The post TVTimes covers appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

The post A gallery of Thames gems appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Rainbow, the pre-school children’s programme, has received worldwide praise for its pioneering documentary films for pre-school children. The latest in this occasional series, designed to introduce the youngest viewers to traumatic aspects of growing up, showed the arrival of a new member to the family, in Rainbow Has a New Baby.

‘Rainbow produces another fascinating look at the toddlers this evening. There’s an “ooooh” in every shot as three-year-old Dominic North – a smashing cherub – learns to live with an interloper in the house, his new sister Felicity. There is a great deal of illuminating observation in Charles Warren’s production. These programmes may be aimed at under-fives, but they prove irresistible to adults, too.’

Daily Express

Straight into the London Top Ten in third position, the summer series of Get Some In! continued the success story of Tony Selby and his ‘erks’ from the RAF.

For the first time, marriage guidance counsellors and their clients were filmed in the throes of consultation, in Nick Broomfield’s often disturbing and intimate film Marriage Guidance. Subsequently, he was invited to tour American colleges, to show and talk about the film.

Ken Ashton’s Lonely Hearts portrayed the problems of loneliness in our big cities through the eyes of ten young people, all of them desperate for friendship.

The Ruth Ellis Story, by Chris Goddard, looked back two decades to one of the most controversial postwar murder trials, that of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Frank Cvitanovich combined newsreel film, Japanese propaganda footage and specially-shot material to recreate The Hunting of Force Z, the story of how the Japanese hunted and finally sank the battleships ‘Repulse’ and ‘Prince of Wales’ in 1941. Sir Michael Redgrave was narrator.

Michael Aspel narrated Joan Aiken’s Mice and Mendelson, a lunchtime story series for children about a group of mice and a pony named Mendelson.

Secret experiments in a laboratory lead to a mysterious murder: Whodunnit? asked Jon Pertwee, in the first of a new series of the successful early-evening panel show. Magnus Pyke, Bill Pertwee, Tessa Wyatt, Jimmy Jewell, Connie Booth and Alfred Marks were among the guesting sleuths.

Tom O’Connor, described by The Stage as ‘the sort of compere the old masters at the Palladium would be proud of,’ took the television variety show back to a theatre setting, and straight back to the top of the National Top Twenty with Night Out at the London Casino. With audiences of up to 14¼ million, the show followed the chart-topping format of the established Wednesday at Eight, including the Name That Tune audience contest. Guests in this entertainment highlight for ITVs summer season included Tommy Cooper, Twiggy, Norman Wisdom, Mike and Bernie Winters and Frankie Howerd.

The months between the end of Today, and the start in September of its successor Thames at 6, vacated the 6.00pm slot for new series. Allan Hargreaves turned quizmaster for The London Quiz, in which teams from London schools pitted their knowledge of London, past and present, in a knock-out tournament. Monty Modlyn returned with A Town Called; among the towns he visited were Chatham, Hampstead, Guildford, and Dinard in France. Get Out and Push was a series of half-hour documentaries about ordinary people who are committed to helping others – neither famous nor rich, their only motive being that they want to help. In Mavis, Mavis Nicholson met six people, first in their home and then in the studio, to discuss topics of special interest to them – from Barbara Cartland on girls’ morals, via John Aspinall on the dignity of animals, to John Mortimer pleading for more freedom of choice. And in preparation for the coming soccer season, Brough Scott returned with Sportscene, reviewing London’s sports.

Exactly one year after a chemical cloud escaped from a factory in Seveso, Italy, John Fielding returned to make a shock This Week Special: Seveso, the Poison Cloud. He revealed a state of maladministration which had allowed the poison to continue spreading, while failing to protect the victims of the disaster.

The Miss Thames competition, and sporting events ranging from the Australia versus the Rest of the World Jubilee cricket match, and international soccer with England against Switzerland, to a series of darts matches, were covered by Thames’ Outside Broadcasts cameras in the late summer.

Rolf Harris returned with a new series of Quick on the Draw, and was also one of the guests in The David Nixon Show; others included in David’s guestlist were Ron Moody, Ray Allen and Lord Charles, Diana Dors and Anita Harris.

