Scott Bakula played Dr. Sam Beckett, a scientist who in the year 1999 invented the Quantum Leap accelerator, a device that allowed time travel within the lifetime of the person travelling. Faced with having his funding cut Sam tests out the machine by using it himself, and so begins his travels through time.

Trouble is, something went a little wrong (or caca as the original introduction to the programme put it) and whilst Sam does indeed travel through time, he does so by having his consciousness jump into the bodies of people from the past.

Seemingly stuck, and initially not knowing where he is due to his “swiss cheesed” memory, he soon comes to rely on his erstwhile assistant Al Calavicci (played by Dean Stockwell). Al is broadcast back through time in the form of a hologram, and tries to help Sam out in whatever predicament he finds himself in.

The pair soon come to realise that in order for Sam to leap again, he must first put something right in history that initially went wrong the first time around. Al uses Ziggy, the Quantum Leap computer, to try and discover what Sam must do, presenting possible options for Sam, each helpfully given a probability that it is the correct course of action to take.

Whilst having an obvious science fiction slant due to the presence of time travel and holograms, the show also had a far more traditional feeling about it at the same time. I suppose it was kind of Star Trek meets The Littlest Hobo in a way. The situations that Sam ended up in were usually all very human in the end, involving reuniting people, calming feuds and that kind of thing.

As viewers we always saw the person Sam had leapt into as Sam, but there was always a reveal at the beginning of each episode where Sam would look in a mirror to see who he had become. It was always a little strange when you saw that Sam had leapt into the body of a woman, as you would then usually see Scott Bakula in a dress for the rest of the episode. Sometimes this was played out for laughs at Scott Bakula’s expense, but more often than not you soon accepted the idea and didn’t even notice that you were enjoying watching a man solve problems whilst wearing a dress.

The show aired for five seasons, and has garnered itself a huge following of devoted fans over the years both from the original showings and repeats. There have also been rumours that there is currently a Quantum Leap movie in production, although it appears that Bakula and Stockwell may only feature in cameo roles, which rather questions the point of making a film in the first place.

Quantum Leap

Hosted by Bruce Forsyth, the show started airing in 1980 and ran through to 1987. It was based on a US TV game show called Card Sharks, although by layering on a great many catchphrases Bruce made the show his own (quite literally, as when the show returned in the mid Nineties it became known as Bruce Forsyth’s Play Your Cards Right).

Two couples competed against each other to win the star prize of a new car, which was the defacto main prize back in the Eighties due to rules which limited the maximum value of prizes that could be given away on TV. To do this, they had to both answer questions and play a game of “higher or lower” with some playing cards.

The questions posed by Brucie all required a percentage as the answer, and were based on a survey of 100 people, normally of a particular career or persuasion, and often had a certain level of innuendo associated with them. An example would be something like “we asked 100 policemen, have you ever used your truncheon for something other than police work”. Not a real one (at least I don’t think it was as I just made it up) but you get the idea.

One couple were asked to give their answer as a numerical value, and their opponents were then allowed to say whether they thought the answer would be higher or lower than this value. The resultant winning couple then got to play with the cards.

Initially five cards were dealt out for each couple. The winning couple were allowed to change their starting card if they thought it would help them, then they had to proceed by calling out higher or lower to indicate whether they thought the next card in line would be higher or lower than the current card. If they got it right, they could continue, otherwise the other team got to have a go.

If they weren’t sure whether to go higher or lower (often the case if you had a middle card like a seven or eight) the teams could also choose to freeze, thus preventing their opponents from making any progress. Bruce used to get quite annoyed (in a playful way) when people wrongly used the term “stick” instead of “freeze”.

As already mentioned Bruce Forsyth had a barrow load of catchphrases on this show, starting with his trademark “Nice to see you, to see you, nice“, he would then go on to say “What a lovely audience! You’re so much better than last weeks!“, which was a reference to the fact that several episodes of the show were filmed in front of the same audience.

He also had a little rhyme for introducing the two female assistants who helped out by dealing the cards for each team. He used to refer to them as his “dolly dealers”, although I think come the Nineties version he had to lose the “dolly” part for political correctness reasons. The rhyme went like this:-

Here’s a little snippet of an episode from the early Eighties which features the kaleidoscopic opening sequence, which I always found fascinating for some reason. Bruce is on fine form too with a truly terrible array of gags when interviewing the contestants, and he attempts a really strange “mind reading” act at the beginning too.

