IT was one of the biggest TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s, pulling in audiences of more than 20 million at its peak. Now a mini "That's Life!” reunion is taking place in a different format 27 years after the last episode aired.
That’s Life!
In the streaming era, it’s hard to fathom a TV show regularly picking up more than 20 million viewers a week, but the BBC series, hosted by Dame Esther Rantzen, managed to do so.
It was a magazine-style show?
That’s Life! which ran from 1973 to 1994, aired on Sunday nights, before shifting to Saturdays on BBC1, offering a mix of the silly to the serious in a way perhaps similar to Twitter newsfeeds now.
Talking dogs?
Regular features did indeed include showing peculiar shaped vegetables and interviewing dogs who could say “sausages” as any YouTube search would affirm.
However?
There was more to it, with Rantzen and a team of co-presenters also highlighting hard-hitting issues of the day such as the need for children to wear seatbelts - the series is credited with sparking the eventual change in the law that made children wearing rear seatbelts mandatory in 1989.
ChildLine?
Rantzen’s work on the show led to the founding of children’s welfare charity ChildLine.
And if you’re a Twitter user…
…you may frequently see a video from an episode in February 1988 showing Rantzen producing a scrapbook listing the names of hundreds of mostly Jewish children rescued from Czechoslovakia in 1939 by "British Schindler" Sir Nicholas Winton. Many of those he saved were in the audience and surprised him by revealing who they were in emotional scenes that now frequently go viral as the video is shared time and again.
Now?
The show is returning in a new form, a podcast called “That’s After Life!”, hosted by Rantzen and one of her former co-hosts from the original series, Adrian Mills. It is a series reminiscent of the original, offering a mix of news, views, commentary and comedy and an array of guests including Anton Du Beke, Michael Palin and Barry Humphries.
And members of the public?
Just like That’s Life circa 1980, anyone with unusual skills or talented pets are invited to contact the podcast with a view to featuring at hello@ThatsAfterLife.com
Dame Esther is still hard at work?
Now 80, she presented a Channel 5 documentary last month about loss, titled "Esther Rantzen: Living with Grief" examining the experience of bereavement and focusing on her own journey, having lost her husband 20 years earlier.
And life has come full circle…
…Rantzen told the Guardian, “When I was getting vox pops for That’s Life! I always used to seek out people of 60-plus, because they knew what they thought and didn’t care who agreed with them”, adding that at a party in recent times, she met talk show icon Michael Parkinson “and I said, ‘I’ve become one of the funny old ladies I used to talk to in the street!’”
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