Monday, January 5th, 1981
Charlie's Angels @ 8pm
Benson
Dallas
Charlie's Angels. Season 5, Episode 1. "Angel in Hiding" Tanya Roberts joins the series for this 5th season two-parter. I think, by this stage, I had totally lost interest in Charlie's Angels. Although I can vividly remember having a huge crush on Farrah Fawcett in the 70s (especially around the time her movie Murder on Flight 502 aired in Ireland) it was really Sabrina who was my favourite Angel. When Sabrina left, I started to miss episodes and not care.
As an adult, I don't watch Charlie's Angels. I've recorded various episode over the years but always end up deleting them before I make time to watch them. If I did watch, I suspect it would be Jaclyn Smith who would be my favourite. Simply because she is so gorgeous. I watched the pilot in the mid-'90s and hated it. It was dumb and - for the first time - I realised that the show was a rip-off of Mission: Impossible.
Benson. Not sure which episode this was. I wrote in my TV Diary that it was a repeat, but that could just mean that I saw it on another channel.
This was/is one of my mother's favourite shows so we always watched it. I liked it, but my interest was driven mostly by the fact that the lead character had been on Soap first. Soap was one of my most favourite shows as a kid and it was kinda cool to think that one of the main characters had been spun-off into his own show. This was probably one of the first times I had ever seen a 'spin-off'.
Dallas. Season 4, Episode 9. "The Prodigal Mother" Again, this was one of my mother's favourite shows and I just kinda watched it. I wrote in my TV Diary that this was the episode where Pam finally finds her mother but I really couldn't give a damn about stuff like that!
Charlie's Angels, Benson, Dallas
Buck Rogers, Dangerous Davies
Sunday, January 4th, 1981
Buck Rogers @ 7pm
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective @ 9pm
Buck Rogers. According to my TV Diary Buck Rogers 'began on RTE2' which comes as a shock to me as I had assumed the show was airing in Ireland before January 1981. According to Roger Fulton's Encyclopedia Of TV Science Fiction the show made it's ITV debut in August 1980 (a full year after first airing on NBC!). RTE2 obviously waited a while longer before jumping on the Buck bandwagon.
I wonder did the start with the first movie? ITV started with the second movie (because the first one had received a limited cinema release) so it was years before I saw Buck's first adventure in the 25th Century. Like many kids, I suppose, I assumed his first adventure was the one with Jack Palance and all those Slave Girls.
David Groh made a great impression on me, also. And I remember wishing (as a kid) that he had been part of the regular series. He and Buck were a good team, I felt, and it would have been fun to watch them squabble/compete on a weekly basis. I wonder did they ever consider having him in the regular cast?
I loved Twiki, of course and - strangely - had no strong feelings towards Erin Gray or Pamela Hensley. I spent the '70s having crushes on TV babes like Farrah Fawcett, so - I guess - the bar was set pretty high at an early age!!
Dangerous Davies. It's funny to re-read my TV diary and see shows that I have no memory of (Stainless Steel and Christmas Spirts) and then see one that I never forgot. This was a detective story unlike any detective story I had ever seen on TV and I absolutely loved it. I have remembered it fairly vividly over the past 28 years and I would love to see it again. It's amazing how some things make a great impression on you.
Bernard Cribbins is/was a great leading may and I remember the whole affair as being rather downbeat.
Swap Shop, The Dukes Of Hazzard
Saturday, January 3rd, 1981
Swap Shop. On this morning, as on many others, I record in my diary that I slept in for - and missed the start of - Multi-Coloured Swap Shop with Noel Edmunds. This was the perennial curse of Saturday Morning TV. It was on too frakkin' early and I was always missing out on the start of Swap Shop, or missing out on complete episodes of Champion, The Wonder Horse.
The Dukes Of Hazzard. Judging from my diary this seems to have been an episode about car strippers? I can imagine... I bet the General Lee was stolen or something...
Chopper Squad, Stainless Steel And The Star Spies, Wonder Woman, Christmas Spirits
Thursday, January 1st, 1981
10.30 Chopper Squad
04.45 Stainless Steel And The Star Spies
06.00 Wonder Woman
10.50 Christmas Spirits
Chopper Squad. I presume that this was a re-showing of the pilot movie from the very cool '70s Austrailian series about a search and rescue team. Goes to prove, I suppose that long before Airwolf and Baywatch I was crazy about helicopters and boobs beaches...
Stainless Steel And The Star Spies. This seems to have been a pilot for a series that never made it. It combined real people and puppets and... I have no memory of it whatsoever!
TV Cream mentions it. As does this blog.
Wonder Woman. Return Of Wonder Woman. I don't know if this aired at 6pm or not, but it's seems like a likely time so I'm going to list it as starting at 6pm.
I always had a love/hate relationship with the Wonder Woman TV show when I was a kid. Since she was a girl, it made sense that it was a 'girl's TV show' and I probably shouldn't be watching it. But the theme tune (later seasons) was awesome and the stories were great, too. Also, as I got a little older I realised that there was another fascination entirely with watching Lynda Carter running around with almost nothing on. Ah, innocent days...
Christmas Spirits.
Another movie/special/play that I have no memory of. But, according to my TV Diary, I watched it. Probably because of Elaine Stritch. During the 70s I would have known her from Two's Company so that might have been the reason I picked it out. Or maybe I wanted to watch it because it was a ghost story.
