Glued to the Box is the third and final collection of the television criticism
Clive JamesClive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...
wrote for
The ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
. It includes material from articles that run from 2 December 1979 to 28 March 1982. In the Introduction he writes that he had, "never thought of television criticism as a career. It is the sort of thing one goes into with a whole heart but not for ones whole life." The volume finishes with his "standing up and moving aside" for his successor,
Julian BarnesJulian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...
. "No doubt he will slag one of my programmes first chance he gets, but by then I will be in the habit of damning all critics as fools." The London Review of Books wrote: "Along with its two predecessors, (Visions Before Midnight and
The Crystal BucketThe Crystal Bucket is the second selection of Clive James's television criticism for The Observer, for which the British Press Awards named him 'Critic of the Year' in 1981: "His contribution to the art and enjoyment of TV criticism over the past ten years has been immense...
), it will stand as a once-only critical phenomenon: ten years worth of high intelligence and wit."
Sheridan MorleySheridan Morley was an English author, biographer, critic, director, actor and broadcaster. He was the eldest son of actor Robert Morley and grandson of actress Dame Gladys Cooper, and wrote biographies of both...
called him "far and away the funniest writer in regular
Fleet StreetFleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
employment." The book is dedicated to
Pat KavanaghPatricia Olive Kavanagh was a British literary agent.Kavanagh was born in 1940 in Durban, South Africa, where her father was a journalist. Her half-sister, Julie Kavanagh, is a ballet critic. Her half-brother, Michael O'Brien is a geologist for AngloGold Ashanti in Johannesburg...
and Dan Kavanagh and carries an
epigraphIn literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...
from
Charles PéguyCharles Péguy was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a devout but non-practicing Roman Catholic.From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his...
at its start.
Programmes reviewed
- Ian Curteis
Ian Bayley Curteis is a British television dramatist and former television director.In a career as a television dramatist from the late 1960s onwards, Curteis wrote for many of the series of the day, including The Onedin Line and Crown Court. In 1979, two television plays by Curteis were...
's Suez - "an epic documentary drama about Sir Anthony EdenRobert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
.... Somewhere in the early 1950s, it is the end of the line for the British in the Middle East. The writing is on the wall, and it is in Arabic.... Eden had no legal justification whatsoever for launching the Suez adventureThe Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
. On top of that, he had misjudged Britain's real strength entirely... he handed the Soviet Union a moral advantage, which they were able to exploit when crushing the Hungarian rebellion.... It was the moment when even Britain's rulers caught up with the truth about their country's reduced capacity to influence events by force."
- Testament of Youth
Testament of Youth is the first installment, covering 1900–1925, in the memoir of Vera Brittain . It was published in 1933. Brittain's memoir continues with Testament of Experience, published in 1957, and encompassing the years 1925–1950...
- "four episodes have gone by. I have watched each of them twice and never ceased to marvel at the writing, directing and acting."
- Nancy - "portrayed Lady Astor as a sacred monster.... She thought that if Ribbentrop were invited to Cliveden
Cliveden is an Italianate mansion and estate at Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England. Set on banks above the River Thames, its grounds slope down to the river. The site has been home to an Earl, two Dukes, a Prince of Wales and the Viscounts Astor....
and allowed to win at musical chairs then Hitler would moderate his demands. Plainly, like many instinctively virtuous people, she was an innocent."
- Ski Sunday
Ski Sunday is the BBC Sports weekly magazine-style television show covering winter sports, broadcast in the United Kingdom on Sundays in a late afternoon or an early evening time-slot...
- "the women go slower than the men but not much. One feels protective when they crash, especially since the protectives they are wearing do not look all that protective. Luckily the British girls, in sharp contrast to their continental counterparts, move at a sedate pace."
- BBC Sports Personality of the Year
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of one titular award. Several new awards have been introduced, and , eight awards are presented. The oldest of these are the Team of the Year and...
- "the trophy for International Sportsman of the Year went to Björn BorgBjörn Rune Borg is a former world no. 1 tennis player from Sweden. Between 1974 and 1981 he won 11 Grand Slam singles titles. He won five consecutive Wimbledon singles titles and six French Open singles titles...
.... Borg is always nice, knowing that he will never be resented for his wealth as long as he stays shy."
- Sportsnight
Sportsnight was a midweek BBC television sports programme that ran from 1968 until 1997.-Sportsview:Sportsnight was a successor to Sportsview which started on 8 April 1954. Sportsview was devised by Paul Fox, later Controller of BBC1 and Peter Dimmock was the original host for a decade...
the World Gymnastics ChampionshipsThe Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique organises World Gymnastics Championships for each of the gymnastic disciplines:...
at Fort Worth - 'Remarkable how slim the Romanian girls are,' mused Ron PickeringRonald James Pickering , was an athletics coach and BBC sports commentator. Born in Barking, Essex, he coached several Olympic athletes, including Lynn Davies, a Welsh Olympic Games gold medallist long jumper. He was also the first host of the BBC1 children's sports programme We Are the...
and/or Alan WeeksAlan Frederick Weeks was a British television sports reporter and commentator.-Personal life:...
. 'Quite slim indeed.' Poor, grim little darlings, they looked anorexicAnorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
."
- Henry IV, Part I (BBC2) - "proceeding staunchly between the lower levels of excitement and the upper stratum of tedium...Interiors tended towards straw-on-the-floor naturalism..The trouble with low-budget naturalism is that it never looks natural..The night scenes before the Battle of Shrewsbury
The Battle of Shrewsbury was a battle fought on 21 July 1403, waged between an army led by the Lancastrian King, Henry IV, and a rebel army led by Henry "Hotspur" Percy from Northumberland....
looked particularly fine."
- Shakespeare in Perspective with George Melly
Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...
- "Melly quoted the odd Shakespearean line, showing that he could tell a pentameterPentameter may refer to:*the iambic pentameter of the modern period*the dactylic pentameter of antiquity...
from a pint pot. Singers are nearly always good at bringing out the rhythm of blank verseBlank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
."
- The South Bank Show
The South Bank Show was a television arts magazine show, originally made by London Weekend Television , presented by Melvyn Bragg, broadcast on ITV and seen in over 60 countries worldwide — including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States...
on the Royal Shakespeare CompanyThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
- "Alan HowardAlan MacKenzie Howard, CBE, is an English actor known for his roles on stage, television and film.He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966 to 1983, and played leading roles at the Royal National Theatre between 1992 and 2000.-Personal life:Howard is the only son of the actor...
's was the voice that thrilled... he has a knack for Shakespeare's rhythm - the rhythm that holds melody together... preparing one of AchillesIn Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
's speeches in Troilus and CressidaTroilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...
, [he] carefully rejected most of the advice and concentrated on picking out the driving impulse of the verse, which thereupon yielded up its meaning of its own accord - the exact effect Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote it that way in the first place."
- A Famous Journey with Kenneth Griffith
Kenneth Griffith was a Welsh actor and documentary filmmaker.-Early life:He was born Kenneth Reginald Griffiths in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Six months after his birth his parents split up and left Tenby, leaving Kenneth with his paternal grandparents, Emily and Ernest, who immediately adopted...
- "Retracing the journey of The Magi, Kenneth landed in IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Immediately he was thrown out...Kenneth blended obtrusively into the scenery. He has a high visibility factor, mainly because he is incapable of either just standing there when he is standing there or just walking when he is walking."
- Henry IV, Part II - "Playing Hal, David Gwillim
David Gwillim is an English actor, best known for playing Prince Hal in the BBC Television Shakespeare Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II and the title role in Henry V which were broadcast in 1979, and John Bold in The Barchester Chronicles broadcast in 1982.- Biography :Gwillim was born in...
... had an ear for rhythm.... 'How ill white hairs become a fool and jester.' FalstaffSir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
(a quietly excellent impersonation by Anthony QuayleSir John Anthony Quayle, CBE was an English actor and director.-Early life:Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, in Lancashire to a Manx family....
), was crushed."
- World of Sport
World of Sport can refer to:*World of Sport made by London Weekend Television and broadcast nationwide.*World of Sport seen on Melbourne's HSV Channel 7...
, with American truck racing - "The man who won leaned out of his cab to say, 'I just thank the good Lord that we were able to pull this thing off.' Another truck, in which the good Lord was evidently less interested, fell apart."
- The Tamarind Seed
The Tamarind Seed is a 1974 Blake Edwards film starring Julie Andrews as Judith Farrow, a British Home Office functionary and Omar Sharif as Feodor, a Soviet air attaché – lovers involved in Cold War intrigue. This was Lorimar's first film. The score was composed by John Barry. The...
, The Go-BetweenThe Go-Between is Harold Pinter's 1970 film adaptation of the novel by L. P. Hartley. A British production directed by Joseph Losey, it stars Dominic Guard , Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave, Michael Gough and Edward Fox.Pinter's screenplay—his final collaboration...
, CleopatraCleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy...
, Ben-HurBen-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
, Where Eagles DareWhere Eagles Dare is a 1968 World War II action-adventure spy film starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. It was directed by Brian G. Hutton and shot on location in Upper Austria and Bavaria....
("fighting their way back through several divisions of the German Army, our two heroes Richard BurtonRichard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
and Clint EastwoodClinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
, had the advantage of being equipped with real ammunition, whereas the Germans, apparently, had made the mistake of issuing their men with blanks"), The Poseidon Adventure: - "Every day of the festive season the channels attempted to clobber each other with old movies...Cleopatra was spread over two days like a small golf tournament.... Ben-Hur... has in fact a lot to offer the discerning viewer.."
- The Knowledge "a play by Jack Rosenthal
Jack Morris Rosenthal CBE was an English playwright, who wrote 129 early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and over 150 screenplays, including original TV plays, feature films, and adaptations.-Biography:...
about what taxi-drivers have to learn before they get their badge. What they have to learn is London...Some of the acting was as unsubtle as some of the writing but the thing worked."
