Today in... 1987

It's a Monday, and for the first time ever in my history of blogging I'm looking at a day when a) I was actually alive and b) I actually watched one of the programmes when broadcast.  It's all so terribly exciting.

The first three programmes we're looking at this evening were the three longest-running drama series on TV at the time.  Starting with...

ITV, 6.35pm

Yes, Crossroads Kings... hang on, what? Well, the name of the show was changed in 1987 to reflect a wider focus on the village nearby the motel (now referred to as a hotel).  In fact the original plan was that the Crossroads name would eventually be dropped from the title altogether.  And if that isn't heretical enough, the much-loved Tony Hatch theme tune has by this time been dropped in favour of something entirely unmemorable, and only two characters from the show's 70s glory days remain (Adam and Jill Chance, neither of whom are in this episode).  But new executive producer William Smethurst's grand plans were never fully realised.  This date marks the 23rd anniversary of Crossroads' first episode.  By this time the decision had already been made that it wouldn't be on air for the 24th.

The current owner of the mo(sorry, ho)tel is one Tommy "Bomber" Lancaster (Terence Rigby), whose daughter Debbie (Kathryn Hurlbutt) has just returned from a romantic weekend in Paris with her boyfriend Steve.  She tells him she had a fantastic time...

...but later confesses to the hotel's extremely camp assistant manager Charlie Mycroft (Graham Seed) that her weekend was miserable, the shadow of Tommy's dislike of Steve having been cast over it (Smethurst's plan was to make the show more sophisticated and upmarket, but continual references to the hotel's "leisure centre", where Debbie's been called on to replace a lifeguard at short notice, only help to increase the Acorn Antiques feel).

Even camper than Charlie Mycroft, though, is young Jamie Maddingham (Christopher Duffy, whose most notable TV credit was playing Magnum PI's butler Higgins in a flashback to his youth).  Jamie's planning King's Oak's bonfire night celebrations and, despite all appearances, seems to be romantically involved with a young lady, Sara, who spends the episode in the most remarkably 1987 jumper.

Also sporting some top mid-late-80s knitwear is Jamie and Sara's friend Ranjit Rupal Singh (Ashok Kumar), who we see working out some issues with his girlfriend Beverley Grice (Karen Murden).  She thinks he's going off her, but it turns out he just feels very insecure about their relationship, partly because he thinks she fancies Jamie (who he thinks "looks like a Greek statue", so maybe there's a bit of projection here), and partly due to good old soap opera angst about the trials of an interracial relationship.  But she persuades him of her feelings to the extent that he invites her to tea with his parents.

"I think you're the most beautiful girl on this earth," he tells her.  Well, chacun à son goût.

The main drama of the episode concerns Jamie's parents, pub landlord John (Jeremy Nichols) and his estranged wife Eve (Val Holliman), who's taken a break from spending his money in London to visit King's Oak and decide whether or not she wants to make the place her home.  It's not looking good: she had her sights on a hotel in the Cotswolds, not a boozer in a cancelled early evening soap.  John's angry when Val presents his with a bill for their daughter Charlotte to see a psychiatrist, dismissing concerns that she has an eating disorder: "Nobody eats at girls' boarding schools, it's a well-known fact.  If you're not anorexic you're not worth talking to."

We end with Val heading back to London, and rather charmingly apologising for being a bitch.  "You're not a bitch, you're my wife!" insists John as if the two were mutually exclusive.  But he's determined to get their daughter out of her clutches...

ITV, 7.30 pm

Next tonight, an even longer-running soap. and one with a much rosier future.

Tonight's Corrie begins with Jack Duckworth (William Tarmey) having his day ruined by news that his mother-in-law will be visiting imminently.  He resolves to stay in the Rovers to avoid her, which wife Vera (Elizabeth Dawn) grudgingly agrees to when Jack suggests that as her mother's health's failing it's probably best for her not to see someone she regularly professes to be sick of the sight of.

