TV Programmes

[Anita Bensoussane]

I watched some of those too, Only Fools and Horses being a favourite.

[Katharine]

I've mostly been watching DVDs or programmes I've recorded.

Currently working my way through the box set of Are You Being Served. Also, the first series of Watching. For longer stints in front of the TV, it's been the boxed set of Joan Hickson's Miss Marple series. Just started on the last one - The Mirror Crack'd - possibly my least favourite, but I do love the nostalgia of the setting, with steam trains, fashions etc.

From my recorded programmes, I'm working my way through a series narrated by Bill Nighy of places in Norfolk and Suffolk. It's making me yearn to move to somewhere nearer the coast. Although there are plenty of places in the UK (and one or two overseas), that I would like to visit, for me this part of the country is 'home' and I always find myself smiling whenever I see it on screen.

I usually watch 'Strictly' but haven't really got into it this year, just watching the occasional dance. As a family we are also watching The Upper Hand - something I vaguely remember watching when it first appeared on TV, but can't remember many of the episodes.

[Barnard]

I’m currently watching some Hancock’s Half Hours, some with Sid James and some without.

[Boodi 2]

I really enjoyed "Are You Being Served?" and occasionally watch an episode on You Tube!

[GloomyGraham]

Watching old TV shows is a bit like reading old Blytons. Comfort food for those of us getting older.

Enjoyed watching some 'Graham Kennedy's Blankety Blanks' recently. It's an Aussie show - based on the US show 'Match Game' and as so successful it was copied in the UK as 'Blankety Blank' though I think the Aussie show was probably a bit more 'naughty'.

If you want a few laughs with a bit of old-fashioned humor check it out on YouTube.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I’m currently watching some Hancock’s Half Hours, some with Sid James and some without.

Love the one about the library book!

[Bertie]

Yes Katharine and Boodi, I have spells where I enjoy Are You Being Served as well. Though I find it more slapstick and hit and miss than most of the other old sitcoms that I regularly re-watch so it's one that I have to be in the mood for and so don't re-watch it as often as the others.

Watching old TV shows is a bit like reading old Blytons. Comfort food for those of us getting older.

That's very true!
I'm only in my mid 40's but society has changed so much in that time - and modern TV reflects that (to an extreme level!) - that I'm returning ever more into the older shows that I love so much. Because they just get on with being funny / telling a fictional drama in their own little world, rather than making social or political statements ad nauseum as pretty much everything does nowadays - so that I mostly feel like I'm being preached to by most modern TV rather than being entertained!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Are we talking about TV drama in general, or comedies in particular? Comedy sitcoms of past decades touched on quite a lot of social and political matters, though it's possible that things were handled more subtly and gently back then. I can't say for certain as I've only watched occasional episodes of classic comedy sitcoms in recent years. I remember all sorts of issues being covered though - e.g. consumerism/self-subsistence, un/employment, criminality, social class, race relations, family relationships, marriage, divorce, old age, renting, sickness and war. I'm thinking of programmes like The Good Life, Only Fools and Horses, Porridge, Keeping Up Appearances, Love Thy Neighbour, Sorry, Terry and June, My Wife Next Door, You're Only Young Twice, Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Dad's Army, etc. One reason (though not the only reason, of course) that they're interesting to rewatch is that they take the viewer back in time to some extent. They're perhaps slower-paced than many of today's programmes, and maybe that enables them to say what they want to say by slowly immersing the audience in the fictional world, rather than through having characters make statements (if that's the kind of thing you mean, Bertie?)

[Bertie]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I meant, Anita.
You're right, of course, that plenty of shows in all eras address some social / political points. I guess my main feeling is that I can find a lot more older shows to enjoy that did it far less, or more indirectly. And really create a fictional world. Whereas now it feels like the raison d'être of most shows is to make pretty much the same very pointed social / political points - and to repeatedly hammer those points home with a sledgehammer!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I must say I like it when programmes allow time for me to reflect on things. The fast pace of some modern shows doesn't leave much time for thought - if I mull over what I've just seen, I miss what happens next!

