A month of nostalgia will mark 25 years of TV

Press, 30 May 1985, Page 11

A month of nostalgia will mark 25 years of TV

On June 1, 1960, New Zealand's first regular television transmissions began from what was then N.Z.B.S. Channel 2. Auckland. This year Television New Zealand will be marking the twenty-fifth anniversay of that occasion by devoting the whole of June to nostalgia.

Every evening in prime time, there will be a programme from the early days of television in New Zealand, most dating from those formative years of the sixties. Most of the programmes selected for repeat come from viewers preferences, although TVNZ’s controller of programmes, Mr Des Monaghan, says that many of the old favourites are no longer available.

In many cases the original tapes or films have either been lost or destroyed, while an added complication has been the difficulty of obtaining rights to telecast them again. Many companies simply take the easy way out and withdraw the programme from sale. “Nevertheless, I am confident that we have come up with a great many programmes that viewers will remember with affection," says Mr Monaghan. Kicking off the nostalgia month will be a 3Vz hour spectacular from the T.V.N.Z. entertainment department. Called “An Entertainment Showcase of 25 years of Television in New Zealand,” the show will include clips from early T.V.N.Z. shows and the reappearance of some familiar faces from the early days. The head of entertainment, Mr Malcolm Kemp, is not saying who they might be, but there are plans to bring back some of the big names who have gone on to

greater things overseas. Replacing the Disney programme on Two on Sunday there will be the first of the old timers — an episode from the western series “Bonanza.” This show, along with “Rawhide,” “The Virginian” and “Gunsmoke,” came from the era in which westerns were all the rage, and it ran in the United States from September 1959 to January 1973 — second only to “Gunsmoke" in the longevity stakes. The same Sunday will also see the screening of the very first two episodes of Britain’s longest-running television drama serial, “Coronation Street,” which first screened in Britain on December 9, 1960 — the

“Street” too is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. This will be the first time these episodes have been seen in New Zealand, for the N.Z.B.C. picked up the series a few hundred episodes in. At that time the series ran some five years behind Britain, but over recent years T.V.N.Z. has closed the gap to just four months, and bySeptember will be only a few weeks behind.

Other highlights of the first week include the medical soap opera, “Dr Kildare,” which made Richard Chamberlain a star, and vintage British comedy in the shape of “Hancock's Half Hour.” Tony Hancock was Britain’s most popular

and highly-paid comedian of the fifties and sixties with his radio and television shews attracting huge audiences for the 8.8. C.

Over the rest of the month there are plenty of other titles likely to bring back memories. For comparison with the current "Robin of Sherwood” there is the original “Adventures of Robin Hood" which starred Richard Greene, “The Black and White Minstrel Show," the spy series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E." with Robert Vaughan and David McCallum. "The Power Game," "Softly Softly Task Force." “Peyton Place,” “The Fugitive," “Perry Mason,” “The Donna Reed " Show,” the early “Avengers” with Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg, and Patrick McGoohan’s “Dangerman.”

Of a more serious nature is the drama documentary “Cathy Come Home,” which won the Prix Italia in 1968 for the 8.8. C.. but provoked a storm of controversy when it was shown because it used the then new drama-tised-documentary technique to spotlight a social problem — Britain’s homeless solo mothers. There is also an interview with Edith Sitwell from John Freeman’s "Face to Face” series (which is credited with pioneering in-depth television interviews), the controversial drama-document-ary “The Naked Civil Servant” about the life of homosexual Quentin Crisp, and “Culloden,” an account of the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s men by "Butcher” Cumberland’s English army in 1746.

These are some of the programme highlights planned to celebrate the anniversary, and viewers will also be seeing again some of the people who introduced the programmes. Sharing continuity with regular T.V.N.Z. announcers will be Marama Martin. Reida Familton, lan Watkins, Joan Palmer, Alma Johnson, Bill Leathwick, Peter Fry and Peter Dallas.

Queen’s Birthday weekend will also see the reemergence of one of the most notorious personalities of television in the seventies, children’s host, “Stu” who put phrases such as “nice one” and “gizago” into the vocabulary of school children.

Stu Dennison will be making an appearance on Saturday, June 1, on One and again on Monday, June 3, when he will disrupt “What Now” in its special Queen’s Birthday appearance.