Reminiscing The Big Breakfast

We probably should get back to the Big Breakfast but one last post as it was a really poor effort for Reg and Tony especially Reg and although they just said at the start of one episode he had resigned after the death of Emma Keane. I followed the Bill from 1999-2009 and really lost interest in it after the 2009 revamp which killed it. I felt Jonathan Young did take it back to basics from 2005-2009 and felt it more about the crimes rather than the officers. The few episodes I watched from 2009-2010 particularly the last few stories were really good but it felt like a different show.

Always the sign a show is on it's way out when it gets an unrecogniseable revamp - more often than not it seems.

Bringing it back on topic we've talked countless times about the two main revamps over the year which although perhaps misguided in 1996 and seemingly too much in 2001, I don't think were ever unrecogniseable.

I vaguely remember Zig and Zag visiting The Bill - I'm guessing it may be in the 1997/98 era rather than earlier when they began phasing them out and they rarely featured in the house but did start doing VTs on location.

This interview gets reposted from time to time but at the beginning of this particular upload show's Johnny and Denise in front of the French windows. I thought they moved away from the French windows at the beginning?

Johnny and Denise were always in front of the French windows, they'd gone back to them in January 1997 after the Rick and Sharron golden age was hastily revamped.

I remember those Spice Girls interviews, they were in my first week at university and I faithfully set my alarm every morning to watch them. And then fell asleep again.

They moved from being directly in front of the French windows at the start of their run in Sep 1997, to being partly in front of them but also with the door through to the hall visible behind them in Jan 1998. (Then moved back again a few months later when the mornings were lighter.)

Not always. There was a long period (with the decor you see in JasonB’s clip) where they were actually sat diagonally across the corner of the room with the windows behind Denise. In fact, I think it’s where they were mostly located during this brief mini-revamp, and it’s quite rare to see them in front of the windows with that decor. I think they mainly moved to hide the reflections on those modern doors during the darker hours. Similar to the issues the original Daybreak had. Those doors were leftovers from the 1996 relaunch, and were never designed to be sat in front of due to the large panels working like mirrors when it was dark outside and you were looking straight at them.

You can see a lot of clips from that era here:


Once they re(re!)vamped the house in 1998 and brought back the more traditional French windows, the smaller panels with white frames made the reflections less of an issue.

EDIT: What Otis said!

They actually brought back the more traditional style windows quite some time before they changed the rest of the living room.

The design of the 1998 French windows was different to the original 1992 windows which had less white lines. When they re-added lines to windows in 2001 they went back to the 1992 design.

Might be worth following this Instagram page which has some pictures i hadn't seen before. It also includes some shots of the brown house in full: https://www.instagram.com/brekkiememories/

The brown house:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKPE4_jHT4l/

Seeing a shot of the brown house taken from the sky has me wondering whether that might be the day they shot the 1998 titles. You can't actually see bricks painted on the house in any clip of the titles online and it's making me question whether you could in higher quality.

I had to go over to YouTube to check out the titles after seeing your comment Whataday! I see what you mean. However, when I look closely, on the shot where the house balloon before the explosion effect you can see some lines faintly.

It raises a question though; I assumed that the brown was the base and they painted the bricks on top of that, but was the brown the brick colour and the cement lines were painted on?

Can't see any brick work in this still from the titles:

Another shot here clearly shows the '96 windows on the canal side have been filled in:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLfDvkaFq-k/

I’ve taken this screenshot from this video:

There appears to be some lines to me.