How We Used To List: 5th – 11th OCTOBER, 2002

What we were watching this week 20 years ago, as recorded in the back-issues of TV Cream’s weekly ‘e-mag’, Creamguide…

(We still send out Creamguides every week via email. If you’d like to receive it – it’s free, there are no ads, we don’t sell on your address, you can unsubscribe whenever; we’re basically soppy like that – then fill in your details below.)

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TV CREAM TIMES
5th – 11th October 2002
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Reel life – Chris Diamond, Phil Norman
Twixt Monday and Tuesday – Graham Kibble-White
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Saturday 5th October

BBC1

08.05 Looney Tunes
Creamguide thoroughly enjoyed seeing Show Biz Bugs again last Thursday afternoon, but can’t help pondering how come these are on the BBC now, after umpteen years on ITV. Perhaps it’s part of the deal which got them Murder She Wrote and Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman. And maybe today’ll be the day they show Duck Amuck. They’re also on tomorrow on BBC2 at 07.35 and as part of Smile, Monday at 08.00 on BBC2 (the fantastic “Ah’m a-crossin’!”), and the slightly more viewer-friendly slot of 16.25 on Thursday on BBC1.

18.10 Only Fools and Horses
This time last year Dog Eat Dog was thrashing the 7pm Premiership, now it’s been shunted to half past five to make way for the millionth repeat of this episode from 1985.

BBC2

14.45 The Egyptian
Pharoah Michael ‘number two’ Wilding lords it over the Nile delta in this long but well-decorated afternoon time-filling standby with Victor ‘Hed’ Mature, Jean ‘Thorn Birds’ Simmons, John ‘Howling’ Carradine and, surprise surprise, Peter Ustinov. Someone put Topkapi on, we haven’t had that in ages.

17.30 Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em
Controversially *not* followed by Steptoe and Son.

20.15 Laughter In The House: The Story Of British Sitcom
We read a while back that Victoria Wood was following up her Sketch Show Story with a similar effort on sitcoms, though we dunno why she’s bothering when they did a series on sitcoms in 1999 – and here it is again! It’s good fun too, and in the first of three episodes they trace the genre from its stage-bound origins to, as obliged on a late-90s BBC programme, Men Behaving Badly. Which Creamguide loved in 1995, then watched again five years later and was shocked to find was a bit crap.

21.05 Spike… I Told You I Was Ill… A Live Tribute
Snappy title there, guys – we suggest a dash rather than the second set of ellipses. First of a triple bill of programmes tonight devoted to Milligna, though only this is new – covering his memorial service last month, where Terry Jones, Michael Palin, John Sergeant and, er, Cleo Laine queued up to say nice things about him. Then…

22.05 Room 101
Spike’s appearance on this show from 1999, which to be frank isn’t much cop because he simply goes on about fox hunting and EastEnders being crap without doing any jokes or anything. Sorry about that. Then after ninety minutes of snooker, we’ve got…

00.05 Adolf Hitler – My Part in His Downfall
The film of the book of the war! Struggling manfully to match the genius of the book this doesn’t quite make it and despite his best efforts Jim Dale as Spike comes across as a bit of a smart arse (although it does fair a little better than Spike’s own readings of the book which came across even worse). There’s also a bit too much musing on the futility of the war and not enough chasing escaped pigs around old folks homes for our liking. Still, Spike himself and Pat Coombs as his mental parents Leo and Kitty are great and Arthur Lowe as moronic platoon commander Leather Suitcase is splendid, too. Bill ‘Oh,no!’ Maynard, Tony ‘git’ Booth, Bob Todd and Geoffrey Hughes make up the numbers. “Silence when you speak to an officer!” Mind you, last time this was scheduled, in 2000, it was postponed about four times before it eventually went out, so don’t get your hopes up too high.

