BBC Genome Blog Feed

Name that cover star: 2

2016-05-18T09:00:00+00:00

It's time to plunder the front covers of the Radio Times again to see if you can spot the front page stars of the day.

Here is a clutch of five from back in 1976, a year ever famed for its very long, hot and parched summer. We've provided extracts from five covers and some Genome listings to help in your quest.

If you have a drought of inspiration then you can find the answers at the bottom of this post. And feel free to share any memories of TV and radio programmes from 40 years ago. Good luck!

You can also test your wits with the first edition of Name That Cover Star.

1) Three for the price of one: these giants of their day were captured in art for a December 1976 Radio Times cover promoting the year's review of Britain's achievements in sport. Name them from left to right.

2) This star was also captured by a Radio Times cover artist in November 1976 to promote "the first series of her outstanding career".

3) This distinguished and debonair thespian graced the front page of an August 1976 edition of Radio Times, marking a season of his work.

4) The shoes have it? This act made one of numerous appearances on the front cover of the Radio Times at the beginning of 1976 to herald their latest series.

5) The beautifully shaggy dog appears to be the cover star here, but in actual fact the owner was the focus of all the attention. A self-titled show featuring a host of other stars in February 1976 was the reason behind this special treatment.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Stumped? You can find out the answers here:

1) David Wilkie, James Hunt, John Curry

2) Shirley Bassey

3) Dirk Bogarde

4) Morecambe and Wise

5) Cilla Black

Test your television mettle

2016-02-10T10:00:00+00:00

We've been poking around in the picture archives and Genome listings to bring you another crop of television teasers to exercise your eyes and minds.

Each of the following five visual teasers features a star of the small screen or the movies. They may not appear as you know them best and be shown in the early parts of their careers. Take a punt and tell us your guesses at the bottom of the page.

To get closer to their identities, click on each link which takes you to the television listing - the right name will be in there somewhere. Happy hunting!

You can also try the first and second editions of our quizzes.

1) Who is this russet-haired gentleman from Scottish historical series The Borderers, which screened in 1968? He has since gone on to become a Knight of the realm and starred in countless memorable roles. You might see him at the moment in a senior role at the movies.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

2) This studio shot from 1974 is from a production of Greek tragedy Electra. Can you identify the actor being locked in an embrace? He has gone on to take on a host of lead TV roles, including pillars of the establishment.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

3) This actor, regularly a romantic lead and dashing hero on the big screen, goofed it up for 1993 one-off comedy Mama's Back, which starred Joan Collins.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

4) You'll find this actor fully in character as Sigmund Freud in an 1984 television drama about his life. His most famous character is suitably hirsute in the facial department - and also European.

Click here to find out his identity with Genome's help

5) A little behind-the-scenes moment from a popular 2005 costume drama. Our heavily draped star has appeared in a number of period pieces, including a recent epic.

Click here to find out her identity with Genome's help

Feel free to leave your guesses in the space below or share your thoughts about any of the programmes mentioned in our quiz!

The Sunday Post: Americana on the BBC

2015-11-29T10:00:00+00:00

Beam me up to the BBC... Star Trek arrived in 1969

To mark the period of Thanksgiving (hey, we do Black Friday now, so why not…), here are some reminiscences of the most notable US programming that has been shown on the BBC.

When the BBC television service started officially in November 1936, while most of the programmes were live, it was realised it would be helpful to allow resetting of studios if film material could be arranged to supplement the schedule.

Apart from cinema newsreels which were bought in to provide topical material, there was a shortage of alternative film content. Distributors of feature films were reluctant to co-operate with television, so very few features were seen on television in the early days.

One source that was willing to allow their material to be used however was the Walt Disney studio, which proved to be the beginning of a long relationship between that company and the BBC. Many Mickey Mouse and other Disney cartoons were to be shown between 1936 and 1939, when the service closed down – in fact the last programme to be transmitted in 1939 was, famously, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, Mickey’s Gala Premiere – which was then repeated on the day the television service resumed in 1946.

Gradually through the course of the 1940s and 1950s film companies relented a little, and more purchased material, including series made for television, was made available to the BBC. Perhaps the earliest full-length American film to be shown on British television was The Fighting Texan, an obscure Western made in 1937 and shown on BBC television in May 1939. Other films such as Whistling Bullets and Galloping Dynamite were also shown before the war, but it can safely be assumed that these were not particularly lucrative properties. Post-war, American cowboy films became one of the staples of daytime programming, and the adventures of Hopalong Cassidy and others were widely shown in the 50s, often as part of Children’s Television.

US film studios had initially been hostile to the new medium of television, but by the 1950s they saw they had more to gain by working with TV and producing material for it. With America’s huge landmass encompassing several time zones, it made sense to produce non-topical material such as comedy and drama on film, which also had the advantage of high production values.

There was simultaneously what has been described as a ‘golden age’ of live American television comedy and drama in the 1950s, with comedies such as The Honeymooners and single plays like Marty and Twelve Angry Men being produced.