- Christmas with Eric
John Eric Bartholomew OBE , known by his stage name Eric Morecambe, was an English comedian who together with Ernie Wise formed the award-winning double act Morecambe and Wise. The partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death of a heart attack in 1984...
and ErnieErnest Wiseman OBE , known by his stage name Ernie Wise, was an English comedian, best known as one half of the comedy duo Morecambe and Wise, who became an institution on British television, especially for their Christmas specials.-Career:Ernest Wiseman was the eldest of five children, and changed...
- "Des O'ConnorDes O'Connor, CBE is an English comedian and singer. A former talkshow host, he was the presenter of the long-running Channel 4 gameshow Countdown for two years...
turned up to receive the benefit of his usual million pounds worth of free publicity. Getting goosed by Eric and Ernie is the best thing that ever happened to him and he is smart enough to be grateful."
- Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way - "Barbara Woodhouse
Barbara Kathleen Vera Woodhouse , was a well known British dog trainer, author and television personality. Her 1980 television series Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way made her into a household name in the UK...
trains dogs by breaking the spirit of the owner." "... she was to be seen teaching puppies how to poo and pee. 'I use "Quickie!" for puddling and "Hurry up!" for the other function.'.... what does she say when she wants the dog to hurry up?"
- Man Alive, debate on the Olympic Games
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...
- "Marina Voikhanskaya, who knows exactly what happens to dissident opinion in the Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, described the process of 'cleaning' Moscow in preparation for the games. The reason for moving the children out is that 'children are spontaneous people.' ...Lord Exeter, 'representing the Olympic movement' had even stronger views but you could not say that he put them. He dumped them in your lap and left you to do what you could with them. 'I've spent my life in this movement,' he barked, as if anyone cared about that. 'We've always kept out of politics.'"
- Blake's 7
Blake's 7 is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC for its BBC1 channel. The series was created by Terry Nation, a prolific television writer and creator of the Daleks for the television series Doctor Who. Four series of Blake's 7 were produced and broadcast between 1978...
- "Servilan, the only reason for watching the otherwise worthless Blake's Seven. Played by a statuesque knockout called Jacqueline PearceJacqueline Pearce is a British actress.-Career:Jacqueline Pearce trained at the British stage school RADA and at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in Los Angeles....
... she is obliged to spend an unconscionable amount of time pursuing Blake's dreary Seven through fitfully shimmering time-warps and into the awkwardly whirling vortices of low-budget black holes."
- The Moonies (ATV)
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
- "Mr MoonSun Myung Moon is the Korean founder and leader of the worldwide Unification Church. He is also the founder of many other organizations and projects...
talks like the leading heavy from an episode of Batman made in about 1946. 'Many people will die. Those who go against our movement.'" "Such groups have a strong appeal for people who are simultaneously self-obsessed and deficient in real personality.... The term brainwashing should be reserved for cases in which there are brains to be washed."
- Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
's Valentine Night Special - "like being forcibly fed with warm peppermint creams."
- Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
- the First Forty Years - "The venue was Caesar's Palace in Las VegasThe Las Vegas Strip is an approximately stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard in Clark County, Nevada; adjacent to, but outside the city limits of Las Vegas proper. The Strip lies within the unincorporated townships of Paradise and Winchester...
. It was jammed with celebrities, many of them still alive."
- The Enigma, adapted by Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
from a story by John FowlesJohn Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Fowles among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Birth and family:...
- "was about a rich Tory MP who went missing...The MP's awful son had a marvellously intuitive and beautiful mistress, played by Barbara KellermanBarbara R. Kellerman is an English actress, noted for her film and television roles. She trained at Rose Bruford College. Kellerman's Jewish parents had fled Nazi Germany and settled in Leeds, briefly living in Manchester before returning to Leeds by 1952...
."
- Very Like a Whale, a play by John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
- "Alan BatesSir Alan Arthur Bates CBE was an English actor, who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he demonstrated his versatility in films ranging from the popular children’s story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving...
played Sir Jock Mellor, captain of industry. Sir Jock had a strange temperament for a captain of industry. He was just like a playwright.... Gemma JonesGemma Jones is an English character actress on both stage and screen.-Early life:Jones was born in London, England, the daughter of Irene and Griffith Jones, an actor. Her brother, Nicholas Jones, is also an actor...
was very good at being the bitchy Osborne woman who shouts, 'I haven't finished my drink!"
- 1980 Winter Olympics
The 1980 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XIII Olympic Winter Games, was a multi-sport event which was celebrated from 13 February through 24 February 1980 in Lake Placid, New York, United States of America. This was the second time the Upstate New York village hosted the Games, after 1932...
- "There was tragedy, of course. 'And that... is another tragedy for the British speed skaters.' While these sentiments were being uttered, a British male speed skater could be seen sliding along on his nose. In another tragedy, a British female speed skater forgot to change lanes and scythed down the only Chinese female speed skater in existence.. All this time the BBC commentators had been doing their best to stay calm about Robin CousinsRobert "Robin" Cousins is a British retired competitive figure skater. He is the 1980 Olympic Champion, the 1980 European champion, a three-time World medalist and four-time British national champion. He later starred in ice shows and also produced his own...
. They rarely mentioned him more than a thousand times a night."
- Nationwide
Nationwide was a BBC News and Current affairs television programme broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the early evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting...
- there was a lady whose cat had recently survived a complete cycle in the washing machine. 'What sort of condition was he in?' asked Frank BoughFrank Bough is a retired British television presenter who is best known as the former host of BBC sports and current affairs shows including Grandstand, Nationwide and Breakfast Time, which he fronted alongside Selina Scott.-Early life:...
. The lady answered without smiling: 'My husband said he looked like a drowned rat."
- Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
, production of Oedipus Tyrannus by SophoclesSophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
- "Costumes consisted of caftans and plastic masks, decor of practically nothing..It was the best Greek tragedy I have seen on television since Eileen AtkinsDame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...
played ElectraIn Greek mythology, Electra was an Argive princess and daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra. She and her brother Orestes plotted revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father Agamemnon...
."
- Free to Choose, with Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
- "Friedman is an eloquent man with a simple idea.... Friedman's theory has the dubious merit of being unfalsifiable. It always fits. A country prospers if its government does not interfere. If a country prospers even when the government does interfere, it would have prospered even more if the government had not interfered... the Left has become unpopular...Nowadays the New Class tends to be on the Right. I would be surprised if this supposedly seismic realignment were anything more than yet another change of fashion, with the truth remaining hard to get at. All you can be sure of is that anyone who sounds as if he has all the answers hasn't."
- The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
BBC Television ShakespeareThe BBC Television Shakespeare was a set of television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, produced by the BBC between 1978 and 1985.-Origins:...
- "Michael HordernSir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...
, as ProsperoProspero is the protagonist in The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.- The Tempest :Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, who was put to sea on "a rotten carcass of a butt [boat]" to die by his usurping brother, Antonio, twelve years before the play begins. Prospero and Miranda survived,...
, was magical enough to transfigure his surroundings, the television screen, and eventually, you."
- Just for Today, documentary about Jimmy Greaves
James Peter 'Jimmy' Greaves is an English former football player, England's third highest international goalscorer, the highest goalscorer in the history of Tottenham Hotspur football club, the highest goalscorer in the history of English top flight football and more recently a television pundit -...
- "Booze stood indicted as a bad thing."
- Secret Orchards a William Trevor
William Trevor, KBE is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesman of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language....
play - "adultery is a bad thing"
- A Gift from Nessus, by William McIlvanney
William McIlvanney is a writer of crime stories, novels, and poetry. McIlvanney is a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch, and Walking Wounded are all known for their portrayal of Glasgow in the 1970s.- Life and career :McIlvanney was born in the...
and Bill CraigBill Craig was a Scottish television scriptwriter.He wrote a large number of scripts, including the TV adaptations of Sunset Song, Cloud Howe, Grey Granite and The Eagle of the Ninth....
- "an excellent play.... As acted and directed, it was genuinely tragic."
- Change of Direction - "A drunkard found salvation at the hands of Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...
... thereby adding himself to the long list of drunkards, reformed or otherwise, who have been featured in recent television programmes. There was another one in Change of Direction. What made him different from all the others was that his name was Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...
- Buzz is not a very dazzling speaker, as Ludovic KennedySir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy was a British journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author best known for re-examining cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley, and for his role in the abolition of the death penalty in the United...
, who had the task of interviewing him, soon discovered. But he is an honest man and his dilemma made sad listening."
- The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys is an award-winning 1978 docudrama mini-series produced by the BBC, written by Andrew Birkin, and directed by Rodney Bennett. It is about the relationship between Peter Pan creator J. M...
- "Ian HolmSir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
brought J. M. BarrieSir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
's neuroses to life with an intensity that made you wish he hadn't. Obviously it was hell being him."
- Parting Shots From Animlals - with John Berger
John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
- The South Bank Show
The South Bank Show was a television arts magazine show, originally made by London Weekend Television , presented by Melvyn Bragg, broadcast on ITV and seen in over 60 countries worldwide — including Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States...
, on Merce CunninghamMercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
- "he and his dancers come fully to life only when the music is the old, melodic kind."
- What the Papers Say
What The Papers Say is a BBC radio programme that originally ran for many years on British television.Its first incarnation was the second longest-running programme on British television after Panorama...
- "Donald WoodsDonald James Woods, CBE was a white South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist.As editor of the Daily Dispatch from 1965 to 1977, he befriended Steve Biko, leader of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement, and was banned by the government soon after Biko's death, which had been...
ably analysed Fleet Street's success in getting everything wrong about MugabeRobert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
."