This Week produced disturbing evidence that 8000 pounds of MUF nuclear material unaccounted for – were potentially on the illegal world arms market. Llew Gardner, joining the programme from Today, reported on a little-aired crisis, that of Quebec nationalism, in The French Disconnection.

Early in 1977, Orient Street, London SE11 was stripped of its television aerials and double yellow lines, as producer Paul Knight transformed it into Dulcimer Street in 1938 – setting for London Belongs to Me, a drama series based on Norman Collins’ internationally best-selling novel about London and Londoners during the early years of World War II. Derek Farr, Madge Ryan, Patricia Hayes, Peter Jeffrey and Terence Budd starred.

‘Few successful novels become successful TV series. The Thames adaptation of Norman Collins’ best-selling novel London Belongs to Me looks like the exception. Collins’ wry sympathy with his characters has been skilfully transferred to the TV series by writer Hugh Leonard and producer Paul Knight. There are excellent performances by Terence Budd as Percy Boon, Peter Jeffrey as Mr Squales and Patricia Hayes as Connie Coke.’

Sunday Times

‘A long overdue recognition of sub-Dickensian literary artifact that is made for television. It has a large cast of fascinating characters – what the trade calls a “human story.”. Hugh Leonard sticks close to the novel, stressing the essential “ordinariness” of Collins’ extraordinary people, with every part a cameo and every cameo well carved in sharp relief. The design and mise-en-scene are admirable and the direction efficiently unobtrusive.’

Broadcast

‘What’s different about this telly period drama is that it’s funny – which period dramas, in general, are not. The series is as tasty, and nutty, as a fruitcake.’

Daily Mirror

Two years after it began as a five-minute insert. Help! became a daily programme in September, expanding from volunteer recruitment to include information on health, employment and welfare rights. By Christmas over 15,000 enquiries were received by the programme, many requesting specially-produced publications: ‘Help Yourself to London,’ a listing of facilities and opportunities for pensioners produced in co-operation with Age Concern (Greater London), was sent to 8,000 viewers. Gordon Honeycombe read the news in Hindustani (illustrating the language problems of home-hound Asian women), Cilia Black spoke about losing her baby, and Instant Sunshine even sang a special song on curing the Christmas hangover, as Help! used different forms of presentation to illustrate their topics. The year of Help! ended with an appeal for wool and unwanted woollens to make patchwork blankets – a mile-long strip of wool and 5,000 jumpers were the result.

This Week returned to Ireland, with a remarkable secret film made in the Maze prison, and an investigation into the RUC’s interrogation techniques; while at home, Peter Williams reported on the threat of a footballers’ strike.

Michael Robbins, Nigel Lambert, Mike Savage and Lynda Bellingham starred as the hilariously ineffective crime-fighting force of a small, outer London police station in The Fuzz, a new situation comedy by ‘Budgie’ creator Willis Hall.

Six months in the making on location in Amsterdam, Euston Films’ new production of Van der Valk went straight into the Network Top Ten, and quickly found a permanent place there with up to 14¼ million viewers. Barry Foster returned as the Dutch detective, joined by a new wife, Joanna Dunham and Nigel Stock as his police boss. Multiple car chases, dramatic effects and stunts injected Euston Films’ trademark of high action into the already familiar character and format. ‘Mike Vardy’s direction is quite exceptional’ the Daily Express reported on the first episode; ‘the series serves a very unusual place in the area of the TV sleuth. It is unorthodox and full of extremely good performances, with Barry Foster filling the bill completely’

Half a million sales of Rainbows, packs designed to reflect the Rainbow series, were topped during 1977. Sold in 23 countries, these have proved Thames’ most successful programme-related publishing venture, and in August a similar series of activity packs relating to Magpie were also launched. Other merchandise in the year ranged from jigsaws based on Cosgrove Hall’s cartoon series, to a silver disc for the Rock Follies of ’77 record.

