Shows that people forget or get lost in time

Talking of obscure channels, does anyone else remember Nuts TV? Used to go out 9pm to 1am with things like Britain's Fittest Barmaid and Book At Bedtime with Lucy Pinder. OJ Borg was one of the hosts, with Comedy Dave hosting the sport.

That was a very short lived idea, wasn't it? At least they tried! Lots of luve studio content... at first, until the money ran out.

Police Action Live! That was on a Saturday night in 1995, presented by Dermot Murnaghan*, and it was a bit controversial at the time because there were arguments that it was going to be trashy and exploitative - a year after the OJ Simpson car chase which was considered the ultimate in tabloid TV - and there was an interview with the producer in the Radio Times who said that if they were looking for thrills and spills they wouldn't have done it live as there was a good chance nothing much would happen when they were on air.

As it turns out, nothing much did happen, and I think the most memorable bit was when they spent a long time talking about how they'd be able to follow a chase via a helicopter, except that every time the car went under a bridge or slightly out of range of the chopper, the picture disappeared. On a personal level, the most exciting bit was that there was also a disturbance in a pub in London which, thrillingly, I'd actually visited the week before when I'd gone to London with the sixth form (my first proper "grown-up" trip to London).

A year later they tried the same thing again with Fire Live, but that was even less interesting.

* Dermot Murnaghan did quite a few Saturday night "events" on ITV around that time, in 1997 he presented the first and only ITV Champions of Sport Awards, which were an attempt to create a rival to Sports Personality of the Year, but completely flopped. There's a great piece about it in Giles Smith's book of his newspaper columns on sport on TV, saying that they spent an unsurprisingly large amount of time on F1 (which ITV had just got the rights to) and David Beckham had to sit in a studio in Manchester for the entire show just to smile when they announced he was nominated for an award. Smith said the show's priorities were summed up when Dermot went into a break saying "Coming up, music from Robbie Williams - and who's the best young sports star?".

That was sponsored by Barclaycard, that's all I can remember about it!

Yeah it was set in 'present day', though it wasn't always obvious. It was filmed in Crawshawbooth in Lancashire so would be more Granada based.

I've not had a single thought about Josie Smith for over a quarter of a century. Totally forgot it existed.

John Sullivan, who wrote Only Fools and Horses (and sung the theme tune!), also wrote another series, more of a drama. Set in a taxi company, it was called "Rides".

Also, back in 1983 (I think), Channel 4 showed a Disco Dancing championship, which was sponsored by Malibu.

I think Channel TV also used to show Disco Dancing contests as well.

From the CBBC staple, based on the books of the same name, they had a bash at bringing Alistair Fury to TV back in 2007. The show lasted only one series and was repeated off and on until 2012.

Was infamous for its opening sequence that was based on a Bob Dylan music video:


The accompanying website for the programme was still online in 2016 but has since disappeared. It used YouTube to house its videos for the website, which may have been a novelty at the time.

It was actually called Roger Roger...
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1996-08-26#at-21.00

Quite an odd series that, it had a pilot which seemed to go OK, followed by a series in January 1998 (without Neil Morrissey) which didn't do much. Then there was a second series in September 1999 which got low ratings, and that seemed to be it until a third series turned up in 2003, by which point everyone had forgotten about it. I get the feeling they might have let Sullivan do it in return for writing more episodes of Only Fools, clearly it was a bit of a pet project for him.

There was another series set in a cab firm called Rides, earlier in the nineties, but it was a drama about an all-women cab firm - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1992-02-18#at-21.30

Will Wyatt mentions it in his book about being Director of Television at the Beeb, when he talks about how hard it was to find a popular drama for BBC1 and how loads of them flopped, including that. He says that every scene in Rides ended with the characters giving each other "right on, sister" looks.



All the ITV regions used to show them, because the UK Disco Dancing Championships were a regular thing on ITV in the late seventies and eighties, and every region would do their own heat. The Yorkshire heat in 1979 presented by Simon Bates is a clip show staple, I remember first seeing it on In Bed With MeDinner but it turns up everywhere (it was on The Archiveologists, the BBC2 comedy show, a few months back), and on YouTube you can see heats from Ulster and, yes, Channel.

Looks like ITV palmed it off to Channel Four when they started up, they showed clips of that one (presented by Leeeeeeeee John) on the brilliant Adam and Joe's Fourmative Years compilation which marked C4's fifteenth anniversary in 1997. That was a great clip show, actually, it had all kinds of brilliant clips in it. Wish someone would put it on YouTube.

That was actually one of my favorite shows.

Eldorado? Got quite good towards the end.

Same with the reboot of Crossroads which suffered an equally short but highly turbulent ride.