US TV star Phil Silvers became a familiar face on the BBC

Most of the widely-exported US shows were filmed productions. Comedy greats such as Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy and its successors, and The Phil Silvers Show (better known as Sergeant Bilko) were among the early programmes which were successful on this side of the Atlantic as well as back home.

BBC television had to wait until the last day of 1962 to transmit The Lucy Show, but it had been showing Bilko since 1957. Silvers’ success with British audiences saw him interviewed for Alan Melville’s alphabetical showbiz magazine A-Z in 1959. There were selected repeats under the title The Best of Bilko in 1961, and specials featuring Silvers including The Phil Silvers Special were also purchased. The Phil Silvers Show, recognised as one of the greats of American comedy, was revived a number of times on BBC television, as late as 2004. Imported comedies continued into the 60s, including hits like The Dick van Dyke Show and Bewitched.

US drama series were also bought in by the early 50s, with George Raft series I’m the Law, shown from 1954. With the start of ITV, there was competition with the BBC over who would obtain which programme. Among the BBC’s purchases were the hugely popular courtroom drama Perry Mason, medical drama Dr. Kildare, and during the mid-60s spy boom, kitsch espionage series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (and its sequel The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.). A slightly less eccentric espionage series in the 70s was Mission Impossible.

While ITV was able to produce some of its own filmed series for both domestic and export markets, the BBC was confined for the time being to making part-videotaped shows, so its only real source of faster-paced, slicker drama material was America. As with the earliest bought-in US shows, Western series remained popular, with titles like Wagon Train, The Virginian, The High Chaparral and Alias Smith and Jones remaining a staple of BBC programming in the 60s and 70s, before America itself fell out of love with the Wild West.

One great hit that was emblematic of the 60s was comedy/music serial The Monkees. Based on the style pioneered by Dick Lester in the Beatles' first two feature films A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, the show featured a manufactured pop group who got into crazy adventures, punctuated by specially written pop songs – many of which charted very highly. Although this series was filmed in colour, the BBC could only show it in black and white at the time, as while the US networks were converting to colour by the mid-60s, the BBC only had limited colour transmission, on BBC2 from 1967, and on BBC1 (and ITV) in 1969.

One of the first programmes to benefit (for those viewers with colour sets) from the coming of colour to BBC1 was Star Trek. Originally produced from 1966 to 1968, the BBC began showing it in summer 1969 as a replacement for Doctor Who, now being reduced to six month-long seasons. Star Trek soon acquired a loyal audience, though the BBC regarded it as a family programme, but thought some of the episodes weren't suitable to be shown before the watershed.

The Radio Times heralded the start of Dallas spin-off Knots Landing with a big feature

A new crime series that began on BBC1 in 1967 was A Man Called Ironside (known in America simply as Ironside), and it was now possible to see this in colour. The 70s saw a number of memorable US police and private eye series bought by the BBC, including Kojak, The Rockford Files, Cannon and Starksy and Hutch.

These were often shown on peak time BBC1 and got big audiences, becoming cults and allowing their stars spin-off careers as recording artists in some cases. At one point BBC1 would alternate different shows in the same slot called The Detectives, rather than run a single series at a time. One highly successful US show picked up by BBC2 was the Depression-era family drama The Waltons, which gained a faithful audience with a mixture of humour, sentiment and likeable, plausible characters – as well as a novel way of rounding each episode off, with characters talking in voice-over as they prepared to go to sleep at night.

BBC2 also had a line in importing high quality comedy shows, such as brilliant Korean War show M*A*S*H, which benefited from the BBC choosing to use the laugh-track free version of the programme. That said, it was made on location, while studio-recorded programmes such as the soap-ish but well-written and acted Rhoda did have audience laughter it was from a live audience, like most home-made shows. It was seen as a daring experiment to have live studio audiences on filmed shows, with US executives worried that they might not laugh enough and in the right places.

US TV experimented with a new drama forms in the 70s too. The BBC did not pick up the feature length detective series like Columbo at first, but did but the new ‘mini-series’ on ‘difficult’ subjects – Roots, which told the story of the African slave trade, and Holocaust, which showed the plight of European Jews before and during the Second World War. Both these series faced accusations of turning serious subjects into soap opera, and though they did show the darker side of historical events there was still a temptation to provide a happy ending.

Towards the end of the 70s came the advent of the expensive, high-quality soap operas like Dallas, which gained a level of hype not seen before – the furore over ‘Who Shot J.R.?’ in 1980 was even covered on the News (which was an unusual event in those days).

Through succeeding decades, US shows kept on being used for some time as a ratings-grabbing way of filling schedules. Gradually this tendency was reined in, though cult hits like The X-Files, “Star Trek: The Next Generation and Twin Peaks still commanded an audience – usually on BBC2.

Gradually with the advent of Sky and other cable and satellite channels there was more competition to secure the rights to American programmes, and while certain programmes such as Family Guy are still shown on the main BBC channels (at least for the time being), American programming no longer features anything like as heavily in the schedules as it did in former decades.

Hundreds of US shows have been imported to the BBC over the decades, so we couldn't include them all in this post. Are there any you would like to mention? Please do so using the space below.

