1 9 6 6 (UK) 3 x 30 minute episodes Premiering on 7 May 1966, this short BBC2 series comprised three half-hour episodes of absurd comedy written by N F Simpson (author of One Way Pendulum and A Resounding Tinkle), the…
1 9 6 7 (UK) 4 x 30 minute episodes Premiering on Monday 2 January 1967, this four-part BBC2 comedy series was set in suburbia and revolved around married couple Bro (Edwin Apps) and Middie (Pauline Devaney) Paradock, characters from the…
1 9 6 7 (UK) 3 x 90 minute episodes Premiering on Monday 2 January 1967, and aired as part of the Theatre 625 programme, BBC2 presented this Evelyn Waugh trilogy – acclaimed as one of the finest works of fiction…
1 9 6 7 (UK) 8 x 25 minute episodes Following the critically mauled The Late Show, John Bird and John Fortune moved on to A Series of Bird’s. Breaking away from their established sketch comedy pattern, each episode of this new…
1 9 6 6 – 1 9 6 7 (UK) 23 x 40/30 episodes Premiering on Saturday 15 October 1966, this attempt by the BBC to recapture the success of the political satire programmes That Was The Week That Was, Not…
1 9 5 9 – 1 9 6 0 (UK) 6 x 30 minute episodes This Saturday night thriller from ATV began with witchcraft on Hampstead Heath, a Malayan youth turning into a spider, and a putative zombie prowling the hospital…
1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 1 (UK) The first Asian magazine programme on BBC Television was an External Services radio programme which was televised for the first time on 22 April 1955, with the Radio Times declaring, “Young…
1 9 5 7 (UK) 32 x 25 minute programmes The first national television programme for schools broadcast on BBC TV premiered on 24 September 1957 with an episode about Canada, entitled ‘The Land of the Younger Son’. It was introduced…
1 9 6 9 – 1 9 7 0 (UK) 13 x 30 minute episodes Thora Parker (Thora Hird) was the landlady of a North Country boarding house that predominantly catered for showbiz types. She oversaw the comings and goings of…
1 9 9 4 (UK) 5 x 30 minute episodes Premiering on Friday 21 January 1994, this late-night BBC Scotland series for BBC2 presented sharp, topical comedy with Scottish comedian Craig Ferguson bringing his unique brand of humour to a series…
1 9 6 8 (UK) 6 x 60 minute episodes This gangland drama from Granada followed the fortunes of South London crime boss Alan Spindoe across six one hour episodes. Alan Spindoe (Ray McAnally) was sent down for seven years for…
1 9 6 8 (UK) 10 x 30 minute episodes Premiering on Wednesday 8 May 1968, the 10-week ATV series It Must be Dusty presented pop singer Dusty Springfield with musical guests including Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Kiki Dee, Manfred Mann, Scott Walker, The…
1 9 7 7 – 1 9 8 1 (UK) 92 x 30 minute episodes Get It Together was a weekly TV pop show – filmed in Manchester for Granada TV – featuring groups miming to their hits in front of…
1 9 7 7 – 1 9 7 8 (USA) 21 x 60 minute episodes One of television’s more serious attempts to explore the problems of adolescents, James at 15 starred Lance Kerwin as James Hunter, an intelligent, sensitive boy growing up in…
1 9 7 3 – 1 9 7 5 (UK) 60 x 5 minute episodes Underground, overground, wombling free . . . Debuting on 5 February 1973 with the episode ‘Orinoco and the Big Black Umbrella’, the furry, long-nosed Wombles of…
1 9 6 9 (Netherlands) 13 x 30 minute episodes In the early 16th century, during the Guelders Wars, the knight Floris van Rosemund (Rutger Hauer) returns home from a trip around the world – accompanied by the Indian fakir/doctor/alchemist Sindala…
Alma Angela Cohen was born in London in May 1932. The family name was originally Kogin, from which emerged the stage name Alma Cogan. Following the family’s move to Worthing, 11-year-old Alma entered the Sussex Queen of Song competition and…
Petula Clark was born in Epsom, Surrey, UK, on 15 November 1932 and was encouraged by her father to seek a career in show business from an early age. Her mother taught her how to sing, and her first “paid”…
Once upon a time, there were two Scottish brothers – lain and Gavin Sutherland – peddlers of particularly earthy soft-rock fare with two albums on Island (1972’s The Sutherland Brothers Band and Lifeboat). Once upon a time, too, Quiver – a guitar-tinged English…
In 1969, while Neil Young was laying the foundation for a solo career, his Buffalo Springfield partner Steven Stills was playing and recording with former Byrd David Crosby and Graham Nash from The Hollies in private. One of their first appearances was at the Woodstock festival,…
In 1964, Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark began playing folk music in coffee houses around Los Angeles, calling themselves The Jet Set. They eventually got a rhythm section – drummer Michael Clarke and bassist Chris Hillman…
The Australian music magazine Go-Set was launched in February 1966 by Phillip Frazer, a quietly spoken, blonde 19-year-old who had previously edited the Monash University paper Lot’s Wife. The title was an amalgam of the catchwords “go-go” and “jet set”. The…
