Forget the X Factor, forget the Brit Awards, forget Top Of The Pops (what do you mean, you have already?) – when it comes to great, memorable musical moment s on your tellybox all of them come from non-musical shows.
Supposed ‘musical programming’ is all well an good but it’s the times when the music surprises you, makes you laugh or moves us that really stick in the mind. Don’t believe us? check this list…
The Simpsons – monorail song
Morecambe and Wise – Andrew Preview
The Office – David Brent’s dance
Our friends in the north – Don’t Look Back In Anger
Remember All Creatures Great and Small? A gentle rural show about a nice man who stuck his hand up cow’s vaginas? Well, you may be interested/bored/thrilled to hear that it is set to return to our TV screens.
We all remember Thundercats. Even those too young to remember it remember it. Well, Warner Bros. Animation have announced that they’ve started production on a new ThunderCats animated series for Cartoon Network. HOOO!
Oh, The Good Life… full of fun seems to be the ideal. Mm, The Good Life… lets you hide all the sadness you feel. Yessir, I’m the first human in history to do that joke about Tony Bennett and ’70s sitcom, The Good Life. Good thing too because The Good Life is celebrating a birthday! For the first time ever, the first series is coming to DVD to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the show.
Sesame Street is 40 years old. As such, it seems like a perfect time to muse over it at some length. Why? Well, you could argue that it’s the greatest thing that has ever been shown on television. Y’see, Sesame Street never once felt like learning, despite the fact that the whole point of the show was to teach you stuff. In amongst the alphabet and numbers line, it also taught you about the world at large.
Tomorrow’s World is always better in hindsight. I mean, it’s fun watching all the things they got wildly wrong… but even better is the things they got eerily right! It goes without saying that it is always good fun looking at vintage gadgets… marvelling at how huge some of them were, or the weird retro futurism of 2001 Space Odyssey style contraptions. Well, now we get to relive it all with an ace BBC archive.
For absolutely no reason, the other day, Northern Exposure popped into my head. Considering what the show was, it almost seemed quite apt that it should just amble through my thoughts, hands in pockets and whistling away. You see, thinking hard, I don’t think I could tell you a single plot from the show, despite the fact that I watched it religiously. It almost didn’t seem like the point. Northern Exposure was a modern day parable. It was about a feeling… about the idea. Sod all that junk about Who Said What To Whom… it was Generation X’s equivalent of The Archers, floating by on a daydream, casting out seeds of thought.
This weekend, for absolutely no reason at all, I started daydreaming about Victor Kiam. Kiam is one of a kind. He’s just about the only American entrepreneur… scratch that… he was the ONLY entrepreneur I’d heard of for a huge chunk of my life. Businessmen, y’see, switch me right off. They talk in garbled tongues about things that make my brain sink. They look constantly crabby and like they weigh everything up in terms of value. However, Kiam was different. When he appeared in those iconic adverts for Remington and uttered those immortal lines… “I liked it so much, I bought the company!” and “…or your money back!”, he seemed like a really cool, nice old guy. Where Barry Scott was a hired monkey, paid to shout Cilit Bang! as loudly as he could and Alan Sugar lurched creepily around that spot for Premium Bonds, Victor appeared in your set like he just happened to be passing. With that, I thought I’d do a little reading on him… and it turns out he was pretty unique!
When people talk about who they’ve fancied from the telly, the usual names crop up. Natalie Imbrulgia, Anna Friel, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Aniston, Lynda Carter, Hayden Panettiere and the like. However, no-one can ever agree on such matters. Aniston switches me right off… and I know lads and lasses that wouldn’t touch Buffy The Vampire Slayer with a bargepole. However, the more I think about it, the more I realise that the most fancied gal in TV history is a surprising one. It’s someone left-of-centre. It’s someone you might not expect at all. It’s Sara Gilbert. It’s Darlene from Roseanne. You may well be thinking “Shuddup, idiot,” but you’ve got to hear me out first…. because, this is definitely the truest thing you’ll ever hear.
Sounds a bit lame doesn’t it? A video of TV production company idents. Wait a minute, come back here you great lump. You see, you might not realise it, but some idents can make a whole host of brilliant memories come flooding back. In fact. some of the animated logos were even better than the shows they produced. I mean, Stephen J. Cannell Productions may not mean a damn thing to you, but when I say that, when you’d finished watching The A-Team, and a guy was sat at a typewriter and flung a piece of paper which turned into a production logo, you cogs may well start to rattle. Click over the jump to see some famous, and some not-so-famous-but-incredibly-lovely spots that will fill you with fuzzy glee. This could well be the finest video you see all year… and so simple.