The Sunday Post: A Brush with fame

2015-11-22T10:00:00+00:00

Derek Fowlds has been one of Basil's many human sidekicks over the decades

Actor Ivan Owen's main claim to renown was as the original voice of children's favourite Basil Brush.

Born in 1927, he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art briefly and then worked in repertory theatre. Owen is first credited in Children’s Television in June 1954, where he and Peter Hawkins provided the voices for puppet series Billy Bean and his Funny Machine. During the 1955 series, Owen made an appearance in person playing “other parts” in children’s drama The Gordon Honour and some other small roles.

In 1957 Owen joined the voice cast of Toytown, making his first appearance in Playbox that year, hosted by Eamonn Andrews when he was also presenter of This is Your Life and What's My Line.

Playbox included an item called The Playbox Detective Agency, in which viewers were presented with a dramatised puzzle, from the 1958 series Owen was receiving star billing in follow-up The Six Clue Challenge as Inspector Bruce.

When he appeared in adult programmes he was still a minor player. Owen was also working extensively for ITV at this time, collaborating again with Peter Hawkins on The Adventures of Booty Mole, and voicing a dog called Fred Barker on Dog-Watch, Tuesday Rendezvous and the Five O’Clock Club during the early to mid-60s.

Birth of Basil

The final series of Playbox in 1963 did not feature Owen’s live-action character, and he returned to the world of the jobbing actor, making appearances in Compact and Mr Pastry’s Pet Shop for the BBC, and police drama Crime Sheet on ITV. But his future was to be in voice-work.

In 1962 Owen was cast in ITV series The Three Scampis, providing the voice for a character designed by Peter Firmin, an artist and art lecturer. The puppets in The Scampis were Basil Brush, a fox, and Spike McPike, a hedgehog, assisted by a human, Howard Williams.

The convention of Basil interacting with a person was to continue for the rest of his career. He made an immediate impact, his plummy accent reminiscent of comedian Terry-Thomas, with whom he shared similar dentition – a gap in his front teeth. The Three Scampis ran until 1965, after which Owen and Howard Williams made a single series of All at Sea, also for ITV. Owen had meantime also contributed voices to the obscure ITV puppet series Muskit and Dido.

Owen’s next partner was to be popular magician and TV personality David Nixon, when an offer came to co-star in a new BBC series. In 1967, children’s show Now for Nixon was aired, and for the first time he co-starred with Basil Brush. By this time Basil was receiving his own billing, and Ivan Owen elected to receive no credit, preserving the ‘illusion’ that Basil was his own man (or fox).

A few weeks after the end of that series came The Nixon Line, an early evening show that allowed slightly more sophisticated material. With Basil Brush now established as Nixon’s sidekick, the series ran until March 1968. Both Nixon and Basil starred in a Show of the Week on BBC2 in July, but that was to be their last appearance together for some time.

Basil's enduring popularity saw him on screen well into the noughties

Basil Brush started his own show in the traditional Crackerjack slot at five to five on a Friday afternoon. The first series of The Basil Brush Show debuted on 14th June 1968. Again scripted by George Martin, it was produced by Johnny Downes, and Basil was partnered by actor Rodney Bewes, late of The Likely Lads. In Basil’s inimitable fashion he was addressed as ‘Mr Rodney’. The first series also benefited from impressive musical acts, including Manfred Mann, The Alan Price Set and The Kinks.

The series performed well enough, and a second series followed in March 1969, although Rodney Bewes had bowed out to concentrate on his ITV sitcom Dear Mother… Love Albert and was replaced by another young actor, Derek Fowlds, later famous for roles in Yes Minister and Heartbeat – but for now known by Basil as ‘Mr Derek’.

Fowlds became perhaps the best remembered of Basil’s partners, interacting well with his furry friend through several series until he called it a day in 1973. They made guest appearances on It’s Lulu, and landed a 'best of' show and a Christmas morning programme in 1970.

Basil also appeared in his own right with Val Doonican, the guest on Ask Aspel, and in a Cilla special filmed in Scandinavia. Special Christmas episodes also began to be featured from 1971 onwards, such as that year’s Basil in Pantoland.

'Boom Boom!'

The format of The Basil Brush Show was a variety show, with musical and comedy guests, sketches and musical items involving Basil and his co-host. One of the best loved features of the show was the serial story at the end of every episode, with Basil’s interruptions and jokes, clashing with his partner’s attempts to get on with telling the story. There were catchphrases like the trademark “Boom Boom!” when Basil made a joke, and recurring references including Basil’s dislike of puppets, though he got on well with clockwork puppy Ticker.

When Derek Fowlds left the series, he was replaced by Roy North. Like Fowlds, North had a great rapport with the fox, though his style was a little less droll. He also stayed with the programme for a number of years, making guest appearances alongside Basil on Seaside Special and an early edition of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.

The show returned year after year, and indeed so did many of the jokes. George Martin was still faithfully providing scripts for Basil, but as time went on the material was getting familiar (but then the humour was rarely ground-breaking). While the music acts never quite lived up to the promise of the first series, there were some odd appearances by the likes of Charlie Drake plugging a single release, acts like Dennis Waterman, the New Seekers, the Electric Light Orchestra and even Abba showed up.

