60's TV shows and comedies.
Posted: 31. Oct 2012, 15:45
@ jayseye and Salix folk.
Hi. I was a boy in the 1960s. Obviously back then there wasn't the tsunami of entertainment options there are now. Tv was in black & white. You had to wait for it to "warm up" a couple of minutes before you could watch anything. If you had favourite weekly TV shows, then you had to be switched on and watching at the right time. In Britain we had just 2 channels; state run BBC and commercial ITV. In '64 that became 3 with the addition of BBC2 for which you needed an addtional antenna. (I wanted to get this extra channel to watch The High Chapparal.)
As a boy of 6 or 7, everybody raving on about the Beatles didn't interest me remotely. What DID interest me was Gerry Anderson sci-fi puppet shows like Fireball XL5, Stingray and of course Thunderbirds. There was also a weekly sci-fi adventure Hanna-Barbera cartoon I would never miss -Johnny Quest. Then there was Herge's Adventures of TinTin. Dr Who and the Daleks were a national institution by 1964 - and I did actually hide behind the sofa when I first saw them the previous year. At the end of the '60s Star Trek also appeared enjoying huge popularity.
After the success of James Bond, films - lots of secret agent type shows appeared. My favourites were The Man From Uncle, Danger Man, The Avengers (John Steed, Emma Peel) and in 1969, The Champions. Roger Moore as The Saint was one I never used to miss.
Popular police series were Gideon's Way, No Hiding Place, Z Cars and Softly, Softly.
As for comedies, they too began in glorious black & white with things like Mike & Bernie Winters, Morecambe and Wise, George and the Dragon with the hilarious Sid James (who had previously been in Hancock's half hour and the Carry On films). Then came colour in 69 with "On The Buses", "Doctor in the House", "Father Dear Father" etc. Some of these were better than others. My parents never got a colour TV until mid 1972 as they were at first very expensive. It was a nice Phillips set. Square corners on the screen and teak side panels. Solid-state too so it didn't need to warm up.
Anyway, now luckily we can see many of the shows again on YT and things like VeeHD.com for which I'm grateful. If I see something I really like, I download the file, put it on a USB key and watch it on the modern Samsung flatscreen. That would have been sci-fi back in the sixties . Then, if you wanted to make a movie it meant a cine-camera, and to record sound, a reel 2 reel tape recorder.
Cheers
Jonathan
Hi. I was a boy in the 1960s. Obviously back then there wasn't the tsunami of entertainment options there are now. Tv was in black & white. You had to wait for it to "warm up" a couple of minutes before you could watch anything. If you had favourite weekly TV shows, then you had to be switched on and watching at the right time. In Britain we had just 2 channels; state run BBC and commercial ITV. In '64 that became 3 with the addition of BBC2 for which you needed an addtional antenna. (I wanted to get this extra channel to watch The High Chapparal.)
As a boy of 6 or 7, everybody raving on about the Beatles didn't interest me remotely. What DID interest me was Gerry Anderson sci-fi puppet shows like Fireball XL5, Stingray and of course Thunderbirds. There was also a weekly sci-fi adventure Hanna-Barbera cartoon I would never miss -Johnny Quest. Then there was Herge's Adventures of TinTin. Dr Who and the Daleks were a national institution by 1964 - and I did actually hide behind the sofa when I first saw them the previous year. At the end of the '60s Star Trek also appeared enjoying huge popularity.
After the success of James Bond, films - lots of secret agent type shows appeared. My favourites were The Man From Uncle, Danger Man, The Avengers (John Steed, Emma Peel) and in 1969, The Champions. Roger Moore as The Saint was one I never used to miss.
Popular police series were Gideon's Way, No Hiding Place, Z Cars and Softly, Softly.
As for comedies, they too began in glorious black & white with things like Mike & Bernie Winters, Morecambe and Wise, George and the Dragon with the hilarious Sid James (who had previously been in Hancock's half hour and the Carry On films). Then came colour in 69 with "On The Buses", "Doctor in the House", "Father Dear Father" etc. Some of these were better than others. My parents never got a colour TV until mid 1972 as they were at first very expensive. It was a nice Phillips set. Square corners on the screen and teak side panels. Solid-state too so it didn't need to warm up.
Anyway, now luckily we can see many of the shows again on YT and things like VeeHD.com for which I'm grateful. If I see something I really like, I download the file, put it on a USB key and watch it on the modern Samsung flatscreen. That would have been sci-fi back in the sixties . Then, if you wanted to make a movie it meant a cine-camera, and to record sound, a reel 2 reel tape recorder.
Cheers
Jonathan
Also enjoyed The Prisoner, right up until the final episode, which struck me as a let-down. BTW Broken Sea Audio did a pretty good "fan fiction" podcast revival of that show, along with many other '60s TV series and movies. 
Really would like to download the shows during off hours, so we could watch them straight through during dinner. 