JA
Earlier this year someone sent me every TOTP from 1993-1998, and the 1993 episodes are indeed very poor. Just two presenters- Dortie and Franklin- alternating, no miming, plenty of not brilliant acts, and half of the links are out of vision, it feels very, very poor. Amazing how quickly it picks up- Ric Blaxill's first show feels a massive step up from what went before, and it only improved from there.
The 1998 episodes feel quite dull too, as you said consisting of performances recorded at different times strung together, so it doesn't even have the feeling of them all being there in the studio, and I'm not sure I agree with him all but getting rid of videos too- it means plenty of songs never appeared, and if a song had a lengthy run at Number 1 (like Cher's Beleive) you just see the same performance week after week, whereas showing the video once or twice would at least have added variety.
Also doesn't help that towards the end of Cowey's era it seemed to be Jamie Theakston most weeks- looking at popscene he could present 4 or 5 shows in a row (it seems the only other time that happened before then was Dortie & Franklin presenting the first 5 shows of the 1991 revamp, and Miek Smith & Gary Davies doing 4 consecutive shows in September/October 1987). Though in the Andi Peters era it was pretty much all they had- Tim Kash for most of the first year, and then Fearne Cotton and/or Reggie Yates most weeks after that. I much prefer a bigger variation in presenters.
In fact you could argue that Pops was pretty much destined from the axe since 1991, so it's remarkable that it managed to carry on for another fifteen years. Everyone slags off Andi Peters for destroying it but it was a basket case before then and although clearly there were some very bad bits under his reign, it least it seemed a bit of a spectacle and it knew it was an entertainment show. The worst eras of Pops as far as I'm concerned are the early nineties no miming era under Stan Appel when it skewed really old and was full of people who Really Could Sing and was utterly tedious, and the latter part of the Chris Cowey era. I was actually quite excited in the early days of Cowey's reign because there was lots of quite imaginative presentation and it felt a bit like the Michael Hurll era we're seeing now, but after about a year there were no new ideas at all and it became such a dull never-changing affair, just stringing together pre-recorded performances.
Earlier this year someone sent me every TOTP from 1993-1998, and the 1993 episodes are indeed very poor. Just two presenters- Dortie and Franklin- alternating, no miming, plenty of not brilliant acts, and half of the links are out of vision, it feels very, very poor. Amazing how quickly it picks up- Ric Blaxill's first show feels a massive step up from what went before, and it only improved from there.
The 1998 episodes feel quite dull too, as you said consisting of performances recorded at different times strung together, so it doesn't even have the feeling of them all being there in the studio, and I'm not sure I agree with him all but getting rid of videos too- it means plenty of songs never appeared, and if a song had a lengthy run at Number 1 (like Cher's Beleive) you just see the same performance week after week, whereas showing the video once or twice would at least have added variety.
Also doesn't help that towards the end of Cowey's era it seemed to be Jamie Theakston most weeks- looking at popscene he could present 4 or 5 shows in a row (it seems the only other time that happened before then was Dortie & Franklin presenting the first 5 shows of the 1991 revamp, and Miek Smith & Gary Davies doing 4 consecutive shows in September/October 1987). Though in the Andi Peters era it was pretty much all they had- Tim Kash for most of the first year, and then Fearne Cotton and/or Reggie Yates most weeks after that. I much prefer a bigger variation in presenters.
