BBC100: Introduction

This week on Dirty Feed, I’m going to try something a little different to usual.

As part of the BBC centenary celebrations in 2022, I was commissioned by my employer at a certain broadcast facility to write something about my favourite BBC TV shows over the years. What was supposed to be only one or two pieces quickly turned into one article per decade, because of course it did, this is me we’re talking about. These ended up being published on the company’s internal intranet, and were never really supposed to be seen by anyone else.

The result was a little different to the kind of stuff I usually post here. These pieces weren’t written for a bunch of archive TV nerds – yes, I’m talking about you. They were intended for a bit of a more general audience, who might not immediately be au fait with old telly. As a result, I found some of them a little tough to write, as they went slightly beyond my usual wheelhouse. But looking back over them now, it seemed there was some stuff that you lot might enjoy, and would be worth republishing here.

So every day this week, I’m going to bung one of these articles up on Dirty Feed. Here’s what you have to look forward to:

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954)
• The Nigel Barton Plays (1965)
• Fawlty Towers (1975-79)
• Paul Daniels: Live at Hallowe’en (1987)
• Smashie and Nicey – the End of an Era (1994)
• The Quatermass Experiment (2005)
• Richard Osman’s House of Games (2017-)
• Epilogue

A couple of disclaimers. I’m not usually one for ranking things; my choices here were as much about having a variety of programmes, and whether I have anything even vaguely interesting to say about them, as opposed to really being my “favourite” show from each decade. You’ll note that I manage to cover drama, sitcom, variety, and quiz shows in the list above. (The big missing genre is documentaries; Washes Whiter from 1990 was going to be my choice there, but Smashie and Nicey kicked it out.) So I love every show I mention above, but please don’t take the list literally.

Also, in my opinion, the pieces generally get better as they go along, especially once we hit Fawlty Towers. Regardless, I hope you get something out of this; if this works, it may inspire me to write further articles which can be stripped across a whole week. All my best ideas come from Channel 5 in 1997.

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