- Russian - Language and People - "Not only has all the location footage been vetted, but everything done here at home has been carefully toned down in order not to offend the tender sensibilities of the host nation.... Total blandness is the bottom line of the deal, into which the BBC went with its eyes open, although doubtless unaware that its hosts would celebrate the launching of the series by invading Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
.... In Russian the stress is arbitrary and the natives elide like mad... a language which is at least as big as ours in vocabulary and even more idiomatic. But it is also wonderfully, wildly beautiful."
- Thérèse Raquin
Thérèse Raquin is the title of a novel and a play by the French writer Émile Zola. The novel was originally published in serial format in the journal L'Artiste and in book format in December of the same year.-Plot introduction:Thérèse Raquin tells the story of a young woman, unhappily married to...
- "Kate NelliganPatricia Colleen "Kate" Nelligan is a Canadian BAFTA award winning stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Nelligan, the fourth of six children, was born in London, Ontario, the daughter of Josephine Alice , a schoolteacher, and Patrick Joseph Nelligan, a factory repairman and municipal...
... has the right kind of nerve to take a hack at a heavy role.... Clad fetchingly in well-laundered underwear, she drops on him [her weedy husband's virile friend], from the ceiling. Blind passion never looked more believable. Or more fun, either."
- Shadows on Our Skin - "the best television play about Northern Ireland since I'm a Dreamer, Montreal... adapted by the poet Derek Mahon from the novel by Jennifer Johnston
Jennifer Johnston is an Irish novelist, winner of the Whitbread Book Award for The Old Jest in 1979, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977...
... the script economically explored the distorted childhood of a BogsideThe Bogside is a neighbourhood outside the city walls of Derry, Northern Ireland. The area has been a focus point for many of the events of The Troubles, from the Battle of the Bogside and Bloody Sunday in the 1960s and 1970s...
eleven-year-old boy called Joe."
- Omnibus, on Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
- "I never enjoyed an Omnibus programme more.... Nevertheless somebody should have pointed out that most Roger Corman movies, whether by the master himself or by an exploited tyro, are not just cheap, but truly lousy."
- China (Thames
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
) - "glumly recounted what has been happening to the Peking Ballet Company during thirty years of revolution..A ballerina, her hands ruined from eight years hard labour in the fields, said that what was done to your body would have been less unbearable if they had let your mind alone.... There was a campaign called 'Three famous, three high' in which the three most accomplished people in any area of creativity were reassigned to a decade or so of carting night-soil."
- Writers and Places - "was excellent. Frederic Raphael
Frederic Michael Raphael is an American-born, British-educated screenwriter, and also a prolific novelist and journalist.-Life and career:...
... had more to say in propria persona than as the author of The Glittering Prizes..."
- The Real Thing - "a new series of science waffle.... 'Your brain has already made up its mind about what way up I am. And because it doesn't possess the information I have, its got it wrong.' What James Burke
James Burke is a British broadcaster, science historian, author and television producer known amongst other things for his documentary television series Connections and its more philosophical oriented companion production, The Day the Universe Changed , focusing on the history of science and...
can't seem to grasp is that I don't care about not possessing the information he has."
- A Song for Europe - "an endless mess"
- The Kenny Everett Video Show - "Unfortunately Hot Gossip
-Formation:Arlene Phillips came to London to learn and teach developing American Jazz dance routines. Employed as a dance teacher, she taught at locations including the Pineapple Dance Studios and the Italia Conti Stage School. In 1974, Phillips started forming the core of a troupe; Italia Conti...
..blot his copybook..with their dim-witted desire to hop about in Nazi uniforms.... As for the much touted question about whether the dance groups are going over the top... the eroticism has been disappearing along with the cloth.... There was never a sexier television dance group than Pan's PeoplePan's People were a British TV dance troupe, who are usually associated with the BBC TV music chart show Top of the Pops.In an era before pop videos, they danced to songs whose original artists were not available to perform them live...
at the height of their fame, and that was because they gave you what is known among traditional jazz-men as a flash. You can't have a flash without a skirt."
- Stephen Poliakoff
Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, FRSL is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.-Early life and career:...
's Bloody KidsBloody Kids is a British television film written by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Stephen Frears, made by Black Lion Films for ATV, and first shown on ITV on 22 March 1980.-Cast:...
- "was directed by Stephen FrearsStephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...
with his customary nose for the phosphorescent glamour of urban blight."
- News at Ten
The ITV News at Ten is the flagship news programme on British television network ITV, produced by ITN and founded by news editor Geoffrey Cox in 1967. It was originally planned as a thirteen week project in July 1967 because senior figures at ITV refused to believe that a permanent 30-minute late...
- "The big deal of the week was nude bathing at BrightonBrighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
... a naked man came limping and shivering out of the sea to tell the camera what a terrific time he was having. He was visible down to a line drawn about half an inch above what would probably have turned out to be, if we had been allowed to see it, a frost-bitten cashewThe cashew is a tree in the family Anacardiaceae. Its English name derives from the Portuguese name for the fruit of the cashew tree, caju, which in turn derives from the indigenous Tupi name, acajú. It is now widely grown in tropical climates for its cashew nuts and cashew apples.-Etymology:The...
."
- The Grand National - "a loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered."
- Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia is a melodramma, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after the play by Victor Hugo, in its turn after the legend of Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia was first performed on 26 December 1833 at La Scala, Milan with...
- "Anne Howells was given clothes worthy of her captivating looks..this telegenic mezzoA mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
... was allowed to strut dynamically about in highly becoming velvet pant-suits plus Renaissance accessories.."
- Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
's Why Didn't They Ask Evans? - "filled with glaring impossibilities.... But it was all highly enjoyable, once you accepted that the idea was to wallow in what you could not swallow."
- Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
- "Lionel Goldstein's The Executioner - "Deborah NortonDeborah Norton is an English actress best known for her appearances in Yes, Prime Minister and A Bit of Fry and Laurie.- Personal life :...
was her usual stunning self - a bucket of ice who melted for one second, then froze up again..How does it happen that a chucklehead like Rolf HochhuthRolf Hochhuth is a German author and playwright. He is best known for his 1963 drama The Deputy and remains a controversial figure for his plays and other public comments, such as his insinuation of Pope Pius XII's sympathies for Hitler's extermination of the Jews in the 1963 play The Deputy and...
gets so much coverage when a playwright of Mr Goldstein's quality is largely unknown?.. The whole chain of thought, deed and consequence was brilliantly worked out.."
- Simon Gray
Simon James Holliday Gray, CBE , was an English playwright and memoirist who also had a career as a university lecturer in English literature at Queen Mary, University of London, for 20 years...
's The Rear Column - "an assorted bunch of British officers waiting in the CongoThe Congo Basin is the sedimentary basin that is the drainage of the Congo River of west equatorial Africa. The basin begins in the highlands of the East African Rift system with input from the Chambeshi River, the Uele and Ubangi Rivers in the upper reaches and the Lualaba River draining wetlands...
.... Their commanding officer, played excellently by Barry Foster in his Orde Wingate manner plus a pint of sweat, was clearly bonkers...Harold PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
in his first try at directing for television... planned his shots with tact, avoided all gimmickry."
- TV Eye - "Chinese whose fingers had been cut off in industrial accidents were to be seen having them sewn back on or replaced with toes.... Thousands of Chinese per year have digits or limbs removed in this way. Apparently it is deemed more interesting to explore surgical techniques for replacing the missing appendages than to devise safe machines."
- Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
's The Imitation Game - "Richard EyreSir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...
directed with an unfailing touch and Harriet WalterDame Harriet Mary Walter, DBE is a British actress.-Personal life:She is the niece of renowned British actor Sir Christopher Lee, as the daughter of his elder sister Xandra Lee. On her father's side she is a great-great-great-granddaughter of John Walter, founder of The TimesShe was educated at...
brought seemingly limitless reserves of intelligent emotion to the incarnation of the central role."
- Pot Black
Pot Black was a British series of snooker tournaments televised by BBC, that played a large part in the popularisation of the modern game, from 1969 to 1986. The event was revived in the form of several one-off tournaments throughout the 1990s and up to 2007...
- "A kill-or-be-killed nailbiter between Ray ReardonRay Reardon, MBE is a retired Welsh snooker player. He dominated the sport in the 1970s, winning six World Championships in that decade...
and the mighty Eddie CharltonEdward Francis Charlton AM was an Australian professional snooker and English billiards player. He remains the only player to have been world championship runner-up in both snooker and billiards without winning either title...
."
- Manon Lescaut
Manon is an opéra comique in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost...
- "James LevineJames Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and as of May 2011 he has...
stood revealed as a great conductor and Placido DomingoPlácido Domingo KBE , born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range...
as a changed man. He has lost at least two stone.... But the voice is bigger and more beautiful than ever, like his eyebrows."
- Jessie Kesson
Jessie Kesson , born as Jessie Grant McDonald, was a Scottish novelist, playwright and radio producer.-Life:...
's The White Bird Passes, directed by Michael RadfordMichael Radford is an English film director and screenwriter.-Early life and career:Radford was born on 24 February 1946, in New Delhi, India, to a British father and an Austrian Jewish mother. He was educated at Bedford School before attending Worcester College, Oxford...
- "Isobel BlackIsobel Amy Black is a British actress who is noted for her roles on film and television. She is the daughter of the late screenwriter Ian Stuart Black...
... beautiful to see... a welcome return.."
- 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was likely first performed between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins...
- "The text was played straight, which helped ensure that the comic relief (Rodney BewesRodney Bewes is an English television actor and writer who is best known for playing Bob Ferris in the BBC television sitcom The Likely Lads and its colour sequel Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? , and in the various radio series based on them , and in the big screen film The Likely Lads...
as Bergetto, the thick suitor), was actually comic.... I really think it is not much of a play. But this was a great interpretation."
