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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Friday nights were spent in The Unpleasant
World of Penn and Teller ... Karachi Kops followed the police
force in Pakistan ... intrepid reporters discovered Undercover Britain
... the "youth culture other youth shows ignore" was featured
in Walk on the Wild Side ... after controversy in the USA, NYPD
Blue made its debut in the UK ... and Time Team began.
FEBRUARY ...
Hairclips were to be won in women-only daytime
quiz Sabotage ... Laura Kightlinger examined the United States
of Television ... director Phil Agland examined life in China in Beyond
The Clouds ... Oliver Reed was the first subject of The Obituary
Show in Without Walls ... the hit US comedy Home Improvement
came to Friday nights ... while after numerous pilots, Don't Forget
Your Toothbrush finally made it onto the screen.
MARCH ...
Joanna Trollope's The Rector's Wife
starred Lindsey Duncan ... a sort of Why Don't You? for adults,
The Great Outdoors encouraged viewers to take up leisure activities
... A French Affair launced C4's French Connection season, following
people travelling to the Dordogne ... David Jessel looked at the legal
system in The Brief ... and the rotten Running the Halls
almost managed to be worse than Saved By the Bell.
APRIL ...
Max Beesley and Dani Behr fronted bizarre Sunday
lunchtime TV review Surf Potatoes ... Frasier and Kids
in the Hall began ... while Champions looked behind the scenes
of sport.
MAY ...
Babylon 5 began its epic run ... Men
Only saw women examine traditional masculine pursuits, while Men's
Rooms visited male sanctuaries such as a working men's club and a
gents toilets ... young writers and directors were given airtime in the
Lloyds Bank Film Challenge ... Baby It's You followed child development
up to the age of three ... and broadcasts from the restored opera house
began in Four Goes to Glyndebourne, with The Marraige of Figaro
shown live on Saturday night.
JUNE ...
Palin's Column saw the erstwhile globetrotter
write a weekly column for a local paper in the Isle of Wight ... Saeed
Jaffrey and Norman Beaton starred in the local government comedy-drama
Little Napoleons ... a night of programmes devoted to reggae included
the pilot of The White Room ... while Boy Meets World was
a less grisly pre-homework import.
JULY ...
The latest Friday night Word replacement
was the "international youth magazine" Passengers ...
The Best Intentions started a season of films by Ingamer Bergman
... topical issues were debated in The People's Parliament ...
Sheena McDonald interviewed people with big ideas in The Vision Thing
... and after an outing in the Bunch of Five pilot strand, Frank
Skinner's Blue Heaven graduated to a full series.
SEPTEMBER ...
Based on the best-selling books, Lonely
Planet offered advice for independent travellers ... The Lost Betjemans
showcased recently discovered films made in 1962 ... while the history
of the FBI was detailed in The Bureau.
OCTOBER ...
Ray Brooks offered advice on saving money in
Scrimpers ... Alexei Sayle and Neil Morrissey starred in Paris,
the first sitcom by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews ... Alan Bleasdale
Presents saw the playwright showcase the work of four new writers
... Muriel Gray presented the transport magazine Ride On ... and
Ellen arrived.
NOVEMBER ...
Richard Vranch set scientific challenges in
Beat That Einstein ... while Ryan Giggs' Soccer Skills saw
the Man United star pass on football hints in a series first shown on
Granada.
DECEMBER ...
Get Up Stand Up showcased new black
comedians ... and the horror continued with Saved By The Bell: The
College Years.
FINALES
DESMOND'S
Trix Worrell's sitcom set in a barber shop
was a Monday night staple for many years in the early 1990s. Never the
funniest of series, it was at least performed with a real energy that
made it hard to dislike. It was always decided that the series would end
in 1994, and as such the final episode was a special 60-minute edition
scheduled as a centrepiece of C4's Black Christmas season. However a few
days before its transmission, the star Norman Beaton sadly died. The show
went out as scheduled as a tribute to Beaton, and was followed by Beaton
But Unbowed, a special programme where many friends and colleagues
contributed to a portrait of one of the leading black actors in the UK.
MISC ...
Cutting Edge's "Shops and Robbers"
documentary got one of C4's highest ever audiences, while "Graham
Taylor: The Impossible Job" was among its most talked-about programmes
... Without Walls got a late-night slot in March for two programmes
on swearing, including Jerry Sadowitz's game show The Greatest Fucking
Show on Television ... The BAFTA Production Awards appeared
on C4 for the first time, as did live coverage of Glastonbury ... Bill
Hicks: It's Just a Ride paid tribute to the comedian after his death
... the Look Who's Talking season on children included debate show Don't
Forget Your Soapbox, BAFTA-winning sketch show Coping With Parents
and a Brookside Special - Beth Jordache's "video diary"
... films screened on the day of the first National Lottery draw were
Dollar Mambo, Easy Money, The Love Lottery and How
To Marry a Millionaire ... and C4's Black Christmas ran throughout
the festive season.
