TV memories

[oh oooh]

That's Life! - pretty much despised by every thinking body today, but it was enormously popular for over 20 years despite sometime Radio Times TV critic Kenneth Williams laying into it. Featuring skope favourite Cyril Fletcher and a dog who could say 'sausages', you can certainly see why. And Rantzen was kind of sexy in the early 70s. 





Play School - the absolute must-see for British kids in the 60s, 70s and 80s. This clip features two of my favourites - Chloe Ashcroft and Derek Griffiths (who once pulled up alongside us at the traffic lights in Whitehaven and waved to me and my sis in the back seat of the car!). 






The Generation Game - regularly pulling in 20 million viewers, this popular show hosted in its initial run by absolute prick Bruce Forsyth had the atmosphere of a stage show. Forsyth asked for the first rows of seating to be lit, so he could see the audience's faces, and he moved through the show quickly as though it was live. With the wonderful Larry Grayson helming in the late 70s the show retained its audience but later incarnations (Mel and Sue) have been less successful.


and talking of Larry...



This Is Your Life - a big draw for almost half a century, first hosted by Eamonn Andrews and then after his death by Michael Aspel (there was a one-off later presented by G's good friend Trevor McDonald). The show was heavily criticised by the press even in its early days ('a revolting emetic', 'a stomach-heaving pie', 'the cruel keyhole'), today's eyes might wonder what the fuss was about.

[sloopjohnc]

At night, I watch this cable station called MeTV. From 5 to 6, they show old Adam 12 episodes and 7 to 8, MASH. They're just finishing up the Frank Burns years and last night I watched an episode called Famouse Las Vegas Writers' School where Radar takes a correspondence writing course and Hawkeye and BJ pretend to pick a fight that turns into a real fight for Frank Burns' birthday.

With so many of these episodes, I remember the first time seeing them in the family living room with my mom and dad on Sunday nights.

Sunday nights were a great TV night - Mutual of Omaha's Animal Kingdom, Wide World of Disney, 60 Minutes, All in the Family, MASH.

I was telling my son that with streaming there are no more family TV nights. You had your regular weekly shows and then you had special showings like The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer where you had to monitor network commercials and the newspaper TV listings to catch them or you had to wait for next year. I was on these like a hawk because I didn't want to miss them.

I can't tell you how many years the family watched The Wizard of Oz and my brother and I had to listen to my dad tell us how much of a crush he had on Judy Garland.

[tory]

My mum used to say that we "couldn't get" ITV for technical reasons. It used to mysteriously work every Wednesday at 7pm for This is Your Life however.

[bungo the mungo]

Oct 20, 2021 13:17:01 GMT oh oooh said:

Featuring skope favourite Cyril Fletcher.

i don't know why you say that, i couldn't stand the cross-eyed cunt and hated the programme even more.

[bungo the mungo]

my earliest tv memory was 'the pogles' and 'pogles wood'. i absolutely loved them and remember getting all the annuals for christmas. of course, everything oliver postgate did was great but those 2 shows were my favourites as a child. i wanted to be pipin and have a friend like tog.



another show i loved was 'thriller'. the stories really put the willies up me and have stayed in my memory ever since.



and finally for all the wrong reasons 'out of town'. i absolutely hated it, especially because i had to sit through it before 'the big match' started at 2pm on sunday afternoon. in hindsight, i think i would probably enjoy it now.

[Deleted]

Yeah, the "countryside" was really boring as a kid.

[souphound]

Back in the 60's and early 70's, our beloved Montreal Canadiens (ice hockey) would play at 8pm on saturday nights on Radio-Canada. Back then, tvs had tubes, not transistors or chips and so, to catch the start of a show, you had to warm the tv up a few minutes before start time. That meant that we would always catch the last couple of minutes of a show called "La Soiree Canadienne" which was basically a broadcast from a traveling barn party with fiddles and jigs and the likes. We all hated it but it meant we wouldn't miss a second of the Habs' broadcast.

When the game was over, we'd turn the tv off and it would shut down slowly, until just a speck of light stayed in the very middle of the screen for a minute or so. Then poof, it disappeared.

Of course, if the tv stopped working, there'd be a repairman with a truck that would come to your door and replace the faulty tube(s). That truck was chock full of all kinds of necessary tubes for all the models on the street. I think we saw him more often than we did the ice cream or popcorn trucks.

[sloopjohnc]

Oct 20, 2021 19:26:50 GMT souphound said:

Back in the 60's and early 70's, our beloved Montreal Canadiens (ice hockey) would play at 8pm on saturday nights on Radio-Canada. Back then, tvs had tubes, not transistors or chips and so, to catch the start of a show, you had to warm the tv up a few minutes before start time.

I remember having to do that on my grandmother's TV. My grandmothers' TV habits were funny. My Swedish grandmother loved the soap opera, General Hospital, for some reason and she'd let my brother and I watch TV for hours when we visited.

We only really visited my other grandmother when my mom and dad would go out for the night. She'd cook us meatballs and mashed potatoes because she thought that was our favorite and then we'd watch Andy Willams or Glen Campbell's variety shows. She was smarter than I give her credit for because they'd always put my brother and me to sleep.

[Charlie O.]

I don't remember my maternal grandparents watching much TV, even though they were among the first in their small Northeast Pennsylvania town to buy a set (a beige Emerson that finally gave up the ghost sometime in the 1980s), but my paternal grandmother loved The Lawrence Welk Show and would never miss it. I thought it was dreadful, but it seemed like one of the few things that could reliably bring Grandma joy, so I couldn't begrudge her that.