The Cosby Show, without doubt, was one of my favourite shows growing up. I was so hooked that when the show kicked off, I would leap to my feet and mimic Bill Cosby’s dancing. It did no harm that I fancied Phylicia Rashad (who played Clair) and Lisa Bonet (who played Denise). I also thought Malcolm Jamal-Warner (Theo) was the coolest human on the planet. There was a lot to love about the show. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the show, the cast reunited on the Today Show, to help launch a new DVD collection. The show ran from September 1984 until April 1992 and never seemed to get tired. If you click over the jump, you can watch videos of the reunion and, yes, Bill does that dance.
From 1968 to 1980, there was a hipper alternative to Blue Peter. That show was Magpie. Magpie is spoken about in hushed, enthused reverie by those that watched. So it’s surprising that it’s never seen a DVD reissue… that is, of course, until now. The DVD is out on 29th June and should retail at £19.99. What do you get for your money? Well, the release contains 12 of the best episodes of the show, with the standard issue bonus features too. Get yourself over the jump and I’ll tell you what they are.
There’s a release due out which should have sci-fi fans fizzing at the nostrils! Basically, set for release is Gerry Anderson’s Fireball XL5 Special Edition (U). It’s available to buy on DVD on 29th June (retailing at £59.99) and includes 6 discs in one set, including all 39 episodes from the iconic series, complete and uncut plus exclusive extras including a 60-page book and new documentary. Sounds great doesn’t it? If you don’t know much about the show, read over for some clips and the low down.
After last week’s Bauhaus-fest it seems the writers and producers may be getting a little fixated on one artist each week in this second series, as last night’s episode featured three tracks either exclusively Bowie or at least featuring him singing. Although the track list looks as long as in previous weeks it felt like there were long interludes in the programme with no music at all, which is at the least a lost opportunity to showcase some great music. It’s rapidly becoming one of the only reasons I’m still watching the show.
It was a bumper night for Bauhaus fans on Ashes to Ashes last night with not one, not two, but FOUR tracks gracing the background as the team smoked, drank and fought their way through another episode. With them making up almost half of all the music on the show it would have been unthinkable not to choose one of these to feature in our YouTube selection this week, so click through for that and another well-chosen couple of nostalgic ear-worms from the 80s.
Some absolute classics in this week’s episode, including some haunting atmospheric mood music from the fingers of keyboard magician Francis Monkman. No matter how far fetched, ludicrous or opaque Ashes to Ashes becomes, at least it’s still a good excuse to spend an hour having your 80s music memories tweaked, and maybe even dusting off some vinyl and reliving the sound for yourself. Alternatively, with us to do the YouTube searching for you, simply click through for a selection of the tracks from episode 3.
If you’re old enough to remember the eighties then this week’s second episode of Ashes to Ashes had another healthy dollop of musical memories for you, proving once again that not all the orchestral manoeuvres were in the dark in that decade. Click through for the full list and to discover what YouTube goodies we’ve selected for you this week, or go here for the full Ashes to Ashes picture.
Our “soundtrack” feature proved quite popular last year, so we thought we’d re-run it for the second series. Yes, I know the information is available elsewhere. So what? We’ve got extra YouTube footage, better jokes, and you were here anyway, so why clock up extra browser miles? It’s probably greener just to stay here and click through for our version. This time round, instead of featuring classic cars from the series (and/or the eighties) I’ll be sprucing up the soundtrack post headers with featured artists.
You’d think that, with me writing about TV pretty much every single day of the last million years, I’d know loads about telly. Sometimes, something comes along and makes me feel like I’ve never seen a minute of it. You see, I had no idea that Coronation Street ever had a spin-off! What makes it even more baffling is that it starred the legendary Arthur Lowe! The show was called Pardon The Expression and is being reissued by Network on a 2-disc DVD. So what is the show all about? Well, read over and I’ll tell you…
Slightly more than halfway through this first of the three-part revival of what was once voted Best Comedy Series, newly arrived hologram Katerina Bartikovsky delivers the official verdict on Rimmer. He’s a bit crap. Sadly it’s been ten years since Red Dwarf was Best Comedy, and those two words apply not just to Rimmer, but to this whole episode.
Forget the X Factor, forget the Brit Awards, forget Top Of The Pops (what do you mean, you have already?) – when it comes to great, memorable musical moment s on your tellybox all of them come from non-musical shows.
From:Set The Video: NASA: Triumph and Tragedy, BBC Two, Wednesday, 24 June, 9pm