At first sight, this looks like a meme. And it is. Sort of. But it's also about something that's been concerning me of late: the youth of today. Ah, I must be getting old if I'm getting concerned about the youth of today – and using the phrase "the youth of today". It's a short step to the Daily Telegraph from here.
What's your favourite TV decade? In other words, which decade produced the television you love the most? Maybe it was the 60s with its escapism and gritty social realism, all rolled into one. Maybe it was the bleak 70s, or the action-packed 80s? It might even be the 90s, when US television really got into quality products for the first time.
But the second part of the question is slightly different: how did you get to see that TV?
I'm gambling that, to a certain extent, most people's favourite TV decade – if they have a favourite decade – will be the time in which they were growing up. If they were young in the 80s, they probably fondly remember 80s TV. And so on.
But there will be a few who will cite an earlier time, and probably a few who will say that the current programmes on TV are the best we've ever had. I'm very fond of 1960s and 1970s, even though I was either too young to have seen very much of it or I hadn't even been born yet – and there's a whole load of 1950s TV that's very good, too.
I grew up in the 80s when there were just four TV channels available to most people. Back then, network programmers had no problem with sticking old programmes and movies on at primetime. Channel 4 stuck The Addams Family, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Munsters, and The Abbott and Costello Show on at 5pm on weekdays, and The Avengers on at night. BBC2 was quite happy to repeat The Invaders, the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Falcon and the Saint movies, and more at 6pm of an evening. ITV littered its daytime schedules with The Sandbaggers and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) and stuck The Baron, The Champions and Thunderbirds on at the weekends. And BBC1 would trawl out Bonanza on a Sunday afternoon. That's how I got introduced to the TV classics of the past – as well as a few old bits of rubbish.
Nowadays, you can get all of this on DVD, of course, and with multi-channel TV, there are networks more or less dedicated to old faves: ITV4 is a haven for all those ITC shows (R&H (Deceased), Space: 1999, The Champions and The Prisoner are all on right now); there's the Bonanza Channel (or used to be at least) for anyone wanting to catch Lorne Greene before he boarded the original Battlestar Galactica; and BBC4 will occasionally dredge something up from the archives for a brief season (Steptoe and Son, recently, or Doctor Who, starting on the 5th April).
But not the terrestrial channels. More to the point, you have to go looking for this stuff: it's not right there in front of you when you turn on the TV. Which is all well and good, but how – and this is my big point – are the youth of today going to ever see any of their TV heritage and become interested in it? How will they ever experience the thrills of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone or The Night Gallery? How will they know the joy of Mrs Peel and Steed's interplay, Carter and Regan's bad driving, or the simple happiness of life in Camberwick Green and Trumpton?
Obviously, learning French, reading classics of literature, and getting a fair understanding of physics, chemistry and biology so they can laugh at homeopaths, particularly French homeopaths, are far more important than tele. But whole lot of effort, expertise, creativity and passion went into creating these old shows, some of which are infinitely superior to their modern successors. Who wouldn't want the original Invaders over its remake, for example? Or, indeed, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - shame on you Vic and Bob. Some of the shows are historical documents in their own rights and are referenced in books and films of the time; some even changed society altogether. And I think it would be a shame to forget that heritage, just as it would be a shame to forget the literature of the 1960s, say.
Is it going to take parents forcing DVDs on their kids or locking every channel except the nostalgia channels to teach them TV history – not that that's a particularly good way to enthuse kids about anything? Now that MOMI's gone we no longer have the equivalent of New York's Paley Center so that's not an option. Worse still, are the youth of today just never going to be able to relate to old TV, any more than most people can relate to classics of Victorian literature? Should we just let ephemeral old TV disappear into the ether and live in the now?
What do you think?
Related entries
- April 16, 2008: Review: Leatherheads
My review of the movie Leatherheads, starring George Clooney and Renée Zellweger
March 27, 2008 | Reply
I've got so many shows I loved spread throughout the timeline - 'Maverick' from the '50s (How I saw it: local syndication while in college), 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' of the 60s (afternoon repeats by the network affiliate mostly), 'St. Elsewhere' from the 80s, 'Picket Fences' from the 90s, and now 'Lost' in the new millennium (all of which I "lived through").
It's the 70s though that I'll pick as my fave, and that's another decade of viewing that I "lived through". I entered high school at the beginning of the decade, was living in NYC by the end of it.