ON SCREEN
DENNIS POTTER
While the playwright was perhaps best known
for his work on the BBC, Potter also had a close relationship with Channel
4. In April, a few months before his death, he was interviewed by Melvyn
Bragg in a Without Walls Special, later chosen by Michael Grade
as the best programme transmitted by the channel during his tenure. In
it he said that he wanted his final two series, Karaoke and Cold
Lazarus to be screened by both the BBC and Channel 4 simultaneously.
These made it to the screen in 1994. After his death in July, C4 paid
tribute with a repeat run of Lipstick on Your Collar and a first
screening for his MacTaggart Lecture, given the previous year at the Edinburgh
Television Festival. The year also saw the death of Derek Jarman, marked
with an evening of programmes on 16 July, including screenings of Blue,
The Tempest and Sebastiane.
TIME TEAM
Archaeology was never the easiest of subjects
to translate to television, but Time Team hit upon a strong format
that turned the unassuming Sunday teatime show into a long-running season.
The programme involved an archaeological dig taking place over a weekend,
with Tony Robinson employed as "all-purpose irritant" to badger
the diggers into explaining what they were doing, what they found, and
what it all meant. One of the first shows to mix education within a light
entertainment framework, the show was a template for future C4 success
like Scrapheap Challenge and Crime Team, as well as, perhaps,
series like Changing Rooms and Ground Force on the BBC.
A long-runner, in 1997 the series began regular live transmissions, eating
up a whole chunk of a weekend's schedules for archaeology as it happened.
OFF SCREEN
• The Brookside Special broadcast as
part of the Look Who's Talking season caused controversy thanks to its
early transmission time of 6pm. This was after the famous lesbian kiss
had been excised from the regular omnibus screening of the soap on Saturday
afternoon.
• The Broadcasting Standards Council upheld a complaint after Chris
Evans opened Don't Forget Your Toothbrush on Easter Saturday with
the words: "It's that time of the year again when we remembered Jesus
was crucified - and it's that time of the week when we remember that Spurs
probably have been too."
• GMTV overtook The Big Breakfast in the ratings, a
decline hastened by Chris Evans' less frequent appearances and, eventually,
his departure in September.
FOUR-WORDS
"Ranting Taylor cast as Compo the Clown."
- The Daily Telegraph on "Graham
Taylor: The Impossible Job"
"My superhint is how to turn your hair
grey like mine. All the way through the show, be as horrible as possible
to as many nice people as you can - people who are there to help you and
allow you to do your job well. Then you become really unpopular and regret
your behaviour for the rest of the day."
- Chris Evans during his final Big Breakfast
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
THE WORD (1993)
Although it frequently made for entertaining
viewing, The Word was a deeply flawed programme in many respects.
Needless to say, it attracted plenty of criticism, but very little of
this criticism was grounded in any kind of considered assessment of its
weaknesses. Instead, critics and tabloid journalists were given to spouting
identikit dismissals of the series ("no-one says anything with more
than two syllables!", "it's the worst TV programme ever!"
and the like) without expressing any argument or reason to back them up,
picking on an easy target without pausing to express any opinion on what
had made it such an easy target in the first place.
Sniping at The Word quickly became the easiest
and laziest trick in the journalistic book, and as the series surpassed
all expectations and stretched out into its third year on air, the attacks
became ever more nasty, sneering and generally groundless. One week, having
read one particular columnist opining that the presenters were so bad
that the show could only benefit from having no presenters at all, anchorman
Terry Christian decided to test the validity of this statement by simply
walking off-set in the middle of a programme. Cue a long procession filmed
inserts linked by static shots of bewildered guests left alone on the
couch, and growing audience unease which resulted in a couple of them
eventually clambering into the presentation area to have a go at providing
the links themselves. In Christian's absence, the programme was chaotic,
disorganised, directionless and overall not very interesting - in other
words, exactly what the lazier critics liked to pretend that The Word
was on a weekly basis. It may not have taken place in one of Channel 4's
more acclaimed works, but this was a potent and memorable moment all the
same. Not only did it disprove a couple of smug myths, but it also reflected
everything that Channel 4 should be - edgy, provocative, confrontational,
impulsive and defiant.
If only The Word could have been that
good every week.
- TJ Worthington
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