things on tv you know only you've seen and you'll never see them again

[weekender]

I remember this one show, broadcast late at night on Channel 4, and it had the lead character as a goat.  Only the goat was made from man-fur and could talk, so every time it spoke it was like hearing a dystopian vision of the future, but one in which goats had been ransacked and made extinct, so mankind could no longer rely on them for pashminas and special cheeses, and instead had to rely on alternative sources of posh scarves and dairy products, but no-one liked dog cheese which sort of proved the point.

I think the underlying point was that "mankind is raping Mother Earth (not the band, that would be hideous) of stuff, and if we end up making goats extinct then we end up essentially killing ourselves as goats are part of the natural cycle of life, so stop killing goats you bastard - I'm a goat!  Don't hurt me!  Why?  Why are you hurting me?  Put that stick away!  OK, I might have died, but your race will die in the future because of the lack of goats.  Which species is the real winner?".

If anyone has any recollection of any such a programme, please let me know, it's been bugging me for years.  Would have been about 1989 I guess.

[Little Hoover]

I think channel 5 would sometimes show heavily edited softcore films I rember being utterly baffled by one which was so butchered, you could barley describe anything in it as an actual sex scene, because anything too suggestive of it was taken out. But at the time I didn't actually contemplate the possibility that it had been edited, I was so angry that it hadn't even given me anything good enough for me to actually ejaculate over.  It wasn't until it was shown a few years later on Bravo, with the scenes unedited and I realised "oh right"

I still don't understand why they would edit it so heavily, they showed worse stuff every other week.

[unky herb]

Isn't that an episode of the American series of Hammer House of Horrror?

Check out the big brain on Brett! Thanks a lot..

Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense - Child's Play

I found it on YouTube.. 8 parts. Looks like Mr Firefox is going to have to download all 8 for me to watch at my leisure.

[Marty McFly]

heavily edited

that reminds me.

I WILL TRADE MY SOUL FOR A COPY OF THE LEGENDARY ITV SATURDAY AFTERNOON EDIT OF ROBOCOP.

"you are going to be one bad mothercrusher"

that is all

[Ray Le Otter]

If anybody has that one edition of Tip Top TV I'd love to see it again - legendary isn't quite the word.

[non capisco]

If anybody has that one edition of Tip Top TV I'd love to see it again - legendary isn't quite the word.

Totally Integrated Panoramic Transmission Of Pop!

That must have been broadcast at least twice. As I mentioned before, someone at school saw it and thought it was a guerilla transmission, then I saw exactly what he described about a month later. Was it meant to be a pilot for something (this was a good year and a bit before they turned up on Radio 1 with Tip Top Radio)? And was the original transmission that my schoolmate saw scheduled? I originally thought he was talking out of his arse but googling 'Tip Top TV' (Wikipedia has nowt) someone on another forum seems to think it interrupted an episode of The Word in the London area. Is this bollocks? I need to do more research.

The last time I thought about Tip Top TV before this thread was years ago on Eastenders when Nikki DiMarco had a pervy Maths teacher who looked like The Ginger Prince.

[waste of chops]

that reminds me.

I WILL TRADE MY SOUL FOR A COPY OF THE LEGENDARY ITV SATURDAY AFTERNOON EDIT OF ROBOCOP.

"you are going to be one bad mothercrusher"

that is all

[youtube=425,350]ip1x_GvUKPQ[/youtube]

[youtube=425,350]aA24ZyCxPBo[/youtube]

[Rev]

googling 'Tip Top TV' (Wikipedia has nowt) someone on another forum seems to think it interrupted an episode of The Word in the London area. Is this bollocks? I need to do more research.

