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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Europe Express focused on the state
of the continent ... while Caron Keating introduced topical science show
Fourth Dimension.
FEBRUARY ...
Initially hosted by Bernard Falk, Travelog
profiled unconventional holiday destinations ... Richard O'Brien wielded
his harmonica in The Crystal Maze ... Cutting Edge was the
channel's new flagship documentary strand ... and Robert Lindsay starred
as an itinerant security guard in Nightingales.
APRIL ...
Cameras rolled live and unedited to show life
at London Zoo As It Happens ... international arts and cultures
were explored in Rear Window ... while the ITV comedy drama Brass
was resurrected for a final series.
MAY ...
Buzz was a contemporary youth reportage
series, co-produced for MTV ... consumer issues were debated in Check Out ... and
audiences were invited along to witness Vic Reeves' Big Night Out.
JUNE ...
Ian Richardson led the cast of Malcolm Bradbury's
acclaimed political satire The Gravy Train.
AUGUST ...
The fortunes and failings of spoof TV channel
Globelink News were told in Drop the Dead Donkey ... Hollywood
Legends chronicled stars of the big screen ... Mark Chase and a handful
of guests indulged in Sex Talk ... and Terry Christian raised the
curtain on The Word.
SEPTEMBER ...
Independent film and video documentary productions
were showcased in Critical Eye.
OCTOBER ...
A host of arts-based formats, presenters and
topics took turns in the spotlight in the anthology series Without
Walls.
NOVEMBER ...
Tonight with Jonathan Ross ran three
times a week ... the changing conditions of Eastern Europe were plotted
in And The Walls Came Tumbling Down ... while Down to Earth
exposed the world of archaeology.
DECEMBER ...
Your presence was requested at Tony Jacklin's
Pro-Celebrity Golf Challenge ... while Wagner's 14-hour opera cycle
The Ring was screened in full on television for the first time.
FINALES
SIGNALS
Since its launch Channel 4 had screened countless
mini-series and one-off productions covering the arts, but Jeremy Isaacs
had never entertained the notion of a recurring strand similar to BBC2's
Arena sitting in his schedules. Michael Grade had other ideas,
and within weeks of taking over initiated a £2.5m commission for a regular
arts and popular culture programme. The result was Signals, premiered
in October 1988 with much fanfare and hyperbole. But due to Grade's determination
to steal an advance on BBC2's new arts review The Late Show, due
on air from January '89, Signals was rushed out before it was really
ready. Despite the credentials of its producers, including celebrated
documentary maker Roger Graef, there was never time to properly refine
its agenda and direction. The individual programmes - ranging from the
history of sex on television to a special photography competition in association
with TV Times - ended up too scattershot, and ultimately subjects were
covered for no other reason than to fill empty slots. The C4 schedules
needed an obvious arts-orientated "brand", but Signals,
though wisely conceived, was poorly executed and never found a clear identity.
Its successor - Without Walls - was far more accomplished.
MISC ...
A three-hour spectacular commemorated The A -
Z of TV on New Year's Day evening ... Soviet Spring was a major season
across all genres profiling the state of contemporary Russia ... the 1000th
edition of Countdown was celebrated on 2 July ... and Roy Hattersley
delivered the Coronation Street Birthday Lecture on Christmas Day.
ON SCREEN
CLIVE ANDERSON
An archetypal "anti-celebrity", Clive
Anderson won his prominence on British TV thanks to two Channel 4 shows
that showcased not what he could do but what he most definitely could
not. Given his previous involvement in television had largely been in
the form of an anonymous writer, it was no surprise to discover he was
pretty hopeless in the role of panel game host. In this sense, however,
Whose Line ... was an ideal platform: the guests ridiculed him
(to the audience's audible delight) but he still won a fair share of screen
time and attention in the bargain. Anderson was also obviously poorly
cut out to be a proper chat show host (he was a barrister after all),
so Clive Anderson Talks Back was perfect for letting him indulge
his fondness for barracking - which again got him noticed. In both cases,
formats were virtually constructed around him to carefully mask his weaknesses;
plus, for either show he was initially assigned a "co-host"
(John Sessions and Tony Slattery respectively) as an additional safety
net. Once his somewhat objectionable, stuffy and cynical persona was fully
established, however, Anderson became very much his own man - and an unusual
yet nonetheless useful C4 star for the 1990s.