Though chiefly a television performer, in May 1975 Basil co-starred with Lord Charles and Lenny the Lion in a Radio 2 quiz Ask a Silly Question!, hosted by Wally Whyton. In 1977-78 Basil presented a Radio 3 series Holiday Special intended to get young people interested in serious music. In September 1977 Ivan Owen made a rare appearance on Radio 3 as himself, with his own choice of records in Man of Action.

Basil even made a bid to make classical music more youth-friendly on Radio 3

Roy North called it a day as Basil’s stooge after four series, and Howard Williams, who had been his first straight man back in the early 60s, came back. The resumed partnership lasted from 1977 to 1979, and as ever there was the usual Christmas special episode each year. These tended to be a departure from the usual format, with more music integrated into the show and a running theme.

Basil Brush’s Magical Christmas in 1978 was especially poignant as it featured a visibly ill David Nixon, renewing his own acquaintance with the fox. Nixon had died from lung cancer by the time the episode was transmitted on 23rd December. The programme came close to not being shown, not for that reason, but because BBC television had been blacked out by a strike for several days in the run-up to Christmas, and programmes only resumed that day.

In 1979 Williams was replaced by the youthful Billy Boyle, an Irish actor in his mid-30s but with a very boyish personality on screen. His nationality led to a few dubious jokes, while there was never a buoyant rapport between Basil and Boyle. There had been a shake-up on the script front too, with George Martin leaving in 1977, and a team of writers under script editor Peter Robinson replaced him – not to any startling effect. The series soldiered on until December 1980, when the last Christmas special, Basil’s Christmas Cruise went out with guests Michael Hordern, Dilys Watling, the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and Legs & Co.

There were rumours at the time that Ivan Owen wanted Basil to be given a peak-time show using slightly more adult material, and that the BBC was not interested. Basil’s next appearance was on ITV schools programme Let’s Read with Basil Brush, before he returned to the BBC in 1983 as part of the team on Crackerjack. On the air almost continuously since 1955, it had started to look really tired by the start of the 80s, and Basil was just one ploy to try to bolster viewing figures.

After that Basil’s appearances are more sporadic, and spread between BBC and ITV, including shows like Fast Forward, former Crackerjack host Stu Francis’s ITV series Crush a Grape and cookery show Hudson and Halls. There was one more starring role in Basil’s Joke Machine for Border TV, where he was partnered by Doug Ridley.

But by the end of the 80s Basil was not making many appearances, and he became a fixture of the rising tide of nostalgia compilation shows. One late appearance was in Granada TV sketch series The Full Monty in 1993. Ivan Owen died in 2000, never having become a star in his own right, though he was instantly recognisable as one particular character voice…

In 2002, the character of Basil Brush was reborn in a Children’s BBC sitcom, still called The Basil Brush Show. The voice was similar to Owen’s characterisation, but it was now a very different era, and Basil no longer appealed to as wide a range of viewers as he had originally. The last original episode was transmitted at Christmas 2007, but repeats were a staple of the CBBC channel until 2011. In a hark-back to one of his 1970s guest appearances too, 2008 saw Basil presenting Basil’s Swap Shop, with Barney Harwood as the latest in the long line of co-hosts.

Additional research by Simon Coward

What are your memories of this enduring character? Who do you think was Basil's best human sidekick? Tell us your thoughts in the space below.

Sunday Post: The Rock 'n' Roll Years

2015-09-13T09:00:00+00:00

Pop music panel game Juke Box Jury was presided over by David Jacobs

I was on a suburban London railway platform the other day and thought I recognised one of the other people waiting for a train: I did, it was the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for his appearances in The Vicar of Dibley. He has had a long career as an actor, and before that as a songwriter, and before that as a scriptwriter, for, among other things, the pioneering BBC pop show Six-Five Special.

Six-Five Special was one of the programmes brought in when the BBC ended its ‘Toddlers’ Truce’, when television closed down from around 6pm to 7pm, supposedly in order for parents to be able to put their children to bed. The ITV companies, who were obliged to have the same break by the Independent Television Authority, had objected as they were losing potential revenue, though the BBC actually saved money by not having to fill that time.

When the practice was abolished, on weekdays the BBC had the popular light current affairs series Tonight. On Saturdays it decided to present a show to appeal to the burgeoning teenage market. As it was to transmit at five past six, following the 6pm news, it was called Six-Five Special, and in line with the railway imagery the title sequence showed a steam train travelling at speed, with the signature tune performed by resident band, Don Lang and his Frantic Five. The hosts were Jo Douglas (who also co-produced) and Pete Murray.

The BBC had wanted a magazine programme that would feature topics other than music, so there were celebrity guests and a sports section presented by boxer Freddie Mills. But producer Jack Good knew that it was the music content that attracted his audience. After a year Good became disenchanted with the struggle to get his way and defected to ITV, where he started Oh Boy!. Six-Five Special carried on, but was eventually dropped when ratings struggled, in December 1958. (Quirky note, there was a special edition in the early hours of January 1st, 1958, called Twelve-Five Special, broadcast from a restaurant overlooking London Airport.)