This is less 'things on TV you know only you've seen' and more 'things you missed, but every bugger was talking about at school afterwards', but there was an awful show in the early-Nineties that was supposedly interrupted in such a way, and perhaps only in the London area.  Can't remember what it was called, or even what the programme's remit was, but it was one of those late-night things that I tended to watch because there was nothing else going:  a live call-in show, hosted by a bunch of numpties on a big curvy sofa.  The hijack was only for a couple of minutes at most, but supposedly all of the subsequent calls on the show were about it, and the presenters - knowing nothing about it - went from laughing it off as a wind-up to becoming more concerned by the end of the thing.

So, er, what was that, then?

[Cheeky Monkey]

Oh and about two or three weeks ago I was doing a night shift supporting a tetraplegic, and the woman I was working with was from Africa.  Anyway, about halfway through the night she was doing something else, but had left the Nigeria Movies Sky channel on.  Holy fuck, whatever that film was it was bad.  It seemed to revolve around a few different groups of people that had absolutely no relation to each other, one group consisted of a woman and her husband who seemed to constantly have messed up dreams about suicide or killing one another, and eventually the bloke hung himself... Then at the end this random bloke was sat at a desk, speaking into a phone, clearly reading his script from an autocue.  The final moments of the scene consisted of him sat in silence holding the phone to his ear apparently still reading the autocue, even though he had nothing to say.  I tell you, watching that whilst slipping in and out of light sleep was truly a disturbing experience.

I stayed on a friend's sofa for a while over the summer and started watching a film on this channel while half-asleep. I think it was meant to be the equivalent of a slasher film.

It looked like it had been filmed on a mobile phone, and Jesus fucking hell the sheer disconnect it had from any recognisable notions of comprehensible narrative or filmmaking made it one of the bleakest things I've ever seen on TV. Complete lack of budget meant no gore, no special effects and no real camera angles to speak of -there was one filter that was continually used, I think it was meant to look like a heat-seeking camera (i.e. Predator) but in reality it look like someone had pulled a purple Christmas cracker hat over the lens and whacked the contrast up. The film itself was just a succession of people running through a brush forest and then falling over in slow motion, which was interspersed with extended scenes at night around a campfire where the remaining actors would stare wordlessly at one another, before the next run/tumble. I'm still not convinced it wasn't all some massive, racist dream.   

[bill hicks]

What I love about those Robocop clips is that most of the scenes involved at the end have the swearing preceeding extreme violence where men get gunned down, or in two cases take place in a Cocaine processing factory. And yet the word boner is dubbed over.

[Feralkid]

I love the fact that Clarence is now seen swerving to avoid his toxic-waste covered friend.   

I remember a late-night ITV sci-fi TV movie from the 80's called Time-Slip - in which we sae Virginia "Mad Max 2/Farscape" Hey topless, Russell Mulcachy lighting schemes and some faux computer graphics recycled from the C4 Max Headroom film.   Sadly my Mother changed the channels as soon as nudity happened....

[gepree]

Get Stuffed?

This programme is always lovingly referred to in our household as "Get Fucked" (also see Shitkickers and Ainsley's Big Cock Out; this is what happens when your girlfriend has the same childish sense of humour as you).

Anyway, back on topic I saw the film Special Bulletin late at night on ITV in 1987 or 1988.  I missed the first quarter, so for a while I was shitting myself thinking I was witnessing a live broadcast of a real American terrorist incident.

[Kawaii Five-O]

There are quite a few odd films I watched during school that I no-one else I know has ever seen and i'm sure I will never see again.

From primary school, there was a series of videos about the human body, with two people named Blod and Bob. You didn't hear them speak because the whole series was narrated by a tiny woman in a yellow shellsuit that used to go inside their bodies and find out what was going on. Of course, this also tied into sex education, because Blod and Bob were a couple and Blod had gotten pregnant. So after all the trips to the various areas of their bodies (a highlight episode being one on the artery with red and white frisbees flying past the little shellsuit lady, representing red and white blood cells),  we were treated to the joy of the birth. Complete with a short but rathergraphicforabunchofelevenyearoldkids labour scene. Euch. To date, the only other person I know that watched this is school was a friend of mine from a primary in the same town, but that's it. I can't remember the name of it which is a pain in the arse and means I can't really search online.

