Was TV really better in the good old days?
TV critic Deborah Ross revisits classic dramas, comedies and children’s TV series to see how they stand up to today’s Netflix big-budget shows (and if they fall foul of the PC brigade)
DRAMA GLENROE
RTE, 1983-2001
Well holy God! Sunday nights in the 1980s and 1990s meant Glenroe and the theme tune struck fear into the hearts of children all over Ireland as it signalled bedtime and the beginning of a new school week.
Preceded by The Riordans, Glenroe became RTÉ’s second major rural soap. The characters of Dinny (Joe Lynch) and Miley (Mick Lally) had made an appearance in Bracken and became the central stars of the Wicklowbased serial. They were joined by regulars Biddy (Mary McEvoy), Mary (Geraldine Plunkett), Dick (Emmet Bergin), Fr Devereaux (Donal Farmer) and pub owner Teasey (Maureen Toal). It wasn’t all sheep and pints in the sleepy Wicklow village, however, as Catholic Ireland looked on in horror when Dirty Dick had an affair with Terry (Kate Thompson) and Miley betrayed Biddy, having a roll in the hay with Fidelma (Eunice McMemamin).
The last episode aired shortly before the death of Joe Lynch, who had decided to leave the series in 2000.
Watchability Medium. Worth watching for an insight into a very different Ireland to the one we live in today.
How to watch it YouTube, RTÉ archives (rte.ie/archives).
UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS
ITV, 1971-5
Welcome to 165 Eaton Place, where the doorbell sounds before the cord is pulled, and the light goes out before the candle has been extinguished, and furniture has obviously been shifted to make way for the camera, but I still won’t hear a word against it. This series is especially close to my heart as I used to play ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ with my little sister. I was Mrs Bridges, the cook, while she was Ruby, the kitchen maid, and I would shout: ‘Roooooooby, have you chopped them carrots yet, girl?’ And that was about it. But we liked it. A critical and popular hit shown all over the world — a billion people are said to have watched — it’s set in a Belgravia townhouse from 1903 and depicts the servants (downstairs — Hudson!) and the aristocratic Bellamy family (upstairs). And while it does not have the Downtown Abbey-style production values we expect today, it is still entrancing and involving and I found myself watching quite a few episodes just to check how the new under-parlourmaid, Sarah (Pauline Collins) was settling in. She had claimed to be half French, which did not impress Mrs Bridges, who would have been a Brexiteer, I think. (‘We don’t want no foreign muck here.’). Big subjects are tackled. Rape, abortion, suicide, and that’s just in the first series — and later, doesn’t Alfred the coachman run off with a baron? — but it’s also very funny. ‘I’m as behind as a cow’s tail,’ says Mrs Bridges, grumblingly.
Watchability High. Start with the first ever episode, which was, interestingly, written by Fay Weldon.
How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set.
THE DARLING BUDS OF MAY
ITV, 1991-3
This adaptation of the novellas by HE Bates was a sensation at the time and it made a star of Catherine Zeta-Jones, and I had remembered it as joyful. Here was Pa Larkin (David Jason) and Ma Larkin (Pam Ferris) and their many children, all running around and loving each other and nature and feasting on strawberries as big as your fist and blowing whatever money they had. It was… here it comes; you knew it was coming… perfick! Or was it? Two decades on and I couldn’t get past the opening episode where Ma and Pa use their beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Mariette (Zeta-Jones, shimmying around in super-tight jodhpurs) as a honeytrap to seduce the tax inspector. They’re pimping her! I was minded to shout at Mariette: ‘Get out, love, and get out fast!’ You do have to make allowances for changing times. And I don’t want to be a party-pooper. But still.
Watchability Low. Or steer clear, even.
How to watch it DVD box set.
ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
BBC, 1978-90
Siegfried! James! Tristan! Tricky-Woo!* I am trying to sound excited in the absence of actually being excited. This was the series that your nan watched and, set initially in the Thirties, it was nostalgic even then. Based on the memoirs of Yorkshire vet James Herriot, it starred Christopher Timothy who, I can now see, was quite hot. (Nan never said anything about that). Herriot arrives in Darrowby as assistant vet to eccentric Siegfried (Robert Hardy), who will later be joined by his brother, Tristan (Peter Davidson). It’s not as sentimental as you might think. Series one, episode one, and a tortoise is saved, and a bull is saved (sunstroke), but the horse with torsion that you expect to be saved? Had to be shot. So sad. But the landscape is spectacular and it does have a gentle charm. Even if the accompanying music is overheated. And won’t leave you alone.
