80s Mania / I Hate The Sixties
Nostalgia, eh? It's not what it used to be ... And now that we've got the obligatory cheap joke out of the way, let's move on to some even cheaper telly. And if 80s Mania cost more in money, time and inspiration than your average cup of Starbucks coffee - heck, your average cup of instant coffee - then I'll be very surprised indeed.
The uncertain offspring of all those I Remember Five Minutes Ago shows that Channel 4 and Sky One churn out, 80s Mania has budget TV written through it like a stick of rock. Just look at the hosts - Leslie Grantham is bad enough, but pairing him with his Queen Vic sparring partner Anita Dobson is an Olympic-class piece of barrel-scraping.
Together, they threaten to celebrate "the decade of excess with the chart-toppers of the time, plus archive footage of what we were all doing, wearing and singing". Which amounts to what?
Well, some old footage, performances from bands you would rather forget and reminiscences from celebs you already have. The country's cabaret circuit must have been stripped bare for the first show's line-up. Midge Ure performs Vienna, Chris De Burgh sings Lady in Red and - shudder - Jennifer Rush flies in to do The Power of Love.
And those are the best bits. Luckless viewers will also have to suffer the happy memories of Twickenham stripper Erica Roe, Streatham Madam Cynthia Payne and TV-am fitness queen Mad Lizzie.
It's makes you grateful for the grumpy cultural superiority of BBC4. Especially when it is putting on stuff as entertaining as I Hate The Sixties.
This is hardly a laugh a minute, but it's fascinating to watch leading academics and broadcasters grimly explain why the supposed decade of peace and love was the worst thing ever to happen to Britain.
They make a good case. Yes, beautiful town centres were demolished to make way for concrete monstrosities. Yes, the sexual revolution was a doubleedged sword. And yes, swinging London was just a big myth.
They go too far when they say that the 1966 World Cup was a fix, but the rest is smart, sarcastically argued telly. Now if only they could do one called I Hate The Eighties ...
