Having made Curious British Telly my second home for the last 15 years, I’ve tracked down some absolute gems of British television. Many of these are forgotten, or haven’t been broadcast in decades, and that’s why they appeal to me.
Watching them often feels like discovering a brand-new programme, even if it was made half a century ago. So, let me introduce you to five great forgotten British TV shows I tracked down.
1. News at Twelve - ITV - 1988
One of the cleverest and wittiest children’s programmes this country has ever produced. But no one remembers it.
News at Twelve is a curious, yet pleasingly simple oddity of children’s television. 12-year-old Kevin Doyle (Ewan Phillips) broadcasts a deadpan news bulletin from his bedroom, treating school scandals and dead goldfish with the gravitas of Trevor McDonald. It’s satire of the highest order, imagine The Day Today but fed through the playground. It never once acknowledges its own absurdity and it’s all the funnier for it.
Six episodes of News at Twelve were broadcast, with the scripts coming from Francis Sinclair - actually two Saatchi & Saatchi employees (Jeremy Sinclair and Cliff Francis) who decided to slum it in children’s television for a bit. Shot handsomely on 16mm, the series even featured guest stars such as Cyrille Regis and Jim Bowen to strengthen its deranged confidence.
Never repeated, News at Twelve is undeniable proof that children’s television can effortlessly compete with its adult counterparts. I missed it at the time, but finally managed to catch up with it at the BFI, where it left me delirious with joy. The fact that it vanished into the archives, completely unmourned, is nothing short of a national tragedy.
For more information on the series - and an interview with Ewan Phillips - just click here.
2. Standing Room Only - BBC - 1991 to 1994
Standing Room Only arrived as English football clambered out of its Heysel and Hillsborough nadir. Rather than taking its cue from the laid-back affability of old boys Saint and Greavsie, Standing Room Only borrowed its whole sensibility from the terrace fanzine. Simon O’Brien fronted the series, all scally hair and genuine scholarship, tackling fascism in reunified Germany and the rise of female fans alongside the usual laddish silliness like Supporterloo.
The photocopied fanzine spirit was bolstered by the comedy of David Baddiel and Rob Newman’s Sepp Maier’s Comedy Shorts, plus there were animations from Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell. Produced under Janet Street-Porter’s Def II umbrella, it ran three admirable series before disappearing, just as the Premier League gold rush began.
I picked up on Standing Room Only around 1992, enjoying it all the way up to its World Cup 94 special. Despite the high number of episodes, very little has surfaced on YouTube. Again, to dig a little deeper, I had to venture to the BFI to watch more. I was rewarded with a genuinely intriguing programme, one which focused on more than just goal of the month. Here was a programme for the fans who liked to think as well as chant.
I’ve barely heard anyone mention Standing Room Only since it was broadcast, and this baffles me. A crucial time capsule of British football at its biggest turning point, yet there’s less than an hour of it online. A clear red card.
3. The Flip Side - BBC - 1966
The Flip Side is a startlingly good showcase for Bob Monkhouse’s dramatic chops, cast against type as Jerry Janus, a late-night Canadian DJ whose gleaming on-air smile is curdling under the strain of a collapsing marriage. Written by M. Charles Cohen for BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre, it’s a neat little play on morality. Focusing on the rot that sets in when integrity gets traded for airtime, The Flip Side demonstrates what happens when commercial television eats its own.
Monkhouse, better known for hosting quiz shows than painting portraits of complex, broken men, is mesmerising here. With his oily charisma stretched thin over internal wreckage, it’s a tour-de-force performance. Meanwhile, director Gareth Davies and producer Harry Moore conjure up a wonderfully camp satire of sixties commercial radio - jingles, ad breaks, and viewer phone-ins.
Rescued from Monkhouse’s own archive after decades presumed junked, it’s a tight, unsettling curio deserving of a far wider audience than it’s had. Once more, I had to head off to London to watch this at the BFI, but it was worth every minute of the journey and booking fee. Did I have a newfound respect for the great man? Absolutely.
If there’s a programme worthy of being slid onto iPlayer for the masses, it’s The Flip Side.
My full write up on the play can be found by clicking here.
4. Jackson Pace: The Great Years - ITV - 1990
It’s back to another slice of comedy from Children’s ITV, and this time it’s Jackson Pace: The Great Years - a gleefully cheap Indiana Jones spoof.
Starring a rather dashing Keith Allen - with lustrous, flowing locks - as the gold-obsessed Jackson Pace, the series finds him dragging sidekick Roger Whibley (Daniel Peacock) across jungles and Cairo nightclubs to the land of Ja Ja Bar. Hopefully, they’ll manage to snatch the treasure of Kinard before the self-obsessed Princess Layme (Cory Pulman) gets there first.
Devised by Allen and Daniel Peacock, with the latter also writing every script and scoring the music, the six episodes ran in autumn 1990 with a supporting cast plucked straight from the eighties alternative-comedy circuit - Josie Lawrence, Arthur Smith, Hugh Paddick among them. Never repeated, never released and stuffed with innuendo that had no business being in a teatime children’s show, it vanished almost entirely from the public consciousness.
Back in 1990, I watched Jackson Pace. In fact, I adored it. But years later, I couldn’t remember the name of the programme for the life of me. Luckily, for the very reason I started Curious British Telly, someone emailed me and asked if I remembered Jackson Pace, the Indiana Jones spoof of the early 1990s.
A month later, I was at the BFI watching a few episodes. It wasn’t as good as I remembered it. It was better. Comedy doesn’t get much better for children, and it was a thrill to reconnect with an old friend. Better yet, five of the six episodes have since turned up on YouTube, so I recommend you get stuck in to this forgotten gem.
5. Lost Property - ITV - 1986
Lost Property, part of the anthology Unnatural Causes, stars Miranda Richardson’s Anne - fresh from Blackadder II - as a woman who buys a fire-damaged, pupil-less school and retreats into a self-invented fantasy of innocence. Her artist husband John (John Duttine) has been relegated to the staff room, denied both a studio and a place in his marital bed. Written by Peter J. Hammond, it’s a claustrophobic, disturbing piece that turns marital collapse into a haunting.
The arrival of Marian - an eerie ex-pupil - tips the play from psychological drama into full-on ghoulishness. As the singing of an unseen child rings across the empty playground and an axe vanishes, the action builds to an ending so savage it’s a wonder anyone forgot it. Richardson and Duttine make a compelling double act, tenderness and resentment knotted together under decades of damage. It’s a true nightmare, but impossible to tear your eyes away from.
I discovered Lost Property a good 30 years after it aired, but it’s now etched into my memory for life. Previously, if you knew where to look, it was available online but it’s long since disappeared. Television of this magnitude simply shouldn’t be allowed to collect dust in the archives. Especially when it shakes you to your very core.
My original, and more in-depth, article on Lost Property can be found here.
Do you remember watching any of the above?
And are there any other shows which, after decade upon decade, you’ve finally reconnected with? Let me know in the comments.
Reading about Standing Room Only, a faint bell chimed in my head, so I grubbed around in my VHS collection. So, I can tell you I've an episode of SRO from 1993, along with various Norwich City clips of the time, an episode of Star Trek ('By Any Other Name') from the BBC2 repeats and what's labelled as episode 2 of Danny Baker After All.
This is fantastic as I have no recollection of any of them ( and wasn’t around for ‘serious’ Monkhouse ).
I think something that should be found/revisited is Hot Metal with Robert Hardy and John Gordon Sinclair from memory. Sunday nights, 10pm slot on ITV had some gold in it, and for me this should have lasted longer than the one or two series it had.