She was a kind woman but always seemed a bit awkward and ill at ease, dour even, and she was VERY square, as evidenced by her favorite TV show. So when I was staying at her house one weekend in the autumn of 1982, I got more than a little nervous when she decided to stay up (well past her usual bedtime) and watch Saturday Night Live with me - I mean, that show was too risque even for my Dad, what was SHE gonna think? As it happened, Ron Howard was hosting, and she knew who he was.

I'd never seen her laugh so hard. She'd never heard of Eddie Murphy before, but he won her over in a big way. One sketch had Ron Howard, playing himself, going on a radio show hosted by Raheem Abdul Mohammad (Murphy) to promote the movie he's just directed, Night Shift. Raheem keeps calling Ron "Opie Cunningham." Ron asks Raheem if he's seen the movie; "Are there any black people in it?" "Uh, well, no." "Then I didn't see it. Well, what's it about?" "It's about these two pimps." Long pause; Raheem seems puzzled. "You made a movie about pimps and there ain't no brothers in it? Man, I don't know whether to thank you or punch you in the mouth." Eventually Ron gets pissed off at Raheem's attitude - he's not a kid anymore, he's a grown man with a wife and children... "You've got kids?? Wow - I can't imagine Opie Cunningham doin' it! I can't imagine anyone wanting to do it with Opie Cunningham!" My square Lawrence Welk-loving grandmother roared (well, her version of it) throughout the sketch, as she did at a sketch about Ron Howard returning to Mayberry and learning, among other things, that Gomer Pyle has come out of the closet, and that Floyd The Barber (Murphy) is and always secretly was black.

This is the one sketch from the show I can find on YouTube; after those others, it wasn't so surprising she would find this hilarious:





I think she went to bed before The Clash (featuring Joe Strummer's new mohawk) came on to do "Straight To Hell". Which was probably a good thing.

It's one of my favorite memories of her. The only other time I can remember her laughing so much was when she accidentally tuned in to Blazing Saddles making its TV debut (heavily censored, of course). Maybe she wasn't as square as she seemed.



When I started reading this thread I didn't expect that I was gonna end up talking about my grandmother, but there you are.

[souphound]

Funny you should talk about grandmothers indeed. That brought back a scene that was fairly regular in my own family. We often had family meals at the weekends, 8 to 12 people around my grandma's table usually. Right after the kids' dessert, a few of us would slink down under the table, stretch our legs and get comfortable to watch Walt Disney among our elders' tibias. Of course, the aforementioned elders were up above, chugging coffees and cognac, brandy or whatever while shooting the shit, to which we were totally oblivious. Good times.

[sloopjohnc]

Oct 21, 2021 0:44:30 GMT Charlie O. said:

I don't remember my maternal grandparents watching much TV, even though they were among the first in their small Northeast Pennsylvania town to buy a set (a beige Emerson that finally gave up the ghost sometime in the 1980s), but my paternal grandmother loved The Lawrence Welk Show and would never miss it. I thought it was dreadful, but it seemed like one of the few things that could reliably bring Grandma joy, so I couldn't begrudge her that.

She was a kind woman but always seemed a bit awkward and ill at ease, dour even, and she was VERY square, as evidenced by her favorite TV show. So when I was staying at her house one weekend in the autumn of 1982, I got more than a little nervous when she decided to stay up (well past her usual bedtime) and watch Saturday Night Live with me - I mean, that show was too risque even for my Dad, what was SHE gonna think? As it happened, Ron Howard was hosting, and she knew who he was.

I'd never seen her laugh so hard. She'd never heard of Eddie Murphy before, but he won her over in a big way. One sketch had Ron Howard, playing himself, going on a radio show hosted by Raheem Abdul Mohammad (Murphy) to promote the movie he's just directed, Night Shift. Raheem keeps calling Ron "Opie Cunningham." Ron asks Raheem if he's seen the movie; "Are there any black people in it?" "Umm, no." "Well than I didn't see it. Well, what's it about?" "It's about these two pimps." Long pause; Raheem seems puzzled. "You made a movie about pimps and there ain't no brothers in it? Man, I don't know whether to thank you or punch you in the mouth." Eventually Ron gets pissed off at Raheem's attitude - he's not a kid anymore, he's a grown man with a wife and children... "You've got kids?? Man, I can't imagine Opie Cunningham doin' it! I can't imagine anyone wanting to do it with Opie Cunningham!" My square Lawrence Welk-loving grandmother roared (well, her version of it) throughout the sketch, as she did at a sketch about Ron Howard returning to Mayberry and learning, among other things, that Gomer Pyle has come out of the closet, and that Floyd The Barber (Murphy) is and always secretly was black.

This is the one sketch from the show I can find on YouTube; after those others, it wasn't so surprising she would find this hilarious:





I think she went to bed before The Clash (featuring Joe Strummer's new mohawk) came on to do "Straight To Hell". Which was probably a good thing.

It's one of my favorite memories of her. The only other time I can remember her laughing so much was when she accidentally tuned in to Blazing Saddles making its TV debut (heavily censored, of course). Maybe she wasn't as square as she seemed.



When I started reading this thread I didn't expect that I was gonna end up talking about my grandmother, but there you are.

That's kind of a nice twist on Howard's role in The Music Man.