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I think it worked so much better than a straight laced version would have done.

So much in that clip - I fancy some Manor House cake! And yes, weird to see LWT programmes being credited, even if only visually...

I'm fascinated by that weird closing programme - I remember it being billed as "Close" in the TV Times but was way too young to have ever seen it. I suspect the "Athena International" in the end credits is the retailer that closed in the 1990s.

Odd co-incidence that Frost died a few hours after the first episode went out. He probably never saw it


Keyhole was such a poor shown in its later years, Frost really flogged it to death. The guests were so obscure even in the pre-reality TV days

Given Sir Frostie had just boarded a cruise ship (the new Cunard Queen Elizabeth IIRC) as a celebrity 'turn' to give two guest lectures when he passed away - unless he saw the edit beforehand, then he would not have seen the new series.

But, it's no wonder in the DS click headline that he 'gave his blessing' to the reboot. He (via his company Paradine Productions) owned the rights to the format.

To be honest I thought the guests were relatively obscure throughout the entire run, not just when it moved around on networks. I think their first "guest" in its original format on TV-am was Stirling Moss, before it was blown up into a full blown panel style show.

The Sky era may have been more lowbrow in terms of guests, indeed one episode which is on YouTube went into Jimmy Savile's house (but it has to be remembered he was highly popular and well in favour with everybody at the time), but outside of the Sky period I often thought, particularly when it went to BBC Daytime, they seemed to favour the obscure and the really obscure, presumably because they may be cheap to book.

Yes, and it would never have been commissioned as a straight reboot anyway, the whole point of it was to find a vehicle for Keith Lemon on ITV because none of the new formats they'd tried with him on the main channel like Lemonaid had worked out. It's the same as Stars In Their Eyes, that would never have been recommissioned as a straight singing show, it would have looked massively out of date alongside things like The Voice, it was commissioned as a Harry Hill vehicle.

It does sometimes go wrong, one obvious example was Dick and Dom's Ask The Family, which was never going to be like the original because it was Dick and Dom. But the Beeb messed it up by promoting it with a documentary about the whole series and even repeating some old episodes, so a load of nostalgic pensioners tuned in and expected it to be something it clearly wasn't going to be. I also remember a similar hoo-haa when BBC2 did Christmas Night With The Stars in 1994, and promoted it by referring back to the shows from the 60s and 70s so people who remembered that tuned in, only to find it starred Reeves and Mortimer, Alexei Sayle and Rab C Nesbitt and was full of swearing.

But as you say, they'd never bring Through The Keyhole back done straight. It was just there as an excuse for Keith Lemon to rummage around people's knicker drawers.







This forum is very good at being appalled at programmes that don't actually exist.

We're the self-righteous brothers

CBBC Morning Continuity from New Year's Day 2002, featuring what I believe are some of the earliest mentions of CBeebies and an in-direct reference to of the CBBC Channel on-screen, (although the channels themselves had been announced on November 20th, the previous year and six days later, the channel logos would be unveiled).

That does surprise me.

Also from New Year's Day 2002, the very first showings of the 2002 Channel 4 idents, produced the year prior; (note the brief glimpse of a VT clock on the first showing of "Lights" introducing The Hoobs!)

Nice find.
There was something lovely and simplistic about those idents that bring back fond memories. They’re not award winning in the way that the 2004+ idents were or as artsy as the 96-98 package but they get the message across clearly with a brilliantly crafted way of using the logo through all presentation. It also brings back a lot of memories of watching a lot of channel 4 back then: The Big Breakfast most mornings before school, Countdown (which my Nan loved), Hollyoaks, Friends, South Park, Frasier, Eurotrash, Big Brother and So & V Graham Norton to name a few.

A couple of observations;
In the third clip after the hoobs there is a basic advert for big brother where the eagle has landed... literally, it strikes me as odd as this would have been for applicants for the third series but feels more like the programme that hasn’t aired before.

The other is with the VT clock in clip two, why would it have a transmission period of up to 31/03/2003, or is it common practice when commissioning an Ident that you do so for a certain length?

Wholeheartedly agree, helps they were the first C4 idents I grew up with. As the 2000's dawned, they definitely beat the stuffing out of the offerings of the other terrestrial channels: (especially ITV1 and Channel Five by 2002), considering they were introduced in 1999, the idents and presentation haven't aged at all: (also being some of the first produced in widescreen) and could easily be mistaken for being from the early 2010's!

The VT clock also says the idents and presentation were mastered on 14/11/2001. In regards to the transmission period, I'm not sure, unless it meant they simply used different masters from 01/02/2003?