Shows that people forget or get lost in time

Just thought of one - Scavengers, the mid-90s ITV Saturday night gameshow hosted by John Leslie. Seemed to be an attempt to cash in on the popularity of The Crystal Maze, with similar types of games, and maybe a little of Gladiators too. It was set on a spaceship and had a huge, very impressive and presumably incredibly expensive set but there was something about the show that didn't quite work.

Can't remember much about it but something tells me it took itself a bit too seriously and wasn't quite as fun as the shows it was trying to emulate. Either way, I'm pretty sure it flopped.

Does anyone remember The Live Six show from Sky One? I think it aired nightly around 1996/1997 and I believe it was hosted by Jenny Powell and Richard Orford.

Yes it was terrible. Far too complex and took itself far too seriously. I seem to remember you had to find fuel rods from amongst a load of space junk. Nobody really cared.

Was commissioned to fill the gap when Gladiators was off air. Apparently the second half of the series went out at 9:25am on Monday mornings ?!

Also see Ice Warriors which was basically Gladiators on ice. Another terrible flop.

Both of those were already on when Wise Up started. It was a good show, though, and there are a few clips online, but none of them feature the brilliant editing style that made the show so much fun. The opening titles just used to be the same few out-of-context clips from the show cycling around several times to make some weird "theme tune", and I vividly remember a feature where they compared theme parks and the entre feature was conducted in split screen. And every time they had an interviewee who said something odd they would freeze the picture and put a big "?" on screen. Really was a hugely creative bit of television. A bit later on they toned it down and it was never quite the same, the editing was such a huge part of the appeal, made it seem really anarchic.



And how, they commissioned two series and the second series (or maybe it was the second half of the first) turned up in some regions on Sunday afternoons, and in some regions on weekday mornings during the school holidays. It was massively po-faced which might have worked if they'd chosen someone other than John Leslie to do it, but fresh out of Blue Peter he wasn't convincing anyone.

I always used to enjoy It'll Never Work on CBBC - great use of a bit of Depeche Mode as the theme tune too!

According to the opening sequence for Scavengers it was in Dolby Surround too. Not quite sure how that worked in 1994, unless I suppose one was able to pipe the sound to a hi-fi or something?

Had this one knocking around for a while, but decided to dig it out from tape and recapture it mainly as it's a bit of a nice one for us pres lovers so it may be remembered better by us than the public. A Question of TV, from 2001. A single series spin-off from Question of Sport, which then swiftly faded into obscurity never to be spoken of again!

Did that morph into It's only tv but I like it?

Some kids shows

It'll never work


False or True (FoT)


Chocablock


And from ITV Saturday nights

Was that around the same time they were airing a Question of Pop? Didn't Noddy Holder and later Jamie Theakston host that?

It's not a 'classic show', but was anyone else amazed by how My Family just ran and ran in the 2000s despite its mediocrity? And then, as soon as it finished, everyone instantly forgot about it.

For someone whose shows were apparently repeated a lot in his heyday, I've never seen a Benny Hill programme actually scheduled on TV, apart from the documentaries like The Unforgettable.

God only knows why that ran for however many episodes it did. Apparently the lead cast were so unimpressed with the scripts towards the end they were on the verge of refusing to film and it really should have just died when Kris Marshall upped sticks and left.



I think the bulk of the problem with Benny Hill was his style of comedy that dated fairly quickly but apparently there are still international airings of The Benny Hill show that go on, but Granada Plus was the last time anything was aired in this country. Even Tommy Cooper went unaired in this country for many years but appears to have resurfaced on ITV4 of all places.

It might have been interesting to see if Hill would have gone on to do a Bob Monkhouse - go out of fashion and then come back in and a resurgence - if he hadn't died in 1992 that is on the same day, it is stated, he received a new contract from Central in the post.