Vladimir Putin is Russia’s biggest TV star. TV is Putin’s way of speaking to his people … ‘We are a great power. I believe in the end we will be victorious.’ The World According to Putin, Channel 4 2019
Welcome to Russian TV. Most of which is state controlled. ibid.
‘Why under Barack Obama was their voodoo in the White House.’ ibid. Russian bird presenter
‘We’ll miss her [Theresa May] African dancing, and her deep cleavage.’ ibid. male presenter
Crimea brought relations with the West to a new low. ibid.
Watching Dick Cavett – it was some of the most memorable times I remember on television – I remember watching Dick Cavett and Ali. Reverend Al Sharpton, cited Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes, Sky 2020 *****
For fifty years BBC has been making programmes about British homes. It’s gone mad with makeovers, it’s finessed our food, it’s directed our leisure time, and it’s planted ideas in our back gardens. The Home that 2 Built s1e1: The Sixties, BBC 2020
It was a decade of such extreme and rapid change … [BBC2] began with a range of how-to programmes that were reassuringly old-fashioned. ibid.
The basics of life: growing things, eating things, and having somewhere nice to live. ibid.
They began with cookery … ‘From all over the world comes a flood of raw materials’ … Now austerity was a thing of the past … [BBC2] set about making food programmes of various kinds, but their early offerings were as bland as boiled cabbage. ibid.
‘Hello and good evening and welcome to Know Your Onions. Now, this is a programme about food, something we all have to have.’ ibid.
Is it Ever too Late to Learn? ibid.
Fanny Cradock was a professional food writer and cook whose avowed mission was to get rich women to up their game … In the mid-60s BBC hired her as their main food presenter. ibid.
Fanny Cradock’s message to the housewives of Britain was powerful too: be modern, be bold, climb out of your rut and experiment. With the advent of colour TV, viewers realised she brought those ambitions to her outfits as well: she was great television. ibid.
People were sick of living in dreary homes. They wanted a place that felt modern, clean and stylish. ibid.
Homeholders all over the land began to ‘do up’. Older properties in particular started to get a face-lift. ibid.
1967: In Your Place: in its day it was a ground-breaker. ibid.
‘The surface which I’m suggesting for the worktops, erm, is an asbestos sheet. Now, it’s very hard. It’s slightly more expensive.’ ibid. home design visit
Habitat: ‘For some people modern design served straight will suit their eye and suit their wallet’ … More extreme ’60s’ looks were available. ibid. contemporary commentary
Margaret Powell [Waring & Gillow] v David Hicks [Habitat] – the pair were asked to go shopping for furniture and design their favourite room … they swapped rooms and then the fun began. ibid.
Gardening Club with Percy Thrower, filmed in a fake studio shed, was watched by up to five million people. ibid.
In 1968 BBC2 got in on the garden boom with a new series: Gardeners’ World … Sadly, for vintage anoraks, only a handful of Gardeners’ World survives. ibid.
The most fragmented decade of them all: 1970s. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of wisdom, it was a time of foolishness, the ’70s started on a rising tide of ’60s’ optimism and modernity. The Home that 2 Built s1e2: Seventies
The first time in our history when more people owned their house than rented. ibid.
BBC reflected the new house-owning fashion in their hit comedy of the period: 1972’s The Return of the Likely Lads. ibid.
The housing boom created a golden age of DIY as people started to do up old houses or repair new ones. ibid.
Make Your Own Furniture with Albert Jackson & David Day. ibid.
We needed a domestic goddess. We needed Delia [Smith] … In Delia’s first cookery course on [BBC]2 she taught the basics. ibid.
6 breweries in the 1970s brewed 72% of all our beer. ibid.
BBC2 was much much happier with more traditional forms of horticulture. With well ordered gardens in a disordered world. ibid.
Geoffrey Smith: All in a Day’s Gardening. ibid.