Beginning in 1969, Greg Shaw’s Who Put The Bomp was a fanzine for aficionados of such then-unfashionable future New Wave building-blocks as Surf Music, Girl Groups, Power Pop and Garage Rock. Many of the mag’s contributors were inspired to start…
Long recognised as Australia’s foremost jazz, blues and soul singer, Renee Geyer (born 1953) issued 15 studio albums over the course of a 40+ year career. Best known for her rich, soulful, passionate and husky vocal delivery, Geyer was also…
This cut-price poppycock begins with husky seaman Thorne Sherman (James Best) arriving with supplies for Doctor Craigis (Baruch Lumet), a scientist working on an isolated island with his team. A storm breaks before the goods can be unloaded, and Thorne…
This 1958 American International Pictures release has newlyweds Eric (John Hudson) and Jenni Whitlock (Peggy Webber) retire to his desolate old mansion, where Eric’s first wife Marianne died from a mysterious freak accident. Jenni, who has a history of mental…
Professor Howard Erling (Frederic Downs) and his assistant, Victor (John Stratton), build a prototype time machine in a remote swampland lab in Florida and begin “trading objects with the future”. The Professor’s daughter, Claire (Joyce Holden), sends the latest artefact…
Nuclear physicist Steve March (John Agar) and his colleague Dan Murphy (Robert Fuller) visit a remote location to investigate unusual radioactivity. A blinding light kills Dan, and Gor – an evil sex-starved criminal brain from the planet Arous – takes…
This World War II melodrama – approached from the distaff side – is set in Nazi-menaced Yugoslavia during 1943 and concerns five Yugoslav women who are punished by partisans for consorting with a German. They subsequently join the guerrillas but…
John Cummings (Richard Todd), a colourless cosmetics salesman, buys a car to increase his business. But a gang controlled by vain, flashy and two-timing garage owner Lionel Meadows (Peter Sellers, cast against type as the leader of a stolen car…
This quite extraordinary anti-communist tract masquerades as naive science fiction. An alien (Arnold Moss) transports five people from five different countries on Earth to his spaceship where he gives each a box of capsules capable of destroying human life within…
This witty and heart-warming Technicolor comedy was based on the phenomenally successful novel and Broadway and London plays concerning a batty Bohemian who, following the adoption of her orphan nephew, loses her money in the Wall Street crash, struggles desperately…
By the early 1980s, thanks to hits like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, video arcade games were starting to take on a playful, cartoon-like appearance. Sensing a trend, some bright executive at Nintendo decided to take the next logical step: create…
Encouraged by the success of Atari, other companies tried dipping their joysticks into the home video game market in 1976. Coleco introduced Telstar Pong, while the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Company weighed in with the Fairchild Channel F; the first programmable…
It was an Atari world back in the late 70s and early 80s, but Mattel’s Intellivison staged a pretty good coup. The Atari VCS (aka the 2600) was the untouchable juggernaut of the home video game world, with hundreds of titles under…
The video game Donkey Kong was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and is owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of the eponymous gorilla and a clan of other apes and monkeys in an industrial construction setting – using barrels as…
Atari had experimented with head-on racing games back in 1976 with Night Driver, but it took a licensed game from Namco (designers of Pac-Man and Dig Dug, among others) to really put the company at the head of the racing…
This maze arcade game was developed by Namco in 1981 and released in 1982, licensed and distributed by Atari. The player controlled Dig Dug to defeat all enemies – “Pookas” (red creatures with comically large goggles) and “Fygars” (fire-breathing green…
Atari’s first racer, the little-known 1974 game Gran Track 10, wasn’t the hit that everyone had hoped it would be. But rather than abandoning the idea, Atari decided to go bigger and better, and the following year, they released Indy…
Gaming companies had launched primitive and clumsy portable consoles in the past, but it was the arrival of the Nintendo Game Boy that launched mobile gaming into the modern era. Reliable, simple, and bundled with Tetris, the Game Boy was…
On 16 January 1979, a young Ukrainian woman jumped from the Russian cruise ship Leonid Sobinov in Sydney Harbour wearing only a red bikini. 18-year-old Lillian Gasinskaya, from Odessa, swam to shore and was found on a Pyrmont footpath on Sunday…
January 01 – Flashing indicator lights become legal on motor vehicles in Britain. 10 – A BOAC Comet jet airliner on its way from Singapore to London comes down into the Mediterranean about 20 minutes after taking off from Rome.…
January 01 – The US gives $216 million in aid to South Vietnam. 01 – The 1955 Cotton Bowl Classic American football game is won by the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. 02 – President José Antonio Remón Cantera is assassinated…
