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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Dickie Davis was the unlikely host of new panel
game Jigsaw ... The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross became
a staple of Friday nights ... cerebral series State of the Art
reviewed contemporary culture ... and the notoriously badly-dubbed German
mini series Chateauvallan began its 26 part run.
FEBRUARY ...
For advice on sexual and personal problems
you were encouraged to Ask Dr Ruth ... the open mike show Comedy
Wavelength gave Paul Merton his first television exposure ... and
there was excitement aplenty during the Speed Chess Challenge.
MARCH ...
John Wells starred in the surgery-based sitcom
Rude Health ... extracts from the Montreal Comedy Festival were
featured in Just for Laughs ... while Muriel Gray fronted The
Media Show.
APRIL ...
Jonathan Meades explored The Victorian House
... and Don't Miss Wax boasted its titular American hostess regularly
swapping abuse with floor manager Norman Lovett.
MAY ...
After Dark kept C4 open until the early
hours ... Sunday lunchtimes were revolutionised by youth "infotainment"
opus Network 7 ... and Morwenna Banks aimed to make science more
fun in Abracadabra.
JUNE ...
Ian Richardson and David Jason led the cast
of the exemplary comic drama Porterhouse Blue ... the recent fortunes
of Eastern Europe were charted in The Struggle for Poland ... while
organic gardening was investigated in All Muck and Magic.
JULY ...
Same Difference focused on disability
issues ... and Carol Vorderman shared her technical know-how in So
We Bought a Computer.
SEPTEMBER ...
Environmental campaigner Jonathan Porritt examined
the Battle for the Planet ... Business Daily became a midday
fixture, followed half an hour later by kids' programmes in Just 4
Fun ... while the Open College, independent television's version of
the Open University, was represented by advice slot Open Exchange
and various vocational educational shows.
OCTOBER ...
Floella Benjamin erected A Houseful of Plants
... Bernard Levin walked To the End of the Rhine ... and C4's new
flagship current affairs strand began: Dispatches.
NOVEMBER ...
Damon and Debbie was the first "soap
bubble" and marked the end for Brookside veteran Damon Grant
... C4's fifth birthday was commemorated with the transmission of Tony
Harrison's televisual poem V, which prompted a stream of complaints
over its extreme language ... US chat show Late Night with David Letterman
received its first British airing ... and Sesame Street made its
debut on C4.
FINALES
THE TUBE
The death of C4's first and arguably most influential
music show was messy and painfully slow. The Tube, made by Tyne
Tees Television, was already ailing by the start of '87 thanks to a tired
format and declining ratings. Jools Holland's accidental "groovy
fuckers" outburst in January merely fuelled a deep-rooted and long-term
despondency over the direction the show should be heading. At the start
of March Tube producer Malcolm Gerrie and Tyne Tees director of
programmes Andrea Wonfor announced their resignations. They cited a mixture
of internal bickering, political pressure and "stifling bureaucracy
and heavy handed moralism" as responsible. The IBA had been putting
pressure on Tyne Tees since formally warning the company over Come
Dancing with Jools Holland, a New Year's Eve show that included sketches
featuring nudity and general bad language. Holland's more recent outburst
had led to a second warning and a six-week suspension for the presenter.
Wonfor later claimed she'd decided to leave back in December 1986, "before
all the rumpus", but in the end hers and Gerrie's departure was an
admission of defeat. The Tube bowed out just in time for Janet
Street-Porter's Network 7 to send youth TV off into an entirely
new and much-needed direction.
MISC ...
Mike Smith was joined by a host of celebrities and
musicians to provide advice and information on HIV in First AIDS
in February ... the first Dance on 4 season kicked off in April ... schools
programmes moved to C4 as of Monday 14 September ... the landmark holocaust
drama Shoah was screened in its entirety, without commercial breaks,
from 8.15pm to 12.45am on 18 October and from 8.30pm to 1.20am on 19 October
... and a three and half hour Salute to ATV on 30 December included
archive editions of Sunday Night at the London Palladium, The
Saint and Edward VII.
ON SCREEN
JONATHAN ROSS
The success of The Last Resort made
Jonathan Ross a ubiquitous star about town and an ultra-public ambassador
for Channel 4. By 1987 Ross had already had a long association with the
station, but behind the camera: first working as researcher on Loose
Talk then as a member of the production teams for, amongst others,
Trak Trix and Soul Train. It was his stint on Soul Train
that introduced him to future collaborator Alan Marke, and with whom he
conceived The Last Resort. While the template may have been shamelessly
stolen from The Late Show with David Letterman, the pair added
various elements that were distinctive and unique - not least an obsession
with cult British telly and nostalgia, reflected both in their choice
of guests and the hit-and-miss comedy interludes. They set up their own
company to make the programme - Channel X - but hesitated over
a choice of host, famously leading Ross to stand in at the last minute
and inspiring the show's name. For all that followed, including many more
high calibre shows with Channel 4, The Last Resort saw its host
display a freshness and energy he was never to equal. Its many memorable
conceits - the entire show coming live from a viewer's home, David Frost
grappling with a blow-up doll, doorstepping George Harrison and John Peel
in the pub - enshrined it as one of the most entertaining and influential
shows of the decade.
