It had started to go downhill by season 4 (when the second titles were introduced too), but Season 5 was when the rot really started, when they totally changed the setting and the entire supporting cast, and even Harvey- I know she moved to college but surely they could have kept some of them. It also moved networks that season in the US from ABC to the WB, I wonder if they demanded some of the changes? They did bring Harvey back in season 6, but even then it was really only a supporting role, and he wasn't in most episodes even then. Then the final season when they dropped the aunts, then put her working in a music magazine as an excuse to have a musical guest star nearly every episode. They she left that job half way through the season and the setting changed again!
The DVDs are quite iffy too, largely due to it being CBS who for whatever reason seem to take the bare minimum effort of clearing commerical music on their DVDs (apparently the DVDs of Happy Days are exceptionally bad for this reason too), so plenty of abrubt scene cuts, music guest stars who you never hear singing, or scenes (especially montages) being overlaid with tinkly elevator music because they were too cheap to even try and clear it.
:-(
A former member
Daira has the some trouble, most of the time there managed to get around it but the scene in the van in the traffic jam doesnt work with that song,
Those old lottery draws being back memories, remember the Dream Number draw!
When the draws were axed it also meant that BBC One lost those music performances that you'd get. I never quite understood why seemingly at random you'd get guest music one week, none the next, yet the programme was always the same length.
I'm surprised inserting a live draw into a recorded game show always went without a hitch, either with a technical failure or the host being ill, either absent or noticeably ill, on the live bit.
It worked well enough when the shows were recorded the same day but the effect wasn't the same once they were recorded in bulk months in advance. I do agree BBC1 misses just having that guaranteed live element on a Saturday night outside of Strictly season.
Going way off topic but would be interesting to know if sales have been hit by the lack of airtime on BBC1. Camelot reported last week at being surprised that doubling the price and having a jackpot which is hardly ever won had hit ticket sales!
The writing was on the wall when they doubled ticket prices, promised bigger jackpots, and it became apparent the jackpot totals were pretty much unchanged. They well and truly shot themselves in the foot IMO.
I've seen a lot of TV adverts for the Health Lottery in recent weeks, clearly trying to pick up ground that the National Lottery has lost (and making a key point that they're still £1).
The National Lottery had quite a few changes over the years, I always did wonder if they would have continued to bother doing the live draws with the game show presenters had Fathers For Justice never happened - it must have been a pain ensuring the presenters looked as identical as possible to their recorded shows every week!
Although this is probably one of the most well remembered theme tunes of them all.
The slide before the ident in that video reminded me - Gordon Kennedy has appeared in Casualty a couple of times lately - most recently in the 'one take' episode a few weeks back. Maybe he had a hankering for Saturday night BBC One again...