The post Summer programmes appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

• Today
• This Week
• People & Politics
• Time For Business
• Thames at 6
• London Looks Forward
  • The Living City
  • The Future City
• Documentaries
  • Hazlitt in Love
  • The Gospel According To St Michael
  • Walt Disney (2 programmes)
  • Marriage Guidance
  • Lonely Hearts
  • The Ruth Ellis Story
  • The Hunting of Force Z
  • Hammer & Sickle
  • Billy
  • Jimmy
  • Aycliffe

OUTSIDE BROADCASTS

• Series
  • Drive In
  • A Town Called
  • Kitchen Garden
  • Wish You Were Here…?
  • Pub Entertainer of the Year
• Sport
  • Darts
  • Horse Racing from Sandown, Newmarket, Epsom, Lingfield
  • Football (7 matches, including 4 internationals)
  • Sportscene
  • Wrestling
• Events
  • Jubilee Flower Show
  • Miss Thames
  • Astrology
  • Model Railway Exhibition
  • Nurse of the Year
  • Variety Club Lunch
  • Evening Standard Drama Awards
  • Evening News Film Awards
  • Royal Film Performance
  • Great British Achievements
  • Chipperfield’s Circus (Easter and Christmas)
  • The Motor Show
  • Britannia Awards
  • The Loyal Address

LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

• Specials
  • The Benny Hill Show
  • TV Times Top Ten Awards
  • The Eric Sykes Show
  • Bruce and More Girls
  • The Peggy Lee Show
  • Max Bygraves’ Christmas Show
  • Vera Lynn Sings
• Series
  • David Nixon Show
  • Looks Familiar
  • Opportunity Knocks
  • This is Your Life
  • Whose Baby?
  • Whodunnit?
  • Wednesday at Eight
  • The Tom O’Connor Show
  • The Little and Large Tellyshow
  • Night Out at The London Casino
• Comedy Series
  • Odd Man Out
  • Get Some In
  • George and Mildred
  • What’s On Next?
  • Paradise Island
  • Miss Jones & Son
  • The Fuzz
  • The Upchat Line

CHILDREN’S

• Pre-School Learning
  • Rainbow
  • Rainbow Has A Baby
• General Interest
  • Magpie
  • Fanfare
  • Somersault to Moscow (Magpie Special)
  • …And I Write Music (Magpie Special)
• Drama
  • The Tomorrow People
  • Horse in The House
• Animation Series
  • Jamie and The Magic Torch
  • Chorlton and The Wheelies
• Entertainment
  • Michael Bentine’s Potty Time
  • Sooty
• Pre-School Entertainment
  • And Maisy Too
  • Mice and Mendelson
  • The Wotsit From Whizz-Bang

FEATURES, EDUCATION AND RELIGION

• Features
  • After Noon
  • Mavis
  • Money-Go-Round
  • London Scene
  • Superman & The Bride
  • The Story of Job
  • Problems
  • Help!
  • Our School and Hard Times
• Education
  • Seeing and Doing
  • Finding Out
  • The World Around Us
  • Writer’s Workshop
  • The English Programme
  • French Studies
  • It’s Life
  • It’s More Life
  • London: The Making of a City
• Adult Education
  • Could Do Better?
  • This Sporting Land
• Religion
  • Get Out and Push
  • Close
  • Christmas Pie
  • Drawing to an End
  • Faith In Place: Matt’s Place
  • Christmas Special
  • A Matter of Morals
  • St Nicolas Cantata

DRAMA

• Serial
  • Rooms – 61 episodes
• Series
  • Romance – 5 episodes
  • Rock Follies of ’77 – 7 episodes
  • London Belongs To Me – 7 episodes
  • The Norman Conquests
    • Table Manners
    • Living Together
    • Round & Round The Garden
• Film Series
  • The Sweeney
  • Van Der Valk
• Plays For Britain
  • Cork & Bottle
  • Last Summer
  • It’s Only Rock ’n Roll
  • The Proofing Session
  • Not Quite Cricket

The post The programme year 1977 appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.

Lloyd Shirley, Controller of Drama
Armchair Cinema, Armchair Theatre, Callan, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Man at the Top, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder, Napoleon, Public Eye, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Six Days of Justice, Special Branch, Van der Valk, The Way of the World.

