Matt Lucas narrates a look back at the decade's TV shows, meeting people who appeared in them, those who watched them and their creators. The first of two programmes focuses on pleasure and leisure on 1970s television, with featured clips including outrageous adult jokes in pre-watershed sitcoms, smoking cigarettes on prime-time panel shows, a surprising history lesson aimed at children, and St Bernard dogs being offered for prizes. The footage is also seen through the eyes of people who missed the decade altogether and who find the moral values exhibited to be a real eye-opener.
With attitudes to feminism, foreigners and family values being somewhat different 40 years ago, the second of two programmes narrated by Matt Lucas focuses on `good old-fashioned Britishness' on TV in the 1970s. From blacking-up in popular pre-watershed programmes, through to homophobia and xenophobia, the decade seems to have had a different set of manners and morals, and took a casual approach to sexism and racism. Looking back on a selection of surprising clips are the people who made the shows, those who watched them at the time, and younger viewers providing a fresh perspective.
Matt Lucas narrates another look back at TV shows from past decades, with clips and reactions to programmes from people not around to watch them at the time. This first edition focuses on 70s-style education, with a look at the lessons conveyed about society and sex, as well as lazy national stereotypes and the casual attitude of TV towards the health and safety of members of the public.
Narrated by Matt Lucas, this episode looks at the world, as seen on TV in the 1980s. With jaw-dropping clips and a range of bemused, amused and just plain horrified reactions, this series revisits the television of the past. The 80s was a time of revolution on the small screen: from breakfast TV to breaking boundaries, a brand new channel shaking it up, to the anxieties of being a girl or a boy in a scary world of big changes, bid ideas and even bigger hair. The 80s was the decade in which men could co-habit with sea lions without raising eyebrows; when children's TV became a parade of lingerie displays; aggressive poets bombarded us with right-on performance art; and gay men and women came out on TV to shock their friends. It was also a time when monkeys really did play tennis.
Matt Lucas narrates another look back at TV shows from past decades, with clips and reactions to programmes from people not around to watch them at the time. This edition revisits the changing social attitudes reflected on the small screen in the 1960s, including humorous shows which took liberties in the name of satire, disability being mocked and bulletproof vests being put to the test on live TV.
Matt Lucas narrates another set of eye-popping, brain-spinning clips in the series that asks whether the television we watched tells us about who we were. The 1990s was the decade of Cool Britannia. Brand Britain was selling British artists, designers, fashion and music around the globe. While the rest of the world was watching the UK, we were glued to some of the boldest, brashest television ever to hit our screens. It was a decade when on The Word people were asked to submerge themselves in a bath of horse manure, lick dandruff and eat toenails; TFI Friday was stripping things bare; and The Girlie Show had a Wanker of the Week.
Matt Lucas narrates another look back at TV shows from past decades, revisiting the time of revolution on the small screen in the 1980s. This edition focuses on the concept of fear, dealing with the threats of heroin, glue-sniffing and AIDS, Keith Chegwin assessing the impact of video nasties and a young Jeremy Paxman discussing how to survive a nuclear war.
Matt Lucas narrates another look back at TV shows from past decades, based on the theme of living dangerously in the 1970s. Clips feature Tony Blackburn climbing into a cage to sing to four fully-grown lions, mainstream comedians who were perfectly comfortable making jokes about domestic violence, and Spike Milligan's comedy multi-racial sitcom Melting Pot, which was considered too controversial and pulled from the air.
Matt Lucas narrates a look at some classic TV paranoia, with the comedies, the painfully honest documentaries, terrifying public information films, and the satires that made people so anxious 40 years ago. From punk to pot, foreign diseases to free love, gay rights, women's rights, and newly arrived immigrants, 1970s TV and society saw danger everywhere. Some of the famous 70s shows covered include Man Alive and Brass Tacks, as well as The Goodies taking on the police and June Whitfield burning her bra. The show features first-hand accounts from the people who were making telly at the time, including Barry Cryer, Janet Street-Porter and Bill Oddie.
The award-winning show returns with a new episode, packed with jaw-dropping clips. What do the TV programmes of the 1970s tell us about life in the UK 40 years ago? In a time before political correctness, comedy viewers were invited to laugh along at just about everyone who wasn't a straight, white, middle aged man. Whether you were foreign, black, Asian, gay or a woman, you were probably the butt of the joke in 70s hit shows such as On the Buses, The Two Ronnies, Dave Allen at Large, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, Are You Being Served? and even the beloved Morecambe and Wise. Matt Lucas narrates this review of classic family viewing, including Monty Python, Tiswas and It Ain't Half Hot Mum.
The award-winning series continues. Packed with jaw-dropping clips, this series asks what do the programmes of the 70s tell us about life in the UK 40 years ago? This episode flirts with danger on screen. Blue Peter carried on filming as a fire broke out live on air, while The Fun of the Fair showed teenage girls riding motorcycles through burning hoops. At the same time government-produced public information films petrified viewers with scary scenarios of possible accidents in the home. There were also the dangers of the sexy schoolgirl, from St Trinian's to Confessions of a Window Cleaner, featuring storylines that would not be permitted today. Narrated by Matt Lucas.
