My top ten Channel 4 programmes

Last week Channel 4 celebrated its 25^th birthday. John asked in the comments about people’s top ten Channel 4 programmes. I would have written this at the time anyway, but I didn’t have the time and figured I’d just let it slip under the radar. However, since the question was asked, I will answer it anyway.

Bear in mind that I am actually younger than Channel 4 is. As such, you won’t find me waxing lyrical about Max Headroom or Minipops. This is, I’m afraid, strictly 1990s onwards.

These are in no particular order, just what I thought would flow well.

Brass Eye

Following The Day Today, Chris Morris took the skewed news concept a step further with Brass Eye. The programme was sometimes controversial, with everybody specatcularly failing to ‘get’ the paedophile episode. Brass Eye highlighted and parodied media wrongs. Here is a clip about the Bad Aids.

Jam

Most people seem to be choosing Brass Eye in these lists, as have I. But I was more fond of one of Chris Morris’s other Channel 4 programmes, Jam. This disturbing sketch show was shot with strange visual effects and set to a constant background track of ambient music. Quite unique and strange, it really set itself apart from other sketch shows.

The programme often dealt with subject matters that might be seen as taboo. But you can’t help thinking, “doesn’t he have a point?” It would be irresponsible of me to compare this sketch to any recent news events.

4Later

4Later was a strand of late-night programming that ran for a few years earlier this decade. The range of programmes was pretty eclectic. Low budget games and DVD review shows Bits and Vidz were cult classics. Disinfo Nation was an “alternative news programme”. 4Later was the home of the last series of Babylon 5. Late Night Poker was the original poker programme that started the craze. A remixed version of Chris Morris’s Jam was perfectly suited to the late-night vibe.

It is such a shame that 4later was unceremoniously axed, taking with it all of its good programmes. Late nights on Channel 4 simply haven’t been the same since.

One of my favourite programmes on 4Later was The Trip, which mixed archive film footage with arty music. I’m so delighted to have found some clips of it on YouTube! It was just perfect for the late-night slot, and well worth staying up for, especially since the feeling that you were about to drop off just added to the vibe. It is probably fair to say that, combined with Jam, this programme shaped my taste in music a lot in my mid-teens.

The Big Breakfast

Kudos to Channel 4 for trying something different with the morning slot. Normally, if you don’t want news or children’s programmes, you can forget about morning television.

It was a tricky balancing act though. It was sometimes unwatchably chaotic, and sometimes seemingly the whole programme was on the verge of complete collapse. At times it also seemed as though they were all just having fun for themselves and completely forgot about the viewer. I found this particularly during the Johnny and Denise phase.

I was quite fond of the programme in its later years. But for whatever reason, the viewing public switched off. Channel 4 tried something similar with its replacement, RI:SE, but it completely misfired. The Big Breakfast had some kind of magic ingredient that made it work for a few years in the 1990s. But today, we are back to the usual diet of news and children’s programmes. Anything else would just feel wrong.

This isn’t a particularly special clip, but it is typical of the kind of material that was featured on The Big Breakfast in its later years. Nigel Buckland, presenter of late-night film show Vidz, reviewed some Christmas DVDs in 2002. You might see what I mean when I say the programme was a bit shambolic.

The 11 O’Clock Show

It is true that The 11 O’Clock Show was sometimes embarassingly bad. This was bound to happen when it was broadcast daily (soon cut back to three days a week). I still thought it contained more good jokes per week than just about any other programme. Still, it was all too easy for the programme to lapse into telling easy cock jokes.

Let’s not forget, though, that it was the early home of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais. The huge writing team also had some great names working for it. Charlie Brooker leaps out in my memory. So it’s not as if it had unfunny people working for it. It was worth tuning in to wait for the good bits.

At the time, the programme was perhaps most famous for Iain Lee’s vox pops. Sometimes I got the feeling that the people in the vox pops were told what to say, but they were still funny nevertheless. This one doesn’t look like it has actors, but it does contain lots of dirty jokes about bodily fluids.

Whose Line is it Anyway?

I guess with the improvisational nature of the show, it was bound to be hit and miss. But when it was hit, Whose Line was hysterically funny. It has also stood the test of time rather well. The American version is screened regularly on Five US, and recently the UK version began to be shown on Dave. I find that it’s well worth giving it a look whenever it’s on because there is likely to be at least one laugh-so-much-you-cry moment.

Here is a ‘hoedown’ game from one of the later series of the UK version. Tony Slattery is obviously near his lowest point here which isn’t good to see, but nevertheless it is very funny.

Father Ted

This programme surely needs no introduction. The silly sitcom is the best of the past fifteen years in my view. Here is the classic moment from the Christmas special when Ted, Dougal and others get lost in Ireland’s biggest lingerie section.

The Chart Show

I can just about remember a time when The Chart Show was not The ITV Chart Show. A few months ago I found myself getting very nostalgic and watching lots of videos of old episodes of The Chart Show on YouTube. It was so different to the other music programmes on offer, with nothing in the way of live performances, and no presenters apart from quirky Amiga graphics.

Of course, nowadays most music programming is like this because it’s the most cost-effective way to do it. But even watching The Chart Show today, it has its own little quirks. The whole ‘FFWD’ / ‘RWND’ stuff was a bit gimmicky, but remained in one form or another until its last show in 1998.

For some reason, all of the Channel 4 versions have been removed from YouTube, while many ITV episodes remain! Here is a clip from not long after the change of channels in 1989.