- The Book Programme - "Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
was plugging his new book, The Real War which apparently advances the thesis that the Third World War is already on.... Nobody else in the studio really concurred... but Nixon for some reason carried on as if they were all agreeing with him."
- Murphy's Stroke with Niall Toibin
Niall Tóibín is an Irish comedian and actor. Born in Cork into an Irish speaking family, Tóibín grew up on the north-side of the city in Bishop's Field. He has appeared in Ryan's Daughter, Bracken, The Irish R.M., Caught in a Free State, Ballykissangel, Far and Away, and Veronica Guerin, and has...
; Fred DibnahFrederick "Fred" Dibnah MBE , born in Bolton, was an English steeplejack and eccentric with a keen interest in mechanical engineering who became a cult television personality....
, Steeplejack; HamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, BBC Television ShakespeareThe BBC Television Shakespeare was a set of television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, produced by the BBC between 1978 and 1985.-Origins:...
, starring Derek JacobiSir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
- "only an average production"; South Bank Show with Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers."...
- "fascinating about his craft."
- Nine O'Clock News - "Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada was a military leader and President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military...
made an appearance... exclusively interviewed by Brian BarronBrian Munro Barron MBE was a British foreign and war correspondent for BBC News. During a career spanning five decades he reported on many major world events, including the end of British rule in Aden, the Vietnam War, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War...
, Idi spoke from his mysterious hideout, which nobody except everybody knows to be the Sands Hotel, JeddahJeddah, Jiddah, Jidda, or Jedda is a city located on the coast of the Red Sea and is the major urban center of western Saudi Arabia. It is the largest city in Makkah Province, the largest sea port on the Red Sea, and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city, Riyadh. The...
."
- Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood CBE is a British comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live stand-up comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano...
's Nearly A Happy EndingNearly A Happy Ending is a television play written by Victoria Wood, which ITV broadcast on 1 June 1980.It is a sequel to Wood's earlier play Talent, with the same lead character's, Julie and Maureen ....
- "the indispensable comic element is a gift that can't be taught: you've either got it or you haven't, and Victoria's got it."
- In Evidence with Jonathan Dimbleby
Jonathan Dimbleby is a British presenter of current affairs and political radio and television programmes, a political commentator and a writer. He is the son of Richard Dimbleby and younger brother of British TV presenter David Dimbleby.-Education:Dimbleby was educated at Charterhouse School, a...
- "he explained that the police force attracts people of 'authoritarian' sympathies. Undoubtedly it does, but it also attracts people who simply believe in authority, which is not the same thing as being authoritarian. A fine distinction but a crucial one, which a television reporter should be able to make."
- No Maps on my Taps - "gave you the essence of black tap-dancing.... There was some attempt to suggest that white tap-dancing was done by numbers rather than from a true rhythmic sense, but this was an understandable case of racism in reverse. As was proved by the miraculous dance numbers in You'll Never Get Rich
You'll Never Get Rich is a 1941 Hollywood musical comedy film with a wartime theme starring Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Robert Benchley, Cliff Nazarro, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The film was directed by Sidney Lanfield...
, Fred AstaireFred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
had as much rhythm as a human being can have. So did Rita HayworthRita Hayworth was an American film actress and dancer who attained fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars...
...."
- Wimbledon - "John McEnroe
John Patrick McEnroe, Jr. is a former world no. 1 professional tennis player from the United States. During his career, he won seven Grand Slam singles titles , nine Grand Slam men's doubles titles, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title...
- For a long time, he did his best to contain his awful personality, tying his shoelaces between games instead of during and merely scowling at the linesmen instead of swearing..Finally the rain got to him. By Thursday, he was behaving as badly as ever..."
- Buccaneer - "the ladies involved, who include Shirley Anne Field
Shirley Anne Field is a British actress who has performed on stage, film and television since 1955.-Early Life:...
are fetching enough..somebody at the BBC has at last grasped the principle by which any given episode of a modern soap operaA soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
must feature at least three delectable females, one of whom shall not be fully clad. Put a stetsonStetsons are the brand of hat manufactured by the John B. Stetson Company of St. Joseph, Missouri.Stetson eventually became the world’s largest hat maker, producing over 3.3 million hats a year in a factory spread over . Today Stetson remains a family-owned concern...
on all that and you've got DallasDallas is an American serial drama/prime time soap opera that revolves around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family in the oil and cattle-ranching industries. Throughout the series, Larry Hagman stars as greedy, scheming oil baron J. R. Ewing...
."
- The Big Time
The Big Time was a British documentary and reality television series made by the BBC, which ran from 1976 to 1980.Devised and produced by Esther Rantzen and narrated initially by Rantzen but later by John Pitman, each programme followed a member of the public placed in the limelight as a result of...
- "an unknown girl called Sheena EastonSheena Easton is a Scottish recording artist. Easton became famous for being the focus of an episode in the British television programme The Big Time, which recorded her attempts to gain a record contract and her eventual signing with EMI Records.Easton rose to fame in the early 1980s with the pop...
was given her chance to become a pop star... although first she had to endure a lecture from Dorothy SquiresDorothy Squires was a Welsh vocalist. Among her recordings were versions of "A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening", "I'm in the Mood for Love", "Anytime", "If You Love Me " and "And So to Sleep Again".-Biography:...
. 'I had tomatoes thrown at me, apples thrown at me...' Sheena sat silent through all this.... She has the temperament to go with the talent and just might make it."
- Panorama with David Dimbleby
David Dimbleby is a British BBC TV commentator and a presenter of current affairs and political programmes, most notably the BBC's flagship political show Question Time, and more recently, art, architectural history and history series...
on South Africa - "the white ruling class..has a vested interest in not being able to understand the issues."
- I Have Seen Yesterday on reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
- "Christmas HumphreysTravers Christmas Humphreys, QC was a British barrister who prosecuted several controversial cases in the 1940s and 1950s, and later became a judge at the Old Bailey. He was an enthusiastic Shakespeare scholar and proponent of the Oxfordian theory...
was the most substantial name involved.."
- Montaillou
Montaillou is a commune in the Ariège department in southwestern France.-History:The town is best known for being the subject of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's pioneering work of microhistory, Montaillou, village occitan. It analyzes the town in great detail over a thirty-year period from 1294 to 1324...
- "In the old days the town's population was thinned by the InquisitionThe Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
... they had called the Church the instrument of the Devil.... The Church disabused them of this notion by toasting them over a low flame. But first the Bishop extracted confessions. What makes Montaillou remarkable is that this register of confessions still exists."
- Women of Courage
Peter Morley, OBE is a German-born British television producer and documentary filmmaker. As a nine-year old child, he fled Nazi Germany with his elder siblings and moved to England, where he has lived ever since...
- "gave us Sigrid LundSigrid Helliesen Lund was a Norwegian peace activist, noted for her humanitarian efforts throughout most of the 20th century, and in particular her resistance to the occupation of Norway during World War II.-Biography:...
, a Norwegian pacifist who saved Jewish children from the Nazis... she got a bunch of children out of PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and took them to Norway. To get there they had to go through BerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where grown up people spat on the children. When the children asked Sigrid why this was happening, she said it was because the people had a cold."
- Inside Story on prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
- "An American proprietor of a legal brothelBrothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
called the Chicken Ranch irrefutably pointed out that the only way to make prostitution benign is to legalise brothels."
- Jeux sans frontières
Jeux Sans Frontières was a Europe-wide television game show.In its original conception, it was broadcast from 1965 to 1999 under the auspices of the European Broadcasting Union and featured teams from different European countries in outlandish costumes competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny...
from AntibesAntibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.It lies on the Mediterranean in the Côte d'Azur, located between Cannes and Nice. The town of Juan-les-Pins is within the commune of Antibes...
- "Stuart Hall... is an intelligent, cultivated man, yet somehow he has managed to embrace his task without recourse to drugs."
- The Martian Chronicles
The Martian Chronicles is a 1950 science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury that chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists...
- "the latest in a long series of undeviatingly tacky science fiction epics which carry the name of Milton SubotskyMilton Subotsky was an American TV and film writer/producer. In 1964, in England, he formed Amicus Productions with Max J Rosenberg.Together they produced a number of low budget science fiction and horror films....
prominent among the credits."
- Bamber Gascoigne
Bamber Gascoigne, FRSL is a British television presenter and author, most known for being the original quizmaster on University Challenge.-Biography:...
's The Christians - "survives a second viewing."
- P. J. Kavanagh
Patrick J. Kavanagh is an English poet, lecturer, actor and broadcaster. His father was the ITMA scriptwriter, Ted Kavanagh.He fought in the Korean War, being evacuated as result of his injuries....
's William CowperWilliam Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...
in Olney - "an impeccably composed and delivered little programme."
- Mork and Mindy
Mork & Mindy is an American science fiction sitcom broadcast from 1978 until 1982 on ABC. The series starred Robin Williams as Mork, an alien who comes to Earth from the planet Ork in a small, one-man egg-shaped spaceship. Pam Dawber co-starred as Mindy McConnell, his human friend and roommate...
- "a slick imported American comedy series in which the one-line gags pile up in struggling heaps."
- News at Ten - "Trevor McDonald
Sir Trevor McDonald OBE is a Trinidadian-British newsreader and journalist. He had a long career as a news presenter with ITN...
's night-to-night analysis of the Polish crisis was consistently the best thing of its kind on television."
- Newsnight, on Christine Keeler
Christine Margaret Keeler is an English former model and showgirl. Her involvement with a British government minister discredited the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1963, in what is known as the Profumo Affair....