Six-Five Special was of course not the first BBC programme that took an interest in popular music - it had been a feature of broadcasting both in sound and vision since the start of the two media. However it was perhaps the first show aimed at young people with music at the centre of its content. Other shows featured pop acts, including rock and roll – one long-running television show of the 50s was Off the Record presented by former bandleader Jack Payne, which included performances by many music acts of the time, including Buddy Holly and the Crickets, in the last episode of the show, in March 1958.

Legs and Co were one of the dance troupes who filled in the gaps on Top of the Pops

Rock and roll and other pop music was to gain another outlet in April 1959, when a new show Drumbeat was launched. This featured a regular roster of acts, including Bob Miller and the Millermen, and the John Barry Seven, as well as frequent appearances by Adam Faith, Vince Eager and other early British rock and rollers. Having made appearances in sketches in Six-Five Special as well as scripting it, Trevor Peacock became the presenter of Drumbeat after the first few episodes (the original host was Gus Goodwin). The show only lasted one series, finishing in August 1959.

In the meantime though, another much longer-running show had begun, based on a US format, the record review show Juke Box Jury. Presented by DJ David Jacobs, this ran from June 1959 until December 1967, with revivals in 1979 (with Noel Edmonds) and 1989-90 (with Jools Holland). The format was simple, a panel of four celebrities listened to newly released records and gave their opinions whether they would be a hit or a ‘miss’.

With no live performances, and only occasional personal appearances by the artists who made the records, it’s hard to understand the appeal other than the scarcity of pop music on television or radio at the time. The panel was not particularly young and trendy, though there was initially a ‘typical teenager’, one Susan Stranks, later to present the ITV children’s show Magpie. Pop artists would often be at least one of the line-up, but the majority seemed to be fairly middle-aged entertainers or ‘personalities’. There was the occasional attempt to be more relevant, as with special shows featuring groups, famously the Beatles on 7th December 1963, the same night as the BBC broadcast a concert of theirs from Liverpool. Later the Rolling Stones and one or two other bands repeated the trick (the Stones’ appearance being the only occasion where there were five panellists instead of four).

Towards the end of its initial run, DJs such as Pete Murray and Alan Freeman having been frequent guest panellists over the years, it was decided to have all-DJ panels for a while, but this too was dropped after a few months. The final edition on 27th December 1967 had Pete Murray and Susan Stranks (both of whom were in the first edition) along with Lulu and Eric Sykes.

Flagship of pop coverage

With the resurgence on interest in home grown rock and ‘beat’ music in the early 60s, the BBC decided to try its luck with a new regular programme featuring pop music, this time based on records that were making their way up the singles charts. With pop music on BBC radio still confined to a few shows on the Light Programme, this was to be a major new attraction – albeit a belated reaction to ITV shows Thank Your Lucky Stars which started in 1961, and Ready Steady Go which began in 1963.

Debuting on 1st January 1964, and initially broadcast from the BBC’s Manchester studio (a converted church in Dickenson Road), it was entitled Top of the Pops, and would become the flagship of BBC pop coverage. Lasting until 2006 in its regular format, with only Christmas specials, spin-offs like Top of the Pops 2 and archive repeats since, TOTP was a winning formula, especially in the first few decades of its existence, with live performances predominating - live in the sense of the artists being in the studio, only occasionally were they not miming to pre-recorded tracks.

For many years these were supposed to be specially recorded, but given the difficulty of replicating the carefully crafted sound of the original record, it is believed that this was not always adhered to. Over the years the amount of live performances decreased – even in the early years, acts like the Beatles (who only appeared in the TOTP studio once, to promote Paperback Writer/Rain in 1966) would be represented by film (either stock shots or specially made promos) or videotaped performances, as their schedules prevented them from making the studio recordings. In the early 70s some acts who could not turn up in person had their records ‘interpreted’ by specially made film clips. One or two acts also thought it beneath them to appear, and some records were banned by the BBC as not being suitable for a family audience.

By far the best-known replacement for artists though was having the show’s resident dance troupe perform a routine to accompany a song. The first of these was The Go-Jos, who were succeeded in 1968 by the most famous dancers, Pan’s People, choreographed by Flick Colby. In 1976 they were replaced briefly by Ruby Flipper, then within the same year by Legs & Co. The latter survived until they were phased out in autumn 1981, then in December that year the last in-house dance act, Zoo, started a run of just under two years. From October 1983 it was felt that pop videos made a dance troupe unnecessary, and the style of the whole show had moved on as well.

One edition of Six-Five Special featured Adam Faith and actor Jon Pertwee (foreground) performing a skiffle number

Concurrent with early Top of the Pops, BBC2 was not afraid to present its own take on the medium, in the form of The Beat Room, which favoured less chart-oriented fare, namely acts in the rhythm and blues genre, though it was advertised as ‘twenty-five minutes of non-stop beat and shake’, which sounds like someone cleaning a carpet. The first show featured Millie, The Animals and Lulu and the Luvvers, later episodes had Manfred Mann, The Hollies, The Kinks, Tom Jones, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye and many more. One early act was Davy Jones and the King Bees, whose lead singer went on to greater things once he changed his name to Bowie.

