Big Deal I used to love that, great cast and Polly Page from The Bill was in it.

The Hot Shit Show as my dad called it was dire, Wayne Sleep (good name for a boring dude) danced like a demented dog. Can't remember if it was popular but everything from Open to Tenko was ratings gold.

Heartbeat was the cause of a lot of BBC1's 1990s Sunday problems. I know BBC1 had had a few Sunday ratings whippings from other things before that, such as Darling Buds of May in spring 1991, which became a massive success thanks in no small part to facing opposition such as London Marathon highlights and a Two Ronnies compilation's third screening, in its first few weeks; and 'Allo 'Allo got whipped in early 1992 because it was clapped out by that time, but when Heartbeat took up an autumn residence in 1993, after a successful spring run, BBC1 started making less of an effort on Sunday nights...

In 1994, they dropped from two new autumn sitcoms to one, and started showing early 1980s Last of the Summer Wine episodes instead, and showed a reduced number of Lovejoy episodes, and they had odd start times such as 7.10pm.

Then in 1995, we got two sitcoms back, but only for ten of the sixteen weeks of the autumn season, and no early evening drama at 7.30pm.

1996 was worse still with six episodes of Pie in the Sky, and six of the seven episodes of The Legacy of Reginald Perrin as the highlights of the early evening schedule. And ITV added Coronation St into the mix that autumn, to make BBC1 even less inclined to schedule very much of their good stuff.

And so it went on, and the problems spread to the rest of the year. There'd still be a handful of good sitcoms or dramas on early Sunday nights over the course of each year for the rest of the 1990s, but they'd often be isolated, and there'd sometimes be several weeks with no pre-watershed comedy. And all sorts of things were turning up by the end of the decade: Wildlife on One, Wildlife Special (new and repeats), one-off docusoap update programmes, various antiques programmes, Ground Force and a spin-off.

Oh! I tell you what I was watching the other day that ITV should bring back. Kingdom! What a lovely show that was. Good theme as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLC-zCD2-S8

What a innocent little drama that was. Better than bloody downton!!! Never mind the Downton Christmas special I want a Kingdom Christmas special. It was the sort off show that really only works on a Sunday. Bloody ITV.

Ken

Ratings for the second series of Keeping Up Appearances went down, but I think it was against Beadle's About in 1991.

IIRC the first episode of Darling Buds was up against a repeat of Butterflies (David Jason v Nicholas Lyndhurst - Only Fools had just finished a hugely successul series a few weeks earlier ended with the birth of Damian) and the Theatre Awards. Both did appalling in the ratings and the Theatre awards were moved to BBC2 from the following year.

Great TV Trivia Facts #15: Darling Buds Of May and Prime Suspect, two huge ratings hits of the 1990s, launched on the same night.

Blimey, did you manage all that from memory? I'm wondering how much variation there was between the ITV regions in 1984. I think Surprise Surprise appeared in my region for a few weeks in autumn 1984. AND I got forced to watch it!

Well, it was definitely something starring Jeremy Beadle.

How many viewers did Prime Suspect used to get?

Butterflies was definitely knocking around on Sunday nights that year. I think it ran for about six months. It started off around 8.35pm, but I think it ended up at 7.15pm by the summer, as viewers switched it off.

Yeah, the BBC schedule was an exact one from October 1984. The ITV one is I believe from September 1984, but from checking some facts from Wikipedia, Spitting Image was a sporadic series during it's first run so is likely not to have aired in the autumn that year, but taking off properly in February 1985 for an 18 week series.

Fresh Fields was on Sundays for the first series in 1984 but moved to Fridays from series 2. Duty Free was the Benidorm of 1984. A big hit on Thursdays. Only When I Laugh was also big on Friday nights.

We'll force you to watch it this time around too. Oh, wait. Holly Willoughbooby is presenting? That's not a punishment....

Back to tonight, starting at 19:30 may hurt X Factor as people may not think it begins until 20:00. If The Cube is hurt too, I do have to wonder if this would have been better:

19:00 - The Cube
20:00 - The X Factor
21:30 - Downton Abbey
22:35 - ITV News

You are correct! It was Surprise Surprise that was on during Autumn 1984. Wow! Thought it was only a few years ago, not 30!!!!!

The first episode didn't do as well as the first episode of Darling Buds. I think PS had about 14m viewers whilst Buds had about 18m. Buds became the first series since Jack Rosenthal's ITV sitcom The Dustbinmen in 1969 to top the ratings with every episode of its first series.

Thanks. As Darling Buds was such a huge hit why was there only 3 series and not more?

I know Strictly results will break up the three hours of factual in three weeks' time, but it says something when the highlight of the night for a big BBC One fan like me is the Weather For the Week Ahead during Countryfile.
Good name!

I can't remember how many weeks it was on for in 1984, but it felt like a lot of weeks at the time!

I hope Piers Wenger can help Channel 4 improve their drama slate especially on the series front. When it comes to one-offs and miniseries, they deliever and doing fine on that front but returnable dramas is where they are lacking. I'm not oppose to them having dramas at 10pm because it works but it would be nice to see a homegrown drama series at 9pm.

Interesting interview and some interesting stuff in the pipeline, though nothing there which has the potential to be a returning series and be the next Shameless.

And maybe it's because I no longer venture into the Hollyoaks threads but Bryan Kirkwood returning to Hollyoaks seems to have been kept very quiet - the first I knew of it was when someone mentioned his name was on the credits for Fridays episode, so it seems his episodes are getting to screen relatively quickly compared to previous producers who generally took a good six months to get anything onto screen after taking over. I do think though the damage may have already been done and although Hollyoaks is probably more reliant on new audiences than the other soaps, it will have trouble getting people who've kicked the habit back watching. The return though of their most successful producer of the last decade though do show C4 and Lime aren't willing to give up on it just yet.


Also interesting to see him confess to being a massive fan of Night and Day as arguably that is the sort of show C4 kind of need - not a tea-time soap but as a one-hour a week bid weird post watershed soap it kind of worked, and I do feel C4 need a more soapy cheaply churned out drama (though with a point of difference) fixed in the schedules alongside the worthy stuff.

It launched in march 1984 with 6 highly rated episodes. A second series of 8 episodes was rushed out for October 1984.

Buds was adapted from stories by H E Bates I think (but I stand to be corrected. Unless you know better as they used to say on That's Life) ITV ran out of stories. I think there was just one story they didn't use in the TV series but it turned up in a Radio 4 version of the show, made after the ITV version and starring David Jason and Pam Ferris, but not Catherine Zeta Jones who by that time was in Hollywood. Or maybe it was only the missing ITV story that they did on radio

You know how they have this wold record for how many jokes a stand-up comedian can tell in one hour? (Tim Vine used to hold the record but I think an Australian has it now.) Well, I wonder if Hollyoaks can set a world record for most serial killer storylines in one soap in one year. No, forget that, most serial killers in one hour.

The jokes record is over 500, I believe. I'm sure Hollyoaks can match that figure for serial killers. It's pretty much the only storyline they can come up with if they want to try and boost their ratings.

Ah! I saw a lot of ITV in 1984 and before, but when BBC1 relaunched in Feb 1985, my family started watching much more of BBC1, and I fell in love with all the sitcoms, and I more or less stopped watching ITV in the evenings.

That's pretty much how it was in our family too. Dad liked watching Wogan at 7 which prevented mum watching Coronation Street so only Emmerdale Farm was the soap in our household. Although EastEnders became watched later on in 1985.

ITV belatedly attempt to catch in on the huge ratings success of the Olympics.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19691018

to be fair, what could ITV do, that would not have looked tacky?