ITV

01.35 Forever
Looks like the Music Box archives only go back to the mid 80s, hence this look at male solo artists – the sort of category even TOTP2 might think is a bit vague – majors rather heavily on Jason Donovan (and it’d better be When You Come Back To Me, which is a fantastic record), Howard Jones and Nik ‘I knew him before the “c” fell off’ Kershaw.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 Clangers

CHANNEL 5

08.00 James The Cat
Last week we said that “There must be something more to this than the Grampian logo, but we’re buggered if we can remember what that might be.” Thankfully, friend of Creamguide Christopher Barbour pointed us towards the theme tune – “My name’s James/James the cat/I’ve had fame/Money and all that/Now I’m here/Growing fat/Chasing all the birds and butterflies/James the cat”. What Chris likes about this theme – as indeed do we – is that it implies that there’s an interesting series to be made about what James actually used to do when he had ‘fame, money and all that’, but instead they’ve decided to base it on his boring retirement, “like a cartoony After They Were Famous”.

01.35 Performance
Channel 5’s still garnering praise from all manner of people who never watch it, but this infamous Roeg-Cammell fag-end-of-sixties meanderer is the only decent thing on it (bar James the Cat, of course) this week. Roller-trashing, as-nails besuited gangster James ‘Greystoke’ Fox takes refuge at fading rocker Mick ‘Freejack’ Jagger and Anita ‘Hello, pretty pretty’ Pallenberg’s Notting Hill guest house for ‘montage of stock footage’-style drugs, dirty baths, POV-of-bullet shots and fun and frolics with a strip light. Undisputed highlight has to be the Francis Bacon gangster camp routine to Jagger’s brilliant Memo from Turner. “It was Mad Cyril!”

05.10 Sons and Daughters
Just the one episode tonight because of the Japanese Moto GP – you’d have thought that in a slot like this, it would never be interrupted. Two on Friday, though.

Sunday 6th October

BBC1

09.30 Great North Run
Despite what the BBC say, this is nowhere near as prestigious as the London Marathon, and probably wouldn’t get anything like this coverage if it hadn’t been invented by Brendan Foster. Still, the commentary on these occasions is normally a three-hour conversation between Foster and Steve Cram, and Simon Thomas is on the reporting staff, as he was on the marathon – although he was really underused there because he didn’t show up until about three hours in and then only interviewed a bunch of kids, when we wanted him running up and down the course and accosting people who couldn’t speak English, a la Bob Wilson.

23.15 The Wild Geese
When you think about it, the plot for this is pretty reprehensible based as it is supposed to be on the mercenary doings of Colonel ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare, fully exposed to be a nutcase by David Frost many years ago. A large company hires some old soldiers to oust an African dictator who is shown to be rather nasty and vicious – so that’s all right, then. Stars on parade include Richard ‘Medusa’ Burton, Frank ‘Witchfinder’ Finlay, Roger Moore, Stewart Granger, Hardy ‘Googie Withers’ Kruger and – stealing the show yet again – Kenneth ‘Hip Hip Hooray’ Griffiths.

BBC2

22.00 The Essential… Diana Ross
Next in the series of profiles of black stars, and the prestige is rather shattered by June Sarpong punditeering.

ITV

15.00 The Dam Busters
We figure this film has inspired more lager adverts than any other, to whit that Carling Black Label one and, of course, the infinitely superior Russ Abott Kestrel ad “Kestrel kegs away, Ginger!”. More fun from Michaels Todd and Redgrave and on a Sunday afternoon an’ all, though we can’t recall the last time this was shown on anything other than BBC2 or Channel 4. Robert Shaw and Patrick Magoohan are in there as well somewhere.

CHANNEL 4

14.45 SOS Titanic
There’s an odd sort of celebrity justice at work in this star-studded but budget-light dramatisation of that boat thing. David ‘Fugitive’ Janssen, Ed ‘UFO’ Bishop, Norman ‘Simon’ Rossington, David ‘That’s Your Funeral’ Battley, Geoffrey ‘Foundation’ Whitehead, Tony ‘earrings’ Caunter and Harry ‘Tom Carrington’ Andrews all cop it while Cloris ‘Blucher’ Leachman, Susan ‘Kate’ Saint James, David ‘Tron’ Warner, Ian ‘Kurtzmann’ Holm, Helen ‘Caligula’ Mirren, Aubrey ‘City Beneath the Sea’ Morris, Warren ‘Onedin’ Clarke, Karl ‘Get Some In!’ Howman, Tony ‘Keep it in the Family’ Maiden and Anna ‘Mrs Monroe’ Quayle survive. Christopher ‘Only When I’ Strauli, Rosemary ‘Life Begins at Forty’ Leach and Andre ‘Pink Panther’ Maranne, plus a few clumsily-inserted effects shots half-inched off of A Night to Remember, assist.