- "Christine's outline is as lissom now as it was then, when Government Ministers dished their careers because they couldn't keep their hands off it... one of the distinguishing marks of the 1960s was that the hookers looked as good as the socialites.."
- Swan Lake
Swan Lake ballet, op. 20, by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, composed 1875–1876. The scenario, initially in four acts, was fashioned from Russian folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger...
- "Natalia MakarovaNataliya Romanovna Makarova is the legendary Soviet-Russian-born prima ballerina. The History of Dance, published in 1981, notes that “Her performances set standards of artistry and aristocracy of dance which mark her as the finest ballerina of her generation.” She has also won awards as an...
was too good for words..Indeed Odile, at the end of a mind-watering pas-de-deux, threw Siegfried a smile which plainly asked, 'Your place or mine?'"
- Invitation to the Dance - "hosted by Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Russian dancer, considered one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.In 1961 he...
, we were treated to BéjartMaurice Béjart was a French born, Swiss choreographer who ran the Béjart Ballet Lausanne in Switzerland. He was the son of the French philosopher Gaston Berger.- Biography :...
's version of The FirebirdThe Firebird is a 1910 ballet created by the composer Igor Stravinsky and choreographer Michel Fokine. The ballet is based on Russian folk tales of the magical glowing bird of the same name that is both a blessing and a curse to its captor....
."
- The World About Us - "there are hot air vents on the ocean floor. Around these vents cluster some of the least photogenic life-forms known to man...What is that strange, spaghetti-like structure? Is it spaghetti? No, it is more worms. And now a rat-tailed fish noses towards the window, obeying the universal instinct of all creation - to be on television."
- Panorama "The People's Daily... congratulated the Party on jailing the dissident Wei
Wei Jingsheng is a Chinese activist known for his involvement in the Chinese democracy movement, most prominent for authoring the document Fifth Modernization on the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing in 1978. He is generally known for getting arrested and spending 15 years in prison due to the document...
for fifteen years. Wei's crime had been to suggest that DengDeng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy...
's famous Four Modernisations would be meaningless without a fifth, namely democracy."
- Andrea Newman
Andrea Newman is an English author.An only child, mainly brought up by her grandmother, she taught at a grammar school after graduating with a degree in English from London University...
's Mackenzie - "Andrea Newman's great strength as a writer is that she sees the drama and passion in the lives of ordinary people. Her housewives carry on like Maria CallasMaria Callas was an American-born Greek soprano and one of the most renowned opera singers of the 20th century. She combined an impressive bel canto technique, a wide-ranging voice and great dramatic gifts...
."
- The Greeks - "This truly awful series is narrated by its producer, Christopher Burstall, who, I am afraid, has developed a bad case of feeling obliged to give us Something of Himself."
- Telethon - "had the hypnotic fascination of a rattlesnake..The audience gets little to enjoy beyond the unintentional humour generated by technical cock-ups. As for the handicapped children, they gain some of the means of life, - but life in what kind of world? To do what? To watch Bernie Winters
Bernie Winters was an English comedian and the comic relief of the double act, Mike and Bernie Winters with his brother, Mike. He later performed solo, often with the aid of his St...
host a darts competition? There has to be another way."
- The Shock of the New
The Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary series by Robert Hughes that was broadcast by the BBC in the United Kingdom and by PBS in the United...
- "fronted by Robert HughesRobert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.-Early life:...
, is plainly destined to be one of the more considerable series about the visual arts. Hughes has gone a long way towards restoring to television the combination of wide knowledge and natural eloquence not seen and heard on this subject since Lord ClarkKenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
retired from the screen."
- Derek Bailey on Rex Whistler
Reginald John 'Rex' Whistler was a British artist, designer and illustrator.-Biography:Rex Whistler was born in Eltham, Kent, the son of Henry and Helen Frances Mary Whistler...
- "Whistler was a dandyA dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
with fashionable friends, but his creations were genuinely inventive: he had fantasy raised to the level of imagination. There was a tragic vision behind his humour. The tragedy fulfilled itself when he died as a war hero."
- Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is an American science fiction adventure television series produced by Universal Studios. The series ran for two seasons between 1979–1981, and the feature-length pilot episode for the series was released as a theatrical film several months before the series aired....
- "The hardware looks good and Wilma DeeringWilma Deering is a fictional character featured in the various iterations of Buck Rogers which have spanned many media over the years.Through all the versions of Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering has maintained some clear characteristics. She is a sometimes romantic interest for Buck, always a loyal...
looks simply sensational, like Wonder WomanWonder Woman is a DC Comics superheroine created by William Moulton Marston. She first appeared in All Star Comics #8 . The Wonder Woman title has been published by DC Comics almost continuously except for a brief hiatus in 1986....
with brains."
- Horizon - "dealing with high-speed and time-lapse photography. Speeded up several hundred times, a gang of maggots devoured a dead mouse...First they were all over the mouse's head like a cloche hat
The cloche hat is a fitted, bell-shaped hat for women that was invented by milliner Caroline Reboux in 1908, became especially popular during the 1920s, and continued to be commonly seen until about 1933. Cloche is the French word for "bell"....
. Then they were around its neck like a feather boa fluttering in the wind. Then they were around its waist like a grass skirt.... Then they were sliding down past its hips like a dress rapidly removed by an impatient lover...."
- Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll - "the rarest of many entrancing things...was the sight it afforded of Phil Spector
Phillip Harvey "Phil" Spector is an American record producer and songwriter, later known for his conviction in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson....
engaged in the actual creation of the Wall of SoundThe Wall of Sound is a music production technique for pop and rock music recordings developed by record producer Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in Los Angeles, California, during the early 1960s...
. Even today I still play my CrystalsThe Crystals are an American vocal group based in New York, considered one of the defining acts of the girl group era of the first half of the 1960s. Their 1961–1964 chart hits, including "Uptown", "He's a Rebel", "Da Doo Ron Ron " and "Then He Kissed Me", featured three successive female lead...
and RonettesThe Ronettes were a 1960s girl group from New York City, best known for their work with producer Phil Spector. The group consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett ; her older sister, Estelle Bennett; and their cousin Nedra Talley...
albums on those occasions when my spirits need lifting and soothing at the same time. Spector had the gift of cool excitement."
- Kate Bush
Kate Bush is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years.In 1978, at the age of 19, Bush topped the UK Singles Chart...
in Concert - "Kate has talent to burn. But she is also a weirdo. For her opening number she appeared in a luminous leotard with Superman trunks, a hairstyle like an exploding armchair, and bare feet."
- Making The Shining - "Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
told of how StanleyStanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
had pushed him into an acting style beyond naturalism. Clips of Jack in action proved that there is no acting style beyond naturalism except hamAn actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
."
- Panorama on organ transplants - "When one makes ill-timed jokes about Donor's Club cards and donor kebab, one is well aware that a nagging insecurity is finding verbal expression."
- Goodbye Gutenberg - "The Japanese are able to give their machines voices only because the Japanese language, though fiendishly complicated when written down, consists of a relatively simple set of sounds when spoken."
- World of Sport
World of Sport can refer to:*World of Sport made by London Weekend Television and broadcast nationwide.*World of Sport seen on Melbourne's HSV Channel 7...
- "motorcycle jumping. The venue was Exhibition Stadium, TorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
... [Karel Soucek]] hurtled down the track, up the ramp and into space. His front wheel was too high. 'He's in trouble.' Karel's front wheel was by now directly above the back wheel, so there was nothing he could do except let go and land on his behind at 80 m.p.h."
- Best of British - "Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
was the first subject... Paul GambacciniPaul Matthew Gambaccini is a radio and television presenter in the United Kingdom...
interviewed Elton at his palatial home."
- Forgive Our Foolish Ways - "Kate Nelligan
Patricia Colleen "Kate" Nelligan is a Canadian BAFTA award winning stage, film and television actress.-Early life:Nelligan, the fourth of six children, was born in London, Ontario, the daughter of Josephine Alice , a schoolteacher, and Patrick Joseph Nelligan, a factory repairman and municipal...
didn't get to bed with the German POW (Hartmut BeckerHartmut Becker is a German actor. He played Sgt. Gustav Wagner in Escape From Sobibor in 1987. He also starred in the 1970 film o.k, which was also entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival...
), in the first episode. Presumably she will in the second episode.... There is a certain predictability about the enterprise, but perhaps it will stun us yet."
- Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
- "Elizabeth DrewElizabeth Drew is an American political journalist and author.- Biography :A graduate of Wellesley College, she was Washington correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker...
of the Washington Post fed Charles WheelerCharles Wheeler may refer to:*Charles Wheeler , Australian painter*Charles Wheeler , journalist with the BBC*Charles Wheeler , Missouri politician...
a brilliantly argued summary of American politics."
- Weekend World
Weekend World is a British television political series, made by London Weekend Television and broadcast from 1972 to 1988.Created by John Birt not long after he moved to LWT, the series was broadcast on the ITV network at lunchtimes on Sundays...
- "Michael FootMichael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
's new haircut proclaims him a serious candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party...Clearly his hair plays a symbolic role. When it was long it symbolised rebellion. Now that it is short it symbolises responsibility...it has long been my belief that a man declares himself by the way he arranges his wisps."
- Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
's Rain on the RoofRain on the Roof is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast by ITV on 26 October 1980.It is the second in a loosely-connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal produced for London Weekend Television by the independent company Potter and producer Kenith Trodd established after...
- "was really like..Jerome K. JeromeJerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...
's The Passing of the Third Floor BackThe Passing of the Third Floor Back is a 1935 British drama film directed by Berthold Viertel and starring Conrad Veidt, Anna Lee, René Ray and Frank Cellier. The film is based on a short story by Jerome K. Jerome and depicts the various small-minded inhabitants of a building and the arrival of a...
