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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Norman Beaton starred as the eponymous barbershop
owner in Desmond's ... Fragile Earth focused on ecological
issues ...hit US drama thirtysomething reached British screens
... as did the first of 220 episodes of Roseanne.
FEBRUARY ...
Out on Tuesday explored gay and lesbian
culture ... and global sounds were showcased in Big World Café.
MARCH ...
Guests were alternately patronised and humiliated
in Clive Anderson Talks Back ... while Go For It profiled
activities for families and children.
APRIL ...
Breakfast television began in the shape The
Channel Four Daily ... celebrities were cross-examined by an anonymous
snooty female computer in the "interactive" Star Test ... the press
industry was investigated by Raymond Snoddy in Hard News ... and
Club X laboured to mix youth TV and experimental art.
MAY ...
Mark Chase hosted youth consumer show The
Survivor's Guide ... while Gordon Kennedy led the ensemble comedy
Absolutely.
JUNE ...
Cherie Lunghi headed the cast of The Manageress
... and Bill Patterson starred in the award-winning drama Traffik.
AUGUST ...
Swedish curio Xerxes
charted the exploits of a group of Scandinavian teenagers ... while Fred
Savage debuted as Kevin Arnold in the superior US series The
Wonder Years.
OCTOBER ...
Cooking With Mosimann promised refined
kitchen experimentation ... Michael Wood surveyed the Art of the Western
World ... and contestants were humbled in Sticky Moments with Julian
Clary.
NOVEMBER ...
Melvyn Bragg introduced a unique story of triumph
and failure in Norbert Smith: A Life ... while audiences were invited
to spend One Night with Jonathan Ross.
FINALES
CLUB X
In terms of expense and airtime alone, Club
X turned out to be one of Channel 4's biggest disasters. Attempting
to marry pop culture with contemporary art in as ambitious a manner as
possible, both Charlie Parsons - its editor - and C4 fatally overreached
themselves. In an intriguing interpretation of focus groups, Parsons cited
the English National Opera - "it's packed with 16 to 23-year-olds!"-
as proof that "there is a young arts educated audience to be catered
for. By putting the fun back into art Club X is more than equipped
to extend this audience even further." But there was nothing fun
about Club X. Each edition lasted a sprawling 90 minutes; the plethora
of features never gelled; its lofty pretentiousness clashed with its often
somewhat seedy content; and chief presenter Murray Boland struggled gamely
to link it all together against a studio background of deafening noise
and crowds wandering all over the place. Unbelievably, it was initially
repeated on Sunday afternoons at 2pm - until protests about sketches poking
fun at Dickie Valentine and Eric Morecambe woke C4 up to just what was
going on. A second series was never commissioned; out of the ruins, though,
emerged The Word and youth TV for the 1990s.
MISC ...
Audiences got a chance to see a pre-Neighbours
Kylie Minogue when C4 aired The Henderson Kids in April ... five
films inspired by H.G. Wells' fable The Invisible Man were run
back to back through the night of 26 August ... and Alfred Hitchcock was
celebrated in the season Hitch on 4.
ON SCREEN
CAROL BARNES
After spending most of the 1980s fronting high-profile
ITN productions, Carol Barnes might have been forgiven for initially thinking
her latest job - reading the news bulletins for Channel 4's new breakfast
service - almost a demotion. The truth was that, given the nature of The
Channel Four Daily and its patchwork of separate strands, whoever
was reading the news would by default become its most prominent and recognisable
face. So it was that she ended up occupying the role, more or less, of
the show's chief "presenter". It was she who cued in the link-ups
with Michael Nicholson in Washington and James Mates in Tokyo in their
respective world news "bureaux"; she who trailed everything
from Countdown Masters to the consumer feature Streetwise;
and she who had to fill for 90 seconds during the very first programme
when a BT line supplying the first edition of Business Daily went
down. Intimate yet authoritative, stern yet prone to the odd bizarre pun,
Carol Barnes only stayed with the programme until the end of 1990, yet
made her role very much her own.
