The first of the patients was Roy Figgis, played by James Bolam. Roy was the trouble maker on the ward. If there was something to complain about he would, and if there was a rule to be broken he would break it. Next was Archie Glover, a role that was just made for Peter Bowles. Archie tried to distance himself from Roy, thinking he was a better class of person. Finally there was Norman Binns (Christopher Strauli) who was the nervous, Mummy’s boy type character.

Their surgeon, Mr. Thorpe, was none other than Richard Wilson, better known as Victor Meldrew from One Foot In The Grave. He would come in and order the patients about, but given how long they were under his care he obviously wasn’t much of a surgeon.

Finally there was the male Indian hospital orderly, known only as Gupte (Derrick Branche), who was ordered about even more so than the patients by Mr. Thorpe, and was the stooge for many of the jokes. This was the sort of character that you just wouldn’t get in a sitcom these days as it would not be deemed politically correct.

As with many shows from my childhood, it is once again the theme tune that I most remember, which was the rather mournfully sung (at least initially) I’m H.A.P.P.Y. For quite some time I was convinced that the programme was actually called I’m H.A.P.P.Y because of this song.

Timothy’s mother was called Phyllis (played by Barbara Lott) and she was most definitely the head of the household. If something didn’t meet with her approval then it wasn’t allowed to happen, especially if it had anything to do with Timothy leaving home.

His father was Sydney (William Moore) who was also much put upon and derided by his wife, so he had evolved a survival scheme of either sleeping whenever possible, or hiding behind a newspaper.

I think Sydney also didn’t really listen properly to things at times, which is why he always came out with his catchphrase “Language Timothy” whenever Tim said something that he thought was rude or inappropriate, when most of the time it wasn’t anything of the sort.

Timothy also had a sister named Muriel, who was always urging him to leave home, as she had already managed to do so by marrying her husband, Kevin. This didn’t sit well with Phyllis, who always treated Muriel with distrust, despite being her own daughter!

The show ran from 1981 to 1988, clocking up seven series in all. Did Timothy ever home at the end of it though? I don’t think so. He’s probably still trapped at home now…

Your typical show revolving around murder normally fits into one of three categories. It’s either the modern day, realistic drama (e.g. Taggart, Morse) or the Agatha Christie-esque meddling old investigator in a sleepy village (e.g. Miss Marple, Poirot) or the “Invesigative Couple”, where two people form a team to solve murderous crimes that they always just stumble across during their normal lives. Todays post subject falls squarely into that last bracket.

Hart To Hart is a US show about amateur detectives Jonathan and Jennifer Hart. Jonathan (Robert Wagner) is a self made millionaire, whilst his wife Jennifer (Stefanie Powers) is a freelance journalist. The pair travel the world living the high life, but keep finding themselves getting involved in mysteries that more often than not end up with someone getting murdered. The Harts then take it upon themselves to bring the culprit to justice.

Assisting the Harts in their endeavours was the gravelly voiced Max (Lionel Stander) who was a sort of butler come housekeeper come chauffeur, and their dog Freeway.

The title sequence for the show consisted of Jonathan and Jennifer driving their open top cars up a mountain road, whilst Max provided a very memorable voice over explaining the premise, describing Jonathan as “quite a guy” and Mrs. H as “gorgeous” and “a lady who can take care of herself”.

By far the most memorable part of this speech was the end bit, which stated “when they met, it was murder”. It’s funny how your memory can be wrong though. I always thought Max had much more of a drawl in his accent, so that what he said sounded more like “when dey met, it waz moider”, but sadly this isn’t the case, as you can hear for yourself in the clip below.

The show ran from 1979 to 1984, and was so memorable that in 1993 the first of eight TV movies was made with further adventures of the well off detective duo, with the three main cast members reprising their roles. Sadly, Lionel Stander died late in 1994, so he only features in the first five of these.

I don’t have anything against shows like Brainiac and The Gadget Show, which are probably the closest you’ll get to popular science shows today, but blowing up caravans or raving about the latest MP3 player aren’t exactly the stuff of the future.

Tomorrow’s World was aptly named, as it quite often demonstrated technology that seemed futuristic then, but is now available today.  Things like mobile phones, satellite navigation and even the fax machine were all demonstrated on Tomorrow’s World years before they became common place.

The show began airing on BBC1 in 1965, and ran for an impressive 38 years before falling foul to the dreaded ratings curse in 2003, which saw it come to an end.  The first presenter was Raymond Baxter, an ex Spitfire pilot who used a pen to point at interesting parts of whatever gizmo he was talking about.

In the years that followed the show had a number of different well known presenters, including Michael Rodd, Anna Ford, William Woollard (who presented Top Gear in the eighties when it was more about everyday driving matters than about mucking about in cars), Judith Hann (who presented for over 20 years!), Maggie Philbin and Howard Stableford (both those last two were also stalwart BBC kids show presenters).

