Why twentysomethings should shut up about Eighties television
- Article 2 of 3
- The Tribe, October 2000
I have a memory of 80s television that’s different from most people’s. It’s of a TV producer on the BBC’s Open Air (a slightly gutsier version of Points of View), answering criticism that shows ‘weren’t as good as they used to be’. He said one thing that's stuck with me ever since.
“The memory cheats.”
Fast forward 20 years. In the 80s, whenever twentysomethings gathered in pubs, they would recite the parrot sketch (‘it is an ex-parrot’ ‘it has ceased to be’); now their successors complain about how there’s nothing good to watch on tele any more. Why aren’t there any shows on as good as there were when they were young, they moan, in their pathetic, ‘ooh, isn’t being an adult scary? Perhaps if we act like we’re still 14, read Loaded, watch Guy Ritchie films and whine on and on about football, we can shut out the world and not have to worry about having crap jobs, etc’ way?
Well, this is Earth calling, you space cadets. We have a newsflash for you. The memory does cheat. 80s television was crap. Now shut up.
The A-Team? Rubbish. Knight Rider? So cack, the scripts could be used in remedial English classes for those with learning difficulties. Tiswas? Bob Carolgees – need I say more?
Now, 90s television ain’t that much better, I agree. Endless streams of series about the police, doctors, vets, police-doctors, police-vets, etc and more costume dramas than you could shake a love-spoon at aren’t going to have anybody in 2020 regretting their demise (‘Why did they have to cancel Dangerfield? Nigel Havers was just so good.” I think not…). But simply because today’s TV is pure, undiluted arse doesn’t mean yesterday’s was any better.
Instead of reminiscing about how great tele was when your brain was too unformed to differentiate between quality and something with the consistency of a soggy rusk, watch some episodes of The A-Team/Dynasty/Miami Vice/Neighbours/Grange Hill/whatever 80s rubbish you still get excited over after a few neat vodkas. Get a satellite dish, cable box or even just rent a few episodes. But watch them. Then realise why they were cancelled in the first place.
80s television sucked. It was stupid with a capital Stupid. Undercover police officers living on boats with pet alligators? Royal weddings invaded by terrorists, and face-changing heroines abducted by aliens? Bad guys (and good guys) with sub-machines that never actually killed anybody, no matter how many bullets they fired? Maybe your world’s like that, but I’ve not been taking any LSD recently so I don’t share your delusions.
How many episodes of Airwolf ended with the villain, rather than running into a nearby shopping mall, flying away in a helicopter/aeroplane/autogyro/hot air balloon that was handily armed with missiles? Then they’d be destroyed just as the same piece of music used every episode for the fight scene ended. And the explosion was always from precisely the same bit of stock footage of a Hughes 500 helicopter blowing up, except if it was over the sea, in which case someone would lob a brick in a pond and film that.
How many thrillers had top-notch international companies, spy organisations and terrorists powering their entire operations from a BBC Micro and monitor? Even the quasi-futuristic trappings of Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who suffered from all-powerful computers that appeared to be based around teletext.
And let’s not forget that the 80s also spawned Inspector Morose – an hour’s worth of yawning extended into two hours, just to keep us on the edge of our bath chairs – that led to the endless series of adaptations of useless English crime novels that no one had ever read until they were made into TV shows and which should really have been buried at the bottom of the authors’ gardens and used as compost. I’m talking about A Touch of Frost, Midsomer Murders, and Inspector Wexford as well as all those others that fell by the wayside in the 90s because viewers were having to stick forks into their legs to stay awake while they were on (Sam Saturday, Resnick, Anna Lee, etc).
I mean, have you already forgotten Bergerac? It was set on Jersey, for heaven’s sake! How much crime can one microscopic island have – particularly one that’s only there for tax dodges and which no one lives on? How can Lisa Goddard be cast as a femme fatale cat burglar without the whole audience laughing so hard their warm milks come out through their noses?
The memory cheats. So take a quick test for me. If you answer any of the following questions with a yes, you’re going to need help.
- Men: Are you ever tempted to roll the sleeves on your jacket up?
Women: If you ever wear a suit, do your shoulderpads make you look like an American football player? - Have you ever said “I love it when a plan comes together”?
- Car owners:
- Do you own a Ford Capri?
- Have you ever done a hand-break turn in it?
- Do you wish it could talk or have a flashing red light at the front?
- Do you really want Kylie Minogue to get back into acting?
- Does the phrase “Zammo chased the dragon and got a smack on the nose” warm you with nostalgia? How about “Ro-land!”?
- Men: If Blake’s 7 and Charlie’s Angels were repeated, would you really have to think about which one not to watch?
Women: Do you still have a thing for men in black leather – and have bitter memories of your dad switching over from Blake’s 7 to Charlie’s Angels?
If you answered yes to any of the above, the best medicine you could ever take is to actually watch the programmes you still love after all these years.
They’re arse. Remember that.