Health-E!

My primary school showed it as well, except ours was a Welsh version called Iechyd-A, which is proving impossible to Google as "iechyd a" means "health and", so it just brings up a load of health and safety pages. I can't remember much about it besides the titles, but Blod did speak in the Welsh one, I remember one bit where she was listing all the upsides to pregnancy, which was rather odd looking back.

[SOTS]

Health-E!

My primary school showed it as well, except ours was a Welsh version called Iechyd-A, which is proving impossible to Google as "iechyd a" means "health and", so it just brings up a load of health and safety pages. I can't remember much about it besides the titles, but Blod did speak in the Welsh one, I remember one bit where she was listing all the upsides to pregnancy, which was rather odd looking back.

Ah! I could kiss you. I've been trying to remember that for years!

[Marty McFly]

waste of chops, you mothercrushing legend.

notice Clarence spitting out blood in the second clip is airbrushed out.

"why me? why me?"

[OG Mudbone]

A ludicrous 'erotic' sci-fi film which went out on Channel 5, which a little digging tells me is called Electra. Shannon Tweed (for it is she) is after a serum which can give a human superpowers, and luckily enough it can be transmitted via sexual intercourse, leading her to seduce her own stepson in the process iirc.

Sample quote:

I remember that! If I recall correctly, she fails to seduce her stepson so instead somehow tricks him into being tied up on a table, where she promptly mounts him and does the deed. She rapes her own stepson.

Speaking of early-Channel 5 softcore erotica, does anyone remember a show they used to put out once a week called Hotline? It was basically Red Shoe Diaries-lite, and was bookended with scenes of a sex/relationships councilor in a radio studio taking calls from listeners about their sex lives.  It would have been on around 1997/8 and for my innocent, 11 year old self was the best thing ever made.

[BJB]

I remember seeing this advert years ago for bacon which was a take on the Exorcist. It was on at about 8 in the morning and scared the living crap out of me. I think it was soon pulled because I'v never seen it again since. And no one seems to have heard of it.

[tygerbug]

Betamax and put on a taped programme about computer graphics; I think it was called 'Computer Dreams'.  I can't really remember much about it except an image of a CGI teddy bear and a segment on Captain America.

  There's a listing here on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094904/

  If that's not it, I remember an 80s video which had a similar but better set of films on it, which I think had a Dreams title as well? Seen it on IMDB before.

[ffogems]

I can only think of one moment that utterly defies comprehension. It came out of nowhere during those lonely nights pre-internet spent flicking through night-time sky channels. I do yearn for those days, really, when limp memories of old films and tv shows remain just that, just a confusing crease in the ether, rather than a clearly labelled boxed-off relic now sullied by the internet's unending ability to savage the sanctity of everything in existence with clinically outlined statistics and trivia that fill the gaps in my memory that I didn't need to know I had. I've stopped buying dvds of old films and tv shows now, as my hazy experience of them was better, more meaningful. I don't need to see youtube clips of them above columns of ill-judged venerative cockery, and I certainly don't need to go to a female actor's imdb page, scroll down to the message board section to find somebody's started a thread titled 'TITS', and think 'oh for fuck sake. Someone got there first'. I think these things should just free-float in the context they occured. Bringing them into starker up-to-date relief ruins it. The internet has already fucked the following in the face -