The Beat Room finished at the end of January 1965, to be succeeded immediately by Gadzooks! It’s All Happening, which had many aspects in common (as well as, additionally, a silly title – which was changed to “Gadzooks! It’s the In Crowd” after a few months. Much better…)

Over on BBC1, late 1965 brought Stramash!, a pop show made in Glasgow which included some elements of Gadzooks, but the beat boom was losing its impetus. Pop acts had long been featured on children’s programmes such as Crackerjack and occasionally Blue Peter, and this continued with acts appearing on The Basil Brush Show when it began in 1968. Also that year The Animals’ former keyboard player Alan Price presented Price to Play, an educational children’s series about the evolution of rock and roll. The following year saw Price present a more straightforward music show Monster Music Mash, including performances by Fleetwood Mac (mark 1), The Moody Blues, and Slade in their early skinhead phase.

Sole survivor

BBC2 continued to promote ‘serious’ rock music, firstly through Late Night Line-Up occasionally featuring artists like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which developed into the spin-off programme Colour Me Pop in June 1968. As the title implies, it was in colour, and the few existing editions provide some of the earliest colour pop footage. The first edition featured Manfred Mann, with each show usually based around a single artist performing either their greatest hits, or sometimes tracks from a new album. This series lasted 18 months, and was succeeded at the start of 1970 by Disco 2, another Line-Up spin-off, presented at first by Tommy Vance, and later by Richard Williams. This had a more varied content, and started to feature commentary and reviews, as well as more adventurous types of music. When this ended in July 1971, the format was rejigged, though Williams continued to present.

The new version was named after the music industry story that new tunes would be tried out on doormen, cleaners etc, to see if they could whistle them after one hearing - this was called The Old Grey Whistle Test. After the first series Richard Williams left and was replaced by DJ Bob Harris, the best-remembered host of the programme, whose laconic style and garish tank tops defined an era – to a certain section of the population at least. Harris himself left the show as punk and new wave music began to be featured at the end of the 70s. Anne Nightingale, who had latterly been his co-host, took over, and the show survived into the late 80s under the stewardship of David Hepworth, Mark Ellen, and later Andy Kershaw – by which time the title had been curtailed to just Whistle Test.

Spin-offs from the series included Sight and Sound in Concert (which had stereo sound from Radio 1 to replace the tv sound, if you wanted) and Rock Goes to College though 'OGWT' did its own occasional special broadcasts of concerts – notably Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. As well as music performances, the show was known for in-depth interviews, and in the absence of actual film of bands, many early editions featured unrelated archive footage to go with album tracks. In those days, album tracks mattered…

At the end of the 70s the genre of youth programming began to emerge, and this naturally featured a lot of music. Shows like Something Else, which hailed from the BBC’s Community Programmes Unit, were succeeded by the likes of The Oxford Road Show and Riverside, which ironically were more like magazine programmes – shades of Six-Five…? At the end of the 80s came the dedicated youth strand Def II which featured shows like Behind the Beat and Dance Energy.

With the advent of dedicated music cable and satellite channels, was the death knell being sounded for a certain kind of music television? Perhaps the sole surviving serious music show is “Later… with Jools Holland” which has graced our screens since 1992, preserving something of the spirit of Whistle Test, even transmitting live as did the first Whistle Tests, and itself a spin-off from The Late Show’s music content. As for the rest, while there is now blanket coverage of music festivals, and various channels showing music videos to choose from, television coverage of pop and rock music seems dominated by talent shows, while the nostalgia market is catered for by repackaging archive material on BBC4.

I didn’t like to ask Trevor what he made of it all.

Andrew Martin will be your regular Sunday guide through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the BBC Genome listings.

On This Day, 1979: Smiley's debut

2015-09-10T09:00:00+00:00

Alec Guinness took to the small screen to portray John Le Carre's character George Smiley

On 10 September 1979, the first episode of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was screened for the first time on BBC2.

The espionage drama, based on John Le Carre's novel, cast distinguished actor Alec Guinness in the lead role of George Smiley, an intelligence agent brought out of enforced retirement to see to some "unfinished business".

In an interview printed the week of broadcast, Guinness admitted that he'd done little television in the past, but said that the making of the seven-part drama had changed his mind about the medium.

Tinker Tailor went on to great success, and in 1982 Guinness reprised his role in follow-up Smiley's People.

Ian Richardson - later the star of House of Cards - made an impact in Tinker Tailor

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy went on to have further life in later listings. It had a complete re-run on BBC2 in 1981 and graced our screens once again a decade later. If you delve into the programme guides of 2000, you will find another BBC2 screening of the drama. In later years, Guinness's performance made regular appearances on BBC4.

A new adaptation for radio - also a seven-parter - was first broadcast in 1988. And in 2009, Le Carre's story returned to the airwaves under the title Classic Serial: The Complete Smiley, with actor Simon Russell Beale stepping into the shoes once filled by Guinness.

Although not in the listings, a big screen version of Tinker Tailor was made in 2011 with Gary Oldman assuming the mantle of Smiley.