The Crystal Maze

Is this the greatest gameshow ever? Yes. The Crystal Maze also must be one of the very few programme adaptations to be better than the original it was based on. Fort Boyard was good, but bland in comparison to The Crystal Maze.

Partly this is down to the ingenuity of the puzzles, and the different zones. But a lot of it is also down to the charismatic Richard O’Brien. His sarcastic comments just sum it up whenever the team messes up, which it invariably does. And of course, he had that harmonica to hand whenever he felt like putting the team off. And then there was that strange relationship with the computer in the futuristic zone…

Popworld

While the staid BBC subjected the nation’s youth to Fearne Cotton’s asinine interviews with boring boy bands, over on Channel 4 you could watch Simon Amstell being sarcastic to them. Some bands played along with it, while others took great offence. And who would believe it, it was those wankerish indie bands who were worse than the bubblegum pop groups. Essential viewing for weekend mornings, as I have already written on this blog.

I wonder if one of the great promises of digital television will not be kept in the long run. Theoretically, Freeview offers viewers more choice than the old five analogue channels. At first it was true. As well as the five channels we already knew, ONdigital launched with plenty of sport and film channels, childrens’ channels and a variety of other niche channels.

That’s still kind of the same with Freeview today. But Freeview is becoming a victim of its own success. There are dozens of channels on Freeview. But once you take away the shopping and quiz channels, many of the remaining channels spend much of their time broadcasting shopping and quiz programmes, or advertising their own subscription services.

Having a Freeview channel is like gold dust for a broadcaster now. But this means that if a company only has one channel on Freeview it has to make the most of what it’s got. Now, instead of each channel catering for its own niche, channels are scurrying around chasing the average viewer. So instead of having loads more choice than we did in the old days, we now have slightly more choice.

It’s a bit like local radio stations. There are millions of them, but as far as I can tell they are almost all exactly the same. Listeners don’t get choice here. They get the same bland middle-of-the-road pop music with over-excited presenters yelping over the top. I mean, how many radio stations have a slogan along the lines of “Classic hits and today’s best music, only on 97.3 Scrotum FM”? All of them?

Freeview still has a lot of quality channels. But most of the choice comes from the BBC, Channel 4 or (at a stretch) ITV. Even then, you sense that this is only because each of these broadcasters have multiple Freeview slots to fill.

Disney has one channel on Freeview: ABC1. Its diet of cheaply imported, inoffensive daytime-friendly American comedy has barely changed in years. Yawn.

BSkyB has three channels: Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Travel. That was, until they decided to replace Sky Travel with a general entertainment channel especially created for Freeview, Sky Three. So what about the fans of travel programmes? They’ll have to make do with gameshows that were originally shown on Sky One five years ago and cheaply imported American comedies. Boring. (Apart from Futurama, of course!)

Even Channel Five couldn’t manage to come up with interesting Freeview channels. Overnight it brings us The Great Big British Quiz, one of the worst quiz channels there is! Past the watershed, Five US is filled with wall to wall repeats of CSI. During the day we are treated to cheaply imported (imported from the past, that is) episodes of Happy Days and comedy backwater Joey. Pass me the pillow.

Five Life is so inconsequential, I won’t even go into it. All it ever seems to show is The Ellen DeGeneres Show (a cheaply imported American chat show). I shat my duvet out of boredom.

The latest culprit to contribute to the increasingly tumbleweed-infested airwaves is Viacom, whose sole Freeview channel is TMF. It used to be called The Music Factory. Just one problem. You’ll never find any music on it. This was understandable when it showed MTV programmes such as Newlyweds or Dirty Sanchez. For one thing, it brought MTV programmes into terrestrial homes which I guess you should be grateful for. And there was still a (tenuous) link to music.

But now TMF has brought into its schedule “classic comedies” such as Cheers, Ally McBeal and The Wonder Years. WTF!!! TMF is now even unrecognisable to what it was last week, never mind a few years ago! What do these programmes have to do with music?

Even the higher quality Freeview channels, such as ITV2, More4 or E4 show more than their fair share of American comedy and drama. Sky took off their travel channel to show more American programmes. MTV have changed their music channel beyond recognition to show more American programmes. Now Channel Five have an entire channel dedicated to it. So where has the variety gone? We may have more choice, but we no longer have variety.

But there is a silver lining! Ftn has been on Freeview almost since the very start, but it was easily the most uneventful channel on the lineup. This was despite all the potential. It could draw from the pool of Flextech channels, which surely have a few quality programmes to rub together. But whoever was responsible obviously didn’t care. Ftn was like a piece of shit on your shoe that you hate so much that you won’t even bother to wash it off, so instead you scrape your shoe all over the pavement as you walk along and hope that it just goes away. Yes, Ftn was exactly like that.

Until now, that is. On New Year’s Day, Ftn’s schedule was shaken up to include more quality programmes. The phone-in quiz shows and Thomas Cook TV segments have gone, and they’ve been replaced with repeats of The Crystal Maze, The Krypton Factor and Bullseye!

Wow! Those were three of my favourite programmes when I was young! The fact that these programmes are now almost twenty years old messes with my mind. What’s even more amazing is just how much of The Crystal Maze I can actually remember, despite it being made way back in 1990.

I know what you’re thinking. These are just cheap repeats like all the other stuff. Well yeah, but at least it’s not Dawson’s Creek. Now, start the fans please!

doctorvee

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