The Airport: Back in the Skies, Monday, 20.30, BBC1

We know nineties nostalgia is big now, but with pop docs on Saturday nights and docusoaps on pre-watershed BBC1 we really are harking back a quarter of a century or so. Docusoaps were an easy target for ire those days, such were their dominance of the schedule, but like all genres there are good and bad examples, and we personally found Driving School so compelling we set the timer for two episodes when we went on holiday to France. And Airport was a big show in its day too, even shown on Saturday nights for a bit, and before they commissioned ten million episodes and ran it into the ground it was a fascinating series in the grand tradition of BBC documentary. Much of the appeal was thanks to an obvious telly natural in Jeremy Spake, a genial and engaging presence who, thanks to his role as Moscow correspondent on 2000 Today, was also the first BBC reporter to cover Vladimir Putin becoming President. Since his moment in the sun he’s gone on to work in numerous other roles in the travel industry, but now he’s back at Heathrow to find out how it’s changed, and what Covid’s done to it.






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