‘We’ve gone through a very silly period when we thought that man with his technology was all powerful and could save us from every kind of ill.’ ibid. Professor Magnus Pike
‘Gardening was suddenly regarded as sexy.’ The Home that 2 Built s1e3: Eighties, Alan Titchmarsh of fellow gardener Charlie
The decade of loads-a-money: thanks to fast cash and even faster technology British home life changed quicker than ever before in the ’80s. More people would own their homes, more money would be spent on them, and more time spent in them. ibid.
A third were renting from the council, almost one in three didn’t have central heating, over a million homes were declared unfit for human habitation. ibid.
Barbara Woodhouse was a dog-training dominatrix: Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way. ibid.
Margaret Thatcher’s … right-to-buy scheme gave Britain’s five million tenants a discount deal to buy their houses. ibid.
Arthur Negus Enjoys … Gardener’s World: still going strong today … ibid.
1982 Madhur Jaffrey … Ken Hom’s Chinese Cookery … Food & Drink … Keith Floyd: a complete departure from cookery programmes of the past … Floyd on France … ibid.
Richard Stillgoe [sic.]: Looking Good, Feeling Fit … Eamonn Holmes: Bazaar. ibid.
By the middle of the decade three million homes had a home computer. BBC2 crashed into the craze with the series Micro Live … ibid.
Another device that plugged into TVs: video cassette recorder: viz. Tomorrow’s World … By 1985 more households had VCRs than cars. ibid.
This was the era in which things got personal and emotional as a makeover takeover gripped Britain. And a creative tornado was unleashed. The Home that 2 Built s1e4: Nineties
Ikea advert: ‘Chuck out the chintz today’. ibid.
BBC: Changing Rooms … Ground Force … Home Front … The Naked Chef … Escape to the Country … ibid.
‘Property shows killed makeover shows.’ ibid. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
Play for Today: a series of single dramas broadcast by BBC television between 1970 and 1984: years of crisis when the consensus politics of Britain’s postwar world began to unravel, when industrial relations, education and the health-service faced fundamental challenges … Play for Today reflected and responded to all this and more in more than 300 dramas shown in prime time. Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, BBC 2020
The Wednesday Play ran for six years and featured a much wide range of drama. ibid.
Only Make Believe (1973: writer Dennis Potter; director Robert Knights) … Angles Are so Few (1970: writer Dennis Potter; director Gareth Davies) … Mike Leigh: Hard Labour (1973) … Nuts in May (1976) … Abigail’s Party (1977) … Ken Loach: Up the Junction (1965) … Cathy Come Home (1966) … The Rank & File (1971) … Ann Scott: Angels Are so Few (1970) … Stocker’s Copper (1972) … Only Make Believe (1973) … Richard Eyre: Comedians (1979) … The Imitation Game (1980) … Country (1981) … ibid.
The After Dinner Joke (1978: writer Caryl Churchill; director Colin Bucksey) … Shakespeare or Bust (1973: writer Peter Tarson; director Brian Parker) … Stocker’s Copper (1972: writer Tom Clarke; director Jack Gold) … Leeds United! (1974: writer Colin Welland; director Roy Battersby) … All Good Men (1974: writer Trevor Griffiths; director Michael Lindsay-Hogg) … Licking Hitler (1978: writer and director David Hare) … The Cheviot, The Stag & the Black Black Oil (1974: writer John McGrath; director John McKenzie) … ibid.
Destiny (1978): ‘Cause first there’ll be the blacks and Asians. Then the Jews and Irish. And this ain’t easy speeches – this is true. And then it’ll be the unions. Oh ar make no mistake. The Labour Party: that’ll do. The others too. All in the interests of the nation. And to save the nation, they’ll destroy the nation. All of it except themselves. And if we let ’em, we’ve got ourselves to blame. Our fault. We turned our back.’ ibid. Destiny: Play for Today 1978: White shop steward addresses need for solidarity with Asian colleagues
The troubles in Belfast also framed the acclaimed Billy trilogy by Graham Reid made for BBC Northern Ireland in the final years of Play for Today. The dramas explore tensions and violence in a protestant working class family. ibid.
Out of 300 Plays for Today only a dozen were directed by a woman. ibid.