Smashing Hits! The 80’s Pop Map of Britain & Ireland
BBC FOUR, 10.00PM
Preceded by another of BBC Four’s entertaining overviews of a year in pop, TOTP: the Story of 1986, this fun new two-parter dispatches Midge “Ultravox” Ure and Kim Appleby (of Respectable fame) on a road trip around Britain and Ireland to examine how different cities fostered the key musical trends of the decade. In truth, the premise is a gimmicky peg off which to hang a clutch of familiar stories that fortunately bear repeating.
The unlikely pair begin in London (birthplace of the New Romantics) before heading to Coventry (the crucible for Britain’s take on Appleby’s beloved ska) and Sheffield (where Ure found kindred spirits in the astonishing explosion in electronic music courtesy of The Human League and their associates).
Several regulars of BBC Four’s Friday-night music documentaries, including Pauline Black and Pete Waterman, bring the eras back to life with lively reminiscences, while the archive footage is well chosen: Trevor Horn’s evocation of ABC’S The Look of Love as “Bob Dylan doing disco music”, for example, is nothing if not memorable. Nostalgia, delivered with class. Gabriel Tate