BBC Genome Blog Feed

Guess who?

2017-12-15T10:30:00+00:00

Test your TV know-how in our picture quiz featuring stars of programmes past. Comment with your answers at the end, or find the solutions in the links under each image.

1.) This actor - pictured here as Estella in a 1983 adaption of Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations - went on to have a varied career, including a regular role in Holby City.

Click here to find out the answer

2.) The actor on the right was a familiar face in the children's BBC drama Byker Grove before becoming one half of a well-known TV presenting duo.

Click here to find out the answer

3.) This actor worked in a post office, restaurant and a shop in EastEnders, making it handy that she had already played so many characters in Goodness Gracious Me.

Click here to find out the answer

4.) Another Byker Grove star, this time with her bags packed for the move to Walford. While appearing in EastEnders she found time to dance her way to Strictly Come Dancing success in 2004.

Click here to find out the answer

5.) Batman normally keeps his identity hidden, but can you tell which future Hollywood star is pictured here on Going Live in 1988?

Click here to find out the answer

6.) This young actor was uncredited for his 1982 appearance in Doctor Who. Fourteen years later (we don’t know if he travelled there in the Tardis) he had a starring tole in 1996 film Trainspotting.

Click here to find out the answer

Don't forget to tell us your answers in the space below. If you want some more teasers to test your knowledge try our quizzes from November and December 2015.

Your Genome astrology sign

2016-09-19T08:03:55+00:00

It all started on a rainy Saturday afternoon: Victorianist academic Christopher Pittard suggested a new astrology system based on the Genome listings constellation.

This external content is available at its source: New form of astrology: using Genome to find first BBC programme aired after birth. I was born under the sign of The Wombles

Hours later, some of you were delving through the listings to find your signs and ascendants - and we were very amused with your replies. This is a brief summary of the Twitter conversation in case you missed it.

This external content is available at its source: Stuff being a Leo; I was born under the sign of News with Moira Stuart. I'm pretty happy with that

This external content is available at its source: Apparently my @bbcgenome 📻📺⭐️ sign is "Letter from America" on R4 & "We British" on 2...hilarious for 🇺🇸 expat who's also now 🇬🇧

This external content is available at its source: A birth early in the morning gives me the sign of Open University, specifically Ethology. Explains my dodgy taste in clothes...

This external content is available at its source: I was born on the cusp of Trumpton and Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye.

This external content is available at its source: would it surprise u 2 know I was born to the sound of the Benny Hill Theme tune on the BBC Light Radio? @bbcgenome

This external content is available at its source: starsign is the Open University... that would probably account for my nerdy-ness!! ;-)

This external content is available at its source: My sign is Meet Me in St Louis, the film I'm named after!

This external content is available at its source: My @bbcgenome sign is 'Open University: The Nature of Chemistry'. There was certainly some chemistry going on 9 months beforehand

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the Service of Remembrance. Probably only one in hospital not quiet for 2 minute silence at 11am.

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the sign of Dr Who according to @CAPittard's infallible @bbcgenome astrology system

This external content is available at its source: Eurovision Song Contest 1970 was on when I was making an appearance. Dana won that year with 'All Kinds of Everything'.

This external content is available at its source: I was born on the cusp of Midnight News Room, with Closedown in the ascendency !!!! :):)

This external content is available at its source: Hmm, seems like I was born under Cucumber Castle with Ken Dodd in the ascendant.

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the sign of Bagpuss, which I’m pleased with. Ta, BBC Genome!

This external content is available at its source: my star sign is Panorama

This external content is available at its source: My @bbcgenome star sign is a Doctor Who episode featuring Victorian antiques. That explains so much!

This external content is available at its source: I arrived on the cusp of Merry-Go-Round, with Play School rising.

This external content is available at its source: Turns out I was born during an episode of The Magic Roundabout. Not sure what that says about me

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the sign of Engineering Science. Or, if we exclude educational programmes, Rag Tag & Bobtail. Win-Win.

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the sign of Play School! Like a good many others I should think

This external content is available at its source: My genome star sign was The Archers! ‘Twas ever thus!

This external content is available at its source: I was actually born under the sign of Apollo 14: Moonwalk is it as cool as Playschool?

This external content is available at its source: I was (appropriately probably) born under the sign of Top Of The Pops

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the Stage 2 presents Tom Courtenay Thora Hird Juliet Mills & Ralph Richardson She Stoops to Conquer sign. Nice

This external content is available at its source: I was born at 4.15am so my star sign would be Test Card F

This external content is available at its source: Looks as if my sign is Rag, Tag and Bobtail 😀 and why not?

