Author: Simon Dunn
-
Pauline’s Quirkes
The late 1970s seemed to provoke a lot of outrage at the output of children’s television. Grange Hill is the obvious example, but ITV didn’t escape the ire either, not least with Thames Television’s afternoon sketch show Pauline’s Quirkes. The show was devised as a vehicle for Pauline Quirke, who together with Linda Ronson and…
-
That 4-Letter Word
Yesterday marked the 57th anniversary of Kenneth Tynan swearing on BBC-3. No, not the youth channel, one of the follow-up series to That Was The Week That Was. There’s a bit about it here, in this episode of Comedy Is … that I made. It’s widely regarded as the first intentional use of the F-word…
-
Rik’s Xmas Helpline
Here’s a rare little treat. Rik promoting YTV’s Christmas Line, as broadcast on 26th December 1987. I think that’s the only time I’ve seen the ear not pop back. It’s clearly been filmed during the making of the first series of The New Statesman, and that’s obviously the office set he’s in.
-
Between The Lines
It’s not often I write about drama shows here, but Between The Lines just popped up on Britbox, so I’ve started watching it for the first time since it was first broadcast in 1992. It’s just as good as I remembered it being, and Neil Pearson was an excellent, if suprising, piece of casting. Something…
-
Goodnight Sweetheart
Goodnight Sweetheart was a sitcom with an interesting, and difficult premise. In their commentaries for the first series, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran talk about how important it was to cast someone like Nicholas Lyndhurst as Gary Sparrow. Only someone as likeable as him could really pull it off. And they were right. In Shooting…