[Katharine]

The main problem with programmes that are too political/topical is that they often don't stand the test of time.

I enjoy programmes such as The Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise, but occasionally there is a joke in them which means nothing to me, although often I can understand the general outline of what they are trying to say.

I can't remember what I was watching a while back, but there was a reference to 'Fred Karno' which meant nothing to me. Thank goodness for Google! Although it's not always convenient to stop watching something and look up a reference, and often by the end of the programme I've forgotten whatever it was I meant to look up.

Topical references don't just apply to TV programmes of course - I'm currently reading

A Christmas Carol

and there have been one or two parts of that which I don't really understand, but I'm sure made sense to someone reading it when first published.

[GloomyGraham]

I remember my Dad used to love 'Open All Hours' and little me didn't think it was that great.

But old me watched the whole series about six months or so and laughed my head off the whole way through. Funny that some US 'You Tube reactors' have discovered this series too and are also laughing their heads off. It shows that some comedies CAN stand the test of time.

I even enjoyed 'Still Open All Hours' though - without the wonderful Ronnie Barker - it could never be as funny as the original.

[Stephen]

I can't put it down to nostalgia because I never saw the programme as a child, but there was a scene in Rising Damp that had me laughing for about FIVE MINUTES when I saw it a few years ago. And that's pretty impressive for something made so long ago! It was when Rigsby wants Miss Jones to pose as his ex wife for some reason. So she dresses up as some common-as-muck battleaxe harridan, not realising the person she starts talking to is the woman in question. Oh my goodness, it was hilarious!

[Yak]

We're having a rewatch of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, any fans out there? Hard to believe it's over thirty years old!

[MJE]

Watching old TV shows is a bit like reading old Blytons. Comfort food for those of us getting older.

     I have never owned a television, and when I was living with my family for the first 17 or so years of my life, I rarely showed much interest in watching television shows, although there were a few I liked to watch - like Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons, and shows such as Gilligan's Island. (I wonder if my emotional growth got stunted somewhere, because those shows are still capable of making me laugh. But some adult humour leaves me completely cold.)
     Sometimes you can find episodes of old shows on YouTube, although the quality of both vision and sound can be rather inadequate sometimes.
     But I recently watched a number of episodes of "Adventures of the Seaspray" sourced from YouTube. It features a widower who operates a charter sailing vessel called "Seaspray" and he has a Fijian crew man and two or three children (originally three, but the actor for one of them dropped out, deciding he didn't want to continue acting), and the series is set in the South Pacific Ocean, with occasional visits to Melbourne or Sydney, and features the various adventures they get into with various villains or lost tribes of one sort or another. It could be very roughly thought of as "Famous Five set in the south Pacific". Several episodes are set in New Zealand.
     This is not quite nostalgia viewing, though, because I never saw the series as a child, even though it was on when I was a child. I only learned about it later, but thought the premise sounded interesting, and the Pacific setting also intrigued me rather. But given that it is very redolent of the 1960s, when the series was made, it could still count as nostalgia today in a general sense, even if not in the specific sense of relating to my own childhood.
     A lot of those old series from that era can now be bought as big boxes of C.D.s containing the whole lot, or a significant subset of them from certain years. But the Seaspray episodes have never been issued to my knowledge, and don't look likely to be now. I am hoping that the channel owner where I found most of the episodes intends to post further ones, and to eventually complete the series, which was only 32 episodes long. I think he does intend to, but he may not have actually acquired them all himself so far - wherever he might acquire them from. I have found approximately two thirds of them so far.
     Although colour television in Australia was still a decade in the future at the time "Adventures of the Seaspray" first showed, and I would guess the situation was similar in New Zealand, the series was filmed in colour - I suppose in anticipation that, for repeat showings, colour television might one day be available.

Regards, Michael.