Saturday Morning television has had a long and ignoble tradition of brightly-coloured and agonisingly shallow celebrity-fests patronisingly aimed at Children as though they only had a thirty-second attention span. Of all the mainstream representatives of this format only Going Live! managed to keep itself above the run-of-the-mill-awfulness with presenters who were at least capable of imposing an air of dignity on the proceedings. This one exception aside, however, the spectacle on offer to young minds from 9:30 on a Saturday morning was usually one of pure unalloyed crap, imagination having been flung out of the window in favour of a quick-to-assemble conveyer belt of tat.
Only Number 73, TVS flagship offering, offered a genuine alternative - almost as if someone had really thought about a concept for children. Which is lucky, because in fact they had. Producer and deviser John Dale succeeded in introducing the elements of character and place into the traditional magazine programme format, creating an adult world into which the audience was invited on Saturday morning.
Additionally the world of 73 was inhabited by a late-Neighbours style non-nuclear family, itself quite an innovation even for the early 80s as Thatchers misplaced capitalist ideal seized the nation.
From the outside No. 73 looks like a tumbledown house, but once inside its a different world. The house, in the south of England, is rented by an eccentric old lady called Ethel Spoon, who is like a fairy godmother to the children in the area. Each week she opens her door and is visited by superstars and famous personalities who provide a madcap spectacle of music, competitions and fun. Ethel is assisted in looking after her guests by her nephew Harry and her boyfriend Percy Trotter. (TV Times 16-22 January 1982)
The names were changed before transmission, to Ethel Davis and Percy Simmons, partially because their self-consciously humorous nature belied the attempt at realism in the concept, but largely because they were shite. The other main character was roller-skating ginge Dawn Lodge. Between them the cast covered all the archtypes likely to appeal to juvenile scruffs - wacky aunt, big brother, big sister, and a nutcase (Percy) for good measure. Authoritarian parental figures were included in the shape of next door neighbours Hazel and Martin Edwards (although the spin-off series, No. 75, never materialised).
Around the standard requirement of guests traipsing mud into Ethels kitchen were threaded plots, and in retrospect these were the programmes main - and now only - appeal. During the course of the series the tenants of Number 73 had to contend with roadbuilders, creditors, Ethels ill-advised and aborted marriage to her boring Bank Manager, Frederick Crossfield, and ultimately the termination of their tenancy before bulldozers moved in - to name just a few of the more major horrors thrown in their direction. If all this sounds unbearably stressful and unconducive to a relaxing Saturday morning in front of the box, just remember they never had to contend with Trevor and Simon.
73 replaced TISWAS (This Is Saturday, We Are Stupid) for a brief period, angering many in the TVS area, but finally became permanent and networked when Tiswas folded. Big changes came in series 3, when 73 moved from the TVS base at Southampton to the new Maidstone Studios (with an address change that confused many of the more gullible viewers), Ethel regenerated into a more youthful incarnation and Percy regenerated into Alec Simmons, developing a Scottish accent along the way. Actor Patrick Doyle soon left the show, and to this day refuses to admit that he was ever in it. His replacements, scouse doodler Neil Buchanan and future Eurovision hopeful Kim Goody, fitted the formula better, to the extent that they were allowed to play themselves rather than wackily monickered alter-egos. The following year the annoying local brats that infested the house were finally ditched, all of which enabled the program to settle down considerably from a creaky Southern-style production to a slick and enjoyable flight of fantasy.
Slick that is, apart from the acting. Nick Staversons enthusiastic portrayal of Harry Stern, perpetual 80s fashion victim, was desperately well intentioned, but his abilty to remember the script didnt quite match up, with the result that his amusingly recast sentences became something of a trademark. (Still, What could go possibly wrong?) Even so, his acting at least engendered some semblance of interest. Neil Buchanan stuck so closely to his lines that each carefully scripted ad-lib was quite obviously exactly that, resulting in a persona more leaden than the average chruch roof.
73s only drawback was its blatant air of provincialism. None of the stars were hugely glittering, and the stunning parade of non-entities seemed feeble padding to the soap opera within the show.
