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If You See God, Tell Him
Society has been bombarded with adverts ever since the first marketing guru climbed out of the swamp and tried flogging cheap holidays to trilobites. A rather whimsical take on the history of...
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Greenwich Cablevision: Britain's First Local Television Station
If there’s one thing which strikes fear into the heart of an audience, it’s local television. Blighted by budgets which make shoestrings look positively affluent, local television channels spend their...
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Regional Oddity: Mag is Mog
It’s very rare you’ll catch me writing about a television show I’ve never seen a single second of. For me, perhaps due to my lack of literary grace, I tend to focus on collecting solid facts and...
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Curious British Telly: Now On Substack
Don't worry, the Curious British Telly blog isn't going anywhere! However, I have decided to set up another avenue for its curious ways. Due to the general furore unfolding on Twitter at the moment,...
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The Prince of Denmark
It would be a foolish soul who argues against the importance of the pub in British society. Walk into any public house and you will be presented with every possible emotion and attitude which has ever...
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Between the Lines: The Best British TV Police Show Ever Made
By G. Neil MartinUp until September 4th, 1992, if you had wanted a fictional TV cop show or police procedural that really got under the skin of the police, one that really inserted a scalpel under the...
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1974: Ceefax Arrives (And Barely Anyone Can See It)
Teletext is unique, when it comes to British television, in that it’s universally loved. In a world where people grouse about Test Card F being creepy and the lack of modern ‘pace’ in programmes which...
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Bob Monkhouse: The Flip Side (Thirty Minute Theatre)
It's hard to believe that next year marks the twentieth anniversary of Bob Monkhouse's death. For decade upon decade, he was a resolute fixture in the schedules, and it almost feels as if he's still...
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Christmas at the BBC 1972 – Dramas Out of Crises
By Jon DearThe last couple of years have been rather tough, haven’t they? Starved of a functioning government and with Covid and Brexit stalking the land like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse after...
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New Article in Best of British (January 2023)
Although Christmas is still a few days away, I've already received an early present: an article of mine being published in the latest issue of Best of British. Following on from my debut in the March...
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29/10/1984 - Let's Pretend: The Milk Float and the Racing Car
It's been a year and a half since I last looked at an episode of Let's Pretend and that's because not a single second of it has popped up anywhere. It's a continual source of frustration given that...
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Bradley
Ephemeral television, as is its nature, comes and goes without causing much of a fuss. Indeed, it only takes a quick perusal of the Curious British Telly archives to understand just how much of our...
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The Life of a Runner on The Children's Channel in the 1980s
Around a year ago, I published an article about The Launch of The Children's Channel in 1984 and, in one of those wonderful this-is-why-I-started-this-website moments, it caught the attention of...
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Book Review: Travel Without the Tardis
Before you read any further, please prepare yourself. A statement which can only be described as a bombshell of epic proportions is about to follow. And that jaw dropping revelation is thus: fans of...
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Regional Oddity: Sit Up & Listen
Much like the concept of ringing our friends on a landline for a chat, the TV closedown is another archaic reminder of a very different landscape where the rudimentary constraints of technology limited...
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What Was It Like Presenting Why Don't You?
As a child, hearing the Why Don't You? theme tune meant two fantastic things: firstly, it was the school holidays and, secondly, that you were going to discover a whole new world of games, activities...
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Dramarama: Snap
By Scampy SpiroWith folk horror having become the subject of increasing cultural fascination over the past decade (fuelled, in part, by the spotlight it received in Mark Gatiss’ 2010 documentary series...
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Looking at the Items in Brian Cant’s Bric-A-Brac Shop
As a preschooler, Bric-a-Brac was easily one of my favourite television programmes and it's a fact which remains true to this day. However, it's a programme which, despite being repeated for nearly a...
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The EastEnders Cook Book and Wicksy's Cocktails
It's debatable if EastEnders, despite running for 38 years now, is still considered a hot property. Nonetheless, when it launched in 1985, it was accompanied by a huge buzz of excitement which lasted...
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Curious British Telly Substack Subscription
Just a quick update to let you know that I’ve decided to try out the paid-subscription option on Substack to deliver exclusive Curious British Telly bits and pieces. You can find out more about the...
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