It seems somewhat unbelievable that Only Fools and Horses first aired 30 years ago. Somehow the memory of watching the show when it first aired and the cold hard fact of it being 30 years just don’t seem to fit together in my brain. 30 years? 3 whole decades? How can that be?

Anyway, to celebrate the anniversary Gold have put together a couple of special items for all Fools and Horses fans. Firstly, they’ve recreated the Trotter’s famously gaudy flat (check out the Gold Facebook page for some pictures of it in all it’s kitsch glory).

Secondly they’ve put together a rather amusing little video showing a bunch of Del Boys, Rodneys and Uncle Alberts who are busting some groovy moves on the dance floor. Check it out below, but it’s just a shame they couldn’t convince David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst to come and join in too. Instead we’re left with Boycie and Marlene introducing it, although that’s OK as I just love the way Boycie talks.

The Only Fools and Horses At 30 season is showing on Gold every day at 10pm.

The problem with Charades is that most people don’t like doing the miming bit because you feel, well, a bit silly. However, everyone likes watching somebody else make a fool out of themselves, and this has to be why the TV version of the game, Give Us A Clue, was so popular.

First airing in 1979 and sticking around until 1992, Give Us A Clue was one of my favourite TV game shows as a child. Initially hosted by Michael Aspel, and later Michael Parkinson, the show pitted two teams of four celebrities against each other. It was also a battle of the sexes as it was strictly boys vs girls.

The boys team was captained by Lionel Blair, whilst the girls was led by Una Stubbs (who I was a big fan of thanks to her being Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge). At some point Una left the show and was replaced by Liza Goddard.

Unlike today’s idea of what constitutes being a celebrity the people who made up the rest of the two teams truly were celebrities, in so far as they were generally people who you had heard of before and knew exactly what it was they were famous for. Off the top of my head the sort of people you could expect to see were Lorraine Chase, Kenny Everett, Windsor Davies and even Kenneth Williams.

The game was played purely for fun, with each contestant being given the title of a TV programme, book, film, phrase or song and then having to relay that title to the other members of their team without speaking, miming out the different words before the time limit of 2 minutes ran out.

To aid things along there were a number of special mimes that meant specific things, though whether or not these were invented for the show or have always been part of Charades I don’t know.

Most mimes started in the same way, first by informing the team how many words were in the title by holding up the correct number of fingers, then detailing what sort of thing was about to be mimed. For example, miming the shape of a square to indicate a TV programme, or miming the use of an old wind on movie camera to mean a film.

Once that was out of the way holding up a number of fingers identified the word number you were about to try and convey. Tapping a number of fingers against your arm indicated how many syllables were in the word, and a further tap against the arm let your team mates know which syllable you were about to mime.

Other useful ones were making a capital letter T with both hands to represent “the”, holding thumb and index finger up to indicate a small word, or if you were feeling brave flailing your arms in a big circle to indicate you were going to mime out “the whole thing”, that is the entire title.

The show originally ran on ITV, but in 1997 the BBC tried a revival which notched up just 30 episodes before fading away again. It had a line up that I personally don’t recognise at all (Tim Clark hosting, Christopher Blake and Julie Peasgood as team captains – sorry, never heard of ‘em!). The fact it was aired as part of the day time TV line up probably didn’t help, as that helped kill off the original version too.

A final fun fact. Apparently (and I certainly don’t remember it as being so) the original show used the music “Chicken Man” as the theme tune (from 1979 to 1982) which just so happens to be the original Grange Hill theme tune too.

Spitting Image was the show in question, and it made household names of its creators Peter Fluck and Roger Law, better known simply as Fluck and Law. The duo had previously been best known for providing topical illustrations, often used plasticene figures, for newspapers and magazines.

The premise was simple enough. It took well known figures of the day, mostly from the world of politics, turned them into grotesque looking caricatures, and plonked them into situations which would make their real life counterparts squirm, quite often because what started as a joke somehow often ended up being closer to the truth that was perhaps first thought.

