O’DAY’S TRAVEL WOES #34: Highlights of UK Television in 1994

December 1994 (London, continued):

I saw some interesting TV programs while in London.

One was a brilliantly funny show called Have I Got News For You!, based on a long-running British radio program. Too complex to try to describe here, but it combined comedy, current events, and quiz show elements in a way I’d never seen before. In the 15 years since I first saw it, this remains one of my favorite programs in the world.

A less impressive show was Good Fortune, an odd combination of Queen for a Day and This Is Your Life. It was shot in front of a studio audience, and basically it consisted of the host bringing audience members onstage and surprising them with the news that they were recipients of inheritances they had not known about. (Some got money from the wills of distant relatives; one received the proceeds from a pension fund he had not know he had contributed to.)

Another program — apparently not very well known — was The Trial. It was a reality-based show involving real crimes but done quite differently than in America. Each episode followed one particular trial from beginning to end and on through appeal (if there was one).

They videotaped inside the courtroom (where the participants acted surprisingly like the ones on Rumpole of the Bailey), and both the defendant and the defense attorney made themselves quite accessible to the program throughout.

The defendant — who, in this episode, claimed innocence of attempted armed robbery — told his story to the camera, which showed what his life in prison was like while awaiting trial. The defense attorney provided analysis of each day’s courtroom proceeding.

If this episode fairly represented the British judicial system, it certainly seems easier to convict someone in England than it is in the U.S. Imagine this:

The prosecution had no physical evidence directly connecting the accused to the crime. Although there were several eyewitnesses who saw the perpetrator up close, none was able to pick the defendant out of a line-up. They all agreed the robber resembled the accused, but none was certain it was he…and one witness went so far as to say the real criminal definitely was taller than the defendant.

So….What evidence was there? A bag similar to the one used by the robber was found at the home of the defendant’s brother (although it was not established the defendant had ever been there). And a former friend of the accused told police the defendant told him he had committed the crime.

The other show I saw was Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush — the title of which came from the fact that at the end of the program, two audience members were sent either to some exotic locale (that week, Grenada) or — if they responded with too many wrong answers to their quiz questions — to some ugly locale in England. And they left immediately after the show.

Prior to this, however, there were several quite silly participation stunts. One featured contestants who entered an elevator in the building that housed the studio. With a couple of dozen floors to choose from, each contestant had a minute or two to stop at as many floors as possible. (For some reason, they didn’t simply go up one floor at a time; they picked floor numbers and jumped around.)

There was a camera inside the elevator. At each floor, when the door opened they either saw a suitcase full of money (which they ran out and grabbed, then returned to the elevator)…or they saw someone with a bucket of water, which promptly was thrown at the contestant.

The most diabolical feature, however, consisted of paying people to let the show drop their favorite things into the river Thames. For example:

A woman in the audience had a drawing done by her young son to commemorate the recent birth of his younger sister. The drawing featured the mother, father, little boy, and the baby. It was very cute, and the mother liked it so much she had it framed. The show had it dangling on a rope from a helicopter, over the Thames, while the host offered her a thousand pounds to let them drop it in the river. (She refused the money. Apparently, most people did not refuse.)

Wonderful news: Rumor has it they’re trying to bring this show back to the airwaves.