CHANNEL 5

21.00 The Truth About Julie Goodyear
Media Guardian went nuts about C5’s performance last Sunday, neglecting to mention that its two killer shows were preceded by Tarzan and the Lost City. Anyway, this documentary follows Julie Goodyear around for a year – and our comiserations to the film crew for that.

Monday 7th October

BBC1

14.35 Murder She Wrote
So we’ve lost the HIGNFY repeats again, then, just as they were getting great, and Monday’s final show, from October 1991, was interesting from an editing viewpoint. We lost Paul’s suggestion of what happened next in a clip of Reagan introducting Diana – “is this where he calls her an overblown tart?” – but we still got Robert Harris answering the missing word question “Wills and Harry use what in disguise?” with “Childline”. Still, this is on every day at this time.

17.00 Blue Peter
Of course, Konnie told Our Andrew (as we like to call him) a few weeks back that she reckoned Simon would go into sports presenting after he left. And we’re ashamed to say that, yes, we did take a look at the latest Blue Peter book in the shop last week, but decided not to buy it because there weren’t enough nice pictures of Liz in it.

22.35 One On One
It’s constantly surprising to realise that Mike Aspel has been on telly almost since the year dot, making his debut, as far as we know, reading the regional news on BBC Wales in the 1950s. Since then, he’s seemingly made a career out of being a likeable but not especially memorable frontman on a huge number of shows, and tonight he’s going to look back at them with us. We hope they show the moment from his own This Is Your Life back in 1980 when one of his mates got caught up in traffic and simply ran on the stage ten seconds before the end.

BBC2

08.30 Round The Twist
Actually we’re not sure they show the urinating one anymore, but the episode where they get covered in birdshit should show up soon. Every day at this time.

21.00 Never Mind The Buzzcocks
Last week Robin Campbell laughed more than anyone we’ve ever seen on this programme, turning bright red in the process. We thought people only did that in cartoons. Another fine line-up tonight, with Budgie, Lorraine Five Star and the underrated Sean Lock. “The only thing special about Special Brew is that a can of it has never been drunk indoors!”

ITV

13.00 Today with Des and Mel
We obviously had to watch this show on Monday, and it’s sort of OK, apart from the first part when Des and Mel just chatter on in a Loose Women-stylee. And Jenny Powell is a regular guest, although oddly they introduced her with footage from her contribution to the unbroadcast pilot. And the title sequence uses *stills* of who’s going to appear, which looks utterly rubbish. And Des has to go ‘Coming next, The Psychic Show’ at the end. But Des is still brilliant and therefore he must be watched.

00.00 Rear Window
Grace Kelly wears a different frock in every scene, you know.

CHANNEL 4

09.00 Happy Days
Every day this week, and not a single episode has a proper billing.

12.25 Cheers
The very first episode of this series seems to be on C4 every other week at the moment, and here it is again. And, fact fans, the only other terrestrial channel this show has been on is ITV, as part of an special showcase evening of C4 programmes in April 1983 which also included P’tang Yang Kipperbang and Father’s Day. And Channel Four showed a TV Eye Special at the same time. You don’t get this in What’s On TV, do you?

23.05 That Peter Kay Thing
“You can’t make 99s with f’king Crunchies!” Mr Softy Top, which of course includes another appearance by Paul LeRoy, who we really like and always hoped he’d get his own episode. Note that his publicity photos brilliantly feature him *pointing at a record*.

