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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Culinary matters were featured in Take Six
Cooks ... The Heart of the Dragon traced the history of China
... while Diverse Reports showcased deliberately biased and confrontational
journalism.
MARCH ...
Originally aired on S4C, the cast of Night
Beat News - a comedy lampooning the workings of a fictional TV station
- taped each scene twice: once in Welsh and once in English ... and Nicky
Horne and Gary Crowley grappled with the art of fronting dodgy pop show
Ear Say, and failed.
MAY ...
Candid discussions and reports were aired in
Sex Matters ... after a one-off special in November 1983, Who
Dares Wins ... began its first proper series ... while Alan
Bleasdale's Scully starred Andrew Schofield, Jean Boht, Elvis
Costello and Kenny Dalgliesh.
JULY ...
Trak Trix misguidedly attempted to stage
It's a Knockout style japes on a miniscule budget on a freezing
cold beach in the middle of nowhere.
SEPTEMBER ...
Listening Eye covered issues for the
deaf and hard of hearing ... and Simon Callow and Brenda Blethyn starred
in the surreal, self-parodying sitcom Chance in a Million.
OCTOBER ...
Mavis Nicolson transferred her ITV afternoon
magazine show across networks in the shape of A Plus 4 ... Geoffrey
Palmer took the lead in Fairly Secret Army ... while The Business
Programme investigated the world of finance.
NOVEMBER ...
Hill Street Blues switched channels from
ITV ... sketch show Pushing Up Daisies made minor stars of Chris
Barrie and Hale and Pace ... and Irish chat institution The Late Late
Show debuted on British screens.
FINALES
THE FRIDAY ALTERNATIVE
Transmitted every Friday at 7.30pm straight
after a shortened Channel 4 News, The Friday Alternative
had contrived to upset more or less the entire media establishment since
it began just four days after C4's launch. The show's brief - to present
news and current affairs reportage in an innovative, provocative and necessarily
one-sided manner - had irked ITN, who lost 30 minutes a week to a show
they believed deliberately sought to undermine their own output. Eventually
Jeremy Isaacs was forced to give way to an angry C4 management board,
and The Friday Alternative was replaced in January 1984 with Diverse
Reports - from exactly the same production company (Diverse Productions).
Somewhat symbolically, the motorbike that was due to deliver the last
ever edition of The Friday Alternative to C4 HQ got lost, ended
up at the BBC, and the show had to go out 24 hours late.
MISC ...
C4's first proper season of films, The British at
War, began in October ... LWT's four hour drama-documentary The Trial
of Richard III was broadcast on 4 November ... while An Evening
with Mary Tyler Moore on 10 December included episodes of St Elsewhere
and The Betty White Show.
ON SCREEN
RICHARD WHITELEY
The way in which the host of Countdown
evolved into one of C4's most well-known and enduring "faces"
recalls David Frost's much-mocked "rise without trace". At some
point during the last two decades Whiteley stopped being the occasional
host of one of a rotating number of teatime quiz shows and became something
approaching a national icon. When exactly that moment occurred is a near
mystery. However a turning point of sorts came in February 1984, when
Whiteley enjoyed a trip to Monte Carlo to attend a special recording of
Countdown's French antecedent, Des Chiffres et des Lettres.
Unbeknown to Monsieur Twatly (as the French erroneously billed him), the
excursion was merely a ruse to keep him occupied while Yorkshire TV bosses
deliberated over whether to fire him in the light of Countdown's
recent poor ratings. Right at the last minute, though, the axe was postponed
when a new set of viewing figures revealed the show had made the C4 top
10 for the first time. A fax from Paul Fox, head of Yorkshire TV, proclaimed
"business as usual" - and so it would remain.
CHANNEL 4 NEWS
After a visibly ropey first 12 months, complete
with regular technological breakdowns, a horrendous garish set, and a
palpable lack of confidence on the part of its presenters, Channel
4 News hit its stride in 1984. Much was to do with the yearlong miners
strike and the manner in which the programme opted to carefully and even-handedly
chart the course of the dispute; at last here was a topic that seemed
to suit the hour-long format. But it was also due to the accomplishment
of its original quartet of hosts and reporters: Peter Sissons, Trevor
McDonald, Sarah Hogg and Godfrey Hodgson. The BBC had jeered when C4 mooted
the idea of an extended news bulletin at 7pm - no-one would watch, it
was too long, it would sabotage any chance of grabbing and sustaining
a primetime audience. The personalities of Channel 4 News helped
to overcome these and other more tangible problems; and from an embarrassing
trough ratings quickly grew, hitting a record high on 22 August during
an interview between Arthur Scargill and Ian MacGregor.
OFF SCREEN
• In January the IBA turned down ITV's plan
to move schools programmes to Channel 4 - for now.
• Channel 4 technicians refused to black out programmes in support
of striking colleagues at Thames Television in August.
• From 15 October C4's output increased by 25%; weekday schedules
now began at 2.30pm instead of around 5pm, and weekends opened at 1pm
rather than 2pm.
FOUR-WORDS
"Trial by television - but no charges
of contempt of court. Richard III, unavoidably absent, was put on trial
for the murder of the Princes in the Tower. For four hours lawyers and
witnesses debated his guilt or innocence. Two million watched. The jury
acquitted."
- Jeremy Isaacs
"This is space age television. Ours is
the most up-to-date newsroom in the world - no typewriters, no paper,
so your story can't blow out of the window."
- Peter Sissons, Channel 4 News, ITN
"If we are going to provide afternoon
programming we might as well provide a complementary service. The reason
it took so long was that until ITV were convinced they could actually
make some money out of us, they were reluctant to part with their money."
- Sue Stoessl, Head of Marketing,
C4
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
LAST DAY OF SUMMER (1984)
This is what I know now. Last Day of Summer,
which went out sometime in 1984, was part of Channel 4's Film on Four
series. Based on a short story written by Ian McEwan in his book First
Love, Last Rites it starred Annette Badland as Jenny and Graham McGrath
as Tom. But I only know that now.
It's a drama I've seen just once so what is it that
makes me pick out Last Day of Summer as as a specific Channel 4
memory? The film was about the close friendship that developed between
Jenny, a nanny (or was she a tutor?) and her young charge Tom during a
school summer holiday. It had a pleasing, private quality - that of letting
you into a secret world shared only by the two characters. I want to apply
the description "gentle" here, but the connotations would be
all wrong.
In truth my memory of the drama as a whole is patchy,
except for the final sequence. It's the end of the summer and for some
reason it's Jenny and Tom's last day together. The pair go out onto a
lake in a small rowing boat. There's laughter that the two have shared
throughout, but it now becomes obvious that outside their guardian/ward
relationship Jenny is desperately lonely - inadequate, even. The laughter
turns into horrifically violent sobbing, and disaster as the boat capsizes.
Tom swims around looking for Jenny, but she's gone. She doesn't want to
be saved.
It's hard to explain why this sequence has stayed
with me. In part because it subverted my expectations about a drama that
seemed at first winsome. It was like a fairy tale gone bad. The realisation
that beyond the relationship the two characters shared was a pretty nasty
world was also striking.
The drowning, the revelation - both were a
neat and nasty trick. But somehow very Channel 4.
- Graham Kibble-White
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