< TERM 2 WEEK 3

Monday January 28th My Dad’s 27th birthday. As gobsmacking as it is for me to think he was only 27 when I was eight years old, it’s far more gobsmacking to realise that by the time he was my age, his son was 31. I don’t have kids of my own so the whole thing sounds immensely terrifying. BBC 2, 6.55 pm: Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way, Part 4. This episode is about “The Down” - i.e. how to convince your dog to lie down. Unfortunately, Barbara keeps using the phrase “put your dog down” which we all know means something else. BBC 1, 7.15 pm: Blake’s 7 - Dawn of the Gods: an entertaining episode with lots of nice character stuff, even for the two computers. For once, Cally is the main focus, but the script still conspires to have her incapacitated for most of it. BBC 2, 7.30 pm: Horizon Special - The Mind’s Eye: an exploration of how we process visual information, including the idea that our eyes actually flip the visual image onto the retina, so we actually see everything upside down. From the description, I’m certain I saw this at the time. But there’s no way I would have missed Blake’s 7 to do that, so I must be mistaken. BBC 2, 8.30 pm: The Goodies - A Kick in the Arts. After the past two weeks of scripts which seem a year or two out of date, it’s a real surprise to find this one suddenly being slightly ahead of its time. The stuff about everyone dropping out of the Olympics except Britain is weirdly prescient and unexpectedly biting. Tuesday January 29th English: Waen Shepherd 2 and (probably) Green Squids. Launch of the Sinclair ZX80, arguably the first affordable home computer, with its whopping 1 kilobyte memory. BBC 1, 5.15 pm: Grange Hill: Series 3, Episode 7 - in which Sudamani is forced to look after new girl Fatima, who doesn’t speak a word of English, while at the same time her father decides to remove her from Grange Hill because he’s terrified of what might happen if she speaks to any boys. (Quite. She could end up with an eight year old kid by the time she’s 27.) Wednesday January 30th Peter Sutcliffe is interviewed by police in connection with the Yorkshire Ripper murders for an eighth time, this time while loading his lorry at work. They search the cab of his lorry and show him a photograph of a boot print found at the scene of Josephine Whitaker’s murder, but that’s as far as it goes and they let him carry on with his day. Sutcliffe later claims he was wearing the exact same boots from the photograph at the time and the police failed to notice. Which can’t possibly be true because, as we know, policemen and policewomen always check people’s shoes. It is another year before Sutcliffe is finally arrested. BBC 2, 10.45 pm: The first ever edition of Newsnight on BBC 2. It was supposed to be shown on Monday, but a dispute about the merging of News and Current Affairs at the BBC kept it off the air for two days after it was originally billed. There’s a short clip here. Thursday January 31st Representatives of the Committee for Peasant Unity in Guatemala enter and occupy the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City. A police raid, ostensibly to remove the peasants, results in a fire which kills 36 people. This incident has been called one of the defining events of the Guatemalan Civil War. Star Wars Weekly No 102 Doctor Who Weekly No 17 Spectacular Spider-Man Weekly No 361 Incredible Hulk Weekly No 49 Look-in No 6: Another shared cover this week, partly by The Incredible Hulk, to tie in with last week’s movie release, while the bottom half of the page reveals maybe slightly too much of the bottom half of ABBA. Top of the Pops - presented by David ‘Kid’ Jensen, with: • Three Minute Hero The Selecter (chart countdown) • Motorbike Beat Revillos • Jazz Carnival Azymuth (via Legs & Co) • Underpass John Foxx • Riders in the Sky The Shadows • I Hear You Now Jon & Vangelis • Are You Ready? Billy Ocean • Captain Beaky Keith Michell • Save Me Queen (playout) Friday February 1st BBC 1, 5.10 pm: Grange Hill: Series 3, Episode 8 BBC 2, 5.50 pm: Monkey - What Monkey Calls the Dog Woman ITV, 7.30 pm: The first ever edition of Play Your Cards Right with Bruce Forsyth. John Carpenter’s The Fog released in US cinemas, according to Wikipedia. Apparently it’s another ten months before we get it in the UK if you trust IMDB. But the BBFC list the release date as January 29th. Saturday February 2nd 2000 AD Prog 151: featuring the final instalment of Judge Death, with a neat ending that calls back to another recent Dredd strip.

Monday January 28th - Sunday February 3rd, 1980

TERM 2: Week 4

Sunday February 3rd ITV: Worzel Gummidge - Very Good, Worzel, in which Worzel and Aunt Sally wangle their way into being a butler and a maid at a special tea held by Mrs Bloomsbury-Barton, just so they can eat all the cakes. UK SINGLES CHART No 1: Too Much Too Young The Specials No 35: Rock With You Michael Jackson No 46: So Good To Be Back Home Again Tourists No 48: Games Without Frontiers Peter Gabriel No 57: Take That Look Off Your Face Marti Webb No 68: Red Frame White Light OMD No 69: TV Flying Lizards No 73: Turning Japanese The Vapors UK ALBUMS CHART No 1: Pretenders Pretenders No 75: Quiet Life Japan

MEANWHILE, IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE… Doctor Who: Shada - Part Three • If things had turned out differently, Part Three of Shada would have aired today. Some really nice Douglas Adams logic in this one - especially the exchange between the Doctor and the computer about whether or not the computer should accept his orders. Plus the brilliant self-conscious budget-saving device of the invisible spaceship in the middle of a field, a whole six years before Star Trek would attempt the same. This is a great piece of Doctor Who.

TERM 2 WEEK 5 >

TERM 2 (Jan - Apr 1980) New Year (Jan 1 - Jan 6, 1980) Week 1 (Jan 7 - Jan 13, 1980) Week 2 (Jan 14 - Jan 20, 1980) Week 3 (Jan 21 - Jan 27, 1980) Week 4 (Jan 28 - Feb 3, 1980) Week 5 (Feb 4 - Feb 10, 1980) Week 6 (Feb 11 - Feb 17, 1980) Half Term (Feb 18 - Feb 24, 1980) Week 7 (Feb 25 - Mar 2, 1980) Week 8 (Mar 3 - Mar 9, 1980) Week 9 (Mar 10 - Mar 16, 1980) Week 10 (Mar 17 - Mar 23, 1980) Week 11 (Mar 24 - Mar 30, 1980) Easter 1 (Mar 31 - Apr 6, 1980) Easter 2 (Apr 7 - Apr 13, 1980)

TERM 2 IN LINK FORM

TERM 1 (Sep - Dec 1979)

Hi-de-Hi! Jan 1, 1980

Steelworkers Strike Jan 2, 1980

St Pauls Riots Apr 2, 1980

State of the Union Jan 23, 1980

My Girl Madness

Blake’s 7 Returns Jan 7, 1980

Barbara Woodhouse Jan 7, 1980

Grange Hill Roof Death Feb 25, 1980

Mugabe Elected Zimbabwe PM Mar 4, 1980

Atomic Blondie

Echo Beach Martha and the Muffins

Games Without Frontiers Peter Gabriel

Robin Cousins at the Olympics Feb 21, 1980

Underpass John Foxx

Judge Death Jan 19, 1980

TERM 3 (Apr - Jul 1980)