Category: Television

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Xmas TV

There used to be a time when tv at Christmas time was a highly anticipated event. Yes, you have a huge captive audience. In the 1960s and maybe 70s there were three channels (2 x BBC plus ITV) and audiences would be millions throughout the day.

Nowadays, where there are so many channels stuck in a computer-programmed rut of Wheeler Dealers, Repair Shop, Judge Judy and so on, even the main channels find it hard to present anything new or thrilling.

In the olden days (sorry) there were things the nation looked forward to. Here are a few random reminiscences:

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Puzzle

A family member sent me a puzzle the other day. It had apparently appeared on tv in a quiz and was worth close to £100,000.

I did not see the show, and here is my version of the question:

there are 100 people in a room. 99% are left handed. How many left handed people need to leave the room to bring the percentage down to 98%?

There are plenty of people doing this on-line, including this:

It’s fine to do it by algebra, but you couldn’t and wouldn’t use this method on tv in a timed quiz for a huge sum of money. But we know why he has posted this – the arithmetic is really interesting.

Have a go yourself, then look at the next page.

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Space Patrol

One of our favourite tv series from the very early 1960s was Space Patrol. This is the UK puppet (actually marionette) series about Captain Larry Dart and his crew who fly round the galaxy (actually, just the solar system) trying to keep the peace and sort out problems.

It was a black and white series, though you can find colourised episodes on YouTube. There are box sets available of the originals.

It’s a little forgotten these days, partially we suspect because it is not Gerry Anderson.

The stories were a bit silly. Science seemed to go out of the window. It took them months to fly anywhere so they went into deep freeze, while the people left behind got no older.

There’s also some oddly weird dialogue that you may hear if you watch an episode.

There were some things we liked: the design of New York and Space Patrol HQ, watching Galasphere 347 coming in to land on that building, and the electronic music and sounds. In truth, 60 odd years later and we still like them.

Here’s a clip:

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