The best thing about the show were the demonstrations of the new technology, which considering how flakey a lot of prototype technology can be were quite often very successful.  I don’t recall any particularly disastrous presentations, which given that a lot of the show was broadcast live is quite surprising.

My favourite items were those involving lasers, as they always got this table sized laser unit out, then dimmed the lights and sprayed over the beam so it became visible.  Indeed, according to Maggie Philbin, she remembers demonstrating a supermarket barcode scanner (which was one of the less reliable gadgets featured) from behind a screen due to the fact that the scanner uses a low powered laser, but the word laser caused the BBC to panic in case someone got blinded!

By the close of the eighties the show was beginning to get a little tired, so it was given a fresh makeover in the nineties with the hiring of Carol Vorderman, who at the time seemed to host everything on TV.  Contract problems meant she only lasted a few months though and was replaced by Peter Snow and Phillipa Forrester, fresh from Robot Wars!  Snow and Forrester were a good mix, appealing to young and old alike, but eventually they too were replaced by the forgettable trio of Adam Hart-Davies, Kate Humble and Roger Black (names I had to look up because I had stopped watching the show by then!) and the series came to an end.

The Tomorrow’s World name has continued to be used by the BBC however, with the most recent example being reports by Maggie Philbin on BBC Breakfast news in 2007.  Apparently there are movements to try and bring the series back properly, which given how fast technology seems to be progressing these days would be interesting to see.

In the meantime, you can check out some old editions of Tomorrow’s World online, as the BBC Archive have just released several vintage episodes from the series for you to reminisice over.  You can also see the title sequence from the eighties embedded below, which includes some very funky synth music!  You can also read some of Maggie Philbin’s memories of presenting Tomorrow’s World on the BBC News site.

The programme was primarily about a painter named Jacko, played by Karl Howman.  Jacko was a bit of a ladies man, but really you got the impression he really wanted to settle down with someone, but was afraid to do so, and was basically being told as much all the time by his co-worker and brother-in-law Eric.

Jacko and Eric worked for Lionel Bainbridge (played by Gary Waldhorn, who is now probably better known as David Horton in The Vicar of Dibley), and Jacko was dating his daughter Lesley.  Lionel’s wife Veronica also had a bit of a crush on Jacko, despite being old enough to be his mother.

Another of Jacko’s love interests was Sandra, the secretary at Bainbridge’s, and indeed he even got engaged to her during the second series, but this relationship eventually fell apart.

As the series progressed Jacko decided to go it alone with his own painting company called Splosh!  Unfortunately for Jacko this didn’t work out, and he ended up having to go back to work for Veronica Bainbridge, who had taken over the running of Lionel’s business when he died suddenly.

For me though, the star of the show was Elmo Putney (Howard Lew Lewis).  Elmo started off as the landlord of the Jacko’s local pub, but unfortunately he was a bit slow on the uptake and often completely misunderstood whatever was going on around him.  In later series Elmo went up in the world when his dog (who you never saw) discovered opals in Australia.  With his new found wealth he opened a wine bar, which he named with great imagination as Elmo Putney’s Wine Bar.  It was decked out from top to toe in pink, so it looked quite a sight.

Brush Strokes also featured a very memorable theme tune by Kevin Rowland of Dexys Midnight Runners.  Called “Because of You“. it was released as a single in 1986 and reached number 13 in the UK charts.

To finish, I want to go back to the wonderful Elmo.  In 1988 Howard Lew Lewis got a role in the Channel 4 sitcom Chelmsford 123.  Not to say he was being typecast, but other than the fact that this sitcom was set during Roman Britain, Howard’s character Blag must have been the great great great great (etc.) grandfather of Elmo Putney, as the similarities were uncanny!

The premise here was that two contestants, one male, one female, were blindfolded and dropped in different locations by helicopter.  Each carried a backpack, one of which contained the prize of £1000, though we didn’t know which was which.  The backpacks were locked so each contestant had to first find the key for their partners backpack, then finally meet up to try and unlock the packs and retrieve the money.

It was the Interceptor’s job to try and stop them.  Looking quite villainous in his black leather trench coat and with a piercing scream, the Interceptor had various forms of transport available to him including a helicopter (piloted by his henchman Mikey), a sports car and a motor bike.  He was also armed with a special infra red gun, which he could shoot at sensors on the contestants backpacks to lock them tight shut, so even the key wouldn’t open it.

The contestants were helped out by Annabel Croft who helped them first find the keys and then find each other, but as viewers it was always the Interceptor that we were excited about, especially when the contestants often seemed to have less intelligence than the average team member on The Crystal Maze (a fine series from the 1990’s).

