Tonight’s Yorkshire Television… in 1977 

22 July 2016 tbs.pm/9143

The TVTimes tells us what was on YTV on Friday 22 July 1977. Things worth noting include:

  • The schools aren’t sitting, but there are 45 minutes of schools programmes anyway – the time they take counts against advertising averages later in the day, making showing them very attractive to the accountants and salesmen in Leeds
  • American documentary series Friends of Man at 10.15am is narrated by actor Glenn Ford (1916-2006). It was made for syndication and usually turned up on independent stations and smaller PBS affiliates
  • Kathy’s Quiz from Granada at noon is most interesting for being produced by Muriel Young. She was a famous voice on Rediffusion and Radio Luxembourg in the 1960s, as an announcer and presenter, switching to producing children’s programmes in the 1970s
  • Twenty-two years of ITV output help Tyne Tees’s Those Wonderful TV Times be both nostalgia and a panel quiz show for very little cost at 12.30pm
  • 21 Days at 2.25pm is from 1940 and was written as a vehicle for Vivien Leigh. It was a troubled production, with writer/director Basil Dean and producer Alexander Korda having very different visions for the film, a battle that Korda won. The resulting unevenness of the film, made before Gone With the Wind but released after, makes it hard to enjoy fully
  • The Georgian House at 4.15pm was one of those weird part-scifi, part-fantasy, part-historical series that HTV seemed to specialise in making for children. Brinsley Forde would go on to found the band Aswad; Spencer Banks had made his name in ATV’s Timeslip. This is the final part of the series, one of only 3 episodes to survive in the archives
  • General Hospital at 7.30pm had started as a half-hour daytime programme in 1972 and was promoted to an hour in peak in 1975. It was very successful throughout its run, but production executives tired of the format and cancelled it in 1979
  • Devenish at 8.30pm is an unusual Granada comedy (is there any other type of Granada comedy?) featuring amoral social climber Prufrock Devenish, played by Dinsdale Landen (1932-2003), clawing his way up through society and his company
  • Took & Co at 10.30pm seems almost entirely forgotten by the internet, a fate its 7 amusing episodes do not deserve
  • Quinn Martin’s Dan August at 11.30pm was a CBS cop show that lasted one series in 1970-1; it was good enough to get a primetime repeat on CBS in 1973 and again in 1975, but not good enough for them to make any new episodes

You Say

10 responses to this article

Arthur Nibble 22 July 2016 at 1:33 pm

“The Georgian House” also features 25-year-old Janine Duvitski, who probably first came to prominence in “Abigail’s Party” and “One Foot In The Grave” and whose last two main TV roles (in “Benidorm” and BBC2’s groundbreaking transgender comedy “Boy Meets Girl”) have seen her playing rather saucier and self-assured characters.

Arthur Nibble 22 July 2016 at 4:33 pm

Derek Batey’s front cover companion (and, apart from a couple of others there. the youngest on the cover by a good 50 years), former Miss Great Britain winner Susan Cuff is still modelling and still looking wonderful. She was 63 yesterday.

Geoff Nash 22 July 2016 at 4:49 pm

Interesting to see Southern and Tyne Tees having a real presence during the daytime in Yorkshire that day, even HTV getting in there with ‘The Georgian House’, the major companies leaving it until the evening schedule before coming out.

Ray Barrington 23 July 2016 at 3:16 am

The only reason “Dan August” got multiple repeats in the US is because of its star, Burt Reynolds, who was at his prime in the early 70s (It was in 1972 that he posed nude in Cosmopolitan.)

Mark Jeffries 26 July 2016 at 7:20 pm

This “General Hospital” has no relation to the long-running U.S. daytime soap opera, correct?

Russ J Graham 26 July 2016 at 7:38 pm

Correct. It’s often said that ATV nicked the format or even the scripts, but in reality the two shows were nothing at all alike and all ATV nicked was the name.

Victor Field 31 July 2016 at 9:38 am

Also had it been shown in the UK they would have had to change the name, like with Ron Moody’s “Nobody’s Perfect” (which became “Hart Of The Yard” when shown on ITV thanks to the Elaine Stritch sitcom) .

Alan Keeling 14 August 2016 at 11:49 am

“Those Wonderful TV Times” was wasted in a 12.30 slot, an evening slot would have better suited it. A lively TV nostalgia quiz show hosted by Barry Cryer with some great guests & lots of clips of old US & British series from the 50s & 60s.

Glenn Aylett 21 August 2016 at 5:26 pm

Border Television’s most famous, or infamous show, gets the front cover on the TV Times. Nice to see their only network hit living on as a celebrity show with Phil Schofield, but obviously no longer made in Carlisle.

Arthur Nibble 24 August 2016 at 4:13 pm

Border did have one other network hit on mainstream ITV, the cosy Derek Batey lunchtime chat show “Look Who’s Talking”. Some years later, Border carved out a bit of a niche as a producer of shows for Channel Four and children’s telly, e.g. “Bliss”, “BMX Beat” (filmed in Border’s car park!) and “The Groovy Fellers”, the latter a comedy featuring the unusual star pairing of Rowland Rivron and Jools Holland.

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