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On the Best of British - Nostalgia and Television

Posted August 15, 2002 8:51 PM.

There are times when the BBC does something well. And when the BBC does something well it does it very well. Take their online title sequence archive for example. Loads of famous RealOne-Up-The-Wazoo-ed TV show memories from the last one million billion years. Most of which I remember - since I am ludicrously, stupidly, absurdly old. Key favourites - and memory-inspiring moments include:

  • A Very Peculiar Practice
    There are loads of entries about A Very Peculiar Practice in my feeble diaries of the time. I was obsessed. It was so gloriously bizarre - a young doctor completely out of his depth in some modern University where Nuns rifled through the bins. I tried to replicate an image from the credits with Microsoft Paint on the early PCs in my school computer lab.
  • Red Dwarf
    It come on TV when I was sixteen. I remember the weekly ritual of turning all my lights off in my bedroom and watching my parents old clapped out TV with the sound down and the door shut so that when my parents went to bed I wouldn't disturb them too much. I used to have to do that a lot. My parents went to bed really early. Still do.
  • Doctor Who (Peter Davison)
    I remember Tom Baker turning into Peter Davison more than I remember losing my virginity. I remember being utterly confused by the whole thing. And being completely glued to his run. I remember when Adric died and there was no credits music. I remember being really freaked out by that.
  • The Adventure Game
    It appeared to be on all the time - thousands of times a week maybe. Maybe more. And it made utterly no sense whatsoever either. Every single characters' name was an anagram of 'Dragon'. Everyone in the UK around my age knows this already...

Other memorables: Box of Delights, Butterflies, Bergerac and Battle of the Planets.

© 1999-2007 Tom Coates