The other day I was watching back an episode of the short-lived CITV series, Let's Roll with Roland Butter, starring the (in my opinion) underated Peter Cocks. My favourite episode in particular is the one where he learns about skateboarding.
I remember a pilot for a holiday type game show, called "Holiday of a lifeitme". Anneka rice hosted on BBC1, and the show saw two couples competing over various challenges at a holiday location.
A few months later, the pilot was morphed into a series, this time called "Passport", same format. The locations were almost always abroad, and included a Kenyan nature reserve, and Hong Kong!
I can't remember what the prize was for the couple who scored the most points at the end.
Another one springs to mind, the only edition of Up Pompeii! not made for the BBC. Further Up Pompeii! was made for the BBC, as an Easter Monday special in 1975. Some sixteen years later, LWT were commissioned by ITV to make another episode, with different writers, and a slight difference to the title, called "Further up Pompeii". No exclamation mark.
The show had moved on, and Frankie Howerd's character, Lurcio, was now in charge of his own group of people. Perhaps most memorable was the line, early on in the show, "We are not BC. We are not BBC".
The show had moved on, and Frankie Howerd's character, Lurcio, was now in charge of his own group of people. Perhaps most memorable was the line, early on in the show, "We are not BC. We are not BBC".
Thatw as about the only good line in it, mind. It was quite an odd commission - there had been a repeat run of Up Pompeii earlier that year which had been quite successful (it was the first time I saw it) and so LWT seemingly just decided to revive it. As you say, there were new writers and a completely different cast, and the whole thing was even more blatantly a Frankie Howerd stand-up routine than before.
Howerd's career is quite interesting in that he was always either a hugely respected and popular figure or a completely washed-up hasbeen, and there were periods when he was on TV all the time and then years when he did nothing at all, before yet another comeback. Happily he was probably as famous and popular as he ever was when he died.
When this edition of Further Up Pompeii was made, LWT were saying, at the time, they had hoped to make more. The idea was, rather than a full series, they would do occasional one offs, like the way Mr Bean was done. Frankie Howerd's death in 1992 sadly ended that idea. I just couldn't see anyone else performing the Lurcio role.
Back in the early 1990s (I think), there was a series on BBC2, which followed a group of people in their daily lives. From what I can remember, they stayed together in a house, like Big Brother, but there was no Big Brother person per se. However, all their daily lives were filmed, such as going to the supermarket, the hairdressers, the pub.
Apparently one person pulled out during the run, complaining that they had to phone up places in advance all the time, to make sure they could be filmed. Anyone know what the show was?
Back in the early 1990s (I think), there was a series on BBC2, which followed a group of people in their daily lives. From what I can remember, they stayed together in a house, like Big Brother, but there was no Big Brother person per se. However, all their daily lives were filmed, such as going to the supermarket, the hairdressers, the pub.
Apparently one person pulled out during the run, complaining that they had to phone up places in advance all the time, to make sure they could be filmed. Anyone know what the show was?
I attended a seminar at the Edinburgh TV Festival a few years later with former housemate Simon McKeown on the panel, by which point he was actually working as a TV producer himself.
There's a great review of it on my old stomping ground Offthetelly when BBC Choice repeated an episode a few years later - http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/index709f.html?p=6125 "If he felt that he was looking like a tit, Matt would begin to swear excessively and jump around or hold commercially-branded goods up to the camera, ensuring the footage became unusable."
Ellen Degeneres's sitcom before she came a talk show host. She was often joined by different acts/guests on her opening title sequence and there seems to be some bad continuity regarding the theme song when it is sung by a guest performer here!
Ellen Degeneres's sitcom before she came a talk show host. She was often joined by different acts/guests on her opening title sequence and there seems to be some bad continuity regarding the theme song when it is sung by a guest performer here!
Ellen Degeneres's sitcom before she came a talk show host. She was often joined by different acts/guests on her opening title sequence and there seems to be some bad continuity regarding the theme song when it is sung by a guest performer here!
I was looking on the ITV teletext section on TV Whirl, and was looking at a set of pages from 1999 from Granada. Teletext on 3 was looking at some of the best and worst shows of the 20th century, and it mentioned one which I can't remember.
The show, on BBC1, was called "The River", and marked the sitcom debut of the singer david Essex. He played a cockney lock-keeper, who fell for a Scottish barge owner. After six episodes, the show sank, apparently without a trace, into the river.