Alec Guinness won the Bafta for best actor in 1980 for his performance. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was named best drama

The Sunday Post: Barlow at Large

2015-09-06T09:00:00+00:00

Stratford Johns is best remembered for playing gruff but humane detective Charlie Barlow

Alan Stratford Johns was born on 22nd September 1925 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province (now Kwa-Zulu Natal), South Africa. After service in the South African Navy during World War Two, he became involved in amateur acting and in 1948 decided to travel to the UK to work in the theatre professionally. Starting at Southend Repertory Theatre, he broke into films with minor roles in the mid-50s including a small part in Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. As with many an actor, while struggling to find work he supplemented his income with various jobs, including running a small hotel for actors in central London.

His credited involvement with the BBC began with an appearance in two episodes of the soap opera Starr and Company in November 1958. Various roles followed, including that of a police sergeant in the thriller serial The Days of Vengeance, co-written by the creator of Dixon of Dock Green, Ted Willis.

1961 saw him appear in two episodes of Maigret, and Big Time, a play about disaffected youths in which one of his co-stars was Frank Windsor. Some months later, Johns and Windsor began a long career together when they were cast in a documentary-drama series based around the new ‘crime cars’ in use with Lancashire Constabulary. Initially called Crime Patrol, this was felt to be insufficiently dramatic, so the title was changed to Z Cars, based on the call-signs Z Victor 1 and Z Victor 2 assigned to the two main vehicles featured.

The first episode, Four of a Kind, written by Troy Kennedy Martin and directed by John McGrath, was transmitted on 2nd January 1962. Johns was cast as Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Barlow, and was an immediate hit as the irascible but effective officer in charge of the C.I.D. at Newtown police station. Under him was Frank Windsor’s Detective Sergeant John Watt, who as Crime Prevention Officer was directly responsible for the two Z Car crews.

Stratford Johns quickly made the part of Barlow his own, rationalising him as the kind of man who would have had a row with his wife and then sat up drinking whisky half the night, before coming to work with a hangover – certainly the character had a reputation for shouting at subordinates and suspects alike, and was often the target of complaints from senior police officers who insisted there were no Chief Inspectors who behaved like that. Barlow still became a much-loved character, as there was always an element of humour and humanity in Johns’ performance.

As with all the cast, he had to deal with the strain of long series of the show, and the fact they were almost all produced live. However the format of the series allowed for this, in that regular characters would not appear in every episode, or at least not with too many lines to learn…

Johns soon became a celebrity, with guest appearances on programmes such as The Kathy Kirby Show, Juke Box Jury, Hugh and I and Star Story, on which he read his own story The Gumphlumph. In 1964 he was featured in Home for a Day on the Home Service in an item called My Dream Boss. He also presented Housewives’ Choice for a week and chose his records for Desert Island Discs – he had also issued an album of songs himself. More seriously, he fronted an appeal for Oxfam, as himself but in the style of Barlow.

Z Cars continued to be a success and Barlow remained a major part of its appeal, but gradually it was felt that it had started to become stale, and it was decided to end it in 1965. During the last series an edition of Line-Up Review (an off-shoot of Late Night Line-Up) called A to Z Cars showed the production of an episode through location filming and rehearsals to transmission, and interviewed Johns at home together with his wife Nan Ryder and their children.

Johns' other roles included the Monarch in Doctor Who

However the end of Z Cars (which proved temporary, as it was revived in 1967) was not to spell the end of the characters of Barlow and Watt. A sequel was devised that would take them to another part of the country, the fictional ‘Wyvern’ district (effectively Bristol), where they would run one of the new Regional Crime Squads. They acquired a new set of subordinates and bosses, chief among the former being Detective Sergeant Harry Hawkins (Norman Bowler), who would stay with the series to the end of its run ten years later.

The new series, which began in January 1966, was about the ‘investigation of the criminal – not the crime’, and was called Softly Softly. John Watt was promoted to Detective Inspector, and through the run of the series made his way gradually up the ranks to Detective Chief Superintendent. Barlow was promoted immediately to DCS, but was fated never to rise higher, despite a couple of ‘near misses’.

Unlike Z Cars, Softly Softly phased out live episodes after the first year or so, so some of the strain associated with making it was reduced, although each season was still lengthy – usually at least 26 weeks (although this was less that Z Cars, and such long runs were not uncommon in the 60s). Barlow’s character went through the ordeal of being investigated for corruption in a three-episode story Barlow Was There during the second series, which may have blighted his promotion prospects in the episode Selection a couple of months later. His original boss A.C.C. Calderwood (John Welsh) was replaced by A.C.C. Gilbert (John Barron), who had been involved in investigating him, though they went on to have a good working relationship. (Barron had fond memories of the Selection episode it as he chose it for the Star Choice repeat series in 1969.

After three and a half years of Softly Softly it was again decided to vary the formula. The idea was again to keep up with innovation in the police force, and this time it was the new Task Force concept that was chosen. Once more, this involved relocation of the central characters, now to the Medway town of ‘Thamesford’, which again allowed a refreshment of ideas and situations. Barlow was put in charge of CID with two Task Force units, helped by Watt and Hawkins (now an Inspector), and more new characters, who included instinctual Welsh Detective Sergeant Evans (David Lloyd Meredith), and lugubrious dog-handler PC Snow (Terence Rigby).