Ken Barlow (William Roache) is due to become a grandfather for the first time, his daughter Susan having recently announced that she and husband Mike Baldwin (Ken's former rival for the affections of wife Deirdre) are expecting.  Deirdre (Anne Kirkbride) is concerned that Susan doesn't seem terribly happy about her pregnancy.

And indeed Susan (Wendy Jane Walker) does seem a bit glum, which Mike (Johnny Briggs), blinded by premature paternal pride, manages to completely miss.

At the Kabin, Mavis Riley (Thelma Barlow) is even more nervous than usual as she's due to begin jury service the following day.  This gives Rita Fairclough (Barbara Knox) the opportunity to trot out her juicy stories of when she was on a jury years before.  Mavis has heard them a million times before, but Gail Tilsley (Helen Worth) and Martin Platt (Sean Wilson) are on tenterhooks as Rita describes the reign of terror of the group of yobs in the dock .

Here, at the Rovers Return, we see a trio of spectacular 80s hairstyles, sported by Bet Gilroy (Julie Goodyear), Gloria Todd (Sue Jenkins) and Ivy Tilsley (Lynne Perrie).  A call comes through to the pub from a neighbour of Jack's mother-in-law to say that she won't now be coming to lunch as she's suffering from nervous exhaustion (it's just as well: the mother of Vera Duckworth is the sort of spectacle really best left to viewers' imaginations).

Back at the Kabin, Mavis's fears are only worsened when Percy Sugden (Bill Waddington) relates the story of how, after the jury he served on, sentenced a gang of hoodlums, their friends took revenge on some of his fellow jurors.  This was in the 1940s, but he insists incidents like this have only become more common since.

Mike has sprung a surprise on Susan: a visit to Derbyshire, to a huge house in the middle of the country which he intends will become "Baldwin Towers", where he and Susan will raise their children and live out their lives in rural splendour.  It's what he's dreamed of ever since his deprived childhood in the East End.

At the Duckworths', Rita shares her worries about her mother's health with Ivy.  She's been going rapidly downhill since her next door neighbour was found dead in bed.  Having depressed themselves something rotten, they decide the only thing for it is to go and get pissed.

Someone who's already well on her way there is Mavis, who's had more than a few to calm her pre-jury jitters.  Rita suggests it's time to go home ("At least they've been modernised," she says as Mavis  heads to the ladies', "so she can't hang herself wi' t' lavatory chain").

While Mike tells Ken all about his grand plans over a drink, Susan pops round to see Deirdre, confessing that she feels stifled by Mike, and doesn't want to give up being her own woman to fit in with his plans...

Here, because it really is needed, is a closer look at the truly remarkable hairdo we find Deirdre sporting at this stage in the show's history.

BBC 1, 7.35pm

Now for another mainstay of the TV schedules, in its 24th year but with its days almost as clearly numbered as Crossroads', the BBC's decision to schedule it up against the inevitably all-conquering Coronation Street looking very much like a murder attempt.  This week sees the start of a brand new three-party story best summed up as Hi-De-Hi! with aliens.

We open on an alien world, where the unfortunate Chimerons are fighting a losing battle against the vicious, banner-wielding and imaginatively named Bannermen.  The male Chimerons are all green with bad complexions, but their queen, Delta (Belinda Mayne, daughter of actor Ferdy) is a beautiful blonde lady in a shimmering white shell suit.  She and her green companion race through an exploding quarry to a spaceship, where green chap is shot dead by Bannermen leader Gavrok (Don Henderson, TV's Bulman), but manages to eject the bushy-eyebrowed baddie before he expires, so Delta can effect an escape in the craft.

The TARDIS, bearing the Doctor (currently played by a not-massively well received Sylvester McCoy) and his companion, supposedly hyperintelligent principal boy Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) land in a gloomy, forbidding location that turns out to be an intergalactic tollbooth.  Producer John Nathan-Turner's policy of casting unlikely celebrities to get the show press coverage (see: Langford, Bonnie) reaches its zenith (or possibly nadir) with the appearance of much-loved and popular funster Ken Dodd as the tollmaster.  He informs the startled travellers that they're his 10 billionth customers, and as such have won a free holiday to Disneyland in 1959 (Mel's delighted, probably because she just happens to be wearing a 50s style outfit).  The coach's departure is imminent.