The Ewoks films
Little Monsters
Stoppit and Tidyup
Russ Meyer's Supervixens
The Wiz
Poison Ivy
Dare to Believe

and I can't let it keep happening. These are my memories, internet. My childhood. Stop filling the gaps of wistful bliss with cheaply-manufactured dvds and incriminating clarifications regarding the age of dubiously dressed girls in children's television.
But this moment was different, and can never be explained.
It was a normal night, during a time before internet porn could be grabbed in full files with swift ease and was still storyboarded in 10-second catch-up clips of the best bits, when I still had the habit of recording onto video or dvd whatever scrap of pout or nipple I could find on late-night TV to make long compilations of something resembling a conspiracy theorist video to convince the disbelieving; a time-capsule of tit-twiddling.
And there I would sit until the early hours, rapidly flicking from channel to channel, one hand round the remote, the other round my penis, and eye sight flitting from TV to living room door with manic unease as I expected it at any moment to open wide to reveal a whole bundle of laughing people with inverted Baftas and ignominious Gotchas held out for me.
In the event of such a thing happening, I had a repertoire of responses to avoid being caught red-wristed. Part of this set-up involved keeping the penis area in my pants so that I was operating with the kind of blunt, folded erection that makes me rue the lack of a voluntary penile elbow. If we all adhered to this cramped set-up, then maybe evolution would take note and provide a better future for our children. Although, if we all actually did do this, humanity would probably die naked and alone in a chair.
Of course, this wasn't an ideal situation, as the yielding of an erection was often followed by frantic fumbling but the knowledge that I couldn't do anything about it until I'm out of the family living room and in a safer place (like the bathroom), which made the whole bleak practice feel like chewing food and then walking around with it in your cheeks for hours before swallowing.
I felt like the boy from Flight of the Navigator (1986) at one with the controls of his ship, with my multi-task button pushing, cranking up and down the channels, tapping in memorised numbers to unlock 10 free minutes, flicking the center stick to bring up the programme information and scan-reading for any hint of a tit, jamming the back button to remove it from view if the current on-screen action suddenly proved promising, then dragging up the volume with slick caution. The volume was always kept low, but if I was feeling daring I would draw it up a notch to just catch a minor earful of the sensual soundtrack of whatever had been laid down to cover the anechoic sound of the cavorting woman whimpering with continued regret.
Another tactic was to have safe-zones established, channels I could retreat to if someone came into the room. One of these was a now-dead channel that seemed to have empty-schedules for most of the day, and then a quiz late at night. During this particular night I touched-base with the channel, just popping in like a gangster stooge nabbing a bun from the display of an under-the-thumb bakery, and saw nothing. The quiz had finished, but the camera continued to film from a high angle, looking down on a white-walled set that was empty but for a single podium. I turned the volume up until I heard static then turned it back down, changed the channel and continued to fumble. I kept coming back to this baffling channel where nothing was being broadcast whenever I heard the catflap go or caught my reflection on the telly screen. The volume was as low as my esteem, and consequently my reaction to what happened next as late as the lonely night. I was about to flick to another channel. I'd brought up the information box and was suggesting to myself that, come on, perhaps I should just give in for today and go to bed, in a nobly weary way as if doing the night shift on the search for Maddy. But then something entered my vision, and I jammed the 'back' button. A man had walked onto set dressed as a policeman. He removed his hat, stood by the podium and then said something with gurning indignance as if acting out a scenario in which he wins an argument to great public acclaim. It lasted mere seconds. He picked up his hat and walked off set before I could get the volume up to hear what he said. And then nothing. Who was that man? What had he said, and why?
I sat for about an hour watching the empty white set in transfixed bafflement, waiting for Act 2. But nothing happened. I didn't record any more porn that night. It just didn't feel right.
Then came the early hours of daylight. The screen faded to black with text saying something like 'programmes begin again at 7pm'. It may as well have said 'oh dear, you've pushed through the night with your cock out'. I went to bed floppy and chagrined.
I kept up the routine for some weeks after, but I'd lost my enthusiasm. I was probably only in it for the empty set now, with occasional reluctant, limp titty base-touching, but there was never an explanation for what had happened. I waited every night, hope in place of penis, for at least a gesture of some sort. I didn't care if I'd missed the whole drawn-out spectacle and the meaning of the titbit'd performance, but if I could just see this man run on in his police uniform and bow as the credits rolled then I'd be happy. But every time I flicked over it was always the same white set, the same static, the same stubborn lack of answers, and no man ever returned to fill the holes.