The change in format happened during the new series of Softly Softly in autumn 1969, and was timed to coincide with the start of regular colour transmission on BBC1. Originally to be named just Task Force, a compromise was reached to retain the old title this time – so it became Softly Softly: Task Force, although the first episode was still billed just as Softly Softly, with the Task Force name introduced in the end credits.

Watt, who had been divorced from his first wife during the run of Z Cars, was given a love interest, Dr Jean Morrow, who he was to marry in an early episode of Task Force. Barlow’s wife, despite a couple of fleeting glimpses, was one of those characters like Mrs Mainwaring in Dad’s Army who never really appeared properly (if she was seen briefly, Nan Ryder played her, uncredited).

After a couple of years of the new format, another experiment was tried, with Barlow being seconded to investigate a difficult case in Wales. The three-part story, made entirely on film and with some foreign location work, went out under the punning title Barlow at Large in 1971. Following this, it was decided to develop this into a spin-off series proper. During the 1972/3 series of Softly Softly: Task Force, Barlow was again up for promotion – at which point it was decided to kill off his wife.

Despite an intensive interview process where he also had to deal with attempts on his own life by a criminal he had once put away, Barlow was not promoted but ended up leaving the Thamesford force to work with the Home Office, investigating particularly complex cases as a kind of troubleshooter. Once more, this was titled Barlow at Large, and John Watt became Barlow’s successor in Thamesford.

Stratford Johns (left) with the Softly Softly: Task Force cast in 1971

Barlow at Large saw Barlow working for suave civil servant A.G. Fenton (Neil Stacy), assisted by Detective Sergeant Rees (Norman Comer) and later Detective Inspector Tucker (Derek Newark). After one series the title was simplified to Barlow, and an attempt was made to make it more action-packed and modern – largely by having a new title sequence and theme tune, though there was occasionally more filming abroad.

Somehow the concentration on Barlow alone never had the same appeal, and the long-running sparring with Watt was hard to replicate. There was a reunion between the characters in summer 1973, with Barlow and Watt now both Detective Chief Superintendents, re-investigating one of the most famous and mysterious series of historical crimes, in Jack the Ripper. As the two fictional detectives went over contemporary accounts and evidence of the Whitechapel murders, these were re-enacted in cutaway scenes. The series, made in the BBC’s Glasgow studios, got a mixed reception, but nevertheless there was a follow-up in 1976, Second Verdict, which had investigations of cases like the Lindbergh baby, the Reichstag fire, Lizzie Borden and the Princes in the Tower. An odd and jarring mixture of drama and documentary, this never really excited much interest, and only one series was made.

Barlow had come to an end in 1975, and it was decided that Softly Softly: Task Force had run its course too, with its final series in 1976. Watt was still in charge, and there is a reference to his friend at the Home Office in the last episode. With the advent of fast-paced film series like ITV’s The Sweeney, the BBC’s studio-bound offerings were starting to feel clunky. Z Cars was still on-going, though a shadow of its former self (even the venerable Dixon of Dock Green only finally bit the dust in 1976).

Z Cars ended in 1978, with an attempt to recapture some of the gritty atmosphere of the earlier series, and a noticeably more down-beat tone. No longer made live since 1965, but now recorded on outside-broadcast video, it was still looking tired. The final episode was written and directed by the same people as the first, Troy Kennedy Martin and John McGrath. These two mavericks produced one of the odder episodes of series television, entitled Pressure, transmitted on 20th September . Among its stranger elements were appearances by early stars Joseph Brady, Brian Blessed, Jeremy Kemp and Colin Welland as members of the public – their colleague James Ellis was still playing Bert Lynch, by now a uniformed Inspector. Frank Windsor made one last appearance as John Watt, back in Newtown to investigate a corruption case. Also featured was actor John Phillips, playing Chief Constable Robbins – who had been Barlow’s boss, as a Chief Superintendent, in the first episode. Somehow though, it felt as if the character should have been Barlow – whether or not that was the intention, it didn’t happen, so the fate of Charlie Barlow was left unresolved.

With the Z Cars franchise finally wound up, Johns continued a varied acting career until the late 90s, appearing in everything from feature films to the likes of Doctor Who and Blake’s Seven, and the dark Channel 4 series Brond. He was an excellent Magwitch in the BBC’s 1981 Great Expectations, and had a central role in an episode of I, Claudius. One of his last appearances as himself was in Noel’s Telly Years in 1996, where he reminisced about 1962 alongside Honor Blackman, Dennis Law and Bernard Cribbins . By the start of the 21st century his health was sadly failing, and he died at the age of 76 in early 2002. Never a huge star outside Britain, Stratford Johns nonetheless created in acting terms one of the great characters of the television age, who could be authoritative, funny, frightening – often in the course of one scene.

Every Sunday, Andrew Martin will be guiding you through the history of broadcasting by digging out archive gems and information from the BBC Genome listings.