CHANNEL 5

11.00 Magnum PI
Note that The Wright Stuff has been extended, and the last time this happened C5 said the additional thirty minutes would be filled with “a talk”. What year is this, 1952? Every day at this time.

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Well, we had a bit of fun last week with the Schedule Wheel and everything. And thanks to Pamtoosh on Ask The Family for contributing to our Mark Curry’s Bush appeal, whilst an official No Thanks goes to everyone else for going on about Caron Keating and Janet Ellis instead. Honestly, can’t you keep your minds on the job in hand? This week, however, we have no wheel (the Radio Creamguide Editor has modified it to make wardrobe decisions this week – give it a spin and on Monday he’s wearing that blue t-shirt, on Tuesday it’s black, and so on). Which means …

RT REVIEW – Radio Smite!

>> THE COVER
Montage – it’s what separates the RT from the rest of the TV listings weeklies (that our mum buys), in that they tend to rely on it whilst the RT goes for actual proper photo-calls and stuff on its front cover. Not this week though, as a series of cut-out and keep characters litter the cover. Is it only us who’ve noticed that Oz has got no legs? Most disappointing of all – where’s the drop-shadows?! This should have been an excuse for loads!

>> FROM THE FACE OF GILL HUDSON:
Great to see the old “I’ve only just discovered how to work my video gag” back in circulation. Next week: “First prize is a week’s holiday with Peter Mandelson, second prize is *two* weeks!”

>> LETTERS PREY
Little of note on the Letters Page, bar a correspondent rightly praising the journalist, chat show host and All Star Secrets presenter Michael Parkinson who is – is he not – a national treasure and certainly “worth staying in for on Saturday evening”. And if all of the previous sentence makes it through to Creamguide unscathed, then our suspicions that the Editor has stopped reading our bit will be confirmed. And in that case we’ll talk solely about Dr Who next week.

>>THIS WEEK WE’RE SPECIFICALLY COMMENTING ON THIS
In Rough Cut (page 12), that bit about how the new “five” logo was created. They just made that up, didn’t they?

>>AND WE’RE ALSO COMMENTING ON THIS
It’s a double-edged sword letting RT readers express their opinion. On the one hand, no-one wants to read their opinion, it’s rubbish. But on the other if it results in a five-page spread about telly over the last year or so, it’s OK with us. However, it’s hard lines to Parky for missing out on Best Chat Show. The man’s a national treasure and certainly “worth staying in for on Saturday evening”. Hello? Hello? Testing! Testing! Sylvester McCoy was 9the crap Dr Who!

>>AC
“I see the Sylvester Stallone remake of Get Carter is out to rent. Don’t get me started …” Oh, go on.

>>GOLDEN GRAHAMS
Anyone who describes something as “the new” something else shouldn’t be allowed to write. It’s that simple. And “comedy, the new drama”? We’d have been grateful for another 200 words on Holby City instead. But only in this exact circumstance – we must stress we’re not inviting Alison Graham to write another 200 words on Holby City ordinarily.

>>BEST BILLING
“The famously diminutive comedian draws a big response – An Audience with Ronnie Corbett, 9.30pm Granada Plus”. “Diminutive?” “Big?” Ah, we see how that works!

>>HOLBY CITY WATCH
It’s Tuesday’s Choice, again – but that’s all. Relatively *slim* pickings for this *fat* BBC cash cow, then.

>>TV CV
You can’t quibble with this week’s selection – Derek Fowlds. The Creamguide Ed is certain that he’s Lyn Faulds Wood’s father, you know. And he says Victoria Wood is in on the whole thing as well.

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Tuesday 8th October

BBC1

23.35 Ransom
Ian MacShane hijacks a plane and Sean Connery gets it back in this longueur-filled Britdram with Richard Harris.

BBC2

18.20 TOTP2
Two fine shows last week, including, as we’d hoped, John Otway, plus also Cats UK, our favourite 10cc record, the majestic novelty disco of the Olympic Runners (with bearded leaping keyboard player) and the first appearance of the Human League, with Martyn Ware hardly touching his keyboard, but instead striding around the stage clapping for three minutes. And with Ultravox and Classix Nouveaux promised tonight, we’re hopeful of more fun.