Whilst many of the politicians and celebrities portrayed in the programme would publicly say how disgusted they were with the appearance and escapades of their rubber doppelgangers, many also realised that appearing on the show was something of a badge of honour, and quite often could possibly help rather than hinder their perception with the general public.

There were very many puppets made, but there were a few who formed the real backbone of the show. Margaret Thatcher’s puppet is probably the best known, being portrayed as a tyrant who quite literally “wore the trousers”, but a close second has to be that of Ronald Reagan, who starred in a little series of sketches called “The President’s Brain Is Missing”.

Other notables include the Queen, Prince Philip, and John Major, who was famed for being deemed boring so his puppet was completely grey in colour from clothes to skin tone.

The show also helped the careers of many well known comedy names. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor of Red Dwarf fame were lead writers for many years (and also penned the so dreadful its brilliant Chicken Song for Spitting Image) and famous people to have provided voices for the puppets include Chris Barrie, Steve Coogan, Hugh Dennis, Harry Enfield and Rory Bremner.

I obviously wasn’t the only one in love with American things, as TV producers started to look across the pond for ideas for new shows they could bring over to our shores, and one of the areas they looked to for inspiration was the game show.

One of the first and probably longest running of these shows was Family Fortunes (called Family Feud in the States) but today I’m thinking of a show which came to represent what a lot of people in the UK thought of US television. Big, brash, bold and incredibly glitzy, I give you The Price Is Right.

I remember seeing clips of the US version before it came to the UK, probably on one of those clip shows like Clive James on TV or It’ll Be Alright On The Night. The funniest thing about it was how over excited all the contestants on the show were when they’re names were called out and they were told to “come on down” to play.

Astoundingly the UK version retained a lot of this over excitement, which is perhaps surprising since us Brits have a tendency to try and tone things like that down. However, I think it’s good that they didn’t try to quell the enthusiasm of the contestants too much as seeing middle aged men and women charging down stairs whilst whooping and waving their arms was always quite amusing. The over the top music that played as they ran down those stairs was really quite terrible too – so terrible that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it.

The Price Is Right first aired in the UK in 1984 and was hosted by one of the nations favourite all rounders, Leslie Crowther. He really was the perfect host as he was completely unflappable. Even though he clearly enjoyed himself, he never lost control of the show when a contestant started panicking and over-reacting because they didn’t know quite what they were supposed to be doing on whichever game had been thrust upon them.

The format was really quite simple. Four contestants were initially chosen from the audience (presumably at random) and asked to “come on down” to join Leslie. The contestants would be shown an item and have to guess it’s monetary value, with the closest guess winning the chance to partake in a single player game of some sort.

There were a great many games that a contestant might be asked to do, but all of them were related to prices in some way or another. They might be asked to put a number of items into value order, or choose a particular key to try and unlock a safe. Whatever it was, you could be sure the contestant would stand there looking flummoxed whilst the members of the audience all yelled there own pieces of advice out.

At the end of the show two of the contestants then got the chance to take part in the Showcase final, where they were given the choice of two big prize packages. Each contestant had to try to guess the total price of all the items in their chosen package, and again whichever contestant came closest was the winner. I think their guess also had to be within 10% of the total, and not exceed the price.

At the time we in the UK looked on in envy at US game shows, not because the shows were necessarily any better than our home grown ones, but because the prizes you could win were so much better. For example, in the US a contestant might win $10,000, in the UK you’d be lucky to win £100. In the US you might win a new car, we might get a new TV set.

This was down to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) rules on the maximum value of prizes which could be given away, so when we laugh about shows like Blankety Blank giving people such measly looking prizes, it’s the IBA we should really have been blaming.

The Price Is Right under Leslie Crowther ran through to 1988 when ITV cancelled it. The then newly emerging Sky TV picked up the idea in 1989, and came out with a shorter length show hosted by some guy called Bob Warman (who he? Apparently a local TV news presenter), but since satellite TV had such small viewing numbers back then the show didn’t last that long.

In 1995 it cam back again with Bruce Forsyth at the helm (and as with most Brucie shows it became known as Bruce’s Price Is Right) and this version ran until 2001. The most recent version ran from 2006-2007 and was hosted by squeaky voiced comedian Joe Pasquale.

