First viewed : 3 September 1980
This was a three part series of special 50 minute reports made by BBC Bristol and led by the Beeb's superstar newsreader.
I only saw the first one , subtitled The Soap Business , which saw Angela trace the development of the soap opera from its early days as a cash cow on US radio for the likes of Proctor and Gamble to the dominance of Dallas. Pre-advertising for the show made sure people knew she'd be interviewing Larry Hagman and Linda Gray during its course.
At this point of course BBC TV didn't have a home -grown soap so part of the programme concentrated on long-running radio soap The Archers where a small part had been written in for Angela as a date for Nelson Gabriel. My mum was a big fan of The Archers so she was thrilled to see some of the faces behind the voices and noted that Eddie Grundy was just as she'd pictured him.
The subsequent programmes were about psychics and salesman techniques.
There wasn't another season made which may have influenced Angela to defect to ITV and her ill-fated stint on TV-am. She bounced back of course in many different shows but I think this was the last time she had her name in the title.
No comments:
Post a Comment