There's a neat bit of misdirection now as we see what appears to be the TARDIS, on Earth.  Wales, to be a bit more precise.  But it turns out to be an actual police box (in reality there were never any police boxes in Wales).  A pair of CIA agents, Hawk (Morgan Deare) and Weismuller (Stubby Kaye, another much-loved and popular funster), who look like they might well prove to be bumbling, use it to contact the president's office.  They're assigned the task of tracking a new satellite.

Back at the tollbooth, Mel persuades the Doctor they need a holiday.  The rest of the holidaymakers are Navarinos, warty purple creatures who look a bit more suited to Earth after they've walked through a transformation arch.  Murray (Johnny Dennis), the driver of the coach (it only looks like a 1950s coach, it's actually a spaceship) is also a Navarino.  Seemingly genuinely obsessed with 1950s Earth, he's a wonderful, hugely likeable character.

Aboard her ship, Delta receives a threatening message from Gavrok.  She now arrives at the tollbooth, and sneaks aboard the coach, which roars off into space.  She doesn't join the others in their rock 'n' roll singalong.

Concerningly, the Doctor, worried that the knackered old coach wasn't up to the trip, decided to abandon Mel and travel to Earth in the TARDIS.  But it's OK, he's closely following the coach, and manages to save it with a tractor beam after it crashes into a satellite.  Also not singing is a sinister man in dark glasses called Keillor (Brian Hibbard), presumably no relation to the American monologuist.

As a result of this collision, the coach goes off course, and instead of Disneyland it ends up at the Shangri-La holiday camp, somewhere in Wales.  The camp's jolly manager, Burton (Richard Davies), unaware of the new arrivals' origin, extends them a warm welcome.

The camp's resident mechanic, Billy (David Kinder) offers to help Murray and the Doctor fix the coach, and is astonished by both the advanced technology and the whacking great satellite attached to it.

Enter the lovely Ray (Sara Griffiths), another camp employee (I mean she works there, not that she's particularly flamboyant), wielding a screwdriver.  She's clearly smitten with Billy, but he seems to barely know she exists.

Mel's sharing a chalet with edgy Delta, who, acting out much of the audience's reaction to the character, pulls a gun on her.  Realising Delta's hiding out from someone, Mel promises not to give her away.

The Bannermen have arrived at the tollbooth, and are interrogating the tollmaster.  He tells them where the coach was heading, but that he doesn't know what happened to it after it struck the satellite.  They kill him (the extended death throes of a much-loved and popular funster being just the thing for early evening viewing).

Burton invites the Navarino party to a dance that evening, where Billy performs "Singing the Blues" and "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" with his band the Lorells (the music, masterminded by incidental music composer Keff McCulloch, sounds like what you'd find on a CD of re-recorded 50s favourites bought off a market stall).  Delta, now in a 50s frock borrowed from Mel, catches his eye and seems to be as attracted to him as he is to her.

Ray, noticing the frisson between the man she loves and the beautiful newcomer, dances with a startled Doctor to ease the pain.

Delta slips out and the Doctor, who's been alerted by Mel that she's a shifty character, follows after her.  Instead, he finds Ray sobbing in the linen store, and stops to comfort her.  This is a lovely scene, and striking for how much it feels like 21st century Doctor Who.  The Doctor involving himself with humans' relationships had never really been done before this, and its unexpectedness makes for one of the most wonderful moments in Doctor Who ever.

Mel finds Delta in their chalet, with a strange, silver, round object.  Which proceeds to hatch... (I vividly remember seeing the snot-like creature emerge from within on this episode's original broadcast.  Reader, I was seven years old and absolutely terrified).