22.00 Porridge
Just the one this week, worse luck.

ITV

20.00 The Empire Strikes Back
Your Phantoms may be Menacing, your Clones may well be Attacking – your Jedis may even be Returning – but your actual Empire Striking Back is by far the best of the sequels to the original Star Wars (and does anybody actually call that A New Hope?). After his first outing Lucas decided against directing this and got his old teacher from film school Irvin Kreshner to take the helm who subsequently delivered a film full of thrills, spills, action, love, laughter and the rest. However, not one to leave well alone Lucas came back to it yeeeears later with pots of cash and fannied about with it leaving us with what we’ve got on show here, the Special Edition – ‘Special’ in this context meaning, of course, ruined. To illustrate: just what does it add to the film to show the Hoth Wampa sitting eating its dinner? Eh? Eh? Hey-ho. You may also care to note that Yoda doesn’t talk the same way he does in Episodes I and II here. Perhaps he just got fed up with it as time went on, we know we have. The series peaked here, folks, let’s face it.

22.50 The Frank Skinner Show
Ten to eleven? He’s hardly earning the ten million quid there, is he? Still, they paid more for the Champions League and on Wednesday stuck the highlights – including the cable-only Liverpool game – on at twenty to midnight, preceded by the longest ad break we think we’ve ever seen. Anyway, Dolly Parton’s the guest tonight.

01.05 The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Harold ‘arsehole to breakfast time’ Pinter fiddles with John Fowles’ Lyme Regis-visiting novel about novels and novelling, with the help of Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Peter ‘Ere I Am JH’ Vaughan, Colin ‘Barnaby the Bear’ Jeavons, professional granny Liz Smith, Leo ‘The Black Horse, dear boy!’ McKern, Arabella ‘bum look’ Weir, Richard ‘ffizz’ Griffiths, David ‘Hold The Back Page’ Warner, Alun ‘Sharp Intake of Breath’ Armstrong and Penelope ‘Ever Decreasing’ Wilton.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

21.00 The Showbiz Set
Another ace episode last week, because the Simon Dee story is always brilliant, especially if you’ve actually got Dee there telling it himself. And we’ve never seen his LWT show before, where he died on his arse throughout. Into the seventies for the final part, though we note that they say in the RT billing that the most popular part of The Greatest Light Entertainment Line-Up In The History Of BBC Television on Christmas Day 1977 was Morecambe and Wise, when in fact Mike Yarwood got a couple of thousand more. Yet they don’t repeat that every five minutes, do they?

CHANNEL 5

14.30 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
In fact, without Gloria Hunniford for what we think is the first time ever. Such is the void she leaves, she can only be adequately covered by two people – one’s Kaye Adams, but better still the other is Nick Owen making a triumphant return to the sofa from his wilderness years on Midlands Today. “Do you think we’ll ever see professionalism in television, Nick?”

Wednesday 9th October

BBC1

17.00 Blue Peter
Paying tribute to Babcock Construction today, as it’s the twentieth anniverary of the raising of the Mary Rose. Maybe Sarah Greene will come in to talk about diving through the ruins, perhaps. If not, at least we’ve got Liz learning how to line-dance in Nashville.

00.05 Don’t Look Now
Laughing Nicholas Roeg brings us this tale of death and raincoats in Venice with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie catching glimpses of what they suppose are their dead daughter and festooned gondolas in the film that is the reason no-one wears red overcoats anymore. From a story by Daphne du Maurier, fact fans.

BBC2

10.50 The Bulldog Breed
They won’t give up with the bloody Wisdoms, but at last they’ve managed to dig out the only one anyone can be bothered with, due to its mammoth cast list, including Peter Jones, John Le Mesurier, Terence Alexander, Harold Goodwin, Johnny Briggs and William Roache, Frank Williams, Liz Fraser, Leonard Sachs, Glyn Houston, Cyril Chamberlain, Sheila Hancock, Michael Caine, Bryan Pringle and Oliver Reed.

