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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Peter Bowles starred as the titular Irish army
major turned magistrate in The Irish RM ... C4's first original
sitcom No Problem! was also the first black-made comedy show created
for British television ... Derek Hobson chaired Jeopardy ... and
Gastank featured both new and old rock musicians in conversation and performance.
FEBRUARY ...
Cheers began its 10 year run ... while
pre-pubescent wannabes sung and danced to contemporary hits in the notorious
Minipops.
MARCH ...
Chips Comic was C4's rather unique attempt
at a genuine home grown children's programme ... while Switch showcased
new and alternative music.
APRIL ...
Steve Taylor hosted youth-orientated discussion
series Loose Talk ... the award-winning Vietnam: A Television
History traced the full story of the Vietnam War ... magazine show
Alter Images featured avant-garde and provocative performance art
... The Late Clive James helped further the career of the ebullient
ex-television critic ... Graeme Garden
challenged guests to Tell the Truth ... for ultra-cheap sitcom
Father's Day John Alderton wore his own clothes to save money,
while the production team brought props and scenery from their own homes
... and acclaimed US comedy drama St Elsewhere portrayed the life
of a Boston teaching hospital.
MAY ...
Fred Harris introduced examples of Numbers at Work.
JULY ...
Hot for Dogs promised cutting edge music
and dance ... while a plethora of word games was dispensed by Peter Purves
in Babble.
AUGUST ...
Jancis Robinson sampled the first of many potent
bouquets in The Wine Programme.
SEPTEMBER ...
Adam Faith solved those niggling home video
problems in Video Video.
OCTOBER ...
Produced by Mickey Dolenz and penned by Ruby
Wax, For 4 Tonight was a spoof TV chat show based in the fictional
town of Newton Barnes.
NOVEMBER ...
Our Lives featured a series of profiles
of East End life, beginning with a look at the memorable world of "The
Knockers".
FINALES
WHATEVER YOU WANT
The first big casualty of the channel virtually
brought about its own demise thanks to the belligerent grandstanding of
its host Keith Allen. After optimistically describing the show as "a
magazine for young people", Isaacs vetoed Allen's choice of guest
for the first show (Tony Benn), overruled the inclusion of an invocation
by Allen for viewers to attend a local government rally, then axed a piece
by a young activist demanding the unemployed "bring down Thatcher".
Allen walked in January 1983, the show briefly limped on as a music-only
package, then disappeared for good.
MISC ...
Robert Powell narrated the 26 part series The
World - A Television History which ran from May ... The Prisoner
was shown in full throughout the autumn ... the entire schedule was cleared
on 9 October for the broadcast of Tony Harrison's The Oresteia,
a four and a half hour adaptation of classical Greek myths ... and LWT's
An Audience With ... transferred to C4 in December starting with
a 90 minute special starring Kenneth Williams; it would only return to
ITV in 1988.
ON SCREEN
JOOLS HOLLAND
While The Tube steadily established
its personality and influence throughout 1983, the standing of its chief
presenters varied dramatically. While Paula Yates doted on publicity and
positively revelled in the platform the show provided her with, Jools
Holland always gave the impression of turning up in spite of rather than
because there were television cameras present. Yet he quickly became something
akin to C4's maestro in residence, seemingly qualified to front reports
and ultimately whole programmes about any kind of music imaginable. Irritating
and intriguing by turn, Holland undeniably helped cement The Tube's
image and establish C4's "youth" credentials. Even after he'd
helped destroy the show in 1987 he still maintained a presence on the
channel through programmes ranging from the woeful - The Groovy Fellas
(1989) - to the sublime - Don't Forget Your Toothbrush (1994 -
95).
MINIPOPS
Lambasted in the broadsheets for its "disturbingly
explicit sexuality" and for contributing to "the slaying of
childhood", Minipops' biggest fault was arguably its woeful
production values. The tackiness and amateurish feel amplified the faintly
ridiculous content, and made the show appear tasteless and offensive rather
than merely daft and embarrassing. Produced by Mike Mansfield, the series
was actually preceded a number of months earlier with the documentary
Don't Do It Mrs Worthington, which revealed the audition process
and profiled earnest starlets not that dissimilar in their ambition and
character to the present-day Popstars. Nonetheless the response
to pre-teen look-alikes singing Satisfaction and other nostalgic hits
was enough to secure Minipops' near-immediate infamy and a swift
demise.
