Shows that people forget or get lost in time

Yes, but I actually quite enjoyed the output in that summer, across BBC1 and BBC2 they had alternative comedy repeats five days a week - Monday KYTV, Tuesday French and Saunders, Wednesday Canned Carrott, Thursday A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Friday Alas Smith and Jones - and I watched them all. The Smith and Jones repeats were particularly interesting, actually, as they went right back to series one in 1984 which I'd never seen before. All kinds of obscurities got an outing that summer, old Wednesday Plays and everything, so it was quite interesting. The Radio Times put Dad's Army on the cover one week in July, though, ostensibly for its 25th anniversary, and it was a bit controversial and an admission they had nothing better to feature (wasn't even any new content for the anniversary, just more repeats). Mind you, they had a Dad's Army cover again last July.

In the book Fuzzy Monsters about Birt's BBC, it suggests that inside the Beeb they were admitting they couldn't afford to run a proper schedule all year round, and that on Saturdays repeats of The House of Eliot were barely getting two million viewers, although I question whether anything could have gone that low in 1993, summer Saturdays or no. Actually while entertaining I'm not sure about the accuracy of various bits of that book.

There was always a sensitivity about repeats in the summer, they always had loads more than ITV, and I remember in 1996 Alan Yentob pledged that there'd always been at least one new drama programme every Sunday of the year, which ITV had always been able to pretty much guarantee.

Two sports ones for you. Many people would regard the 2017/8 season as being the first time since 1997 that Channel 5 has shown a live rugby union match. But, in 1999, Channel 5 showed a Scotland v Barbarians match live from Murrayfield, on a Wednesday evening. It was weird that Channel 5 got the rights instead of the BBC, but apparently the SRU offered the rights to Channel 5.

Also, the final season of football before the Premier league, 1991/2, saw Leeds United crowned as champions. I seem to recall looking on the BBC Ceefax listings, at the regional variations one Sunday, a couple of weeks after the season finished. BBC2 Yorkshire (probably still BBC North) showed a special programme looking at Leeds United winning the title. I would suspect that this would largely be interviews with the players, still photos, and perhaps coverage of the FA Cup, as that season ITV had the top flight rights. Does anyone remember that programme, what it was called, and what it consisted of?

Half of an episode of CITV's Wyswiyg from 1992:


So popular it lasted for five episodes. Over six months. Mondays at 4:15 apparently, October 1992 to April 1993.

I have no idea what is going on apart from the fact its a Blockbusters spoof that's interrupted by an alien broadcast. I think.

Not Clive Mantle's finest hour.

Yes it was quite good, although the comedy is best described as 'gentle'. The theme music is very much of its time, David Essex singing over a synth. It has had a DVD release of which I think we probably own one of the few copies as my wife was a big fan of the programme. Not sure whether that's because she's always liked boats and canals, or she has a thing for David Essex

Spotted on Greggle's Channel (because YouTube recommended for you works in mysterious ways):


Who Dares Wins ran for four series on Channel 4 from 1983 and used many of the writers that previously featured on Not The Nine O'Clock News. For some reason a "best of" was cobbled together and thrown out on ITV as a one-off.

Greggles claimed it's been "wped" (think he means wiped), but I can't find any evidence to the contrary though its plausible the production company (Holmes Associates) no longer exists and if that's the case its anybody's guess who has the rights.

If Who Dares Wins still exists - bet all the money I have, that the masters and the rights are with Hattrick Productions.

Good call!

With 63 up airing this week on ITV, I can recall once 21 years ago, when the BBC aired a programme, called "7 up USA", which featured some children, aged 7, in the same scheme as the UK 7 up series etc. But, I've never seen 14 up USA, or 21 up USA since.

And the reason why it was on the BBC? Well, 21 years ago, ITV declined to show the 42 up programmes, for reasons never established, and so the BBC showed them instead.

I believe the reason 42 Up was on BBC One was because Granada wanted the ITV network to show the American and Russian Up series and they refused which lead to Granada taking it to the BBC.

I think 49 Up's return to ITV was largely due to it coinciding with ITV 50, and by 2012 it felt more in keeping with something the network would do again.

There was also 7 Up 2000 which rebooted the series for the millennium. I think that's still going on BBC One.

It is indeed, in that they did follow-up programmes in 2007 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007zylb - and 2014 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gvb52 - and presumably there'll be another one in 2021. That said, it's never really captured the imagination, it probably didn't help that the first one back in 2000 was on about three weeks after Child Of Our Time which, although more concerned with medical matters, seemed to be going at very much the same kind of thing.

In any case, I did watch the programmes in 2007 and 2014, and perhaps one of the other problems is that, certainly in 2007, all the participants seemed incredibly well-adjusted and were having a great time, which was nice to see but it didn't really generate much tension or excitement.

As for the USA, Russian (and South African) spin-offs, I'm certain all of those began on ITV in the early nineties, shown in the Tuesday 10.40 slot that was ITV's regular documentary slot for many years. When 42 Up moved to the Beeb, so did the spin-offs, and they showed 14 Up for all three - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1998-07-26#at-22.25, https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1998-07-29#at-22.30, https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1999-06-06#at-22.45 - but as you can see those are the only showings in Genome (there's nothing for 21 Up), and I can't remember if ITV showed anything.

As mentioned, 42 Up was on the Beeb, seemingly ITV just didn't fancy it at the time but it seems like they instantly regretted it, because on New Year's Eve 1999 they did a programme called Many Happy Returns which did a similar kind of thing with the idea they'd go back to them every five years, but I don't think they ever did that ever again. When 49 Up came around they were well up for it again.