Turn back time – the BBC chalks up another 70s retrospective
28/07/12
I have just finished catching up with Tuesday night’s episode of ‘Turn Back Time’, thanks to the BBC’s iPlayer. This episode, the last in the series, was staged in the 1970s (previous episodes moved the same families through earlier eras). The series took a number of families and made them live within the constraints of the 1970s (think homes, clothes, cars, technology, food etc.). Heaven from my perspective!
This is not a new idea and it has been done before - 'Electric Dreams' for example was another time-travelling BBC production (and was terrific too). The BBC also ran ‘The 70s’ series presented by Dominic Sandbrook recently so I have to say a big thank you to the corporation for continuing to feed my retro habit. My guess is that some key programme commissioners are from my era and have similar interests – I should investigate that a bit further!
Back to the episode; seeing the homes decorated in period patterns and materials was delightful; watching the dads of two of the families squeezing themselves on to Raleigh Choppers to ride them up and down the street made me so desperately want to have a go; and the red Mk.3 twin headlight Ford Cortina was just the kind of car that really should be parked on my drive.
For me, this was great TV and I recommend that you watch the episode. In fact why not log off from my site right now and get on with it!
In the seventies I remember Andrew Cursley, my best friend from my Bletchley period, having a purple Chopper and us riding it around the play area by Celina Close. I was probably seven or eight at the time and the Chopper was hard work to ride, it was heavy and slow and it was so easy to tip over if the front wheel caught some gravel. Nonetheless it was the bike that defined, and still defines, the decade and I’d love my son who is now nine to have a chance to ride one – especially if it could be an original with the centre-mounted-three-speed Sturmey Archer gear selector (and blimey it hurt when you slid off the seat and on to that – no doubt that is why it is absent from the modern variants).
The Cortina made me reminisce about another best friend Mike Costantini, whose mum had a dark green 2.0 GXL mark three Cortina (Mike, if you have a picture of this great car then send it to me and I'll add it to this article). Mike's mum, Filomena, struggled to drive it and revved the nuts off it to the point that she blew the engine up. The MK.3 was a good looking car then and it remains so to this day. The three large, deep recessed dials in the backward sloping dashboard were as cool as Starsky and Hutch.
In the programme some of the kids were playing with vintage Mouse Trap and Kerplunk games, both of which I have introduced to my children and we have all enjoyed playing together.
The episode recreated strikes, the three day week, water shortages and power cuts, all of which affected the parents a lot more than the children - as a child of the seventies I lived through all that chaos but I don’t remember the hardship at all. I must ask my mum and dad what they remember! Crikey, they voted for Maggie Thatcher at the end of it so they must have some emotional scars from the decade!
Two final thoughts:
I’d love to have been in the programme myself – I have no idea what you have to do to get on a list for this kind of thing, but I should take the time to find out.
And, what does the BBC do with all the props that it uses for these programmes when it has finished recording? Does the BBC have a props museum of sorts that it dips in and out of (and more importantly, could I visit the place)? Does the BBC sell off the items it uses and if so, how could I go about bidding for some vintage stuff? If anyone knows, please get in touch.
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This is not a new idea and it has been done before - 'Electric Dreams' for example was another time-travelling BBC production (and was terrific too). The BBC also ran ‘The 70s’ series presented by Dominic Sandbrook recently so I have to say a big thank you to the corporation for continuing to feed my retro habit. My guess is that some key programme commissioners are from my era and have similar interests – I should investigate that a bit further!
Back to the episode; seeing the homes decorated in period patterns and materials was delightful; watching the dads of two of the families squeezing themselves on to Raleigh Choppers to ride them up and down the street made me so desperately want to have a go; and the red Mk.3 twin headlight Ford Cortina was just the kind of car that really should be parked on my drive.
For me, this was great TV and I recommend that you watch the episode. In fact why not log off from my site right now and get on with it!
In the seventies I remember Andrew Cursley, my best friend from my Bletchley period, having a purple Chopper and us riding it around the play area by Celina Close. I was probably seven or eight at the time and the Chopper was hard work to ride, it was heavy and slow and it was so easy to tip over if the front wheel caught some gravel. Nonetheless it was the bike that defined, and still defines, the decade and I’d love my son who is now nine to have a chance to ride one – especially if it could be an original with the centre-mounted-three-speed Sturmey Archer gear selector (and blimey it hurt when you slid off the seat and on to that – no doubt that is why it is absent from the modern variants).
The Cortina made me reminisce about another best friend Mike Costantini, whose mum had a dark green 2.0 GXL mark three Cortina (Mike, if you have a picture of this great car then send it to me and I'll add it to this article). Mike's mum, Filomena, struggled to drive it and revved the nuts off it to the point that she blew the engine up. The MK.3 was a good looking car then and it remains so to this day. The three large, deep recessed dials in the backward sloping dashboard were as cool as Starsky and Hutch.
In the programme some of the kids were playing with vintage Mouse Trap and Kerplunk games, both of which I have introduced to my children and we have all enjoyed playing together.
The episode recreated strikes, the three day week, water shortages and power cuts, all of which affected the parents a lot more than the children - as a child of the seventies I lived through all that chaos but I don’t remember the hardship at all. I must ask my mum and dad what they remember! Crikey, they voted for Maggie Thatcher at the end of it so they must have some emotional scars from the decade!
Two final thoughts:
I’d love to have been in the programme myself – I have no idea what you have to do to get on a list for this kind of thing, but I should take the time to find out.
And, what does the BBC do with all the props that it uses for these programmes when it has finished recording? Does the BBC have a props museum of sorts that it dips in and out of (and more importantly, could I visit the place)? Does the BBC sell off the items it uses and if so, how could I go about bidding for some vintage stuff? If anyone knows, please get in touch.
Back to Reviews & Recommendations Home