AS IT HAPPENS
A real gem of a show, As It Happens
was classic Channel 4: slightly over-ambitious, forever prone to failure,
but always entertaining. It traded in the simplest of premises: take a
camera and microphone to a notable place and transmit the pictures live,
or at least unedited. As such, it relied wholly on the charm of the unexpected
to deliver results. No-one knew what would happen when the cameras started
turning - indeed, if anything would happen at all - but that was why the
show was so addictive. The fearless, half-demented confidence of the programme-makers
was infectious; the expectation of witnessing something truly memorable
on screen, be it good or bad, was gripping. In its first incarnation,
As It Happens was a low-key daytime programme with Michael Groth
and Paddy Haycocks taking turns to wander round London. It quickly mutated,
however, into a trans-global epic, spending 90 minutes each Saturday night
in a different foreign city. Now Pete McCarthy and Andy Kershaw alternated
as the hosts, the former ambling around like an innocent abroad, the latter
forever heading down the first dark alley in sight and swearing profusely.
Terrible things went wrong, and more than once a C4 continuity announcer
back in London had to virtually take over as pictures and sound were lost.
But that just made it all the more fantastic, and why come the show's
end you'd always be wanting more. A superb programme, and much missed.
OFF SCREEN
• C4's first director of advertising sales
and marketing was appointed in September. Stewart Butterfield would be
responsible for co-ordinating the selling of the channel's air-time from
1 January 1993.
• The onset of recession forced C4's various budgets to be both frozen
and cut. Two prospective Film on Four developments were cancelled, while
the budget for Business Daily was slashed.
FOUR-WORDS
"Fifteen-to-One seems rooted in
that most competitive of models for education, the Victorian classroom.
The presenter - or teacher - fires a series of questions at his pupils
until one by one they are eliminated by failure. William G Stewart, in
teacherly fashion, presides over this most competitive and hierarchical
of educational forms, and it is ironic that he was also responsible for
producing The Price Is Right, in which the cheerfully unruly audience
were much more like children let out of school."
- Garry Whannel, TV critic
"It has an unashamedly American approach,
packing every line with gags and pushing the notional plot along with
failed-brake speed, neatly tied to the old British comic virtues of satire
and late-entry political jokes. C4 has done well to invest so much faith
and cash in the production company, Hat Trick, and it is indeed the best
trick to be pulled out of the hat so far. Long may it graze."
- Mark Sanderson on Drop the Dead
Donkey, Broadcast magazine
"Again and again I had to insist that
it was not necessary to be a towering intellectual to run Channel 4 so
long as you could lay your hands on a towering intellectual when you needed
one. As Bill Cotton used to say, 'I may not know the answer, but I know
someone who does.'"
- Michael Grade
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
THE CRYSTAL MAZE (1990)
It seems a far distant memory, but Channel
4's original remit was to provide an alternative to mainstream broadcasting.
The moments that stick in my mind could all be defined as an alternative
take on what others were offering at the time: the inspired pointlessness
of Mortimer shouting to Reeves "What on the end of the stick, Vic?";
an inebriated Oliver Reed admiring a fellow guest's "tits" (his
words) during a live open-ended After Dark discussion, to name
but two. But, and I admit the bias, I recall with particular fondness
a moment on Crystal Maze.
Picture the scene. A confused contestant
(they weren't all stupid) emerges from a cell early, having failed his
primary mission: to find a geodesic crystal. His team outside have been
screaming at him for two minutes, because he has in fact solved the puzzle.
He knows the number of the box containing the crystal, but simply hasn't
noticed a wall of numbered boxes directly behind him. Instead of commiserating
with him, Richard O'Brien breaks all the rules by marching the guy back
into the cell and showing him what he'd missed - which was exactly what
we, the viewers - wanted him to do with the idiot. Er, contestant. Inspired.
- Justin Scroggie
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