Lloyd Shirley, Thames Television’s Controller of Drama programmes, began his broadcasting career with TV in his home province of Ontario and came into British television in 1956. In ITV’s early years his productions ranged across the whole output from arts programmes and documentaries to World of Sport, but he later began to specialise in drama with such successes as Armchair Theatre, Public Eye, Frontier, Callan and lately The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.

The title Controller of Drama is, to say the least, an odd one. You cannot legislate drama into existence any more than you can dictate any creative process successfully from the outside. All you can do – at least, all I feel I can do in my department -is bring together a group of professionals who write and produce and direct drama, and give them the facilities to do it in a certain way. A way that will both satisfy them as programme makers and also please our audience as consistently as possible. For me that is as far as you can go towards ‘controlling’ drama. But what you can do from outside is to finance it, and how you do that is important to results.

The Board of Thames Television has just allocated my department’s programme expenditure for the next two years: £5½ million. That is a great deal of money but no blank cheque, because programme production is very expensive. Yet there are two vital things about the allocation. First it gives us the chance to plan well ahead, which helps us to vary our output properly. Secondly, it comes without strings. It is financial backing for the programmes we would like to make and which we hope viewers will enjoy.

Our most striking new venture is, I suppose, Armchair Cinema. We shall go on making Armchair Theatre (including a new Terence Rattigan play, incidentally) but Armchair Cinema will be a £1 million series of films made especially for British television. There will be new thrillers – indeed the whole concept began when our films rumour and suspect were so successful – and there will also be comedy and romance and domestic drama. There has been no other project like it in Britain, and if it sounds hackneyed to describe it as a challenge I can only say that is exactly how we see it.

Another departure for us is a cycle of Restoration comedy, a series of linked adaptations which Peter Hammond will produce. We are calling it The Way of the World, borrowing Congreve’s title because it exemplifies the way we intend to present the plays: not as a quaint period revival but as a living revelation of wit, manner and morals which is relevant to the present. George Markstein’s adaptation of De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater will again be a portrayal of an earlier period, but all too clearly relating to our own society. And for a present-day message actually written in this century, we are negotiating with Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s representatives to serialise one of his works. I hope to announce the details soon. None of these will be in the studio for several months, though they are all in active preparation. One which will appear rather sooner is the new eight-part series on Napoleon which Philip Mackie has conceived and is writing.

In naming those particular series I do not mean to imply that we have lost interest in popular contemporary story-telling. The role of television as a presenter of popular fiction seems to me an important one. But we are more interested in a series that reveals some human truths than we are, say, in just a good detective story. Frank Marker in Public Eye is a detective, but the series concentrates on him and his cases as human problems, Callan is a sensitive character with believable emotions. In another genre, Joe Lampton of Man at the Top is a complicated and interesting human being. In all of those it was the characters that attracted us first, the stories second. The same is true of Nicholas Freeling’s Dutch detective Van der Valk, which is a series going into production shortly.

If there is any theme in our work, I hope it is this sense of humanity and of relevance to ordinary life. We do not, in the main, create escapist fantasy. That is not to say that Callan and Public Eye are heavy with social undertone. But neither are they a couple of handsome heroes who solve every problem with a bullet, Six Days of Justice illustrates the point very well. Courtroom drama is hardly new. But we took an ordinary magistrates’ court and tried to present, exactly as they would happen, the cases which represent day-to-day British justice. Cases about ordinary people that take place by the hundred for every one dramatic trial at the Old Bailey.

We had a great deal of praise from the critics for it, but many of them said in effect that it was too authentic to be entertaining. That, as one of them put it, it would never reach the Top Twenty. In fact, each programme has been watched by around thirteen million people and it was in the Top Twenty every time. Now that is very gratifying, because with only one channel it is part of our responsibility to make our work appeal to a large proportion of our audience. We want, if you like, to fill our theatre and not have half the seats empty. But much more rewarding than that is the knowledge, from letters and calls and comments, that people were excited by the very lack of traditional dramatic ingredients in Six Days of Justice. Because the professionals who work for my department learned long ago that dramatic power doesn’t lie in the barrel of a gun. And we never tire of proving that the audience knows it too.

The post People behind programmes: Lloyd Shirley appeared first on THIS IS THAMES from Transdiffusion.