OFF SCREEN
• One in Five, a late-night profile
of homosexual lifestyles broadcast on New Year's Day, and The Eleventh
Hour: Veronica 4 Rose, which featured two schoolgirls discussing lesbianism,
garnered C4's most extreme criticism to date - and prompted Tory MP John
Carlisle to try and get the channel banned.
• ITV bosses supposedly hatched a plot during the festive holiday
to persuade the IBA to sack Jeremy Isaacs and then transmit old black
and white episodes of Coronation Street across the C4 schedules.
"ITV chiefs do not meet or confer over Christmas," retorted
Isaacs.
• C4 was censured by the Advertising Standards Authority in March
for promoting their music output with the slogan: "Warn your neighbours
they could need ear plugs."
• In an effort to cross-promote the new channel, ITV gave over the
bulk of its evening schedule on 7 April to what was billed as ITV's
Channel Four Showcase - a mixed bag of both current and upcoming C4
programmes, including, bizarrely, the fifth episode of Father's Day.
FOUR-WORDS
"Now listen, you've got thirty seconds
to justify this preposterous title. I don't want any of our programmes
called 'The ... anything'."
- Jeremy Isaacs to Andrea Wonfor, Founding Producer, The Tube
"Storm over IRA film on Channel 4"
- The Mail on Sunday
"A 'storm over ...' is a conversation
between a journalist and a Member of Parliament in which the journalist
tells the MP something he does not know, and the MP calls for the banning
of something he has not seen."
- Jeremy Isaacs
"Vietnam - A Television History
is simply the best series of this kind ever made, including The World
at War."
- David Elstein, Director of Programmes,
Thames Television
"Despite the low ratings, the word is
quietly spreading in the advertising world that Channel 4 is becoming
something of a success. While ITV's viewers are predominantly elderly
and downmarket, Channel 4 is reaching more young people from upper socio-economic
groups; in other words the kind of people who, instead of spending all
their leisure time in front of the box, go out and buy things too."
- Sue Summers, Evening Standard, 24/06/83
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN
(1983)
Being only seven years old when Channel 4 was
launched it would be a lie to say that it leapt on my consciousness early
on. It must be said to begin with that none of the channel's early fare
made it on to my parent's schedule of desirable programming and consequently
my experience of its very first days are confined largely to memories
of the floral continuity cards that peppered its commercial breaks during
the early afternoon when commercials seemed rather thin on the ground.
Nothing on show, however, was to prove alluring enough to draw my attention
away from the children's output of the BBC or ITV. That was not to last,
though.
At some - inevitably - rather indeterminate stage
the channel decided to screen programmes that can't have been seen on
British television for many years: Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke
Show and the one that grabbed my attention by far the most, the tremendous
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.
I can't pretend that I understood most, or indeed
any, of it so perhaps it was the extraordinary luridness of it all in
its gloriously stereotypical '60s psychedelia that caught my junior eye
to begin with. Whatever the reason, it became the first show on Channel
4 that was appointment viewing for me as I insisted to a baffled mother
that I wanted to watch it and shun the usual early evening offerings.
I soon became addicted to the dreadful puns, the strange characters, the
"way-out" cast of regulars (most particularly Rip Taylor and
his confetti act, which remains baffling to this day). Most especially
I loved the wall from which the likes of Goldie Hawn and Henry Gibson
would appear and throw their terrible jokes at Dan and Dick and the frequent
appearances of Sammy Davis Jr and his "Here come the judge"
schtick. So I was suitably mortified when it was finally removed from
the schedules and the show was replaced with something considered a little
more appropriate for the new burgeoning identity of the fledgling channel.
I have not the slightest notion of what criteria
were set which lead to the transmission of the Laugh-In (although
I think it is reasonable to speculate that in the early '80s the shows
would have been less than expensive) although of course the station has
subsequently became synonymous with US import comedy. But whatever the
reason it was the show that brought me to Channel 4.
Say goodnight, Dick ...
- Chris Diamond
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