Watchability Not exactly urgent.
*Tricky-Woo, the pampered Pekingese, received so much fan mail someone had to be employed to reply.
How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube
THE WAY WE WERE: Clockwise from main picture above: Jumpers and Guinness for Christmas 1987 in Glenroe; The Sweeney’s Dennis Waterman and John Thaw; those Darling Buds of May; David Kelly and Brendan Cauldwell in Strumpet City, and that ever-so-glamorous, tanned, white-toothed cast of Dallas
DALLAS
RTÉ, 1978-1991
Who shot JR? The country was convulsed when JR Ewing took a bullet in Dallas in 1980 as Ireland took a shine to Southfork and the dramas around the Ewing and Barnes families. Dallas was everything Ireland was not — it was big, bold and flashy, the actors all had amazing teeth and Sue Ellen’s shoulder pads were as wide as her smile. We had Glenroe, the Americans had Dallas and the soap took off in Ireland even if some of the storylines were beyond ridiculous — Bobby Ewing made a bizarre reappearance after being killed off in the infamous
shower scene.
Watchability Low. It’s worth a look for a giggle. How to watch it: DVD box set, YouTube
STRUMPET CITY
RTÉ, 1980
The most ambitious and expensive series ever produced by RTÉ at the time had viewers gripped as James Plunkett’s tale was brought to life on screen. And what life indeed — the cast included luminaries such as Peter O’Toole as Jim Larkin, Peter Ustinov as Edward VII, David Kelly as Rashers Tierney, Bryan Murray as Fitz and Donal McCann as Mulhall. Set in Dublin between 1907 and 1914 in a period of major labour unrest, the seven episodes were adapted by Hugh Leonard and it remains one of the best productions RTÉ has made.
Watchability High. How to watch it: DVD box set, YouTube
THE SWEENEY
ITV, 1975-8
In the Seventies this was the cop show that mattered. And if it felt like everyone watched it was because they did. It was the first police procedural to incorporate highly stylised violence, macho cops who did not play by the rules, and Ford Granadas that would perform handbrake turns before crashing through piles of empty cardboard boxes stacked up for no reason at all. (Always empty cardboard boxes. Unless it was empty oil drums.). It stars the brilliant John Thaw as DI Regan, who was teamed up with DS George Carter (Dennis Waterman) and they smoked too much and drank too much and had the pallor to confirm this is so. It is pacy and kinetic, always on the move, as they crash though cardboard boxes (or oil drums) and equip themselves with knuckle-dusters and coshes to take on dangerous armed robbers whom they will, inevitably, hold up against some wall. The dialogue is spare but terrific. Not just ‘shut it!’ and ‘you’re nicked!’ but also: ‘I’m gonna come down on you so hard your going to have to reach up to tie your shoe laces!’
Watchability High. Still massively entertaining. However, you do have to have to suck up the sexism (George, after
at a woman’s cleavage: ‘Cor, that Sheila ain’t ’alf got a lunch on ’er!’)
How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube.
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
ITV, 1979-88
I always watched with my mother on Friday nights and also with my sister if she wasn’t too busy in the kitchen. It was based (at least initially) on the Roald Dahl short stories that were unsettling and creepy and always ended with an unforeseen twist. Even the opening titles — a silhouetted woman dancing in front of a roulette wheel — were somehow unsettling and creepy. But onto the tales, which did attract huge stars. The Umbrella Man, for example, starred John Mills and Michael Gambon, while Lamb To The Slaughter starred Susan George and Brian Blessed. I watched both and easily foresaw the twists, but that could just be from residue memory. The acting, even from such big stars, is overstated and I don’t know if everyone was more forgiving back then, but the plots are plainly ludicrous.
Watchability Low. Alas. How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube.
THE RIORDANS
RTÉ, 1975-77
He went on to Hollywood stardom but Gabriel Byrne started in Ireland’s first rural soap, The Riordans, as Pat Barry. Set on a Kilkenny farm, the series used onlocation filming and was the inspiration for the everpopular Emmerdale Farm, now just Emmerdale. John Cowley — who played the patriarch of the family, Tom Riordan — was from real farming stock in Ardbraccan in Co Meath and many of the issues his character had to deal with reflected his own life experiences in rural Ireland.