This external content is available at its source: I was born under Farming Today. Figures.

This external content is available at its source: My @bbcgenome star sign is the 1981 TUC Conference. Shame I couldn't hang on for the Playschool interlude. Always hated trade unions.

This external content is available at its source: My @bbcgenome birth sign is Programmes for Schools and Colleges. Although from what my Mum says I was half an hour too early.

This external content is available at its source: My @bbcgenome sign appears to be 'England vs Pakistan with Brian Johnston, Denis Compton and Peter West'. This makes me absurdly happy.

This external content is available at its source: I was born under the sign of Camberwick Green. Think I prefer Virgo.

This external content is available at its source: i'm either "Gala Performance" or "The Week Ahead on 2"

This external content is available at its source: That makes my star sign Ceefax AM.

This external content is available at its source: As far as BBC star signs go, I'm mightily pleased with "You and the Night and the Music."

What is your Genome sign, then? What was on the day you were born? Have a look at the listings and let us know...

Five TV teasers

2015-12-02T10:00:00+00:00

It's time to cast your eyes over some more photographs from TV's past.

Each of the following five teasers contains a star of the small screen. They may not appear as you know them best. Take a punt and tell us your guesses at the bottom of the page.

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

You can also try your hand at the previous edition of Guess Who? here.

1) This rather hirsute gentleman was among the stars of 1972 comedy series His Lordship Entertains. One of his famed non-BBC roles involved facial hair - although a lot less than this...

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

2) Concentrate on the historical female on the right who's in a tussle in this 1983 BBC production of Shakespeare history Henry VI (Part I). This famed actress is less of a blonde these days and most recently known for her shabby overcoat.

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

3) This young actress was the titular star of Eleanor, a Play for Today outing from 1974. In the intervening years, she's become known for many roles, perhaps most renowned for sticking to her own sort.

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

4) Who's this hairy Bottom? Thats right, the character from A Midsummer Night's Dream. This famous man was noted for his many comic roles, including from this 1971 production.

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

5) This handsome bunch made a bid for Eurovision glory in the 1980 Song For Europe competition, but didn't make the cut. We're interested in the man second on the left, slightly obscured at the back. He wasn't mentioned in the TV listing, but these days he's regularly in the spotlight and fond of raising his paddle.

Tell us your answer in the space below!

Guess who?

2015-11-18T10:00:00+00:00

Can you guess who these stars of radio and television are? They may not appear as you know them now. Take a punt and tell us at the bottom of the page. To reveal all, click on the links which will take you to the answers in Genome.

1) This actress was aged beyond her years for a sci-fi series which was first shown in 2002. She has since undergone a name change, and is better known for her deep, sometimes dark character on a regular show.

Click here to find out the answer

2) This little scamp was on our screens back in the 1960s in an adaptation of a literary favourite. Over the decades he's become known for a whole host of grittier TV roles.

Click here to find out the answer

3) Hello sailor. This suave gent was cutting through the seas in this infamous nautical drama. These days he is less of a brunette.

Click here to find out the answer

4) The gentleman on the ropes was the star of this 1957 drama about boxing. He's since got himself out of many tighter situations.

Click here to find out the answer

5) This actress went under a different surname when this drama was broadcast in 1986. She's currently a little more glammed up in a long-running role.

Click here to find out the answer

The Sunday Post: Doctors and Nurses

2015-10-18T09:00:00+00:00

We all love a good medical drama. They've been in rude health for years, and have peppered the television and radio listings for decades. Here's a glance at just some of the biggest shows telling of illness, recovery - and characters who set the pulse racing.

Casualty is undoubtedly the juggernaut of medical dramas, having been on air for close to 30 years. Set in the fast-moving emergency department of Holby City hospital, it has seen a long line of medical staff and stricken patients pass through its doors.

On a weekly basis fresh storylines are created, and viewers play at guessing which catastrophe is going to befall its roll call of characters. But the professional and personal lives of the medical staff are picked up week after week, including nurse Charlie Fairhead, who has been in the drama since its inception.

In 1999, a Casualty spin-off was created, called Holby City (pictured below). It was originally billed as a "nine-part spin-off" but has become a continuing drama. The action is based in the same hospital but across other wards.