The episode's cliffhanger sees the Doctor and Ray ambushed by the evil Keillor, who threatens them with a gun and reports Delta's whereabouts to the Bannermen using a space radio.  He's a mercenary who's also thrilled to have found the Doctor, who he thinks will be worth a great deal of money (the acknowledgement of how notorious the Doctor's adventures had made him throughout the galaxy was also fairly novel at this stage in the show's history, though in later years it would become a bit of a cliché).

BBC 1, 8pm

Next tonight, one of the 80s' most popular sitcoms, centred on the adventures of womanising painter-decorator Jacko (Karl Howman).  I'd forgotten just how odd the show's opening titles, with Jacko larking about in a variety of locations are.  His fondness for hanging around with black people doesn't extend to there being any featured in the show itself, and as for the bit where he sneaks up on a schoolgirl and steals a crisp, well, if this were to happen in the 21st century he'd probably never work again.

Brush Strokes is written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, who gave us The Good Life and Ever Decreasing Circles.  It's not up to their standard.  It's got plenty of entertaining moments but this episode alone features some shockingly bad lines ("You're scared of commitment." "What, being put in an asylum?"; "He's out of this world!" "You mean you're going around with a ghost?").  Tonight's episode begins with Jacko getting a goodnight kiss from Sandra (Jackie Lye), who makes it clear that, other than a cup of coffee, there's nothing else on the agenda.  I think Sandra's was the first Geordie accent I ever heard.  I remember being a child and thinking I'd never heard a voice like it.

Next day, Jacko tells sister Jean (Nicky Lancaster) and her husband Eric (Mike Walling) about his frustration that Sandra's not more sexually forthcoming.  They're not terribly sympathetic.

One person who's not backwards about, well, coming, is Jacko and Jean's sister-in-law Gloria (Carole Harrison) who turns up at Jean's door in distress, husband Reg having left her to become a lobster fisherman in Ilfracombe after finding her in a delicate situation with a double glazing salesman.  That she'd run to Reg's siblings with her tale of woe seems more than slightly odd, and indeed her story's received even less sympathetically than Jacko's.

Jacko's currently engaged in redecorating the home of his boss, dim-witted nouveau riche Lionel Bainbrige (Gary Waldhorn).  Lionel's rather more switched-on wife, Veronica (Elizabeth Counsell) sports a truly remarkable dress that Lionel likens to a coloured awning (he actually means it as a compliment).

Lionel and Veronica's daughter Lesley (Erika Hoffman) brings her new beau (Lionel pronounces it "B.O."), Giles (Nicholas Pritchard) to meet her parents.  He's a posh, thoroughly wet army officer.  Veronica, using a piece of 80s slang I'd completely forgotten, describes him as a "gink", but social-climbing Lionel thinks he's marvellous.

The highlight of the episode is the joy of pub landlord Elmo (Howard Lew Lewis) at having been left by his wife: "She used to depress the dog.  Whine, it would, even if her shadow fell on it."

While enjoying a drink at Elmo's, Jacko and Eric bump into an old friend, Steve (David Janson, not the star of The Fugitive), recently returned after years living in Canada.  He's now married with children that he, Eric and Sandra become absorbed in talking about, much to Jacko's distaste.

The kibosh is firmly put on Giles and Lesley's relationship when the drippy officer happens upon Gloria in the street, with her heel caught in a drain...

Jacko later spots the pair of them all over each other when out for a walk in the park with Sandra.  In one of those staggering sitcom coincidences, a horrified Lesley now happens upon them as well.

Lionel's devastated by Lesley and Giles' split.  He and Veronica have a row which leads to him warning her not to badmouth his family: "My family goes back generations!"

Steve and his wife (Claire Hirsch) bring their children round to see Jean and Eric and their kids.  Jacko's delighted that what starts out as an evening of smug coupledom descends into a blazing row between the families.

The episode ends as it began, with Jacko on Sandra's doorstep, failing to get his end away.

Pop spot

I leave you with this week's number 1 single, which brings back far too many memories of my holiday in Spain in 1987, when it was almost as ubiquitous as that "Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé" song.  Bye for now!