The Riordans ran from 1965 to 1979 and didn’t shy away from issues such as poverty, the problems of old age, marriage break-up, sexual activity, the dramatic changes in the Catholic Church, and most famously contraception, when it was revealed that Benjy’s wife, Maggie, could not risk having a second pregnancy. The decision of the couple to use the Pill caused controversy and criticism from some organisations and some in the Catholic Church.
Watchability Medium, for nostalgia.
How to watch it RTÉ archives (rte.ie/archives).
POLDARK
BBC, 1975-77
I was mad for Poldark as a hormonal teenager, loved the Cap’n more than words can say, and the original series still
SPECIAL CHEMISTRY: Robin Ellis, below, as Poldark in the original series and right, Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg in The Avengers. Top: Moira Deady, Tom Hickey and Rebecca Wilkinson in The Riordans.
Above right: Gay Byrne is pranked by
Mike Murphy on The Live Mike. works, I am extremely happy to report. True, the accents are sometimes iffy, there are only two camera angles (close and not as close) and the indoor sets are stagey, but what made this Poldark so special was the shocking sexual chemistry between the Cap’ n (Robin Ellis) and Demelza (Angharad Rees). Acting-wise, Ellis is wonderful, as is Rees, while Jill Townsend is wonderfully frosty as Elizabeth and Ralph Bates has a ball as scheming banker George Warleggan. Love, love, love.
Watchability High. Get to it and get to it now.
How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set.
THE AVENGERS
ITV, 1961-69
The third to fifth seasons of The Avengers are acknowledged as the best, and series five, episode 11 (Epic) is a corker. Here, our debonair spy John Steed (Patrick Macnee) is aided by fellow agent Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) through a plot that is wonderfully bonkers. It involves a mad German film director and being chased by cowboys and Indians (can’t explain, go watch) and there’s also a circular saw, because of course, there is a circular saw. It is supremely sexy and stylish and not meant to be taken seristaring ously. It often feels, in fact, as if Peel and Steed are playing out some private joke, which is a good thing.
Watchability Huge. It’s a lot of fun and also the Sixties fashion is exquisite. Steed is all bowler hat and umbrella at work, but for leisure? A cardigan with cowhide panels! I have never seen anything like it, ever.
How to watch it Amazon Prime, DVD box set, YouTube.
THE SINGING DETECTIVE
BBC, 1986
This six-part series from Dennis Potter was the talk of its day as it was like nothing else we’d ever seen. It stars a dazzling Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow, a pulp crime writer with the horrendous psoriatic condition that has rendered him a prisoner in his own scaly, lesion-covered skin. He lies in a hospital bed, unable to move, his hands clenched in gnarled half-fists, railing like Job and feeling (understandably) sorry for himself. In his feverish mind, episodes from his novel, also called The Singing Detective, start to mingle with painful childhood memories that in turn mingle with the visualisation of musical numbers. His doctors and nurses may suddenly break into song and dance, for instance. Watching week by week, you got some of it, but if you binge watch all of it now you can make much more sense of the connected layers (and layers and layers) and the psychological subtext and its meaning.
Watchability Medium, for its madness.
How to watch it DVD box set.
COMEDY THE GOOD LIFE
BBC, 1975-8
The worry is that in a world of Fleabag, comedies like The Good Life will disappoint. But it doesn’t. All these years after Tom Good (Richard Briers) decided to jack in his job designing plastic toys for cereal packets, and lead a life of self-sufficiency with his wife Barbara (Felicity Kendal, on whom everybody had a crush) it is still exquisite. The interplay between the Goods and their aspirational neighbours, Margo (Penelope Keith) and Jerry (Paul Eddington), is especially masterful. In lesser hands, Margo and Jerry would have purely looked down on Tom and Barbara, but instead the relationship is characterised by a fond bafflement that speaks of real friendship, which adds a whole other, deeper layer. Also, whenever it is in danger of becoming too safe and twee, it takes a swerve. In The
Wind-Break War (Series Three, Episode Five) they all get drunk on Tom’s peapod wine and while Jerry and Barbara are stacking the freezer with dirty plates thinking it’s the dishwasher, Margo is confessing to Tom that she was called ‘starchy’ at school and weeps: ‘I’m not a complete woman, Tom. I haven’t got a sense of humour. I became the butt of jokes and have been the butt ever since…’ It tears your heart out. And it’s clear to me now that Margo is one of the great comic creations of all time.
Watchability Super-high. Not dated at all.
How to watch Amazon Prime.