The 70s just had the largest output of shows I count among my top faves in overall enjoyment and certain subsets. Another factor has to be the ambience of the times in which I watched these show - VCRs were practically unheard of and too cost-prohibitive ('Columbo' made a big deal out of one as an alibi in one episode) so that we had to watch those shows in real time or miss out. Which is why the early 70s (at least here in the USA) was a golden age for commercials - you had no choice but to watch them, so the advertisers could take their time to make them entertaining... instead of the info-dumps crammed into 15 seconds that they've become.
Social mores became relaxed, so that certain topics could be broached for the first time, and that began the "pushing the envelope" phase. And those who grew up watching TV were now starting to write for it - which may or may not be a good thing.
Plus there was the mood-enhancing "atmosphere", the clouds of which I lived under for a good chunk of that time.
And that brings me to the shows:
Columbo
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Saturday Night Live
Monty Python (for America, of course. We didn't even hear about them until 1974)
Doctor Who (same reasoning - I don't think it got over here for the most part until 1978 or so)
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
SCTV
WKRP In Cincinnatti
Soap
Three's Company
The Bob Newhart Show
All In The Family
Maude
The Muppet Show
mini-series
movies of the week
and Jiggle TV in general, of course, of course.
And although I saw it in the summer of '68, 'The Prisoner' got its major revival here in '77; and I was finally able to show my friends what I was blabbering about in that previous decade.
Those are just my choices - I left out a lot of biggies that didn't excite me as much as the general public.
March 27, 2008 | Reply
Put me down for the Seventies (and occasionally earlier) too.
Whether I can claim it as my personal decade I'm not sure - I think of myself as growing up in the 80s, but I was 10 in 1980 so most of my kids tv watching was already pretty entrenched.
My initial favourite shows were those I remember from being a kid - Doctor Who with Pertwee and then Tom Baker, the glory which was Pipkins, chunks of Space:1999, the first year of Blakes 7 and any number of BBC children's classic adaptations.
But then, ahving watched everything I remmebered on video in the late 80s and early 90s, I started looking out for old televsion I hadn't seen and discovered that the Seventies almost invariably produced my favourite shows.
Come the internet and trading old grainy videos, then cds and now the bittorrent revolution, and I still prefered seventies and earlier shows - whole strands of television like the grim miserablism which links shows as diverse as Survivors, Secret Army and Sapphire and Steel; creepy kids telly like Escape into Night and The Clifton House Mystery; fantastically silly sitcoms like Man About the House, George and Mildred and Dads Army which even with all the daftness were still capable of the unexpected; and above all drama after drama (from the BBC mainly) which doesn't patronise the viewer or underestimate his intelligence and where good writing, acting and direction are more important than bright lights, expensive fx and marketing.
God, I sound like a right grumpy old man today...
March 28, 2008 | Reply
I think 70s TV mirrored 70s cinema to a certain extent. All the experimental stuff in Hollywood happened during the late 60s and early 70s and TV took a little time to catch up.
March 28, 2008 | Reply
Ooh, this is a good game. Hmmm. The bulk of my childhood is 70s, which is probably be why LOM appealed so much. The use of the Test Card, one of my earliest TV memories, genius.
Hmm. Sixties memories include Watch With Mother: Bill and Ben, Pogles Wood, The Herb Garden, which I loved. Andy Pandy/Woodentops which I hated.
I can remember saying aged 5 at school my favourite tv programmes were Scooby Doo and Blue Peter (not dissimilar from my own sprogs).
Also of course I loved Dr Who. I liked Tom Baker more then Jon Pertwee. And as far as I was concerned it was all down hill after he left.
I also loved The Tomorrow People, plus all the children's classics they showed on Saturday afternoons.
I also loved alot of the sixties shows which got repeated: Randall & Hopkirk, The Persuaders (I was in love with Tony Curtis), and The High Chaparal.
Later on cop shows like Kojak, Columbo and Starsky and Hutch featured. Plus English stuff like The Professionals (my friend lived next door to Martin Shaw which involved lots of visits to her back garden to try and spot him), and The New Avengers...
Wasn't allowed to watch The Sweeney, but Minder was great.
Comedy was all Young Ones and Not the Nine O Clock News.
I missed lots of 80s telly cos I was a student and having too much of a good social life. So I think that probably makes me a sixties/seventies girl... (And now I feel really old).