Characters from Casualty occasionally turn up in Holby and vice versa, but the original series is now produced in Wales and Holby at BBC Elstree. The staff don't even repair to the same bar.

Connie Beauchamp started life in Holby and now runs the emergency department in Casualty

While Casualty and Holby City are linchpins of the Saturday and Tuesday evening schedules, Doctors is the weekday soap opera which has held sway over daytime audiences since 2000. It was also originally billed as a self-contained "series of medical dramas" but developed beyond that. The tangle of patients and medics' lives takes place in a Midlands GP surgery and tackles all manner of hard-hitting issues.

You have to hurtle back to the late 1960s to find a twice-weekly TV drama called The Doctors, also set in a general practice. The actors were put at the forefront of this show, with full-page colour portraits of them featured in the Radio Times.

An interesting note is that an actress called Lynda Marchal (pictured below) was among the regular cast. She's now better known as TV screenwriting heavyweight, Lynda La Plante. She also appeared in Rentaghost, but that's for a future post on stars before they were famous...

But it's not always doctors who are at the forefront of medical drama. Nurses - chiefly from the fairer sex - have made some compelling television over the years.

Angels (pictured above) ran from 1975-82 and featured a group of hospital nurses, including the likes of Pauline Quirke and Fiona Fullerton. It was directed by Julia Smith, who went on to cement her place in TV history as the co-creator of EastEnders.

This contemporary, gritty London setting for the perils of nursing was later replaced with a more gentle, Welsh backdrop for The District Nurse starring Nerys Hughes in a 1920s period setting. This series (1984-7) was also devised by Julia Smith and her EastEnders co-creator Tony Holland.

The format of this drama would much later be replicated in the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s with the phenomenally successful Call The Midwife, while recent daytime drama The Indian Doctor also has Wales as its setting.

Talking of the softer end of medical drama, the daddy of the bunch has to be Dr Finlay's Casebook (pictured below) which was a regular fixture on our screens from 1962-71. It was set in the practice of a small Scottish country town before the NHS was born and featured a handful of regulars including the dashing doctor and his doughty housekeeper. The stories were also heard on radio, while the TV drama was rebooted in the 1990s on ITV.

There have been some shows with a medical pedigree over the decades that have been quite removed from the premise of doctors treating patients.

A Very Peculiar Practice was about a university campus practice - but this was merely the setting for a show that veered in an entirely different direction. Starting in 1986 and penned by screenwriting giant Andrew Davies, the show's stars Peter Davison (pictured below) and Amanda Hillman were honoured with a Radio Times front cover.

With a scattering of nuns and a university filled with "manic, feuding intellectuals", this series was much less about medical issues and more about the lives of a series of larger than life characters.

Recent hit thriller Doctor Foster had plenty of scenes in a small town surgery, but it was all about the title character's seething rage over her husband's infidelity. Mind you, she did seem to get up to some mischief as a GP in her pursuit of the truth.

The reach of medical drama went beyond the confines of the UK down the years. Australia - and its flying doctor service - was introduced to the nation in the 1950s. How we all marvelled at a sparsely populated country where the medics might only be able to get you by plane.

The Flying Doctor, starring Australian actor Bill Kerr, took to the radio airwaves in 1958 and was later made for television. Confusingly - but much later - an Aussie-produced drama called The Flying Doctors came to our screens featuring a gaggle of former Neighbours actors including Peter O'Brien and Mark Little.

This is a quick jog around the history of medical drama on TV and radio. Do you have any favourites you would like to mention? Do you loathe them? Is the gore too much for you? Please leave us a comment in the space below.

Poldark v Poldark

2015-10-06T09:30:00+00:00

Robin Ellis played the lead role in the first BBC adaptation of Poldark

On Monday it was 40 years since the first episode of Cornish costume drama Poldark took to our screens. We asked our Twitter followers on @bbcgenome if they preferred this incarnation to the "raunchier" reboot starring a smouldering Aidan Turner, which aired earlier this year. Here's a selection of what they said...

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@mariaDadd: I fell in love with Poldark when I saw the original all those years ago, and the new version made me fall once again.

@CameronYardeJnr: I think both versions are perfect for the eras they were made in.

@Rockbird86: Original by a country mile. I'm too young to have seen it 1st time round and remake is good but not as good.

@JuliaGulia809: The remake is "raunchy?" People please.

@nois_faida: I prefer the Aidan Turner and I'm old enough to remember the Robin Ellis version.