Ultimately 73s only real drawback was its blatant air of provincialism. None of the stars were hugely glittering, with the possible exception of Willy Rushton, and as such the stunning parade of non-entities seemed feeble padding to extend the soap opera inherent within the show. Dawns style of interview highlights this most obviously: faced with yet another fumbling cretin you can almost see her lack of interest tipping her gently into coma. (Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. Could you bugger off now please?) The format of the show, however, did at least provide for swift termination of celebrity dullness: [sound of madcap doorbell] Oh, sorry. Ive gotta go and answer the door...
However, it was far from all bad. Sandi Toksvigs talent as a deadpan comedian allowed her to play Ethel perfectly straight. During her tenure as landlady the character comedy and interplay was far more low key, subtle and occasionally sly. (Toksvig was also by far the best adlibber out of the cast, even if she did have to drop completely out of character to do so.) Even the potentially hammy am-dram films provided by Front Door Productions, liberally seeded with bad puns and with obvious gags lurking around every corner, were underplayed enough to be funny. Sadly, after Ethels unexplained departure in 1986 the restraining hand on the tiller vanished completely.
The show struggled to reinvent itself to avoid the gaping hole left by her departure. Several new characters were dragged in to allow the series existing staff to take shifts on a watered down extra edition on Sunday (recorded immediately after the live Saturday edition by a less than enthusiastic cast and crew). On screen the sporadic appearances of the favourite cast members were bewildering at best and disappointing at worst. In addition Harry took centre stage as man of the house and any subtlety vanished completely. Of the later additions to the cast, only their new neighbour, the twitchy, badly dressed Hamilton Dent (Richard Waites), showed any inspiration.
The collapse of the programme was mirrored in the story as the budiling began falling down and the gang faced eviction by unscrupulous landlord J.C. Birch. They needed another home and fast. In some respects, 73s demise was inevitable. TVS, originally as queasily parochial as its predecessor Southern, was becoming one of the big guns of ITV production, with glossy professionalism taking over from charm. With production of the vaccuous but ratings-grabbing Catchphrase now a priority, 73 took the biggest studio out of action during its transmission period since the sets were permanent.
Thankfully some bright spark thought of taking the Coronation Street route and building an outdoor set - planning permission sought and obtained. Somehow, though, a strokey-beard meeting turned the idea from good one - take what you got and put a lid on it - to a rather crap one: Hey! Lets build a wild-west park in Maidstone! So it was that the bulldozers moved in and the team took control of 7T3 (?) in January 1988.
Sadly 7T3 was flawed: the suspension of disbelief became intolerably stretched, production standards deteriorated and, in a move that would send shivers of disgust down the backs of middle-Englanders everywhere, the kids moved back in. Ultimately, and perhaps even thankfully, the outdoor set proved too expensive to maintain and three months later 7T3 finished, never to return. Its replacement, Motormouth, was the epitome of the bog-standard Saturday show: glossy, high-speed, and utterly without charm.
Originally a small fictional element was retained in Motormouth but this failed to integrate into the rest of the show so it was ruthlessly excised, leaving a gaping hole in the diet of youngsters everywhere. Ghost Train, run concurrently with 73, had a fictional aspect which was potentially far more flexible, but this potential was never fully realised and it too vanished, dragging with it a presenter who looked suspiciously like Hazell Dean.
Since then, only Fully Booked has come close to having a fictional premise for a Saturday show, with a plausibility far greater than 73s - stars are, after all, far more likely to book into hotels than drop into dingy urban hellholes such as Maidstone to visit eccentric ladies with hysterically camp nephews - but the show, like so many others, is just a very thinly veiled fare of a sub-Going Live! standard.
It seems pretence is going out of fashion, the post-modern tendency to break down the barriers and show the workings of television removing the simple joy of watching something magical and willing the suspension of disbelief. It wouldnt be impossible for 73 to work again, but one gets the feeling its intended audience may be too cynical to go for it. After all, if only one generation separates Bagpuss and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who knows what the last ten years have done to our nations youth?
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