AFTER DARK
Live, late-night and - crucially - open-ended,
After Dark was groundbreaking in terms of content, scheduling,
format and presentation. Made by production company Open Media and inspired
by an Austrian programme called Club 2, After Dark was also
typical of 1980s C4 by being alternately absolutely gripping and overwhelmingly
boring. The first show was chaired by Tony Wilson and tackled the issue
of freedom of information. The half dozen guests were deliberately picked
to provoke argument, and often included a member of the public, but the
contrivance ended once they were seated on a small circle of sofas and
the cameras started to roll. Over four series Tony Blackburn and Peter
Tatchell quarrelled over privacy; Billy Bragg and Teresa Gorman argued
over how to reduce the number of unemployed; Garth Crooks and Sir Rhodes
Boyson disputed the future of football; and Oliver Reed famously disputed
"Do Men Have To Be Violent?" by mauling Kate Millet. The show
ended proper in 1991 and a number of occasional one-off specials followed;
but when Channel 4 went 24 hours in 1997 After Dark was no more.
OFF SCREEN
• Nightime, a mixture of films and discussion-based
programmes, extended C4's hours until 3am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays
from 23 April.
• On 7 July Jeremy Isaacs announced that advertising revenue for
the channel over the year 1986 - 97 exceeded costs for the first time
in its history, providing a £20m profit.
• Michael Grade was appointed Isaacs' successor as Chief Executive
in November, assuming official control of the channel on 1 January 1988.
On learning the identity of his replacement, Isaacs immediately warned
Grade he'd physically harm him if he messed with his inheritance.
FOUR-WORDS
"If Channel 4 had any sense, it would not transmit this cascade of obscenities."
- Teddy Taylor MP on V
"After Dark: not just the most
intelligent, thought-provoking and interesting programme ever to have
been on television; but the most extraordinary three hours on television."
- The Daily Mirror
"I don't look on C4 as my baby. I was
rather pleased that the channel was so kind to me and felt that I had
helped it at the start, but when you are in politics you get very cautious
of describing anything that happens as your baby - it is a very unwise
thing to do as like all babies it can turn on you and not do so very well."
- Lord Whitelaw, former Home Secretary
"Jeremy Isaacs is a man of courage. Courage
is the quality I admire most. He got together a group of people, many
of whom had never worked in television, and told them: 'I know you have
never done this before and you may think you don't know how to do it,
but go ahead and give it a go.'"
- Richard Attenborough, Chairman,
C4
"I have spent quite long enough in broadcasting.
I would like to be remembered as the man who had a go and made some of
it stick."
- Jeremy Isaacs
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
ARTHUR AND PHIL GO OFF ...
AROUND CHANNEL 4 (1987)
My favourite Channel 4 moment - which until
finally switching off the BetaMax signal in my old flat I used to have
on tape - is not meant to be wilfully obscure. It came within a one-off
comic documentary called Arthur and Phil Go Off ... Around Channel
4. My best guess is that this programme was made to celebrate C4's
fifth birthday as it must have been on in about 1987. A self-referential
hour-long piece, and markedly different from the formal way the BBC would
celebrate itself, this was basically a clips show from the then-infant
C4 archive, linked by Arthur Smith and Phil Nice, otherwise known, on
the also-infant London cabaret circuit, as the duo Fiasco Job Job. Directed
by Geoff Wonfor, this was a low-rent piece of telly, but they really made
an effort, filming Arthur and Phil in various locations around C4's HQ
on Charlotte Street: editing suite, reception, Right to Reply's
video booth, even a skip outside in the street.
My favourite link was filmed in the toilets, where
Phil discussed old-school (ie pre-C4) comedy's reliance on the double
entendre in a mock-intellectual way while Arthur sat up on one of the
cubicles (no, really) making cheap double entendres, Sid James style,
every time he detected one in Phil's link ("Screw you up, screw you
down, screw you round and round and round" is one line that has stayed
with me). I loved this link then and I love it now - it was so cheaply
miked up, with Arthur sounding very much as if he was, well, in a toilet,
and the subtext of what was basically a functional link into a clip of
some apparently upmarket, liberal reconstructed comedy (probably Stomping
on the Cat!) was subtly courageous and multi-layered: C4 has been
remodelling the comedy landscape for five years and yet, we still yearn
for the old days of cheap innuendo. Arthur and Phil made, I think, two
further Go Offs, one to Marbella, but what was presumably intended
as a longer-running imprint ran out of steam. Pity. The partnership disbanded,
with Smith graduating to his current position as playwright and honorary
piece of Radio 4 rough, and Nice returning to mostly comic acting - Mr
Bean, People Like Us, EastEnders.
- Andrew Collins
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