@RiehlAlice: Don't believe it's "raunchy" at all! Both have pluses and minuses. Both good.

@AidansHair: The Aidan Turner version is closer to the novels.

@coolmarg: It's the opposite of raunchy. It's classy.

@tvmuseum: Tough to bring out the characterisation in fewer episodes, so the original wins on that front. But the new version is great too.

_________________________________________________________________________

If you'd like to join the debate, please leave comments below or feel free to head over to Twitter.

Aidan Turner played a dark, brooding Poldark in the BBC's recent remake

The Sunday Post: What's in a name?

2015-09-20T09:00:00+00:00

Not So Much a Programme More a Way of Life - too clever a title by half?

In a previous look at titles mentioning days of the week, we included the 1970 chat show If It’s Saturday It Must Be Nimmo as an example of the weird titles that sometimes emerge in the constant battle not to just call something The Fred Bloggs Show.

Tempting though it is to compile a list of the latter type of title, we thought it would be more entertaining to scout around for a few of the more peculiar examples that have been used in radio and television. Sometimes these are the series titles, though the fact that these will by their nature be used a number of times means that they are less likely to be gratuitously odd.

Though of course the need to stand out and draw attention to the show makes the quirky more attractive – though make it too offbeat and you will probably put people off – it’s probably a valuable lesson that really weirdly-titled shows tend not to last for very long.

Ack-Ack, Beer-Beer (a wartime show for crews of anti-aircraft and barrage balloon units, and employing the old British phonetic alphabet)

Gadzooks, it’s all Happening (repeating myself as this was mentioned last week…)

Celebrity Mantelpiece (which sounds like something invented by Alan Partridge)

Dance While You Dust (another wartime series, aimed at housewives, it just consisted of records of danceable music)

Not So Much a Programme More a Way of Life (David Frost-helmed satire show, successor to That Was the Week That Was, quirkily shown three times a week over the weekend, with threes an on-going theme throughout the show)

Tennis Elbow Foot Game (a radio panel show, later briefly also a tv version, devised by Norman Hackforth – the aim being to think of a word connected to a given word, and keep going as long as possible).

Dixon of Dock Green has had its fair share of odd episode titles

And not forgetting the long-running children’s series Why don’t you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?, which was originally abbreviated to Wdyjsoytsagadslbi?, before it began to be billed (and commonly referred to for obvious reasons) as Why Don’t You?

As well as series titles, there are some nice examples of odd and unusually episode titles. Dixon of Dock Green had a plethora of strange episode titles such as The Vanishing Bummaree, There’s Your Story: There’s My Story – and There’s the Truth and File No.7/948732/462, but as a series it seems to specialise in these, and part of the storytelling is explaining what the title signifies.

Similarly, oil industry drama The Troubleshooters had episodes including The Minister of the Crown… and the Very Compromising Photograph, while Adam Adamant Lives! included a story called The League of Uncharitable Ladies. Many series, especially in the 60s, had a habit of using odd titles, influenced by American shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

One title we came across is perhaps the longest episode title in the history of broadcasting. It is from the surreal 1970s/80s Radio 4 comedy series The Burkiss Way. It’s for the episode transmitted 1st November 1980, and the complete title in the Radio Times billing is: “The Burkiss Way: Lesson 45: Write extremely long titles with lots and lots of words in, like this, so that the Radio Times will have to allot more space than the measly half a centimetre of billing space we usually get and at least it'll look a bit more prominent on the page, although still nowhere near the 50 column inches they give to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Burkiss Way”.

Sadly, this is so long that the Genome system can’t cope with it, so we have had to compromise with “Write extremely long titles… The Burkiss Way”, and left the complete text in the synopsis. In case you were wondering about the reference to Hitch-Hiker, there was a running joke in The Burkiss Way about Douglas Adams, who had contributed material to some of its early episodes – though he doesn’t appear to be credited in Radio Times…

However, I’m sure this is all just scratching the surface of the weird and wonderful title – if anyone has any favourite oddities they have come across, please share them with us and we will share them.

So it's over to you...

Your 'forgotten' 1990s sitcoms

2015-08-24T10:00:00+00:00

Maureen Beattie played a Romanian exile in bakery sitcom All Night Long

A delve into the listings to unearth some long lost sitcoms from the 1990s jogged a lot of memories on Genome's Facebook and Twitter channels. Here's a round-up of comedies from those days which failed to make it beyond one series...