HALL’S PICTORIAL WEEKLY
RTÉ, 1971-80
Who doesn’t love political satire? Back in 1971, inspired by daily regional news magazine Newsbeat, Frank Hall decided to write some sketches. That became Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, a series dealing with current news stories, politics and popular culture, as well as parody songs, comedy sketches, re-edited videos, cartoons and spoof television formats.
The show was written, presented and edited by Frank Hall and featured a cast including Frank Kelly and Eamon Morrissey. Its timing was perfect — Ireland had a volatile economic situation so there was no shortage of fodder for satire. The series spared no political expense in portraying the then Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, as the “Minister for Hardship’ while the Minister for Finance, Richie Ryan, was portrayed as ‘Richie Ruin’. Former Taoiseach Jack Lynch (played by Frank Kelly) was a benign, ineffectual pipe-smoking figure. Fianna Fáil was lampooned as ‘Feel and Fall’ with Charles Haughey parodied as ‘Charlie Hawkeye’.
Hall’s Pictorial Weekly inexplicably ended in 1980 after RTÉ decided not to go ahead with a planned tenth series. We can only imagine the fun that would be had today given the current political situation.
Watchability High, because of its satirical colour in boring, po-faced 1970s Ireland.
How to watch it DVD, YouTube.
THE LIVE MIKE
RTÉ, 1979-82
Back in 1979, RTE2 was a fledgling station and to fill the Friday night slot, Mike Murphy was roped in for a show that was a mish-mash of discussion, comedy and candid camera.The late, great Dermot Morgan provided the laughs and he was joined by Adele King, Honor Heffernan and Fran Dempsey. The most famous clip from the series involves Murphy winding up an exasperated Gay Byrne, who eventually told him to ‘f*** off’. It ran for just three seasons, after which Murphy decided to move on.
Watchability Low. It’s dated badly.
How to watch it RTÉ archives (rte.ie/archives)
STEPTOE AND SON
BBC, 1962-1974
They say that a truly great sitcom could easily be rewritten as a tragedy and that has to hold true for Steptoe And Son. Albert (Wilfrid Brambell) and Harold Steptoe (Harry H Corbett) are a father and son who run a rag-and-bone business. Harold has pretentions and aspirations but his ambitions are always being thwarted by his father, who fears being left alone, so there is that, but also there is another layer of tragedy: Harold thinks he would amount to something if it weren’t for Albert. But would he? And is that the true tragedy? There is comedy too, like Harold dropping dentures into a his steak and kidney pie, for instance, or Top: Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers in The
Good Life. Above left: Frank Hall on Hall’s Pictorial
Weekly. Above right: Wilfrid Brambell and Harry H Corbett in Steptoe and Son
trying to watch that football match on the telly divided down the middle.
Watchability As it’s a masterpiece, why do you even need to ask?
How to watch it DVD box set,
YouTube.
RISING DAMP
ITV, 1974-78
Leonard Rossiter’s first great sitcom role was as Rigsby, the wheedling, moth-eaten landlord with delusions of grandeur, who operates a down-at-heel boarding house. His tenants include lovelorn Miss Jones (Frances De La Tour), muddled student Alan (Richard Beckinsale) and Philip (Don Warrington), who bills himself as the son of an African chief. ‘It was a different time,’ some will say, but that’s not especially helpful as you’re trying to sit through it in 2020. Rigby may say to Philip: ‘You’re not dealing with savages now. You are dealing with educated white men.’ Or it’s Philip saying he’s studying town and country planning at college and Rigsby sniggering sarcastically: ‘I bet there is real demand for that in the jungle.’ Some will also say that as Philip is so clearly superior in every way, it’s small-minded, pathetic Rigsby we’re laughing at, but that defence is dangerous, as one person’s caricature can be another person’s champion. It’s complex. Yes, the performances are terrific (I could never get bored with Frances De La Tour) but fun to revisit 40 years on? Possibly not.
Watchability It’s not whether you should but whether you can.
How to watch it Amazon Prime, ITV Hub
THE KENNY EVERETT VIDEO SHOW
ITV, 1978-81
Full disclosure: I was never a fan at the time. Too anarchic, too manic. . I can now see that Kenny was an extraordinary one-off as well as endlessly inventive. There were characters (including the especially unlovely Sid Snot), sketches, Hot Gossip grinding their ‘naughty bits’ (yes indeed) and to say it was star-studded doesn’t even get near it. One episode features Elton John and Kate Bush and Lindisfarne.
