Swinging decade that put the Yabba-dabba-do into our lives
From kitchen sink drama to Beverly Hills, Brian Beacom recalls TV highlights from the Sixties. Far out, man
THIS week, to mark the 75th anniversary of television inventor John Logie Baird’s death, we are reflecting on the impact the small screen has had on our lives. In part two of our week-long look at TV’S most defining moments we recall the decade that gave us The Beatles, the miniskirt and the first taste of glorious Technicolor: the Sixties.
Coronation Street
Kitchen sink drama still flourished in British cinema and in 1960 the damp wallpaper, cheap net curtain, hair net and pigeon-loft sensibility transferred to television with Granada’s new series. Realism was ladelled on thick as hotpot, one-liners flowed faster than Newton and Ridley’s taps. And the nation drank it in.
The One O’clock Gang
STV was brave and bold to produce this sketch and song show each lunchtime, which made stars of Larry Marshall, Jimmy Nairn and Dorothy Paul, the latter dressing as a sexy schoolgirl each Friday afternoon. The show wasn’t always funny, but it was cheap as chips and it slung the Scottish accent on to our screens.
The Adventures of Francie and Josie From an idea developed in variety by Stanley Baxter, Rikki Fulton and Jack Milroy emerged on STV in the 1961 series as the less wise but much-loved Glasgow tenement teddy boys, who loved to pontificate on the vagaries of life. Or “patter merchants” as they were described at the time.
The Flintstones
The cartoon series aired in 1960 in America (on primetime television) and it was easy to understand why it was bought up quickly by the BBC. Based on The Honeymooners, The Flintstones was a clever domestic eco-comedy that reminded us how fortunate we were to have the ease of modern appliances in our lives. Yabba-dabba-do, indeed.
The Assassination of John F Kennedy Incredibly, the BBC and ITN missed the event. The assassination on Friday, November 22, 1963, happened in Dallas at lunchtime. In Britain, the 6 o’clock news had finished and TV execs on both sides were off to an awards dinner.
It took Granada’s local news mag programme Scene to break the story. The BBC later announced the story, but followed it with a screening of Dr Finlay’s Casebook. Public condemnation was loud.
Telstar satellites, which had been broken, were up by Saturday and both BBC and ITV beamed the shocking pictures into British homes and the hunger for imagery could only grow from then. Anthony Burgess, writing in The Listener magazine, declared prophetically: “We have seen everything now; that impartial eye has looked on murder; from now on there will always be the stain of a corpse on the living-room hearthrug.”
Doctor Who
In November 1963, Dr Who landed on our screens and suddenly an aged alien, in the form of William Hartnell, was protecting Earth from a series of scary monsters and robot-like creatures who had all the mobility of a supermarket trolley – and voices even more harsher on the ear than the One Show’s Alex Jones.
Despite the shaky plywood sets, the greatest science fiction series of all time was born. And has been re-born many times since.
Steptoe and Son
Britain’s have-nots had a mirror held up to them in the early Sixties, and this sense of being trapped, frustrated and marginalised was captured perfectly by Galton and Simpson, exploring the love/hate relationship of a decrepit junkyard father and a pretentious son, who ultimately needed each other.
The Beverly Hillbillies
The ultimate dream sitcom: a dirt-poor family hit oil and this backwoods, backwards family find themselves having to live in a mansion with a cement pond – and cope with the pressing demands of consumerism and judgementalism.
The premise, finding yourself in another world, was near perfect, and of course cleverly reversed in the more recent Schitt’s Creek.
The Likely Lads
This BBC buddy act were far removed from Francie and Josie silliness. The Geordie friends were the antithesis of each other: the cynical Terry and the optimistic, idealist Bob and the two characters summed up the mid-sixties debate – to grow your hair longer and step forward into modernity and pink shirts – or remain in a bleak postwar flat-capped industrial landscape.
Public Eye
ITV had the great idea in 1965 of ignoring the square-jawed, anti-hero, private eye concept and opting for a detective who operates at near sewer level. Alfred Burke’s Frank Marker, who has spent time in jail, offered up classic television noir.
Till Death Us Do Part
Johnny Speight’s sitcom was a brilliant satire on the pervading racism that had developed in Britain since Windrush – or did it simply served to fuel the fires of bigotry?
It would never be screened nowadays, and that’s a good thing. But what’s inarguable is that the show – fronted by Warren Mitchell – highlighted the political and the generational divide.
Incredibly, the sitcom was voted into the Top 100 British programmes of all time.
The Prisoner
What a contrast; 1967 is the Summer of Love, a celebration of personal freedoms, yet the best drama series of the decade features a story of abduction and control.
Patrick Mcgoohan’s prisoner was perfect: a man struggling in a surreal world, forced to play psychological mind games in a bid to remain sane, reduced to a number. A predictive metaphor for the real-life reductive state powers that were to materialise.
The show wasn’t always funny, but it was cheap as chips and it slung the Scottish accent on to our screens
Please Sir!
Bernard Hedges wasn’t simply taking on Class 5C in 1968 when the hopeless idealist turned up at Fenn Street school in London’s East End. He was taking on a comprehensive anarchy, the end of deference to authority and the demise of a value system. The fish out of water tale was clearly inspired by Poitier’s To Sir, With Love, with huge laughs coming from a panto villain caretaker and an old school headmistress.
The Odd Couple
Neil Simon’s brilliant play – based on his brother Danny’s flat-share adventures –became a film and then a 1970 television series which was seldom less than superb. Simon’s conceit – an OCD victim is forced to live with a slob – brings about one of the greatest relationship comedies seen on television.
The Waltons
In 1974 our world was coloured and sparkled by glam rock, glitz, and pop excess but the major TV show on BBC Two was an American series which featured string-tied worn boots, threadbare trousers and home spun values. The Waltons ladelled on Depression kindness until our hearts were full as a belly full of grits and gave us the joyful, homely voice-over pay off each night. “Goodnight, John Boy. . .” Tomorrow: The Seventies.