[Blue Jam]

The pilot episode of High Hopes, a Welsh sitcom in the vein of Sattelite City. In the pilot the main characters found a corpse and one tried to bite its gold rings off before realising he was putting a dead man's hand in his mouth. A discussion of necrophilia followed, with two male characters agreeing that they'd shag a dead carol Vorderman "if she was still warm".

I had no idea there was a full series, shown only in Wales:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0207888/

The same goes for loads of bizarre Welsh TV programmes, the IMDB entry for Pam Fi Duw? has some interesting Plot Keywords:

Urinating Into Bottle
Innuendo
High School
Homosexuality
Wales

and an interesting quote:

advertisementDad: [in Welsh. He says "rhyw" rather than "rhew"] What about "sex"?
Nain: [irritated] Have you realised what you said just now?
Dad: I only meant "ice"!

Possibly comedy gold to a Welsh speaker.

[Catalogue Trousers]

BJB wrote:

I remember seeing this advert years ago for bacon which was a take on the Exorcist. It was on at about 8 in the morning and scared the living crap out of me. I think it was soon pulled because I'v never seen it again since. And no one seems to have heard of it.

Oh, it was real, all right. Didn't see it myself, but read various press articles about it at the time. Parodied the revolving head of Regan McNeil in particular: this shot was later dubbed over with merry-go-round music in an attempt to make it less scary for the wee ones. Can't find it anywhere on YouTube, though.

[Ambient Sheep]

I would just like to say that I read ffogems' post, and enjoyed it.  I don't really have anything to add, or theories to concoct, but it seemed a shame not to reward that piece of writing with a comment.

[Shane G]

Does anyone else remember these two one-off comedy shows from about the 90s? Weirdly, both appear to be absent from the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy, and that book is supposed to list every comedy series/one-off ever screened on British TV.

The first was called "2Gether 4Ever" or something very similar. I don't remember much about it other than it was a slightly wacky and not very amusing sit-com.

The other was a scetch comedy. One scetch involved an investigative reporter on the streets reporting on drug dealers. At the end of the scetch he was arrested by the police on suspicion of being a drug dealer himself and his last words when being bungled into the police car were "I am in deep shit". Another sketch was a parody of cop shows with an american-style detective called 'the man with a sofa' who went chasing criminals about accompanied by a sofa.

[j_u_d_a_s]

This is less 'things on TV you know only you've seen' and more 'things you missed, but every bugger was talking about at school afterwards', but there was an awful show in the early-Nineties that was supposedly interrupted in such a way, and perhaps only in the London area.  Can't remember what it was called, or even what the programme's remit was, but it was one of those late-night things that I tended to watch because there was nothing else going:  a live call-in show, hosted by a bunch of numpties on a big curvy sofa.  The hijack was only for a couple of minutes at most, but supposedly all of the subsequent calls on the show were about it, and the presenters - knowing nothing about it - went from laughing it off as a wind-up to becoming more concerned by the end of the thing.

So, er, what was that, then?

Oh my god I remember that! Happened on a Friday night ITV/LWT call in show which had a spiky pair of lips as a sofa. If I remember, Vic Reeves was a guest on that edition too!

I've mentioned this series a few times before but I'll do so again because it was just gobsmackingly misinformed on all levels. South Central attempted to marry a sitcom format with the gritty reality faced in the area. There'd be whole episodes with just one or two official gags. Someone on youtube has been putting a few episodes up - http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F50FEAE105DE3B31

Another series that didn't last long, Now and Again. The pilot starred John Goodman as a family man who dies in the first episode and is reborn in a new body specially grown. It was superbly directed and a superior piece of genre TV. Only lasted a full season though sadly - http://uk.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7450D984815ACE06&playnext=1

Another sitcom I've never been able to see again since though was Tottenham Two which was an offshoot of another late night Channel 4 interstitial. Basically the adventures of 2 asian guys who were incredibly naive. I remember it being quirky and charming rather than funny but I wouldn't mind revisiting it again.