18.20 TOTP2
Mind you, this show’s irritating policy of repeating sections of clips when they’re running under means that Rock and Roll by the Human League sounded even more repetitive than it actually is. Anyway, tonight, perhaps making up for their non-appearance the other week is the Inspiral Carpets – with Mark E Smith! And also The Beatmasters and Hall and Oates, which’ll do us just fine.

ITV

02.30 Emergency
As if by magic, here’s one of the ancient b-movies we happened to mention last week (ie. the ’62 version of this blood donor thriller with Glyn Houston), which would count as a spooky coincidence, if it wasn’t on practically all the time anyway.

CHANNEL 4

06.00 The Magic Roundabout

21.00 Faking It
100 minutes? Isn’t that slightly overdoing it? Anyway, the latest episode of The Big Time for the new millennium lets a 999 operator loose as a director of a segment of RI:SE. Insert “if she messes up, nobody’ll notice” “joke” here. Perhaps rather more interesting is the bizarre panel of judges – Peter Bazalgette, Andi Peters and Gail Porter-Hipgrave.

CHANNEL 5

14.30 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
Kaye’n’Nick again, presumably asking their guests about the morale in the dressing room. Today they include David Bellamy, and everyone seems to have forgotten that he stood for the Referendum Party in the 1997 election, for some reason.

Thursday 10th October

BBC1

14.30 Call The Shots
We were intending to stop billing this because we saw the first episode last week and it was entirely about films, which we’re not interested in. But today it moves on to talking about telly, although the subject is – surprise! – Holby City.

BBC2

21.50 Look Around You
This is going to brilliant, we’re sure of it. It’s a new comedy show parodying schools telly from the seventies and eighties, it starts with a dotty countdown clock, and it stars – and is written and produced by – the great Peter Serafinowicz, alongside Robert Popper. We’ve seen some grabs from the pilot, and if the script is even half as good as the visuals, then this could be something very special indeed. We’ve not been so excited about a new comedy show for ages, and that’s true.

CHANNEL 4

23.40 The Best Of TV Go Home
On the other hand… Seemingly C4 can’t be bothered screening the whole series, so those viewers without digital will have to make do with this compilation – perhaps fortunately if the reviews are anything to go by. Colin Bennett’s in it, of course, but apparently he’s rubbish.

CHANNEL 5

14.30 Open House with Gloria Hunniford
Dunno what’s stopping Kaye and Nick doing another day, but they’ve buggered off and left Angela Rippon and Aled Jones holding the fort – Aled’s first attempt at a chat show since that 1988 HTV West classic Chatterbox (“the first kids’ chat show”), we suspect.

Friday 11th October

BBC1

19.00 George Best: Me and My Liver
An exclusive interview with Best, which we include because we were reading the Media Guardian piece where Kevin Lygo said, basically, how dare the BBC show programmes people want to watch, and apparently they wanted to do this interview because they’d actually gone and bought – God knows how, unless these sporting memorabilia auctions are really desperate for lots – his old liver. Unfortunately, it’s not the most talkative of guests.

01.10 The Legend of Hell House
Care to spend the weekend in a haunted house? A team of investigators including a scientist and medium visit Hell House accompanied by the only survivor of the group who visited it last. Perhaps it’s just us but if we were invited to spend the night in a place called Hell House with anyone designated as ‘the only survivor’ we would think twice. Anyway, Roddy McDowell, Peter ‘R.M.’ Bowles and Ronald ‘Trio’ Culver are among those who did go and got up to all sort of ghostly shenanigans. Couldn’t they keep this for Hallowe’en, then?

BBC2

06.50 What Have The Eighties Ever Done For Us?
Better than RI:SE, as we’ve officially got to say about anything at this time of day.

19.30 The Good Life
Oh, and we’re no longer billing The Basil Brush Show, because to be honest we never really liked him in the first place.

22.00 Room 101
Alexei Sayle’s the guest, and we can’t really remember what he puts in, whether it’s actually funny, or if there are any Creamy clips. We really run out of steam by Fridays, don’t we?