The Sitcom Club nominated All Night Long (pictured above), a 1994 comedy set in a round-the-clock bakery which starred Keith Barron as a reformed burglar and other characters including a Romanian migrant called Vanda. It was on air for just six episodes.

Aaron Brown, meanwhile, says he was a big fan of All Along The Watchtower (pictured below), and is "still gutted" a second series never materialised. The comedy was set at a remote RAF early warning base in a remote part of Scotland, where the news that the Cold War is over hasn't quite hit home.

Another offering from Scotland was The High Life, a caper about the cabin crew of an airline which starred Alan Cumming and mentioned by Chris Gilmour. While it may not have been forgotten, the show only lasted one series plus a pilot episode.

Kevin Ryan contacted us on Facebook suggesting Starting Out, a comedy from the tail end of the 1990s dealing with the romanic entanglings of four people in their twenties. It came from Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks, who write the mighty Birds of a Feather - but this one failed to take flight.

The creators of Father Ted came back with sitcom Hippies, but it was canned after just six episodes and a critical basting. Starring Simon Pegg, the take on 1960s culture was remembered fondly by Simon Love, while Dave Rhodes said: "The hype machine suggested Hippies would be Fawlty-meets-Blackadder - what we got (though good) could never match the marketing."

Thank you for all your suggestions - please keep them coming for this and all other topics.

Scottish offering All Along The Watchtower failed to develop past series one

Over To You: the quest for available BBC programmes

2015-08-19T10:20:00+00:00

It's been a good few weeks since we started linking to radio and TV programmes available on the BBC website to their Genome listings - and since we first posted on the BBC Genome blog.

Since then, we have increased the listings from where you can watch and listen to programmes to 8,548 - and the number of those linking to TV programmes has increased from the original 282 to 363.

This has been possible thanks to a very dedicated group of contibutors who have been digging out true archive gems from the BBC website and submitting them. Special mention to Stuart Ian Burns, who has been finding amazing content and submitting it to us, like this 1967 Whicker's World episode about the stresses of divorce.

We have been slowly adding all of your suggestions - mainly because we want to be methodical and go through them collection by collection, rather than adding individual links. We are also constantly making editorial decisions as it's a grey line between clips and programmes - we tend to only use clips when it's all that is left from an archive programme, and not too short. Finally, we're adding programmes that are available permanently or at least for more than a year.

But please keep sending your suggestions - in a matter of weeks, the BBC Genome content has been enriched with your finds. Have we missed anything? Can we link to other BBC programmes we haven't included?

Also, we would like to highlight some of your favourite listings and content on the blog, as we would love for it to become a meeting place for people passionate about the BBC Archive. We have shared some of our favourites already, but we really want to hear from you. Any unusual listings that depict British society at the time? Any amazing archive content to watch or listen to?

Over to You: What have you found so far?

2015-07-30T10:30:00+00:00

Surely by now you know that we have begun to link Genome listings to the thousands of TV and radio programmes which are already available on the BBC website.

(What do you mean you haven't? I invite you to give it a go - you can run an empty search and filter your search results by "Programme Available" in the Advanced tab, or better still, let us do it for you and click here.)

We now want to hear from you. What have you found so far? Any archive gems or unusual findings? Has any programme triggered any cherished memories?

Our own Jake Berger, by far the most sartorially elegant member of the Genome team, found "some top waxing tips from Salvador Dali" on a 1955 edition of Panorama...

This external content is available at its source: https://twitter.com/jakeberger/status/625614973608304640

And our colleagues from BBC Scotland stumbled upon a programme about The West Highlander...

This external content is available at its source: BBC Scotland: We've been searching the BBC archive thanks to @BBCGenome, found this gem from 1988!

My favourite thing to do with this feature is to search for a particular keyword and then check if there are programmes available. If you search for "parents", for example, you'll get a pretty interesting list of BBC Radio 4 programmes from the 1960s to today - from a Reith Lecture exhorting listeners "not to panic because enriched human experience fits less and less tidily into compartments" (how 1967!), to the 1970s "child-centred age", to a more recent discussion about "whether shouting at children inflicts long-term damage"... A radio playlist of parental anxiety throughout the decades.

So please comment on this blog post to share anything unusual, funny or interesting - we will then create a list with all your favourite picks to guide people throught the thousands of programmes available to watch and listen to on the BBC website.

Over to you...