, in which a houseful of people had their lives transformed by a holy stranger."
- Newsnight - "revealed..Madame Tussaud's must have been all set for a Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
victory. Within minutes of the announcement an effigy that looked nothing like him was being lifted into position, while the effigyAn effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
that had looked nothing like CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
was taken away.... At ITN Anna FordAnna Ford is a retired English journalist and television presenter, best known as a newsreader....
was ruling the roost [with] Edward HeathSir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
, Roy HattersleyRoy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
, Jo Grimond and the knowledgeable American Lloyd CutlerLloyd Norton Cutler was an American attorney, who served as White House Counsel during the Democratic administrations of Presidents Carter and Clinton. He was also the trainer of the former Vice President of the European Parliament and current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, M.P...
. All concerned seemed ready to agree that Reagan would not blow up the world immediately. Anna handed back to Alastair BurnetSir Alastair Burnet is a British journalist and broadcaster, known for his work in news and current affairs programmes.- Early life :...
. 'There you are, Alastair, people coming round to President Reagan already.' ...Barbara WaltersBarbara Jill Walters is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality. She has hosted morning television shows , the television newsmagazine , former co-anchor of the ABC Evening News, and current contributor to ABC News.Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news...
asked Henry KissingerHeinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
how close he was to Reagan. 'I know many members of his endourage..' Kissinger wouldn't say what he had discussed with Reagan. 'I'd love to know' piped Barbara, 'what you did discuss.' 'I jusd wished him good lug.'"
- Fronting In Evidence - The Bomb Jonathan Dimbleby
Jonathan Dimbleby is a British presenter of current affairs and political radio and television programmes, a political commentator and a writer. He is the son of Richard Dimbleby and younger brother of British TV presenter David Dimbleby.-Education:Dimbleby was educated at Charterhouse School, a...
overwhelmingly proved that nuclear weaponA nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...
s were a bad thing..I feel justified in suggesting to him that he might care to underpin his conclusions with a bit more evidence that he has thought the subject through. Just how good, for example, is E.P.Thompson's argument in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament?"
- Oppenheimer - "reasonably well written and brilliantly well acted [(by Manning Redwood as General Groves
Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. As the son of a United States Army chaplain, Groves lived at a...
)]..Unfortunately..the physics have been left out... the physics could have been made fascinating to everybody if described in the right words...The series has made drama out of moral issues.... A pity it fudged the physics."
- Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
's Cream in My CoffeeCream in My Coffee is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast on ITV on 2 November 1980 as the last in a loosely-connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A juxtaposition between youth and old age, the play combines a non-linear narrative with the use of popular music to...
- "Gavin MillarGavin Millar is a Scottish film director, critic and television presenter.Millar's early career was as a film critic, most notably for The Listener from 1970 to 1984. He also contributed to Sight and Sound and The London Review of Books. With the film director Karel Reisz, he co-authored The...
made an impressive directorial debut."
- Miss World
The Miss World pageant is the oldest surviving major international beauty pageant. It was created in the United Kingdom by Eric Morley in 1951...
- the master of ceremonies, Peter MarshallPeter Marshall is an Irish broadcaster, educated at St. Columb's College in Derry.-Early life:Having originally intended to train as a teacher, he started his working life as an actor, studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.-Television:In 1967 he became an announcer at...
, showed all the signs of having been passed through that famous BBC processing room where front-men go to be deprived of charismaThe term charisma has two senses: 1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, 2) a divinely conferred power or talent. For some theological usages the term is rendered charism, with a meaning the same as sense 2...
... Anthony NewleyAnthony George Newley was an English actor, singer and songwriter. He enjoyed success as a performer in such diverse fields as rock and roll and stage and screen acting.-Early life:...
..singing a medley of his own songs..gave the most brilliant impersonation of an egomaniac I have ever seen."
- Tim Rose Price's Rabbit Pie Day - "The Second World War was coming to an end and Britain was faced with the question of what to do with the Russians it had liberated from the Germans. Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
wanted them back. Eventually, despite much evidence that to repatriate a Russian was the same as sending him to his death, they were all sent home.... Rabbit Pie Day was not particularly strong on dialogue, but it was still a script of high distinction."
- Russell Harty
Russell Harty was an English television presenter of arts programmes and chat shows.-Early life:Born Frederick Russell Harty in Blackburn, Lancashire, he was the son of a fruit and vegetable stallholder on the local market...
- "Rod StewartRoderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE is a British singer-songwriter and musician, born and raised in North London, England and currently residing in Epping. He is of Scottish and English ancestry....
and his wife AlanaAlana Hamilton Stewart is an American actress and former model. She has also used her maiden name, Alana Collins, and her names from her first marriage, Alana Collins-Hamilton and Alana Hamilton, professionally....
, talked to Russell Harty ..The interview which Russell conducted with a patently genuine sense of inquiry, as one who might ask a child what its latest creation in paints or crayons is meant to represent - was climaxed by a stage performance from Rod. Wearing very tight striped pants, he looked like a bifurcated marrow."
- Français, si vous saviez - "another of those blockbuster documentaries.... This time the specific topic was the career of de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
...You had to take it for granted that de Gaulle's dismissal of the ResistanceThe French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
fighters hopes for a different society was an act of gross cynicism. With his part of the war allowed to dominate the screen, it became easier than ever to entertain the suspicion that he was merely being realistic when he brushed aside all those gauchiste hopes."
- Margaret Drabble's The Waterfall - "I would gladly watch Lisa Harrow
Lisa Harrow is an actress, noted for her roles in British theatre, films and television.- Early life :Harrow was born in Auckland and attended Auckland University...
and Caroline MortimerCaroline Mortimer is a British actress.Caroline Mortimer was the daughter of the novelist Penelope Mortimer from her first marriage to the journalist Charles Dimont and the stepdaughter of the playwright Sir John Mortimer...
playing anything, including soccer..."
- Shoestring - "from a near nothing start has become viewing for the millions.... The big plus, apart from the hero's undoubted charm, is probably that the minor characters are satisfyingly filled out."
- Not the Nine O'Clock News
Not the Nine O'Clock News is a television comedy sketch show which was broadcast on BBC 2 from 1979 to 1982.Originally shown as a comedy "alternative" to the BBC Nine O'Clock News on BBC 1, it featured satirical sketches on current news stories and popular culture, as well as parody songs, comedy...
- "The same might be said of Pamela StephensonPamela Helen Stephenson Connolly is a New Zealand-born Australian clinical psychologist and writer now resident in the United Kingdom. She is best known for her work as an actress and comedian during the 1980s...
. In a recent show she impersonated Sue Lawley- Early life and education:Born in Sedgley, Staffordshire, England and brought up in the Black Country, she was educated at Dudley Girls High School and graduated in modern languages from the University of Bristol and some time later started her career at the BBC in Plymouth...
hostessing a typically shambolic edition of NationwideNationwide was a BBC News and Current affairs television programme broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the early evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting...
. It takes somebody with Pamela's dish-aerial aural receptors to pick up the weird dopplerThe Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from...
and wow effects of Sue's voice."
- An Everyday Miracle narrated by David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...
- "featuring a baby in the womb.... An ultrasound scan showed the foetus sitting upright in there like a little van-driver."
- Ski Sunday - "bringing David Vine
David Martin Vine was a British television sports presenter. He presented a wide variety of shows from the 1960s onwards.-Early life:...
with it. 'Just watch the way this man has the rhythm through the gates... ooh, and he's gone! StenmarkJan Ingemar Stenmark is a Swedish former skier, active during the 1970s and 1980s. He is regarded as one of the most prominent Swedish sportsmen, and as the greatest slalom and giant slalom specialist of all time. He competed for Fjällvinden Tärnaby.Stenmark was born in the province of Lappland...
has gone!' By now even David must be falling prey to the suspicion that he has the evil eyeThe evil eye is a look that is believed by many cultures to be able to cause injury or bad luck for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike...
."
- The Tales of Hoffman, a live broadcast from Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
- "the foreground faded into the background when Agnes BaltsaAgnes Baltsa is a leading Greek mezzo-soprano.Baltsa was born in Lefkada. She began playing piano at the age of six, before moving to Athens in 1958 to concentrate on singing...
came on as the courtesanA courtesan was originally a female courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person.In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
Giulietta. One of those marvellous new lady singers who look the part as well as sound it, she glided around in a believably seductive manner preparatory to nerving Hoffmann up for a duet."
- All's Well that Ends Well
All's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....
- directed by Elijah Moshinsky..Angela Down playing Helena... played a blinder. You couldn't ask to hear the words better spoken...On came Parolles with the subplot. Played by Peter JeffreyPeter Jeffrey was a British actor with many roles in television and film.Jeffrey was born in Bristol, the son of Florence Alice and Arthur Winfred Gilbert Jeffrey. He was educated at Harrow School and Pembroke College, Cambridge but had no formal training as an actor...
as an Osric with bells on, he too spoke beautifully. So did Celia JohnsonDame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE was an English actress.She began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. She also appeared in several films, including the romantic drama Brief Encounter , for which she received a nomination for the...
and Michael HordernSir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor, knighted in 1983 for his services to the theatre, which stretched back to before the Second World War.-Personal life:...
...."
- The History Man
The History Man is a campus novel by the British author Malcolm Bradbury set in 1972 in the fictional seaside town of Watermouth in the South of England. Watermouth bears some resemblance to Brighton. For example, there is a frequent and fast train service to London.-Plot introduction:Howard Kirk...
- "got off to a suitably repellent start, with Malcolm BradburySir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
's arch academic villain arriving at centre stage like a rat out of a trap..His woolly tank-top worn with nothing underneath proves that he is a man with his armpits bared to experience..The director, Robert KnightsRobert Knights is a British film and television director, perhaps best known for his film The Dawning, about the Irish War of Independence, and his work with the British TV Series The Bill, and the TV mini-series The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, based on the hit Jilly Cooper novel.He has been...