THE ART OF LANDSCAPE
Perhaps it was in response to that sudden late-'80s
interest in all things green. Maybe it was to plug a hole in the schedules
when schools programmes finished for the holidays. Possibly it was just
a cheap rip-off of Pages From Ceefax. Whatever the rationale, The
Art of Landscape became a Channel 4 fixture for a few years. It was
certainly unique, and for a while pretty near unavoidable, yet its true
purpose was amusingly never explained. Viewers were simply invited to
sample the delights of up to three hours uninterrupted slowly-changing
sceneries, animations and landscapes accompanied by a mix of "classical,
jazz, rock and electronic new age" music. And that was it. A shop
window for innovative contemporary designers and composers, yes, but for
the viewer the programme was either a perplexing invocation to stay watching
the TV, go out for a walk in the countryside, or both. The Art of Landscape
debuted at 9.25am on 11 December; then moved to a half hour slot preceding
Channel Four Daily in April 1990. Fans were upset when it disappeared
suddenly during the Gulf War; but a surprise one-off re-appearance on
the morning of Princess Diana's death afforded one last chance to enjoy
those breathy synthesisers and rolling meadows.
OFF SCREEN
• In March Peter Sissons received death threats
after being seen to speak out against the fatwah on Salman Rushdie, but
continued working under 24-hour guard.
• Transmission of programmes in NICAM digital stereo began from 11
September.
FOUR-WORDS
"My first impression of Channel 4 was
amazement at how small an operation it was. The entire staff were crammed
into a few floors of an inadequate building in Charlotte Street. There
was barely a suit or frock to be seen. It was a noisy, undisciplined and
immensely stimulating atmosphere in which to work."
- Michael Grade
"Channel 4 has been forced for legal
reasons to shelve, perhaps permanently, a 'hard-hitting' documentary about
County NatWest, analysing its performance since the Big Bang. News of
the programme leaked out 10 days ago when the name of the Transport Secretary,
Cecil Parkinson, was wrongly associated with its findings."
- The Daily Telegraph
"There never has been any crisis. This
is a long, long haul. My view was that we had to place ourselves somewhere
between Breakfast Time and TV-am. Our audience profile needed
to be far more varied. So for the World News and Business Daily
we would expect a higher number of ABs and probably more men than women.
Streetwise is a more middle-marked strand appealing as much to
women as to men. Countdown is clearly for a far more middle to
lower market audience. We haven't broken into the duopoly as dramatically
as I would have wished. But overwhelmingly when people find the service
they like it."
- David Lloyd, C4 Commissioning Editor
for News and Current Affairs, on The Channel Four Daily
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
VIC AND BOB (1990)
It's hard to think of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer
as much more than a pair of catch phrase spouting one trick ponies nowadays,
but the first time I saw Vic Reeves Big Night Out at the age of
14 I was absolutely spellbound, despite wondering what kind of televised
nightmare I had stumbled into.
Much to my shame I must admit that I saw it by complete
accident after watching (on purpose) an episode of The Golden Girls.
I had no idea what to make of the slightly sinister characters and nonsensical
home-made props, of the pathetically self-aggrandising Reeves and the
obviously smarter but downtrodden Mortimer (who was only one step above
creepy Les on the food chain). It scared me but I guessed it was meant
to be a comedy, although I didn't find it particularly funny. The one
thing I knew, however, was that it fascinated me and I had to see it again.
A couple of weeks later I was a card-carrying fan
and knew all the catchphrases (which I dutifully spouted at the telly,
whilst wearing my "Help Vic, I've fallen!" t-shirt). However
sad that might seem in retrospect, it brought me immense pleasure as a
naïve high school student to feel that I was in a secret gang of
people who were all into something cool and weird that no-one else at
school would "get".
Over time the novelty wore off, the catchphrases
got tired and much to my dismay everyone else at school "got it"
after all (demonstrating this by playground pratfalls and endless shouts
of "What's on the end of the stick Vic?") However, for a while
it was the most enjoyable programme on TV, allowing you to feel like the
daft things you got up to with your mates might really be comedy genius
after all.
- Rose Ruane
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