10-05-2025
What I learnt by watching an evening of TV from 1975
In our multi-channel, multi-streaming world, we're overwhelmed when it comes to choosing what to watch. Not so, 50 years ago, when UK homes had only three TV channels. Because of that, programmes of the time commanded vast audiences, but how do they stack up when viewed today?
I've committed to watching a line-up of television from 50 years ago because I'm participating in a Channel 5 production, 70s TV We Loved & Lost. The programme sets three modern families down in front of a selection of 1975 shows and asks them to offer instant reactions in the Gogglebox idiom. I will appear as a talking head, providing social and historical context.
And so I settle in with an evening from 1975, fascinated to discover how many of the shows still entertain, how many feel relevant, and how many might horrify today's more 'socially-conscious' viewer. Having grown up in the 1970s, I anticipate being reasonably familiar with everything that follows. How wrong I was.
Dicing with death on Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
BBC One
Michael Crawford and Michele Dotrice starred in this hugely successful sitcom (viewing figures regularly topped 20 million) about accident-prone man-child Frank Spencer, whose efforts to find a job perpetually end in disaster.
The episode begins with two men in silhouette, engaged in some kind of activity. 'Have you still got it in your hand? Now twist the top, pull it out and give it a shake.' The studio audience roars with laughter. It transpires Frank is working in a photo lab, and he's being taught how to develop film. His next move is to accidentally tip acid down his employer's leg. With its mix of crude innuendo and slapstick cruelty, it isn't quite the family-friendly comedy I remembered.
Another scene follows Frank to a maternity class, where he ends up seated beside an expectant mother, who's black. The audience love it when a doctor assumes she and Frank are a couple, while he coos meekly. It's an uncomfortable moment.
The final set piece, however, is one of the greatest in sitcom history, as a roller-skating Frank is catapulted out of a rink onto the streets of London. With Crawford himself careering through moving traffic, and speeding over groin-high bollards, it's a masterclass in invention and daring. Health and safety would prohibit any leading man attempting that feat today.
Trying not to fall asleep to the Open University
BBC Two
The Open University launched in 1969, providing distance learning courses to thousands of Brits. As part of that initiative, BBC Two would broadcast classes during periods in the day when its normal service was off-air. This session – airing in black and white – features mathematics lecturer Michael Crampin bringing us unit 13 of the Complex Analysis course.
It's an absolutely un-televisual production, rudimentary in its presentation with Crampin employing a pencil and pad to take us through his equations. But this wasn't TV for the masses, this was narrowcasting to a tiny audience who simply wanted the information. You'll find nothing like it today; even YouTube explainers employ more showbiz.
Lion-taming on Seaside Special
BBC One
A teatime TV favourite, the series visited a different UK seaside resort each week to lay on a variety show, mixing pop acts, comics and end-of-the-pier entertainment. Tonight's edition is hosted by Tony Blackburn and comes from Torbay.
Fittingly, it's the most vivid postcard yet from 1975, with a bill including singers Lulu, Mike Batt and Des Lane, whose act is simply to play the penny whistle. Folks dressed in gorilla suits gyrate to The Funky Gibbon, a strongman leg-presses a bench adorned with Roy Hudd plus 10 leotard-clad women (producers of the time always had an eye on including such an element for 'the dads'), and Abba give us Waterloo.
At one point, Blackburn serenades four (real) lions with Tie A Yellow Ribbon while a whip-wielding tamer discourages them from taking vengeance. It wouldn't pass animal welfare laws today. Elsewhere, Hudd casually drops an anti-Semitic gag, but things just roll along happily. It takes a moment to process that you really did hear what you think you just heard.
The unbeatable Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game
BBC One
On a good night, this game show could top 25 million viewers and was the cornerstone to an unbeatable Saturday night line-up on BBC One. It pitted four couples, each a generation apart (usually parent/child) into a series of diverse challenges. Tonight's episode includes flamenco dancing, trivia and dress-making for dolls.
Bruce Forsyth is at the helm with a confidence that still impresses, commanding the studio audience like a drill sergeant. When he's not deploying a catchphrase, he's demanding applause with an arm swing. As the contestants are trooped in, I'm struck that he's inventing modern-day Saturday night TV in front of my eyes with his easy repartee. He's told Barbara Davis from Northenden, Manchester was the first-ever Festival Queen of the Isle of Man. He gives her the side-eye and quips: 'Were you the only woman there?' The more he insults her, the more she glows.