, gave the bacchanal an authentic air of doom."
- Triangle
Triangle was a BBC television soap opera in the early 1980s, set aboard a North Sea ferry which sailed between Felixstowe & Gothenburg and Gothenburg & Amsterdam. A third imaginary leg existed between Amsterdam & Felixstowe to make up the program title, but this was not operated by the ferry company...
- "a thrilling new series about ' life on an international passenger ferry'... Kate O'MaraKate O'Mara is an English film, stage and television actress. She is perhaps most widely known for her role as Caress Morell, the scheming sister of Alexis Colby in the 1980s American primetime soap opera Dynasty, though is also known for playing other villains such as The Rani in Doctor Who and...
is the mystery presence on board. Sunbaking on the quarter deck, she threatens the equilibrium of the crew. They are unused to seeing scantily clad women lying down on a cold steel deck while being lashed by a freezing wind."
- Playing for Time
Playing For Time is a 1980 CBS television film, written by Arthur Miller and Fania Fénelon, based on Fénelon's autobiography, The Musicians of Auschwitz...
- "Vanessa RedgraveVanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
played Fania FénelonFania Fénelon was a French pianist, composer and cabaret singer.-Biography:...
, a half-Jewish French cabaret star who was sent to Auschwitz and escaped the ovens by being selected to play in the camp orchestra...to play up-tempo music while people were being worked to death..The orchestra was part of the obscenity, like one of those harps in Hieronymus Bosch which have human beings threaded on the strings."
- The Treachery Game - "the plot is either intricate or hopelessly confused, it is difficult to tell...."
- Parkinson
Parkinson is a British television talk show that was presented by Sir Michael Parkinson. It was first shown on the BBC from 1971 to 2004, and on ITV from 2004 to 2007.-Background:...
- "starring Muhammad AliMuhammad Ali is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist...
, who once again demonstrated that he has a way with words, even after having taken one punch too many to his clever head. Freddie StarrFreddie Starr is an English comedian who became famous in the early 1970s. He is also an impressionist and singer, with a chart album After the Laughter and UK Top 10 single, "It's You", in March 1974 to his credit.-Early career:Under his real name, he appeared as a teenager in the film Violent...
was on the same show, on his way through to the asylum."
- Labour Party Conference - "the Gang of Three expanded overnight into the Council for Social Democracy. Somebody tried to re-title this latter body the Limehouse Pinks, as a witty variation of the famous dance number (Philip Braham
Philip Braham was an English composer of the early twentieth century, chiefly associated with theatrical work.-Biography:...
and Douglas FurberDouglas Furber was a British lyricist and playwright.Furber is best known for the lyrics to the 1937 song The Lambeth Walk and the libretto to the musical Me and My Girl, composed by Noel Gay, from which it came. This show made broadcasting history when in 1939 it became the first full length...
's), Limehouse Blues, but the famous dance number was not famous enough for the idea to stick."
- Solo
Solo is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1981 to 1982. Starring Felicity Kendal, Solo was written by Carla Lane, a writer well known for having previously written the sitcom Butterflies....
, played by Felicity Kendall - "has such a knack for arousing the protective male instinct that you would not be surprised to find her house surrounded by a Roman legion, the Coldstream GuardsHer Majesty's Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, also known officially as the Coldstream Guards , is a regiment of the British Army, part of the Guards Division or Household Division....
and the Afrika KorpsThe German Africa Corps , or the Afrika Korps as it was popularly called, was the German expeditionary force in Libya and Tunisia during the North African Campaign of World War II...
.."
- Russell Harty - "After giving Russell Harty a thoughtful interview Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole.-Life and career:...
, still looking like the head prefect of a private school for the daughters of rich romantic poets, was rewarded by the sudden irruption into the studio of the Dagenham Girl PipersThe Dagenham Girl Pipers are a female bagpipe marching band based in Dagenham, London, UK.The band was formed in by a Congregational minister, Rev Joseph Waddington Graves, in 1930, turning professional three years later, and have toured internationally...
. As the skirling girls marched and countermarched, Edna eyed them with a lack of appreciation that warmed the heart."
- The World About Us - "it was revealed that male butterflies after mating plant an anti-aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
stink-bomb in the female so that nobody else will want her. Feminist butterflies face a long haul."
- Nationwide
Nationwide was a BBC News and Current affairs television programme broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the early evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting...
- "A man from the GPO-Organisations:*General Post Office **General Post Office UK*German Patent Office, *United States Government Printing Office, a federal government agency*Green Party of Ontario, a policial party in Ontario, Canada...
appeared to explain that the underlying motive for the current proposal to paint all the telephone booths yellow was to find out if people really and truly wanted them left red...I switched off to go and have a lie down."
- Horizon
Horizon is a current and long-running BBC popular science and philosophy documentary programme.-History:The programme was first broadcast on 2 May 1964 with The World of Buckminster Fuller which explored the theories and structures of inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller and included the Horizon...
- "Edward TellerEdward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...
, variously known as the Father of the H-bomb and the prototypeA prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
for Dr Strangelove, had a Horizon all of his own.... You could see why so many brilliant people found him difficult to hate, even when he was carrying on like a mad bomber...."
- The World About Us - "about the Confederate Air Force..The power includes, incredibly enough, a fully operational B-29 flown by the man who dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
...What stayed in the memory, however, was not the pious vapourings of the super-patriots but the sheer loveliness of a P-51 MustangThe North American Aviation P-51 Mustang was an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II, the Korean War and in several other conflicts...
stunting in a clear sky."
- The South Bank Show - "Of the four judges who each read 35,000 poems entered in the great Arvon/Observer poetry competition, three were brought on stretchers to the South Bank Show... Charles Causley
Charles Stanley Causley, CBE, FRSL was a Cornish poet, schoolmaster and writer. His work is noted for its simplicity and directness and for its associations with folklore, especially when linked to his native Cornwall....
... Seamus HeaneySeamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
(bogs,eels), and Ted HughesEdward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
( crows, violence).... The top man (Philip LarkinPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL is widely regarded as one of the great English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century...
) wasn't there.... It was amusing to note, incidentally, that one of the minor prizewinners was B. Wongar. The famous Australian aboriginal poet B.Wongar has the same corporeal existence as Kilroy, but no doubt he can still use a hundred quid."
- The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner - "a play by Stewart Parker
James Stewart Parker was a Northern Irish poet and playwright.He was born in Sydenham, Belfast, of a Protestant working class family. While still in his teens, he contracted bone cancer and had a leg amputated...
... possessing the best title of any dramatic work since Mourning Becomes ElectraMourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...
.... It was fun to watch British character actors playing Japanese without bunging on oriental accents, but the gags made you smile rather than laugh."
- Nationwide
Nationwide was a BBC News and Current affairs television programme broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the early evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting...
- "Frank BoughFrank Bough is a retired British television presenter who is best known as the former host of BBC sports and current affairs shows including Grandstand, Nationwide and Breakfast Time, which he fronted alongside Selina Scott.-Early life:...
was in charge.... Large photographs of Prince Charles and Lady Diana were behind him...Tina BrownTina Brown, Lady Evans, CBE , is a journalist, magazine editor, columnist, talk-show host and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of Diana, Princess of Wales. Born a British citizen, she took United States citizenship in 2005 after emigrating in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair...
, editor of The Tatler, was there to agree that Lady Diana had what it took to ward off the intrusive press. 'She's absolutely trained for it. And so are her friends.' The Earl Spencer belted on as if P.G.Wodehouse had invented him. 'Diana's life has been very difficult. No protection at all. Very grateful for those girls in her flat. Incidentally, when she was a baby she was a superb physical specimen.'"
- Hi-De-Hi!
Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom that aired on the BBC from 1980-1988. It was set in a holiday camp during the 1950s and 1960s and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had written Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The title was the phrase used to greet the campers and in early episodes...
- "the massive, well-greased hub of the action is the master of ceremonies, Ted Bovis, brilliantly played by Paul Shane. The marvellous thing about him is that he could very well be a holiday campHoliday camp, in Britain, generally refers to a resort with a boundary that includes accommodation, entertainment and other facilities.As distinct from camping, accommodation typically consisted of chalets – small buildings arranged either individually or in blocks. Some had three or four storeys,...
comic, except that no holiday camp comic would have such resources as an actor."
- Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
- "The repeat run drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so... the joke... is that Basil FawltyBasil Fawlty is the main character of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, played by John Cleese. The character is often thought of as an iconic British comedy character, and has been deemed unforgettable despite only a dozen half-hour episodes ever being made....
has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor..By putting the wrong man in the right spot, John CleeseJohn Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
and Connie BoothConstance "Connie" Booth is an American-born writer and actress, known for appearances on British television and particularly for her portrayal of Polly Sherman in the popular 1970s television show Fawlty Towers, which she co-wrote with her then-husband John Cleese.-Biography:Booth's father was a...
hit on the deep secret of successful farceIn theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
."
- Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy...
Ancient and Modern - "is the television equivalent of an unputdownable book... it was good to have the ugly Mugg dredged up again.... The personality shone through. He was one of the first television performers to demonstrate that all you have to do on television is be yourself, always provided that you have a self to be."
