Weekend Watch Vol. 2
Another selection of vintage British television for you to enjoy
Weekend Watch should, hopefully, maybe, possibly become a weekly feature for the Curious British Telly Substack. And, well, I’ve done two weekends in a row, so I’m currently at a 100% success rate for this objective. Anyway, once again, I’ve curated another lineup of vintage footage for you to indulge in over the weekend, so here’s this week’s offerings:
08/10/1990 - BBC1 - Pigsty
First up is an episode of Pigsty, one of the more curious offerings from Children’s BBC in the early 1990s. Featuring a family of anthropomorphic pigs running a US-style fast food restaurant based within a recording studio, Pigsty is a children’s comedy which features calamity after calamity - mostly at the expense of complex manager MT. It’s certainly a programme which has to be seen to be believed, but it’s still fun.
It’s not one I remember from the time, but it seems to have have stuck in the consciousness of many of my peers, most of whom appear to have suffered frequent nightmares about the pigs. I interviewed the writer, Paul Mendelson, a few years ago, about the series for my book More Curiosities of British Children’s Television, and he’s a lovely chap.
17/12/1989 - Channel 4 - One Hour with Jonathan Ross (Phil Daniels)
Back when I was 16, I got Quadrophenia on VHS and fell in love with both the film and the mod culture. As a result, Phil Daniels was very much an inspiration for me. Then, a year or so later, Clockwork Orange got re-released in UK cinemas and I became equally obsessed with that, even more so when I discovered Phil Daniels had appeared in a stage version of it. And that’s exactly what the youthful Daniels (10 years after Quadrophenia, but still 5 before Parklife) is discussing here with the equally fresh-faced Jonathan Ross in 1989.
1982 - ITV - TV Eye (The Future of British Television)
It’s back over to the Thames archive for this edition of TV Eye which looks at the future of British television, mostly concentrating on the impact of cable television on viewers and society. This aired in 1982 when, technically, there were more channels available than just BBC, ITV and Channel 4, but multichannel households as we now know them were some way off. Compared to modern day schedules, the proposals here seem quaint, but they were very much the beginning of a snowball effect.
06/07/1970 - ITV - World In Action (Quentin Crisp)
One of the Great British eccentrics, Quentin Crisp led a highly varied and entertaining life with a choice comment available at a moment’s notice. And this edition of World in Action finds Crisp, seemingly in the late 1960s, discussing his life up until this point and ruminating on his purpose and passions. Characters such as Crisp feel sadly lacking in the modern landscape, and I dare say that the world is a poorer place for it.