After six decades, what will be named ITV’s best ever show?
IF YOU hanker for a golden age of commercial television, prepare to wallow in nostalgia.
Today’s schedules may be dominated by talent contests and reality shows, but there was a time when people rushed home to watch unforgettable dramas on ITV such as Brideshead Revisited.
Now, with ITV approaching its 60th anniversary next month, a poll to mark the occasion is asking viewers to vote for the channel’s greatest ever show.
Brideshead and another ITV series from the 1980s, The Jewel in the Crown, both feature in a list of 60 programmes compiled by Radio Times for its poll. All have been broadcast on the channel since it launched on September 22, 1955.
The survey covers output from Saturday night entertainment shows such as Opportunity Knocks in the 1950s, Blind Date in the 1980s and The X Factor to drama series such as Inspector Morse, first screened in 1987, 90s shows Cracker and Prime Suspect and the more recent Broadchurch.
It also includes classic documentaries such as Seven Up! and The World at War as well as cult children’s TV shows Tiswas and Magpie.
The UK’s longest-running television soap Coronation Street, which was first broadcast in 1960, has also been included.
Alison Graham, Radio Times television editor, said: ‘ITV has always liked to do things differently, to shake things up a bit. It brought us the muck and brass of Coronation Street and its flinty northern women and, in another television time altogether, Prime Suspect’s DCI Jane Tennison, flawed, brilliant and impossible to forget.
‘It opened minds and changed lives with World in Action and John Pilger’s unforgettable Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, and it has never been afraid to give us flat-out, glittery and unapologetic entertainment shows, from Sunday Night at the London Palladium to The X Factor.
‘No list can possibly cover everyone’s beloved programmes, but we’d like to think that there’s something on here that stirs your heart and prompts you to vote for the greatest ITV programme of all time.’
Votes can be cast at www.radiotimes.com/ itv60 or by post via a coupon in the new issue of Radio Times, with voting closing on September 11. The winner will be announced in the week beginning September 21.