- BBC 2 Playhouse, Unity script by David Pryce-Jones
David Eugene Henry Pryce-Jones FRSL is a conservative British author and commentator.- Career :He was educated at Eton and read History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied under A.J.P...
and John MortimerSir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
- "told the story of the Mitford sisterUnity Valkyrie Mitford was a member of the aristocratic Mitford family, tracing its origins in Northumberland back to the 11th century Norman settlement of England. Unity Mitford's sister Diana was married to Oswald Mosley, leader of British Union of Fascists...
who fell for Hitler...Lesley-Anne DownLesley-Anne Down is a British film and television actress, former model and singer.Down achieved fame as Georgina Worsley in the ITV drama series Upstairs, Downstairs...
made her look suitably beautiful but she sounded like a raving bitch at all times, which rather blunted the point when she was shown being beastly to the Jews. She was beastly to everyone...Hitler's incipient dementia was conveyed by pop eyes..but there is no point in trying to dodge the fact that he had real charisma. He made a genuine appeal to the dark place in human nature. If he could have been shown doing that, there would have been something both plausible and instructive about Unity's multiple orgasm of Sieg heil!"
- Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union .Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition...
- "Bucks FizzBucks Fizz are an English pop group who achieved success in the 1980s, most notably for winning the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Making Your Mind Up". The group was formed in January 1981 specifically for the contest and comprised four vocalists: Bobby G, Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and...
from Britain did a hotted-up hokey-cokey...."
- The Boat Race
The event generally known as "The Boat Race" is a rowing race in England between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights each spring on the River Thames in London. It takes place generally on the last Saturday of March or the first...
- "the only occupant of the Oxford boat smaller than a house was the coxette..'Sue Brown, 22 years old,' enthused our HarryHarry Leonard Carpenter OBE was a British BBC sports commentator broadcasting from the early 1950s until his retirement in 1994. His speciality was boxing...
, 'who really has stirred up a lot of interest'...Clearly she had aroused his protective interest, but really there was no call for him to worry. As long as the boys were rowing flat out their hands were fully occupied..'Cambridge did their best' gritted Harry, adding weirdly, 'They won the toss, which was no mean achievement."
- Tomorrow's World
Tomorrow's World was a long-running BBC television series, showcasing new developments in the world of science and technology. First aired on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003.- Content :...
- "visual thrill of the year was undoubtedly the space shuttle ColumbiaSpace Shuttle Columbia was the first spaceworthy Space Shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet. First launched on the STS-1 mission, the first of the Space Shuttle program, it completed 27 missions before being destroyed during re-entry on February 1, 2003 near the end of its 28th, STS-107. All seven crew...
blasting off... the shuttle assembly yelled off the pad like a burning cat and headed straight for space in order to cool off."
- Horizon
Horizon is a current and long-running BBC popular science and philosophy documentary programme.-History:The programme was first broadcast on 2 May 1964 with The World of Buckminster Fuller which explored the theories and structures of inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller and included the Horizon...
- "pictures of SaturnSaturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
.... taken by a robotA robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
camera... made you feel a bit inadequate to be looking at them with the unaided human eyeball..For a moment you felt the way Einstein must have felt all the time.... He would not have been surprised at the sheer loveliness of Saturn's rings and moons."
- The Sky at Night
The Sky at Night is a monthly documentary television programme on astronomy produced by the BBC. The show has had the same permanent presenter, Sir Patrick Moore, from its first airing on 24 April 1957, making it the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history.The...
- "Patrick MooreSir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore, CBE, FRS, FRAS is a British amateur astronomer who has attained prominent status in astronomy as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter of the subject, and who is credited as having done more than any other person to raise the profile of...
telephoned an astronomer..Patrick held the telephone as if he had never seen one before in his life. Looking like a baby holding a cigarette, he embodied the childlike curiosity which gives science its indefatigable force."
- The South Bank Show - "As Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
pointed out while bestowing a long and civilised interview on Melvyn BraggMelvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...
, 'Write about what you know' is the advice we give to people who shouldn't be writing at all. What he meant was that writers without the capacity to imagine won't be very interesting even when reporting their direct experience, no matter how bizarre."
- Bread or Blood - "You can't have many series like Bread or Blood because there aren't many writers who share Peter Ransley's capacity to take a book like William Henry Hudson
William Henry Hudson was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist.- Life and work :Hudson was born in the Quilmes, a borough of the greater Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, son of settlers of U.S. origin...
's A Shepherd's Life and bring the past out of it."
- The Chinese Detective
The Chinese Detective is a British television series, transmitted by the BBC between 1981 and 1982 and created by Ian Kennedy Martin, who had previously devised The Sweeney and Juliet Bravo....
- "The grainy look and the barely comprehensible East End argot are all there, except that they have somehow got mixed up with an old Charlie ChanCharlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1919. Loosely based on Honolulu detective Chang Apana, Biggers conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes, such as villains like Fu Manchu...
movie."
- The Crime of Captain Colthurst - "In 1916, one is forced to assume, all the intelligent officers were away at the war, leaving Ireland to be garrisoned by idiots and bigots.. Captain Colthurst shot the non-violent Irish journalist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington
Francis Skeffington from Bailieborough, County Cavan, was an Irish suffragist, pacifist and writer. He was a friend and schoolmate of James Joyce, Oliver St John Gogarty, Tom Kettle, and Conor Cruise O'Brien's father, Frank O'Brien...
for no reason at all, whereafter the army covered the whole thing up in a manner seemingly calculated to generate the maximum amount of bad blood..Philip BowenPhilip Bowen is a British actor who has appeared in a number of British film and television roles including in Agatha Christie's Poirot, Kavanagh QC and Soldier Soldier. He was born in Liverpool, Merseyside in 1949.-References:...
played Colthurst with a suitable air of virulent dementia."
- Lion - "taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
was the subject.... It was... great stuff."
- Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
at Work - "marvellous"
- Private Schulz - "Schulz... has been put in charge of forging £5 notes in order to wreck the British economy, which activity was in those days thought to require the intervention of an outside agency."
- People from the Forest - "was bad drama... this production... somehow contrived to miss out entirely on the dignity of its subject, which was Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
and his heroic witness for freedom of expression. Sakharov was played by the excellent John ShrapnelJohn Shrapnel is an English actor.Shrapnel was born in Birmingham, Warwickshire, the son of Mary Lillian Myfanwy and journalist/author Norman Shrapnel....
... who in a better dramatisation would have made memorable casting as the scientific genius at war with his own Government. Alas, this time he was also at war with the script, the production and the direction."
- Snowdon on Camera - "closely argued, richly filmed, tersely cut..Lord Snowdon is plainly sceptical about the pretentious talk which tends to attach itself to his subject."
- Goodbye, Darling - "The Beeb has long wanted its own Bouquet of Barbed Wire, one of the all-time ITV ratings triumphs..Baroque casting among the peripheral characters ensures plenty of subsidiary interest, not to say fascination. There is a lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
aristocrat called Lady Brett, who has a voice like a diesel locomotiveA diesel locomotive is a type of railroad locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine, a reciprocating engine operating on the Diesel cycle as invented by Dr. Rudolf Diesel...
and a wan companion called Maude. These two are either resting up for the next FassbinderRainer Werner Maria Fassbinder was a German movie director, screenwriter and actor. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the New German Cinema.He maintained a frenetic pace in film-making...
movie or else they are due to move center stage.."
- Loretta
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...
- "country music, for all its rhinestones and sentiment, is a real tradition that holds its performers within fruitful limits. She sang melodically, articulated cleanly, gave value for money and left you wanting more."
- Question Time
Question Time is a topical debate BBC television programme in the United Kingdom, based on Any Questions?. The show typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer questions put to them by the audience...
- "Robin DaySir Robin Day, OBE was a British political broadcaster and commentator. His obituary in the Guardian stated that "he was the most outstanding television journalist of his generation...
... ably contained a potentially explosive panel made up of Lynda ChalkerLynda Chalker, Baroness Chalker of Wallasey PC is a British Conservative politician who was Member of Parliament for Wallasey from 1974 to 1992...
, Denis HealeyDenis Winston Healey, Baron Healey CH, MBE, PC is a British Labour politician, who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.-Early life:...
, Paul FootPaul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
and (deep breath) Admiral of the FleetAn admiral of the fleet is a military naval officer of the highest rank. In many nations the rank is reserved for wartime or ceremonial appointments...
Lord Hill-Norton.... The admiral..could not convey even the simplest opinion in under five minutes and looked outraged when Robin cut him short."
- Grand Prix Live from Monaco - "'I am going mad with excitement!' Murray Walker
Graeme Murray Walker, OBE is a former Formula One motorsport commentator...
told us - a necessary item of information, because even in moments of tranquillity he sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire."
- Platform One - "The main topic was Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society...
's erstwhile Sapphic affair with a lady who eventually proved her selfless devotion by telling all to the gossip columnists..Only love of the game, Billie Jean averred, will get you to the top...any star performer..spends most of the time concentrating. A great truth that makes dull copy."
- Stella Artois Grass Court Championships - "Roscoe Tanner
Roscoe Tanner is an American former professional tennis player, who turned pro in 1972 and reached a career high world singles ranking of World No...
seems to have found a way of making his service go even faster, so that the ball is now quite invisible, like STEALTHStealth aircraft are aircraft that use stealth technology to avoid detection by employing a combination of features to interfere with radar as well as reduce visibility in the infrared, visual, audio, and radio frequency spectrum. Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during...
.... Indeed, just as we have to take the PentagonThe Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
's word that STEALTH exists, so we have only the noise made by Roscoe's racket to prove that there is an actual ball on the way. Perhaps he is faking the whole thing."
- The Caretaker
The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...
- "showed itself to have a lot of mileage left in it, mainly because it features so many and such extended examples of PinterHarold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
's most resonant motif, the interrogation,..he distils to an essence the characteristic modern political experience, which is to search, as if your life depended on it, for answers to questions that make no sense."
- The Making of Mankind - "Animations of cave life appeared on screen. Cave-dwellers looking like the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...
or Hell's Angels sat around doing various conjectural things."
External links