Back when ITV used to have a decent late night schedule, there was a show called Comics, the ninth art that would just show comic panels set to music! Each episode featured comics from a different country and had some fantastic interviews too.

Ok one thing I remember seeing on channel 4 many years ago now was a test broadcast of illegal levels(according to the onscreen text). Basically just a random collection of filmed shots with various filters used while church music played. Basically it was like my TV was having a bad trip. It was on at like 4 in the morning when presumably no one was expected to have seen it go out.

[daimoniac]

i remember planet mirth - milton jones is brilliant! - it was a fair bit sub-par all round though

there was something on called "flux" around the same time - it was another late night ITV thing, that mainly focused on happy hardcore rave music (as i used to video this i fast forwarded these bits), various odd little sketches, reviews and that, but the main reason i mentioned this pile of garbage is "iiiiilkillyaaa" the yorkshire kung-fu movie by smile orange prodctions that was serialised in the middle of it. its only recently come to light that smile orange have a website and now the movie is for sale! :D

did anyone else see this thing?

[variant]

Has anyone else seen the children's* drama which is about Sean Maguire standing on the roof of some building next to a big neon sign? I can't remember much else about it but I saw it twice - a couple of years apart I think - and that was probably around 10 years ago (maybe when sean was between grange hill and 'enders). Any ideas?


*I say childrens drama but I'm not sure if it was specifically aimed at kids. It did look fairly cheap though.

[Phil_A]

Has anyone else seen the children's* drama which is about Sean Maguire standing on the roof of some building next to a big neon sign? I can't remember much else about it but I saw it twice - a couple of years apart I think - and that was probably around 10 years ago (maybe when sean was between grange hill and 'enders). Any ideas?


*I say childrens drama but I'm not sure if it was specifically aimed at kids. It did look fairly cheap though.

Hmm. The only thing I can remember Maguire doing between Grange Hill and Eastenders was "Dodgem", which was one of those incredibly gritty Bernard Ashley children's dramas. However, if that's the one then your time perception must be a bit fucked, because that was on in 1991.

[gepree]

Anyway, back on topic I saw the film Special Bulletin late at night on ITV in 1987 or 1988.  I missed the first quarter, so for a while I was shitting myself thinking I was witnessing a live broadcast of a real American terrorist incident.

I posted the above a few days ago and was getting annoyed because there has been no subsequent reply from anyone else who remembers the film.

Then I remembered that that is the whole point of this thread.

[James "End-To-End" Benton]

ffogems, you saucy man. You made me Google the word 'anechoic', and now I have this somewhat NSFW video in my Favorites cache

[kidsick5000]

there was something on called "flux" around the same time - it was another late night ITV thing, that mainly focused on happy hardcore rave music (as i used to video this i fast forwarded these bits), various odd little sketches, reviews and that, but the main reason i mentioned this pile of garbage is "iiiiilkillyaaa" the yorkshire kung-fu movie by smile orange prodctions that was serialised in the middle of it. its only recently come to light that smile orange have a website and now the movie is for sale! :D

did anyone else see this thing?

Was it Flux that had a film challenge, that got reviewed by three sort of critics. One was a sub Mark Lamaar/ Kermode type.

Theres a shitload of foreign films shown once never to be seen again from itv late night schedules.  One about a dating agency, where the guy wheres a special tiepi, and finds that in whatever situation, one of the lovely ladies there wants to do him.

And there has to be a copy of TipTop TV floating around somewhere surely. I still say it was cruelly cheated by coming out just a bit too early to catch the full retro lounge boom. That and having their version of Pans People. Just not appreciated at the time. Dancing to Rocks by Primal Scream as I recall