Never did find out why Fun House ended as it was very successful and as I say ran for 10 years. Presumably it ended because of the change of controller of the service, which is sadly often the case for a lot of channels, not just individual strands.
Petswap was apparently paired with Twister, so they got a bargain of two crap shows for one. Brilliant!.
I have a feeling it was a cost cutting measure, by ITV. Twister was alright but just looked cheap. Around the same time CITV budget was cut by nearly 20%.
Everybody remembers Andrew Norriss's other work, namely Brittas Empire, Bernard's Watch and the book that inspired the TV show Woof, but not Aquila. Despite the fact he wrote the book that the TV series was based on.
I remember it, That poor old woman It really should get a repeat.
Everybody remembers Andrew Norriss's other work, namely Brittas Empire, Bernard's Watch and the book that inspired the TV show Woof, but not Aqvila. Despite the fact he wrote the book that the TV series was based on.
I remember another series he wrote called Matt's Millions. About a boy who becomes a millionaire.
Another CITV show I can't believe seems to be forgotten despite it's success is Roger and The Rottentrolls. A hilarious series about a young boy who befriends a group of Trolls who live in 'Trollers Ghyl' in the Yorkshire Dales. I'm in my 20's and the series still makes me laugh out loud with it's surreal humour.
The show was so popular at the time it had two spin off shows. Combat Sheep (which aired on CBBC instead of CITV for some reason) and also the CITV pre-school series Ripley and Scuff.
In 1992, Thames Television made a 4 week long game show series, in the 0925-0955 slot, called "Your Number Please". Neil Buchanan hosted. The idea was there were 20 questions, and the small audience had to enter what they thought was the numerical answers on the keypad. 15 questions were for the audience, five for the viewers, who had to phone in their end total and the winner was picked at random every day.
In the case of the audience, the end correct numerical total was given, and whoever was closest to that got the prize money, or a share of it. All questions had a numerical value, such as "What is the missing number in the title of the game show something to 1" or "How many teams contested the 1991 Rugby World Cup" or "What is the number of the motorway that the Preston Bypass is located on"
For those wondering, the answers were 15, 16 and 6.. So the total was 37. So, if you go the total right, you got the money or a share. If no one got the right total, the people nearest it were the winners.
^^ A few 90s Cosgrave Hall productions tend to not be greatly remembered, even though I recall them to be quite decent; such as Victor & Hugo, Avenger Penguins and Fantom Cat.
There was The Foxbusters too which I'm in afan of, in fact I mostly know one of my closest friends as a result of us both liking this show!
I think the short lived Carlton Kids showed a fair few 80s/90s CITV cartoons (including some mentioned in this thread). Though as it was OnDigital only, nobody ever saw it! Rather sadly the CITV channel never really showed much retro stuff despite ITV plc's quite big archive to dig through (though they did have Wolves, Witches and Giants on a constant loop until recently), but then the CBBC channel haven't shown much older stuff since the first few years either.
Talking of kids shows, I seem to recall a show in the late 1980s on BBC1, called "Corners". I think kids wrote in, asking questions about things, and the presenters would have experts explain the answers, or have video reports with the answers.
A few forgotten BBC educational shows from the 90's
The Experimenter
- A series where a girl called Sarah teaches her friend XP (A supposed alien, really just a bloke in a really cheap sci-fi style outfit) about how various science related things work.
Space Ark
- A trippy animated series about some robots who live on a space ship orbiting Earth.
Science in Action
- Science investigation series featuring a woman called Stella who lived aboard a submarine.
Revisewise
- Key Stage 2 SATS programme. Similar in style to Bitesize. Used to air for years in the early hours of the morning. Strangely my 10 year old self enjoyed watching it when I couldn't sleep.
The GCSE Bitesize series all went out at 2am-4am on BBC Two as part of the Learning Zone. This was the version with the fish that I remember, though if I poke about on YouTube it looks like the fish was used for the Key Stage 3 programmes as well.
I can't remember what came first, the GCSE Bitesize or the lower year ones, suffice to say I know the GCSE ones were airing in the summer of 1998 as that was my GCSE year but it looks like by 2000 they'd extended the idea.
Those were a great series of programmes, very useful for revision and a great visual aid. Shame they don't do them anymore and more to the point shame the Learning Zone no longer exists, presentation wise it was the longest serving bastion of the 1997 look
* Anatole (co-produced with Nelvana and CBS)
* Birdz (co-produced with Nelvana and CBS)
* Dumb Bunnies (co-produced with Nelvana and CBS)
* Flying Rhino Junior High (co-produced with Nelvana and CBS)
* Mythic Warriors: Guardians of the Legend (co-produced with Nelvana and CBS)
I might be wrong, but I don't think any of those were even shown on CITV, the only one I can ever remember actually being shown in in the UK (outside of Scotland) was Flying Rhino Junior High- and that was on Cartoon Network!
Yeah, according to their Wikipedia articles, those were all on STV only, not networked.
The GCSE Bitesize series all went out at 2am-4am on BBC Two as part of the Learning Zone. This was the version with the fish that I remember, though if I poke about on YouTube it looks like the fish was used for the Key Stage 3 programmes as well.
I can't remember what came first, the GCSE Bitesize or the lower year ones, suffice to say I know the GCSE ones were airing in the summer of 1998 as that was my GCSE year but it looks like by 2000 they'd extended the idea.
Those were a great series of programmes, very useful for revision and a great visual aid. Shame they don't do them anymore and more to the point shame the Learning Zone no longer exists, presentation wise it was the longest serving bastion of the 1997 look
The GCSE ones came first, initially a small number of subjects, I think they started in 1998. I think they made more of them later, in the early days a lot was old footage of blokes with tweed jackets and elbow pads shown 'ironically' voiced over by someone trendy at the time, probably Zoe Ball or Mark Goodier or similar. Professor Brian Cox started voicing the science ones at some point.
It really should get a repeat.