CHANNEL 4

12.45 They Who Dare
A deal of stiff-upper-lippery is involved as soldiers are charged with destroying two Greek airstrips from where Allied forces in Egypt are being bombed in this week’s mandatory proper Second World War film (since the others don’t count). Also with Sam ‘Orlando’ Kydd, Dirk ‘Sparrow’ Bogarde and Denholm ‘Coleman’ Elliot.

CHANNEL 5

02.50 Aloha, Bobby and Rose
Minor delinquent road movie. With Robert Carradine! We thought for a moment that, pending a Keith ‘Southern Comfort’ Carradine appearance, we’d have assembled a full set of Carradines this week (we had to be physically restrained from nipping out to Ladbroke’s, in fact) but a little more research confirms that three further Carradines – Bruce Carradine, Calista Carradine and, er, Ever Carradine, no less – have had professional acting work in some capacity, mainly on spinoffs of Kung Fu (no comment), while a certain Chris Carradine pops up on the frightening sounding family concert special The Carradines Together. Two more of David’s offspring, the soberly-monickered Free Carradine and Kansas Anne Carradine, seem reluctant to step in front of the camera, to their credit. If anyone knows of a more formidable/foreboding acting dynasty (only the Redgraves come close, as far as we can make out) let us know. Oh, and the film? Er, well, the soundtrack includes both Your Song and Karn Evil 9, which must be worth some kind of award, we think.

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DIGI-CREAMGUIDE

E4
Saturday, 22.00
Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights – Well, we’ve all rushed out and bought our copies of this on video and DVD, only to see E4 showing the whole first series in one great big lump. We bought our copy of the video at Peter’s live show last Thursday, although we’re actually not allowed to regurgitate any of what he did that night until the whole of TVC Towers has been to see him, which isn’t going to happen until mid-December. Just the one line, then – “Sharon, your mum’s going home! It’s ten to eight!”

SKY ONE
Wednesday, 22.00
Vinnie’s Football Adverts – Surely “Shorts” is the better title, though? Anyway, we neglected to include the first screening of this last week, but seemingly you didn’t miss much because the only decent clip was Billy Bremner plugging Radio Rentals in 1974; the rest were all the usual suspects chopped into bits, often taken off VHS tapes and with Ed Hall, Paul Ross and Leilani in between them. And no “a goalkeeper is a lot like an oil filter”, which is our favourite.

ELSEWHERE
* Ages ago we referred to an episode from the last series of Shooting Stars where Ulrika couldn’t make it and so Sara Cox was captain which seemingly they weren’t bothering to show. It finally surfaces this week, but as an hour-long special, on BBC Choice (Sunday, 22.00, Wednesday, 23.30). Neil Hamilton and Liz Smith are there, too.

* We’re pretty sure there was never a film called The Alf Garnett Saga, so presumably that’s what Granada Plus has decided to rename the Til Death Us Do Part film as for some reason (Sunday, 21.00). And it means there’s no Bullseye, the bastards. We’ve still got Cuddly Ken, though (Saturday, 22.30, 04.30). Also missing in action are Fry and Laurie, who have finally disappeared from Paramount’s schedules. And it doesn’t matter whether you rename every programme he’s ever done, there still isn’t enough for six weeks of Anyone For Pennis (Sunday, 22.05).

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IT’S YOUR LINE
Christopher (may we call you Chris?) Barbour, as well as providing us with that fantastic James The Cat observation above, also questions whether We All Stand Together (Humming Version) is by the Finchley Frogettes, as we said last week, or the Finchley Froglettes, as he recalls. To be honest, it’s very dark in the cupboard we keep the 7-inch singles, so it could be either of them. If you’ve spotted lazy errors in this week’s Creamguide, let us know either via e-mail (please don’t include the whole of Creamguide in your reply, though) or via Ask The Family, the TV Cream message board, reached by hitting ‘Long Shots’ on http://tv.cream.org
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Very misleading – Chris Barbour, Chris Hughes, Ian Jones, Simon Tyers






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