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Tonight’s Anglia TV… in 1978
28 September 2016 tbs.pm/9712
TVTimes tells us what was on Anglia on Thursday 28 September 1978. Things worth noting include:
- The day starts properly at noon with Yorkshire Television’s Jackanory-style Topper’s Tales, featuring light music and a narrator over watercolour stills. Cheap but effective
- The bi-weekly Crown Court from Granada continues at 1.30pm. Each case in this drama series was shown over a couple of days, presenting both the prosecution and the defence cases in turn. The jury – real people, invited by Granada from real potential jurors in their region – then decided on guilt based solely on what they had seen. The actors had to learn two scripts for their reactions to the jury’s verdict
- ATV’s play The Bass Player and the Blonde, in the ITV Playhouse strand, had been a huge hit back in June 1977. The repeat here pongs slightly of ‘convenient filler’
- The Flintstones, at 4.45pm, a mainstay of BBC-1 since the mid-1980s, is on ITV at this point in time
- The Six Million Dollar Man at 7pm had just been cancelled by ABC in the States in March after 5 seasons. “Date With Danger: Part two” is the penultimate episode of the series
- Thames Television’s This Week at 8.30pm is going through the – long – period of calling itself TV Eye, which it did 1978 to 1986. This is something we’ve all collectively decided to ignore when discussing the programme
- The Cuckoo Waltz at 10.30pm was a Granada sitcom, and like nearly all Granada sitcoms, it was sometimes introspective and more drama than comedy. This is not a bad thing
- It Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy at 11pm is… well… look, times change. In 1974 on ABC in the States, this TV movie could get laughs out of the idea that an (ugly, squat, portly, ha ha) man is kidnapped at gunpoint, forced to have sex with a (beautiful, tall, thin, ha ha) woman and then dropped off, naked, in the middle of nowhere to walk home with everyone laughing and pointing at him. Once home, nobody believes him. Well, at least that bit hasn’t changed. There’s a serious point to be made, but this cheap hour and a half doesn’t even try to make it
You Say
6 responses to this article
Alan Keeling wrote 28 September 2016 at 11:48 am
The “Lassie” episode at 4.20 is from season 17 (1970), during this season, the canine character does not have any owners, so roams about from place to place (in a similar vein to “The Littlest Hobo”.
Alan Keeling wrote 28 September 2016 at 11:54 am
“The Flintstones” episode is from season 5 & is a sort of “Addams Family” parody. N.B. – “The Flinstones” first aired on most ITV regions from around 1962. ATV in the Midlands, finally began to air this popular cartoon series from September 1972, beginning with season 3.
Arthur Nibble wrote 28 September 2016 at 12:29 pm
Ooh, Francesca Annis. Still looking gorgeous at 71.
“Jabberjaw” (4.20 on Yorkshire) was a cartoon series featuring a talking shark and his human friends who were in a band. Apparently, it wasn’t much cop.
We’re in the era when Anglia showed “Emmerdale Farm” out of step with the rest of the network, in anger at the rough treatment given to their earlier farm soap “Weavers Green”.
I love the fact the final programme, “The Living Word”, is fronted by a man whose surname is Speake.
Arthur Vasey wrote 28 September 2016 at 3:26 pm
CROWN COURT: This was actually on three days a week – depending on ITV’s whim, it would be on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, sometimes – or Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday or Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – always consecutive days, never alternative ones or whatever – the general rule was that the first day would be the prosecution evidence, the second day was usually split between the two, with the final day concluding the defence evidence, plus summing up, the whole thing concluding with the verdict.
The programme claimed that the jury were comprised of members of the general public – and such they were – apart from one – as ordinary people who aren’t members of Equity, the actors’ union, aren’t permitted to speak on a TV drama, the jury foreman (the word “forewoman” was never used) was, in fact, an actor – not usually a familiar one, but a member of Equity.
THE SULLIVANS: Up to this point, ITV had shown some cheap imports from Australia and New Zealand, usually set in the outback or the bush, in the present day, more or less – most of which were made entirely on film and didn’t last long – and each ITV region showed them at different times of the day, on different days – ITV originally networked early episodes of The Sullivans, up to about the point where John’s wife Anna died – after that, it was shown in different regions and moved to half past twelve, in most areas – this set a precedent for ITV to import more Australiana in the shape of programmes like Sons And Daughters, The Young Doctors and A Country Practice.
Victor Field wrote 2 October 2016 at 9:42 am
“You Lie So Deep, My Love” over on Thames at 10.30pm was another TV movie, this one off the Universal production line with Don Galloway from “Ironside” wanting to bump off his wife Barbara Anderson formerly from “Ironside” – she’d quit the show before it ended – and get her money and live happily ever after with Angel Tompkins. Needless to things, horribly wrong.
Victor Field wrote 2 October 2016 at 9:43 am
I meant to say, “things go horribly wrong.” (for him, anyway.)
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