Xenon's Seventh Circle

I got a new sister in 1982. That was nice. I hated being the youngest. We didn't get along until she was practically out of her teens, but it was mostly nice having her there anyway! I guess that was also the year that the garage fell down, and squished my bike. Probably one of the few times I'd put it away, rather than leaving it out on the lawn! It must have been in the winter, either at the start or the end of the year (bit vague, I know). I do know that we were watching Tarzan, in one of its various forms; and he jumped out of a tree, and landed with the most almighty crash you ever heard, which shows that sometimes the wind has jolly good timing.

TV wise, I think I was turning steadily American from this point onwards. I don't know when The Dukes Of Hazzard starting airing in the UK, but it was certainly underway by now. The Fall Guy was just getting going, and so was Tales Of The Gold Monkey, although I guess everybody would rather forget about that one nowadays. Obviously there was Starsky & Hutch in near permanent repeat, and Bonanza settling into what seemed like a decade-long position in the BBC schedules at noon on a Sunday. Guns! Explosions! Car (horse) chases! Hurrah! (Although America also gave us Fame in 1982, so by no means was it all good). I must be fair to British TV, which did give me a good series of Doctor Who this year of course. And then killed Adric at the end of it. I was devastated! Boy have times changed...

Musically a few surprises. Bucks Fizz managed to become temporarily cool with The Land Of Make Believe, the Jam fell apart, Chas & Dave would keep bothering us with nonsense (that my sister would insist on singing, loudly), and half of the Specials unfathomably formed a duet with Bananarama. Me and some friends from school formed a band this year, although I don't think it lasted the year out. I don't remember much, but there must have been some pretty severe musical differences, given that (of a trio, if memory serves), one was a Bucks Fizz devotee, and wasn't really allowed to listen to anything else (paranoid parents), and the other third only seemed to know Christmas carols. My abiding memory of our attempt at musical stardom is that we were initially called Hot Chocolate, as it was the one thing we all seemed to like! Then we found out that there was already a band with that name, which was bound to cause confusion on Top Of The Pops, so after much deliberation we changed to Blancmange. Somebody nicked that one off us too. :) Why we were so obsessed with foodstuffs, goodness only knows. And I don't think any of us could sing. Two of us played the melodica, and I don't remember what the third one did. She had one of these, so probably that.

And now I'm going to shut up, before this gets any more embarrassing!

( 1982 stuffs )

Channel 4 started this year too of course, but my family didn't get it until 1983. Something to do with the aerial, I think. And we went to war with Argentina, mostly because the leaders of both countries were low in the opinion polls, and needed a handy distraction, sharpish. (When I say "we", I do of course mean Britain. Not my family. We always were a rowdy bunch, but we were never that bad. And in 1982, the furthest we went was Cornwall. Honest).

I think Kojak has ruined me for cop shows. I've been watching season one of Starsky & Hutch, and it keeps making me cringe. They're really, really terrible cops. Prettier than Kojak, maybe, but I know who I'd turn to in a jam. They don't follow proper police procedure. Their behaviour at crime scenes is appalling. And their gun control! Everybody in Starsky & Hutch has a cannon, and they blast them constantly, in all directions, without even the slightest attempt to aim. Fortunately the bad guys are all terrible shots, which helps no end, because neither Starsky nor Hutch shows any evidence of ever having handled a gun before.

The writing on Kojak is better too. Starsky & Hutch have a worrying amount of cases brought to them by their girlfriends; and no matter how serious the episode, it always ends with a tacked-on laughing scene, usually with everybody sitting around in Hutch's living room. Sometimes he even gets his guitar out, and they have a sing along as well as a laugh. It's a fun show, and in its way it's perfectly enjoyable, but the last three to five minutes are often best skipped.

Oh dear. I like the show really. As a fan of The A-Team, and goodness knows what else in the ridiculous violence genre, I shouldn't be having a problem with any of this. It's just the contrast with Kojak, I think. I've gone from careful, considered policing, and well-written, layered plots, to tyre-screeching nonsense with ridiculous shoot outs. I like ridiculous shoot outs! Kojak has made me sensible. I can only hope that it wears off soon.

Meanwhile, the seventies are continuing in their usual vein. Oh the joys of period decor. I don't think I've seen anything worse than on The Hardy Boys yet, but they're giving it their best shot:

( ... )

Woe is me, for I have run out of Kojak. Bloody television, always ending. I think I might watch some Rockford Files next, partly because James Garner, and partly because I'm rather enjoying the seventies, and don't want to leave just yet. The paint is terrible, the wallpaper is worse, but all the same there's something welcoming about the seventies. Plots develop at a sensible pace, the editing isn't done by a crazed heroin addict, and there's absolutely no stupid wobble-cam or crash zooms. All of which serves to make me sound like a complete fuddy-duddy, but I don't care.

And I've run out of Kojak. I hate it when that happens. When you watch a show, you get used to the characters and enjoy their company; and then it ends and you have to move on to different people, when you'd rather still have the old. I'm going to miss Kojak. I'll miss Crocker and Stavros more, but I will miss Kojak too. He's such a pleasingly different sort of cop. For starters he's not a maverick. Oh, he's unconventional (what TV cop isn't?!), but he's a dyed in the wool teamplayer. No rushing off alone, no stupid solo ventures. I don't know if that was as much of a breath of fresh air in 1974 as it is now, but I've certainly enjoyed it. And it's all so entertainingly vintage. Kojak with his inkwell on his desk; and Crocker was wearing a brown tweed waistcoat with a pocket-watch today. Waistcoats with pocket-watches, people! That's proper dressing, that is. Although I'm amused by the idea that this naive young cop in 1974 should think so. He and Kojak really do appear to be sharing a wardrobe.

Must admit, for all that I've enjoyed the show, I do kind of wish it had ended sooner than it did, though. For the first couple of seasons it was something really, properly good, and genuinely different. Season three was good too, though it started to repeat itself a little. By season four it had become pretty generic, and audiences apparently began to jump ship. So, bizarrely, the producers revamped the show for season five, and turned it into a comedy. Who looks at a gritty, realistic (ish, shut up) police drama, and thinks "this needs more slapstick"?! It's the equivalent of adding sex and drugs to Tom & Jerry. One episode even has Liberace in it. Now, I like Liberace, don't get me wrong; but as a pianist, not as a guest star on Kojak. Characterisation got chucked out the window, too. For four years, Kojak enthusiastically displays his willingness to bite your head off if you so much look at Crocker a bit funny. Then in season five, Crocker gets kidnapped by an armed gang, and suddenly everybody's standing around making jokes, and not being at all bothered. And Kojak goes off for a chat about frozen yoghurt with Liberace. Yeuch. Still, I watched season one last, so it all ended on a high note. And there was Antonio Fargas and Paul Michael Glaser as guests (though not in the same episode), so that was nice. And now I'm going to shut up. And possibly hunt out some Starsky & Hutch on YouTube.

But I'd rather have more Kojak, damn it.


Here, have a wilfully funky seventies theme, with slightly wobbly titles FX. Everything is so polished nowadays. Sometimes I think they're rather missing the point.