Shows that people forget or get lost in time

The revamped mid-90s daytime on BBC One was pretty successful in that era. Change That, Can't Cook Wont Cook, Going For A Song, Style Challenge, Call My Bluff, The Really Useful Show etc. Almost all of them courtesy of BBC Pebble Mill.

This thread isn't working in my opinion, no time for any comments or memories, before it moves onto the next succession of YouTube links. Half the programmes mentioned could have been spun off into about 10 different new threads by now.

Yes, although this came out of an exceptionally poor period in the early nineties when Daytime UK and Anne and Nick were being completely thrashed by This Morning, the Beeb were absolutely miles behind. Can't Cook Won't Cook began in 1995 and it was actually the first show the Beeb had that actually did anything, I think it started beating The Time The Place which previously had never happened. So at the beginning of 1996 they had a revamp and moved it from 10am to 9.20 (with Breakfast News Extra before it) so it could get one jump ahead of ITV who of course started programmes at 9.25.

Then in 1996 there was a radical revamp after Anne and Nick were axed. I remember this all seemed to start when Polly Toynbee did an article in the Radio Times about how bad daytime BBC1 was, which got picked up in all the papers and for a few days the state of daytime telly became a bit of a national talking point. So after Anne and Nick were axed they decided not to have one long This Morning-style show, but lots of half hour and hour long programmes instead, which is where we got things like Change That, Style Challenge and so on. And it took a while but eventually BBC1 turned it round and starting beating ITV.

I remember John Peel saying that he watched Style Challenge most days with the sound down while he was working on his show, and that he could never really work out the difference between the before and after.



Someone I know once switched on BBC Choice Scotland in its very early days and it wasn't broadcasting, so they phoned up BBC Scotland and asked why it wasn't on. They said "Oh, hang on a minute" and then it immediately appeared.



The owners of what? Russ Abbot? Is he being held hostage or something? I hope not, he lives quite near my uncle.

Actually surely Russ has become the least famous famous comedian of all time, given he was voted the funniest man of the eighties and the new Peter Sellers, and was a huge star at the time, nobody seems to remember his shows at all these days, even when things like Love Thy Neighbour are available on DVD. I'm not saying anyone wants to see them, but you know what I mean.

I've probably said this before but Russ, alongside Little and Large, were the first comedians I realised whose careers were going down the toilet. I remember in 1991 Russ' series got demoted from Saturday to Friday and I knew that meant he was on his way out, and indeed that was his last series. Similarly even as a stupid kid I noticed that Little and Large's series that year had clearly had a massive budget cut and there was so little enthusiasm about it.



I used to love those copycat ITV things, as you say Better Homes was so blatantly just an attempt to do their own version of Changing Rooms, and then when Ground Force became popular they span it off into Better Gardens as well. Just the most blatant affair. That said, they were massively popular, just because people were so enthusiastic about the format - the same way Caught In The Act did so well despite being the worst programme ever made, just because people loved watching home video cock-ups. Doesn't really work these days, though, as Food Glorious Food pointed out, because the shows they're ripping off are on so frequently nobody needs a lookalike to replace it between series.

Thank goodness Polly Toynbee complained about BBC Daytime. BBC should be doing its own thing now coping ITV. Mind you is this part of the reason why we ended up with talk shows at 09.25 instead of gameshows?

Wait you used to be able to Phone BBC Scotland Directly? Its a shame you can't do that nowadays.

With Russ Abbot, I meant the controlled over the series. You never saw it one UK GOLD, of granada plus or anything like that, even Copy cats got a repeat back in the 90s! It's something to do with his management and who controls his actully series, hence why its never been repeated or put on DVD. Maybe ask you uncle to go around and ask for his DVD release, he might get the proper version.

Mind you the BBC fell out of favor with Russ, and then he switched to ITV and got two big budget shows then went back to BBC radio 2 and did 4 series on Radio. Dead Ringer has done the same Radio - TV - back on Radio..

I think he means Russ Abbot's Madhouse/The Russ Abbot Show (it changed name upon moving from ITV to the BBC). Who was the production company? Wikipedia doesn't say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russ_Abbot_Show

Of course it isn't working! One man's forgotten programme is another's cherished childhood memory. The whole thread is pointless!!

Yet it had 38 pages and in turns of traffic and etc it is working.

I believe it was LWT.

A couple of childrens shows, which I remember. Gran, which was from the Woodlands Animations stable, who also made Postman Pat. The show had many scenic similarities to Postman Pat. Also, was Stop Go, which was a Childrens BBC version of Stop Look Listen on ITV Schools, and later ITV Schools on 4. Here's a video with an edition of both.



And what about the crème de la crème? Pigeon Street!

Go on, sing along "If you lived, in Pigeon Street, here are the people you could meet...."

Doing It Up was originally a Meridian series featuring Pattie Coldwell renovating her house with her first husband Tony. Not sure if it's the same show.

Anyway, I know we're going off topic slightly but talking of how bad BBC mornings were in the mid-nineties, this remains one of my favourite junctions just because of the sheer Partridge-isms and general cheesy music!

Gotta love the announcer's real subtle shift from serious-to-ultra-cheery when he goes from Kilroy to Anne & Nick.

When first launched, Good Morning With Anne and Nick was ahead of This Morning in the ratings. It was only the last series after a revamp it lost the audience.