Picture the scene: it’s a Saturday night in 1993. You’re 10 years old. You’ve been into town with your mum that day to buy some checked, baggy, drawstring trousers from Tammy, some plastic bracelets, Shaggy’s Oh Carolina on CD single from Our Price and the new copy of Shout magazine. You’re all at home, having your tea and preparing for a night in front of the TV. What you don’t yet know is that what you’re about to watch is the greatest television scheduling run that will ever exist. It starts with Baywatch, the US drama about the impossibly fit squad of lifeguards on Santa Monica beach. There’s a young Pamela Anderson as CJ, who’s working alongside Mitch (David Hasselhoff) but you’re mostly fixated on Hobie (played by Jeremy Jackson). There’s a lot of slow mo running, and a lot of high drama as a drunk college student with a dark secret falls off the pier.
Once that’s done with: you’re gearing up for Gladiators. There’s Wolf, there’s Jet, there’s Hunter, Rhino and - most importantly - there’s referee John Anderson whose catchphrase ‘Contender: ready! Gladiator: ready!’ you scream along to, euphoric. There are big foam fingers, Queen singing Another One Bites The Dust and Ulrika Jonsson and John Fashanu. One of your biggest ambitions is to be in that audience at the Birmingham NEC. One day.
Then, there’s Blind Date. Dating is an alien concept (though you did get a box of Black Magic on Valentine’s Day from your crush!!), but you enjoy the banter, the men in huge nineties lounge suits making crap jokes which make the audience do that ‘oo-oooooh!’ noise that all audiences in the nineties did. You already know Cilla Black is a legend, and ‘our Graham’ gives you a quick reminder of the line up before they’re sent off on a date which was inevitably a curry or some lurid drinks at a cocktail lounge.
There’s a reason you remember this all so clearly: there has never been anything that could compare to the programming we bore witness to on those electric, heady Saturday nights. There is nothing that comes close these days, because the concept of a programming schedule is pretty irrelevant. We’re not bound to four channels, or watching things when they air: we’re in charge now.
One of the things I miss the most about the TV of my childhood is the reassuring feeling of instinctively knowing what would be on when you turned on the TV and watching it (whether you wanted to or not). Saturday mornings: The Raccoons, Live and Kicking. Sunday afternoons: Little House on the Prairie (sorry but why did everyone watch this?). Tuesdays: Byker Grove. Everything felt right. Streaming services lend an air of chaos to the world: you can access any episode of Friends at any time and that feels wrong. These were rationed to us as tweens at a rate of one a week, then, later, two a day when Friends aired on E4. In fact I think the last notable TV line up of my life was the day time programming of my student years. We’d sit down to Countdown on Channel 4 at 3.15, followed by Coach Trip or Come Dine With Me, then to E4 for two episodes of Friends, then Neighbours, then Hollyoaks. Then you’d watch every episode again in the Hollyoaks omnibus on a Sunday, in bed.
I love being able to watch what I want when I want. But I will forever feel nostalgic for the days where you watched the same three hours of television as the rest of the country.
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