Shows that people forget or get lost in time

both really good show shame they are not around anymore do think that a lot of people do remember theses shows

Upstairs Downstairs did a Thomas and Sarah spin-off years back.

Spotted on the fabulous VideotapeFTW channel, something I don't recognise or remember but two presenters I do, considering they did other things:


Joe Greco (who appeared elsewhere on CITV in Spatz and is also a former Pink Windmill dancer) and future Nickelodeon (and Home Under The Hammer) presenter Lucy Alexander.

Looks like Fun House on location, and seems it only lasted five episodes because Thames lost its licence at the end of the year.

I remember the theme tune and logo but not much else so thanks for the upload tip

don't forget Lucy also presented milkshake IIRC and Joe was also in havakazoo

In the late 1980s, ITV showed a series of programmes, I think made my Granada or Central. The name escapes me, but I'll try and explain the format as best I can.

The studio was a grey floor, with blue and white tile effect walls. The presenter explained that, each week, the programme would look at something to do with a person, deciding whether they had been a success. The subject, themselves, were not present. It was done as if it was in a court, with a twelve person jury, and witnesses would come forward to put their evidence. At the end, the "jury" had to decide whether the case had been proven or not.

I can't even remember the name of the presenter, but one subject, I think, was Joan Collins, and there was a mix up in that they said, during the show, she wrote Hollywood Wives. In fact, it was her sister Jackie, and the announcer mentioned this over the end credits.

Can anyone else remember this show, which was a strange format, and not a success.

A childrens programme, shown on BBC2 on Sunday mornings, in the mid 1990s, called "As seen on TV". The idea was that, each programme would focus on a particular area of city, and three, or four children, would each present a 10 minute long video diary of something they done. One edition I recall was based around Newcastle Upon Tyne, and featured a blind child, who had aspirations to be a DJ, and was very good at it, and another who liked trains, and did the Tyne and Wear Metro challenge.

Jasper Carrott appeared in the 2002 "sitcom" All About Me, a British television sitcom about a multicultural family living in Birmingham. It was broadcast on BBC One from 2002 to 2004. The first series also starred Meera Syal who jumped ship after one series and was replaced by future EastEnders actress Nina Wadia.

Although the first series was pushed out onto video it somehow lasted three series overall, was aired and never seen or heard from again. So much so there appears to be absolutely no trace of it video wise online at all.

Meanwhile somebody for some reason decided to animate a Jasper Carrott audio skit - The Mole - which was shown on ITV Christmas 1984:

I thought the first series of All About Me was OK. The other two though...

Horses for courses. I wonder sometimes how certain sitcoms end up with more than two series despite not being very good. All About Me wasn't spectacular, granted, but somebody growing a new head between series seemed to upset all the dynamics. Mind you other sitcoms just refused to die - My Family was the obvious candidate for this, it ran for years, even the actors decided it had well and truly gone off the boil by its sixth or seventh series and it still somehow managed to rack up 11 series in all before somebody finally killed it off...

I know in the mid-late 90s the BBC went through a period of commissioning second series of sitcoms before the first had aired. Which means lots of bad sitcoms which flopped ended up with a second series. Usually flung out unpromoted in a graveyard slot.

Yes, this went out on Sunday mornings, and I remember reading at the time that they were deliberately using Sunday mornings as an experimental slot, so they also used it for Sub Zero, the live internet-based game show and Kids And Cops, which was a fully-fledged documentary about the police in Liverpool working with young people - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/1999-01-03#at-11.00

As Seen On TV won BAFTAs and the like, although in exactly the same slot on Channel Four was a very similar show in Wise Up, which also won loads of awards and got a lot of acclaim. There are a few clips on YouTube - https://youtu.be/KePSiEdu2wk - and this is the best one for illustrating its incredibly distinctive visual style, it really stood out and it made it feel like it was on the audience's side. I remember every time one of the interviewees said something odd, or didn't answer at all, they'd freeze the picture and put "?" on the screen. Great little touches like that.



Yes, never more so than in 1997 when they launched ten new sitcoms and they all pretty much flopped, but quite a few of them had second series - Chalk is the obvious one, but also A Prince Among Men with Chris Barrie, which got demoted to Sunday afternoons, and Keeping Mum which conveniently got "lost" during the 1998 World Cup and flung in every available slot.

It's quite common with comedy shows even to this day, I think, with things like Watson and Oliver. I sometimes think it's harder for a comedy show not to get a second series.

The most exciting thing about All About Me was the long sequence in episode one filmed at Cafe Rouge in Brindley Place in Birmingham, where I had my 21st birthday party when I was a student. Lost interest when there weren't any more scenes in there.