January 02 – 66 Football fans are killed when a barrier collapses at Ibrox Park in Glasgow following a match between old firm rivals Celtic and Rangers. A few seconds before the end of the match, as fans were already…
January 01 – French singer Maurice Chevalier dies (b. 1888) in Paris. He is 83. 03 – An IRA bomb injures 55 women and children when it explodes in a Belfast department store. 04 – Rose Heilbron is the first…
On 25 November 1984, 36 British recording artists gathered at a studio in Notting Hill, London, to donate their time and talent to a song written by Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure (Ultravox) to raise money for the…
It remains the defining assembly of rock music – an unprecedented gathering of at least 300,000 young, long-haired, raggedy clad Americans “going up the country” in New York’s Catskill Mountains, searching for answers, hoping for transcendence . . . and…
January 01 – Western Samoa becomes independent. 01 – The Beatles are turned down by Decca Records, whose A&R man Dick Rowe enters the history books when he advises them that “groups with guitars are out”. 03 – Fidel Castro…
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Featured Blog Posts
A look at some fascinating behind the scenes shots from some classic television shows. UFO (1970 – 1973) Star Trek (1966 – 1969) Z Cars (1962 – 1978) Steptoe and…
The BBC’s Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd’s Bush officially opened on 21 May 1950. The site had started out as film studios, first for Gaumont and later for Gainsborough and…
Steptoe and Son (1962 – 1965) The Morecambe and Wise Show (1961 – 1964, 1966 – 1976, 1980 – 1983)) Happy Days (1974 – 1984) The Dustbinmen (1969 – 1970)…
30 January 1969 The Beatles made their last ever live appearance together on 30 January 1969, putting on a free lunchtime concert on a hastily constructed wooden stage on the…
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28 July 2021 The son of comedian Eric Morecambe has found a missing episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show in the family home’s attic. While searching for paperwork in…
According to today’s regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s probably shouldn’t have survived . . . Our baby cots were covered…
Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) As the episode begins, Mary is talking excitedly on the phone at her office desk, planning her Christmas visit with her mother. Right afterwards, her…
Featured Aussie Posts
Peter Weir achieved a career-high as the Oscar-nominated director of The Truman Show (1998). His directorial debut, however, could not be more different from films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1976)…
1 9 6 9 (Australia) 26 x 25 minute episodes “The year: 2500 AD. The Phoenix Five. The crew: Captain Roke, Ensign Adam Hargreaves, Cadet Tina Kulbrick, and their computeroid Karl.…
1 9 8 1 – 1 9 9 3 (Australia) 1057 x 60 minute episodes This long-running Australian drama series revolved around the activities of a medical clinic, hospital and veterinary…
In late 1974, Gough Whitlam’s Australian Labor government allocated a new AM radio license to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) for a “youth-style” radio station that could reach future potential…
Formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1986, The Hummingbirds comprised singer/guitarist (and principal songwriter) Simon Holmes, singer/guitarist Alannah Russack, singer/bassist Robyn St Clare and drummer Mark Temple. Their debut LP, LoveBUZZ (1990), was…
Little River Band was an Australian ‘supergroup’ of savvy and well-experienced musicians. Three members came from an acoustic band called Mississippi while Dutch-born Beeb Birtles had been a member of Zoot,…
Featured Canadian Posts
1 9 7 1 – 1 9 7 5 (Canada) 90 x 30 minute episodes This syndicated magic variety show screened from 1971 to 1975 and was known in 1975 as The…
The song Sh-Boom was originally recorded early in 1954 by The Chords. But it was the version by Canadian quartet The Crew Cuts (released later the same year) which attracted the attention…
This Canadian remake of a Danish film called Think of a Number (Tænk på et tal) has timid bachelor bank teller Miles Cullen (Elliott Gould) held up at gunpoint -…
This modern horror classic from Canadian writer/director David Cronenberg – in which he seamlessly blends the genres of science fiction and conspiracy thriller into an exhilarating ride – suggests there…
1 9 5 9 – 1 9 6 0 (Canada) 39 x 30 minute episodes French-Canadian actor Gilles Pelletier starred as Corporal Jacques Gagnier in this Canadian television drama series about…
The Pointed Sticks formed in Vancouver, Canada, in 1977 when singer Nick Jones returned from England where he had witnessed the excitement of the British punk rock scene. Taking the…
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Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 1999 and contains some words and references which reflect the attitudes of those times and which may be considered culturally sensitive, offensive or inappropriate today.
