET THAN DOWN YER WHILE IT'S WARM", "METAMORPHOSIS OF THE FROG", "YOU'RE JUST AT THE DAWN OF YOUR DISASTERS" ETC...
RAGGED STUDIO-BOUND videotape romp through the turn of the century life of the titular royal-bedding ragamuffin, played by a bony-cheeked bonny FRANCESCA ANNIS, who bribes, blags and bonks her way through 13 episodes and 60-odd years. A huge supporting cast do their best to get up her nose and under her skirt, including DON FELLOWS, PETER EGAN, DENIS LILL, PATRICK RYECART and DAVID GWILLIM, while back home ANTON ROGERS, ANTHONY HEAD and PEGGY ANN WOOD tut disapprovingly.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...PART OF A LATE 70S RASH OF TATTY TAPED POSH SAGAS, INCLUDING EDWARD THE SEVENTH AND EDWARD AND MRS SIMPSON
L! I! N! G! O! ran the sub-Ottawan theme tune to this half-remembered, half-arsed bingo-based Thursday night quiz, fronted by MARK "SON OF ROY" WALKER in a Top Man collarless suit. Lots of pulling out balls from pots and grids. Summer replacement for THE KRYPTON FACTOR. Probably.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...BASED ON US FORMAT AIRED HERE ON THE LONG LOST LIFESTYLE NETWORK
LITTLE AND LARGE
(1978-91)
BBC
FAT MAN dons comedy wig/glasses/oversized bowtie while thin man attempts to sing popular song on acoustic guitar. Thin man looks pissed off. Fat man laughs uproariously. Thin man attempts to resume song. Fat man dons second comedy wig/glasses/oversized bowtie while doing the world's worst impressions. Thin man looks pissed off again. Repeat ad nauseaum for almost 15 fucking years. The Beeb promoted this pair as, if you can believe it, the new MORECAMBE and WISE. Yup, the next new ones since the last ones (see LENNIE AND JERRY above). Amongst Eddie's armoury of vocalese: Deputy Dawg, Dave off MINDER, Zippy off RAINBOW, Tina Turner. Only decent joke involved litany of impersonations accompanying who's-this-starting-their-car hand gesture. Original title sequence featured animated versions of the pair parachuting into Television Centre, a bit like that bloke who illegally flew a light aircraft into Red Square. Reception in both cases uncannily similar.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."NO TIME TO BE YAWNING" LIED THE THEME SONG
LITTLE ARMADILLOS
(1984)
CHANNEL 4
LOW-KEY LARKERY in pretend London nightspot the Seal Club run by two Krayesque gangsters aka ex-CBTV dream team JIM SWEENEY and STEVE STEEN. TV set behind the bar utilised to cut to surreal sketches inbetween more conventinoal sitcom business. HELEN LEDERER was involved (minus ten points), as was DANIEL PEACOCK (plus three points) and MARK ARDEN (minus a million points).
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."LITTLE ARMADILLOS/MARCHING ACROSS THE FLOOR/I SWEAR I'LL NEVER DRINK NO MORE..."
LITTLE BIG TIME
(EARLY 1970s)
SOUTHERN
FREDDIE "DREAMERS" GARRITTY marshalled this music/talent/adventure show with audience participation. Convoluted set-up involved a sort of miniseries inside the actual variety show, Oliver In The Overworld, wherein dwelt various people dressed as machines (a grandfather clock, a "gearbox" who was a sort of Baldrick character) and a villain in an electric wheelchair. In one episode the hero's best mate was turned into a clock, and he accidentally messed up all the workings.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...NOT EVEN FREDDO'S CHARACTERISTIC MID-AIR SPLITS COULD DETRACT FROM THE BIZARRENESS
ESOTERIC, I.E. IFFY "animal living with human family" ITV situationism starring a baby elephant. Cartoon format but, crucially, not stop-frame, presumably for budgetary reasons. Instead, shot in a money-saving storyboarded style that was also popularised by ISSI NOHO, although some dynamism was afforded by the rostrum camera tracking across the frame at particularly dramatic moments. Otherwise, we're talking a sequence of static hand-drawn tableaux, folks. So what was the premise? Titular pachyderm "bit his mother's fountain pen and broke it in two" while having a bath. "The ink it squirted in the water, wow, and his mother's got a blue boy now." Evidently it wasn't water-solvent ink as the elephant was then lumbered with blue skin for the rest of the series, and, presumably the rest of his life.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
...AMPLY NARRATED BY WILLIE RUSHTON
LITTLE GREEN MAN
(EARLY 1980s)
ITV
NONSENSE-TALKING GREEN egg-shaped alien visits Earth and Sidney "Skeets" Keats, a generic suburban boy. Adventures ensue. Also a strange sun-shaped sidekick called Zoom-Zoom who could fly and render portions of his body invisible. Blessed by the lisping larynx of JON P'TWEE.
TV CREAM immortality rating -
..."SQUDLLIM-SQUIDDDLEURH-SQUURRUDIDIDUH!" "WELL, REALLY!"
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