Sadly Interceptor only got a single series, which is a real shame as it was one of the most exciting television game shows ever made.  It has popped up on satellite channel Challenge TV from time to time, so keep your eyes peeled for reruns.  In the meantime here’s a clip from one of the episodes where the dastardly Interceptor, disguised as a farmer, takes a female contestant for a ride on a tractor only to zap her in the back when she gets off.  He may have been a villain, but he had class!  You can also find more information on The Interceptor’s Lair website, which is where I pinched the picture illustrating this post from!

The contestants were aided in the studio by former newsreader Kenneth Kendall under the watchful eye of TV-am weather girl Wincey Willis.  Wincey tracked the route of Anneka on a wall mounted map whilst Kenneth helped solve the clues.  It was always claimed that neither Kenneth or Anneka knew where they were supposed to be going, although both gave a fair bit of help to the contestants.

The studio was decorated like a little library with reference books lining the walls, from atlases and encyclopaedias to a few relevant classic novels or some books about the local area in which Anneka was treasure hunting.

The contestants won cash prizes for solving each clue and, most importantly, getting Anneka to the correct location.  If the time ran out before Anneka had the next clue or the final treasure object in her hand the prize was not awarded.

The show was one of Channel 4’s big hits at the time, and spawned both computer games and a board game, which was also awarded as a prize to contestants, but the thing it will always be remembered for most is Anneka Rice’s bum, which was often the only thing in view as the camera man ran after Anneka when they got out of the helicopter to find the next clue.  Anneka always wore brightly coloured jump suits, and in one episode she ended up with a tear in her rear, which got patched up later by the camera man using a roll of black tape!

In the final series Anneka left to have a baby and was replaced by tennis player Annabel Croft.  Sadly Annabel never seemed to be quite as switched on as Anneka when it came to solving the clues, and although Annabel was credited as being a “Special Guest Skyrunner” we never got to see Anneka return since the programme ended with this series.

However, Annabel Croft did return to our screens with another helicopter based show called Interceptor.  I’ll be writing about this for my next post, so stay tuned to find out more!

In more recent times the BBC attempted to revive Treasure Hunt in 2002, with Dermot Murnaghan taking over from Kenneth Kendall and new Skyrunner Suzi Perry.  To be honest this new version completely passed me by (and everyone else it would seem, given the ratings it received) which is a shame as I liked the original so much I would have liked to see some more.

Initially hosted by Terry Wogan, the Irish TV presenter who was never off the telly back then, the show was a panel based quiz show.  Six celebrities (most of whom were genuinely famous at the time, unlike today’s poor excuse for celebrity line ups) sat in a three up three down set.  Two contestants appeared on a revolving section of floor and the game began.

Terry would ask a phrase with a word missing, replaced by the word blank, and the contestant would think of a word to fill the gap.  Normally these phrases had the potential to be full of innuendo, causing many a smirk on the celebrity panel, yet they were worded so that a clean(ish) answer could always be given.  Each of the panel wrote down their answer on a card, and the contestant had to choose the word which they felt would match with most of the celebrities.  Here is an example:

The vicar is really looking forward to judging the vegetable competition this year.  He can’t wait to get his hands on Miss Chumley’s blanks.

When faced with this question many contestants would play it safe and pick something like cabbages, except this was not the safe bet as the celebrities usually had far dirtier minds.  The bold contestant that chose melons was far more likely to win.

The winning contestant then got to play the Supermatch Game, which involved a single word followed by a blank.  They were allowed to ask three celebrities to fill in the word, and could then choose one of their answers or come up with their own.  A board revealed the top three answers suggested by the studio audience, with the least popular worth “fifty blanks” and the most popular “150 blanks”, which basically meant which of the prizes they got to win.

Oh!  The prizes.  This is where the word cheap fits the show perfectly.  If you were lucky 150 blanks might be something like a TV set, but was more likely to be a Teas Maid, which was a sort of alarm clock combined with a kettle that woke you up with a cup of tea.  To be fair to the BBC though, the reason for this was because they didn’t want to appear to be frittering the TV licence fees away, and to be honest it made the show much more charming because of it.

The cheapness of the show also extended to its jingles.  A lot of work went into the theme tune which went like this:

Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank (dum dum dum)

Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank (dum dum dum)

Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank (pause) Blankety Blank.

The intro to the Supermatch game was little better:

Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank (dum dum dum)

Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank (dum dum dum)

Supermatch Game, Supermatch Game, Supermatch Game (pause) Supermatch Game.

For me though, the one thing that I looked forward to most was when Kenny Everett was a guest on the panel during Wogan’s era.  Terry carried a long stick like microphone dubbed Wogan’s Wand, and this generally ended up being bent or broken by Mr. Everett at some point.  I’ll finish with a clip of Kenny doing his worst!  Also, check out just how bored looking the contestant is!