Fast-paced, varied, it's a show that still works, and I think about how often the BBC have tried to bring it back. The only note of antiquity is Anthea Redfern's hostess role. In the year Parliament passed the Sex Discrimination Act, she's not making strides for feminism, but instead is being told by Forsyth to 'give us a twirl' and show off this week's new frock. Yet television remains poorer for its absence. Michael McIntyre's Big Show just doesn't quite do.
Pioneering TV with That's Life!
BBC One
Contrary to the orthodoxy of 1975, here's a series marshalled by… a woman. The crusading magazine show, which covered everything from viewers' photos of rude-shaped veg to serious investigations into child abuse, was an absolute BBC staple, running for 21 years. And contrary to the orthodoxy of 1975, it was marshalled by a woman.
The show begins with Esther Rantzen taking her chair. To her right are Kieran Prendiville and Glyn Worsnip. They're from an ever-changing line-up of men who, during the series' lifetime, were unkindly dubbed 'Esther's Nancies' within the BBC. They read out viewers' letters, in this case, voicing correspondence from a finance company in a commendably thorny segment where Rantzen goes into bat for a viewer who took out a loan to pay for central heating from a firm that went bust.
From here to a rakish Cyril Fletcher with funny snippets found in local papers, and a vox pop where members of the public are challenged to open recalcitrant snap-shut plastic bags. That's Life! really impresses, pulling off these canyon-wide segues with a confidence that should intimidate The One Show.
The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club is... incredibly dated
ITV
Running for six series, this was set in a fictional working man's club, featuring an array of novelty acts performing in front of a live audience. Tonight's begins with host Bernard Manning crooning a Patsy Cline song. The members – men drinking pints, women halves – sing along dreamily until Colin Crompton, in the guise of chairman, clangs his bell and hectors everyone with faux club business.
Manning acerbically cues up an array of novelty acts, from a man balancing swords on his chin to music by the Settlers. Cigarette smoke wafts by, as do people heading to the bar or the loo. Visually, it's all very brown, except in skin colour. Apropos of nothing, Manning makes a racist gag, and everyone hoots. The whole thing feels incredibly low-rent and oddly aggressive.
Parkinson vs Helen Mirren
BBC One
The king of the talk show, who reigned on and off between 1917 and 2007, sat down with huge stars, including Bing Crosby, Muhammad Ali and James Cagney. Tonight's instalment, alas, doesn't show Michael Parkinson in his best light. His first guest is the Royal Shakespeare Company's 'rising star' Helen Mirren, whom, he advises us, has been commended for 'projecting a sluttish eroticism'.
Mirren flounces onto stage and takes her seat, saying: 'That was 'sluttishly erotic' for you'. Parkinson goes on to say, 'You are, in quotes, 'a serious actress'...' And of her craft, he wonders, 'Do you find, in fact, that what could be best described as your 'equipment' hinders you in that pursuit?'
It's gob-smacking and uncomfortable, but asked about this encounter in 2016, Parkinson said: 'I don't regard what happened there as being anything other than good television.'
A gay love affair on Within These Walls
ITV
Our final offering is a drama set in a women's prison, which ran for four years. It's a low-budget affair, akin to something like Doctors, albeit airing around 9pm. Although my expectations are lower, it surprises with a thoughtfully-written episode exploring a growing romantic relationship between two inmates. The institute's welfare officer gets wind of it and takes her concerns to the prison doctor.
Where I expected the show to ignite in its depiction of something considered transgressive at the time, the conversation is commendably measured. 'Any affection is better than none,' counsels the doctor, before delivering a line that has more even resonance today: 'What the hell does gender have to do with it?'
And so to bed, with Closedown
BBC
The BBC globe is ushering me to bed. As the National Anthem bleeds in, I'm thinking about what I've learnt from this evening of 1975.
Foremost is there was a sense of commonality hanging over television, as if we were all engaged in the same conversation. We holiday at the seaside, we covet an infra-red grill and we write letters to the utility companies. A lot of that was rooted in the certainty that, in a three-channel world, everyone was watching. Even now, with the anthem playing, there's an assumption of a nation on its feet – although that might be just to switch off the set. Because of this, programme makers pitched for the widest possible audience. It was a time when a host would still say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls'.
Does that mean 1975 TV was better? Not quite. I've witnessed insensitivities, passing cruelties and real oddities. But it is also clear that much of what we enjoy now was engendered in this decade.
TV really came alive in the 1970s; in colour, in confidence and often with a winning kind of crudity. One way or another, all these shows held my attention tonight. As my screen blanks out, I conclude that it was nice to see them, to see them nice.
