Shows that people forget or get lost in time

DJ Kat would be remembered certainly by anyone who had pre-1989 Sky Channel. It actually survived the launch of Sky Television on Astra (though Linda de Mol didn’t - in truth the show was massively revamped at that point). It ran on in various versions until 1995. It had a sister strand at weekends called Fun Factory, which also survived the transition to Astra (though the post 1989 version only really retained the name and ditched all the continuity).

There was a clip on TV Ark of the intro to Cool Cube from 1991, which was made by Granada and filmed around their studios. Actually began on the BSB Galaxy channel, but was one of the few things that (briefly) survived the merger.

Being made by Granada I imagine it's one of the few BSB shows that probably survives in the archives (along with Jupiter Moon), unlike the Noel Gay and John Gau programmes.

There's a great review of The Christmas Show on my old stomping ground of Offthetelly...
http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/indexad03.html?p=4545

As mentioned, The Christmas Show didn't really have anything to do with Christmas at all, it was another in the seemingly endless attempts at the time to find something for the 5pm slot which took an age to fill, and was just a bunch of stuff that happened to take advantage of the fact there were a load of people around with books and records to plug for the Christmas market.

I've mentioned in this thread before about Channel 5's Havakazoo show which aired on Milkshake in the early days.

Some episodes have finally popped up online



Also interesting to note that Joe Greco has written about his time puppeteering on the show (among many others) here.

https://joegreco.wixsite.com/actor/puppeteer

and an interview with Jason Maverick has appeared here

http://jackremembersthings.blogspot.com/2018/10/jack-interviews-jason-maverick-from.html

From Channel 5's opening night, I remember "Hospital", a one off comedy set in a hospital. The Rugby Union player Ben Clarke made a credited cameo appearance, dressed in his then club kit of Richmond.

ISTR Hospital was dreadful, but "Beyond Fear", a British film made for television was pretty good and pulled in a decent audience (1.7m according to Wikipedia). It was a dramatisation of the the kidnap of estate agent Stephanie Slater (played by Gina McKee) by convicted murderer Michael Sams (Sylvester McCoy). I've never seen it repeated.

However, I think I gave The Jack Docherty show about 10 minutes at most before reaching for the remote.

Wiki also suggests True Entertainment repeated Beyond Fear at some point after 2009 when that network launched, though you'd probably be forgiven for not noticing.

I remember quite liking Hospital myself. Had an all star cast, most of which have probably never made anything for channel 5 since.

Well, there was a follow-up, the similarly-themed Hotel!, which then sat on the shelf for months and months.

I quite enjoyed it, you could certainly argue that like The Comic Strip on C4 it effectively set out the channel's stall on its first night. Everyone forgets comedy was a big part of the early C5 schedules and they stripped comedy shows every night at 11.40 for the first few months. Of those, The Comedy Store and Club Class were bog-standard stand-up shows (although the latter emphasised black stand-ups) and Tibs and Fibs was a bloody awful medical-themed panel show.

The two most interesting shows were Bring Me The Head of Light Entertainment and We Know Where You Live. The former was a panel show, produced by Anglia and indeed filmed in Norwich, which was devised by Lee Hurst but was basically I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on the telly. Hurst was one of the captains, alongside Fred Macaualey, and Graham Norton hosted, and it was an entertaining half hour, and lasted a couple of series, although by the end all three regulars had left, with the Canadian comedian Sean Cullen taking over as host.

And We Know Where You Live was a sketch show which is most famous now for its stellar cast, including Fiona Allen, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Amanda Holden and Simon Pegg, and they repeated it a few years later when they'd all become incredibly famous. It wasn't very good, though, filmed on a microscopic budget, but the producers went on to make a similar show for BBC2 called Bruiser which, like that show, had a cast which went on to become very famous - Olivia Colman, Martin Freeman, David Mitchell, Robert Webb - and, like that show, wasn't very good.

Anyway, when all those C5 comedy shows ended their runs after three months, that was it for the regular comedy slot and the following week Prisoner Cell Block H was there every night instead. Most of the shows came back but all over the schedule and there was never a regular comedy slot on C5 after that.

Channel 5 made good use of its shareholders' production companies in the early days. A lot of shows were made at Anglia & Thames.

Thames/Grundy seemed to make most of Channel 5's early output.

Usually made at Stephen St by many people that were Thames staffers before they lost the franchise.

Quite a lot was made by Anglia. The Wright Stuff was initially made there along with some of the programmes already mentioned. And Havakazoo, Dappledown Farm and The Mag were provided by Meridian (although I think Havakazoo was made in Norwich)