Watchability If you liked it then you will like it now. For anyone else, it’s exhausting and also feels like a cry for help. In some way.
How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube.
SPITTING IMAGE
ITV, 1984-1996
The puppets were works of art and the voices were wonderfully spot on, but while we remember certain killer blows – bossy Thatcher and her ‘vegetables’, John Major playing with his peas — many jokes either didn’t land or went on for far, far too long. (I thought a Bob Dylan skit would never end). The show’s topicality required scripts to be written at a frantic rate and that does show.
Watchability If you must, opt for the ‘Best Bits’ compilations on YouTube.
How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE LIKELY LADS?
BBC, 1973-74
I’m gutted. Truly. I have nothing but fond memories of this.
I have nothing but fond memories of Bob (Rodney Bewes) and Terry (James Bolam) hanging out and getting on each other’s nerves because Bob craves to be middle class while Terry is adrift in life, but believes he’s morally superior as he has not sold out. I have especially fond memories of No Hiding Place
(Series One, Episode Seven), where Bob and Terry are determined to not find out the football score, but... it’s also, alas, a half-hour of homophobia and xenophobia. Terry won’t have his hair cut by a male hairdresser, as distinct from a barber, because all male hairdressers are ‘fairies’ and ‘poofs’. Terry later says you can’t trust Koreans because they are ‘sinister, like all Orientals’ and as for the Egyptians, they are ‘greasy, although not as greasy as the French’ while ‘Spaniards are lazy.’ You get the picture.
Watchability See Rising Damp above. Gutted, gutted, gutted.
How to watch it DVD box set
SOME MOTHERS DO ’AVE ’EM
BBC, 1973-78
‘Ohh, Betty. The cat’s done a whoopsie in my beret.’ Was there any playground that didn’t ring with that in the Sevboth enties? I doubt it. We loved Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford), who was married to long-suffering Betty (Michele Dotrice), and who couldn’t put a foot right. Everything he touches falls to pieces. He destroys his brother-in-law’s home. He leaves a job interviewer on the
verge of a nervous breakdown. He renders asunder a small seaside hotel. The theme is ineptitude and Frank is, in a way, similar to Basil Fawlty in that everything he does to make a situation better makes it worse, and disasters never come singly. Instead, each sparks another in a nightmarish chain reaction of farce. What carries the day is the intensity of Crawford’s performance and the jaw-dropping, elaborate stunts, performed by Crawford himself.
Watchability Medium. But then, on the other hand, Frank doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body, and it’s all fine on that score, so maybe I’ll revise that to ‘high.’ It’s safe!
How to watch it DVD box set, YouTube.
CHILDREN’S BOSCO
RTÉ, 1979-1991
‘Knock, knock, open wide’... those of a certain vintage will recall the Magic Door and Bosco. The ginger puppet with the squeaky voice was a favourite of children whose biggest wish was to see inside the box where he lived. On occasion Bosco went through the Magic Door for excursions to Dublin Zoo and the HB ice-cream factory. He was voiced by Miriam and Paula Lambert and he always had two sidekick presenters who had a penchant for dungarees (remember Marian’s pink corduroy ones?). Bosco was joined over the years by Faherty the dog, crow magician Cornelius, Freddy the Fox, Fiachra the Frog, Gregory Gráinóg and Síle Séilíde.
Bosco closed his box permanently in 1998, but his website boscosbox.com is going strong with details of live appearances around the country.
Watchability Still painful for adults but kids will like it. How to watch it RTÉ archives (rte.ie/archives).
THE DEN
RTÉ, 1986-2010
The first children’s programme on Irish television to push the boundaries — The Den did, after all, introduce us to Zig and Zag, Podge and Rodge, Socky the Sock Monster, and Dustin the Turkey. It was fun, snarky and even had then-president Mary Robinson as a guest.
Ian Dempsey fronted the series until 1990, although he continued to present the music feature Pop Goes the
Den for a number of years. Ray D’Arcy took over The Den until 1998, and was later replaced by Damien McCaul and in 2003, Francis Boylan Jr.
One of its characters’ funniest moments came during the 1989 IFTA awards when Zig and Zag “accidentally” mistook then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds for actor Burt Reynolds and addressed him as ‘your majesty’.
Watchability Medium. There are some genuinely funny moments among the madness, particularly in the Dempsey years.
How to watch it RTÉ archives (rte.ie/archives)