Public information films were particularly gruesome in the 1970s. You can embark on a chilling nostalgia trip by watching them all on YouTube, recalling The Spirit of Dark Water, the boy who climbs the pylons to retrieve his kite and an especially graphic one called xxxx, about the dangers of playing on the railways.
A Song For Jenny (BBC1) told the true story of Jenny Nicholson, a young woman killed in the bombing at Edgware Road tube station. 52 people died in the London attacks, and we don't know how most of the bereaved coped with the deaths of their loved ones, and we hope we'll never need to find out for ourselves. We might shudder, on seeing a news flash, wondering what we'd do if we got a phone call or heard a policeman's severe knock on the door, but we can flinch and cast the thought away and just get on with what we were doing. We don't need to answer the dark question 'What would I do if that was my daughter, my husband, my mum?' We can shove it away, and the awful things that particular thought comes dragging with it.
Yes, the couple are given this big fat wad of cash and told to create the wedding of their dreams, so what's the catch? The catch is that the dreams belong to the groom. The bride, if she takes the money, has to do the unthinkable and keep her lip buttoned about the wedding preparations, and allow the groom to go off for three weeks on a spending spree, planning every aspect of their wedding, and she'll know nothing about his plans until the 'big day'.
One of them even declared herself 'over the moon! Can't believe it!' You'd never get such platitudes from the raw, eccentric, charmingly nippy amateurs on the Bake-Off.
I've never been enchanted by Game of Thrones. There may be a perverse strain in my character, but when something becomes so ridiculously popular, when my Twitter feed becomes swollen with people raving and OMG-ing about something, when people keep poking me in the chest, insisting you have got to watch this I naturally flinch from it. I start to dig my heels in. Indeed, the mania for Game of Thrones has provoked me to dig my heels in so far and so deep I fear I may dunt a koala.
In his famous story, There Will Come Soft Rains, he presents a house filled with robots who make the beds, hoover the carpets, toast the bread and make the coffee. The house springs into life each morning, making cheery breakfasts for the family, then cleans up after them, but one morning the people don't appear. There has been a nuclear war and the family have been reduced to shadows on the lawn, but the hi-tech house still ticks along nicely, until one morning when the bread jams in the toaster and starts a fire, and soon the house is burning to the ground, though still ticking, whirring and functioning as it falls, with its family scorched into the grass outside.
TFI Friday (C4) came back last night for a one-off special but I don't believe it won't return properly. Last night's anarchic extravaganza felt like a test or a pilot episode, as though Channel 4 were saying 'are you kids still into this stuff?' According to Twitter, 'the kids' might not be, but all the 30 and 40-somethings certainly were.
Stewart did a terrible thing, an appalling, dreadful thing. Oh, it haunts him. Oh, it tortures him. Oh, the terrible, tormenting thing! It led to him being hounded out of town by the local gangsters, and meant he had to jump aboard a freight train like a hobo and go into exile in London. It means he needs to sheepishly ask permission to return to Stonemouth so he may attend his friend's funeral.
Ascension (Sky1) is set on board Orion, a gargantuan spaceship which secretly left America during the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On board are soldiers, doctors and scientists, plus lots of beautiful women in evening gowns and diamonds. They also have swimming pools, ballrooms and bars at their disposal, and are all having a fine old time.
When you go to see your favourite band you don't want them drowned out by shrieking, urinating teenagers, but that's what happened at Beatles gigs, and it began to annoy the Fab Four. They wouldn't have had to mop up the sweat, tears and urine, but they were certainly miffed that their music was being drowned out. A grumpy Paul McCartney complained that the constant howl at Beatles concerts was making it impossible for the group to perform. What was the point, the baby-faced Scouser asked, if their music was imperceptible? And it was damaging the group's talent as they had no way of knowing how they sounded, and if they were improving or declining. All they could hear was screaming girls.