Imagine my excitement then when flicking through the TV Times (as I was wont to do back then) I stumbled across Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. I simply had to watch it, although I could’t quite figure out why it was on at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Why would a kids show be on then?

Of course, I never realised that children’s books were only one part of Roald Dahl’s works, so it felt really unfair to me when Mum and Dad said I wasn’t allowed to watch it.

Fast forward a couple of years and for some reason I had been allowed to stay up late on a Sunday night (it obviously must have been during school holidays or something) and on came Tales of the Unexpected. Yippee! I finally get to see it, I thought, but that feeling of joy soon changed to one of trepidation as I watched the opening credits.

Scary images of cards with skeletons on (Tarot cards of course, though I didn’t know that at the time) and guns appeared on screens, overlaid with the silhouette of a woman dancing all provocatively, all whilst THAT theme tune played along. Combined, music and imagery were enough to make me start feeling uneasy, and I think at that point I may have made some excuse and gone off to bed!

Forward a little more and I happened to catch the show again. Whilst the titles still seemed creepy I thought I would be brave and watch it through, and I was glad I did. I must have watched over episodes since but this particular episode sticks in my mind. It was about a man who had invented a device which let you hear the screams of plants as people picked them from the garden. I seem to recall the guy ended up either dying or going mad when he heard the scream of a big old oak tree being cut down.

The stories of Tales of the Unexpected were much like this, short, one-off tales which took an interesting germ of an idea and fleshed it out into a 25 minute episode. Most of the stories had a very dark streak to them, although they were often quite funny too, and pretty much all of them ended with some kind of twist which completely changed how you expected the story to end.

The show ran from 1979 until 1988, initially composed solely of stories by Dahl himself. He even introduced the stories sat in a big high backed chair with his trademark writing tray perched across his lap. Later series saw stories being written by various different authors and eventually Road Dahl stopped introducing the stories as well.

Tales of the Unexpected is one of those programmes that a lot of people will fondly remember for years to come, though possibly not so much for the stories as the creepy intro and music, which incidentally was composed by Ron Grainer, who was also responsible for two of my other favourite TV show themes, namely Doctor Who and The Prisoner.

The back story was that Maddie Hayes (Shepherd), a former model, found herself in financial problems after being ripped off by her accountant. Whilst selling off her remaining assets she finds she owns a private detective agency run by David Addison (Willis). Addison manages to persuade her to not sell the business and instead become a full time partner instead, which she agrees to do, renaming the company the Blue Moon Detective Agency, a name which came from the shampoo for which she was famous for advertising.

The partnership, for the most part, worked well, with the pair solving cases amid many a wise crack from Addison and a blossoming, but awkward, romance between the pair.

One of the main reasons for the show being so unusual was that the characters in it quite often started addressing the audience directly, from a raised eyebrow or a knowing look to the camera to full blown dialogue addressing the viewers. Other bizarre things would also suddenly happen, like cast members suddenly leaving the set of a member of the production crew coming on to make an adjustment to the set.

It seems strange that this could work, but work it did, and when it came to the final ever episode it was taken to its logical conclusion, with the last scenes being played out as the sets were deconstructed and the stars having to track down the director of the show to ask questions.

Other regular characters were Agnes Dipesto (Allyce Beasley), the softly spoken receptionist who always answered the phone with a new rhyming slogan or phrase, and in later series Burt Viola (Curtis Armstrong), a clerk who dreamt of becoming a detective himself, and eventually did when Maddie and David started to appear less in the show.

This last point is why the series suddenly faltered and began to die. Bruce Willis, for whom Moonlighting was his big break, had just made Die Hard and wanted to pursue a movie career (which was obviously the right move for him!) whilst Cybill Shepherd had become pregnant and wanted to concentrate more on her children than on a TV show.

This meant that for the final series David and Maddie were barely around, and the detective agency was being run by Agnes and Burt, who whilst good characters weren’t the reason why you wanted to watch the show, and so viewing figures trailed off.

During its peak though the show was much loved, so much so that its theme song became a hit for jazz singer Al Jarreau. Considering its popularity though, it is surprising that it hasn’t been repeated more often on TV over the years…