The Saturday Show (ITV TV Series)
The Saturday Show was Birmingham-based Central Television's flagship Saturday morning kids TV show which replaced their previous show Tiswas. It ran on ITV for two series between 1982 and 1984. It was originally planned that popular wrestler Big Daddy would star and that it would be called "Big Daddy's Saturday Show". A pilot show was recorded with Big Daddy presenting, assisted by Isla St Clair and short films were shot with Big Daddy to insert in the upcoming series; a trailer for "Big Daddy's Saturday Show", complete with logo was shown on ITV the Saturday morning before the show was due to air. It was then announced during the week that Big Daddy was dropping out and that Isla St Clair would now take the lead, with ex-Magpie host Tommy Boyd assisting and with Jeremy Beadle being used as an occasional "stand in" host. The actor David Rappaport was also a fixture playing the character "Shades", as was soccer legend, Jimmy Greaves.
It was never made publicly clear why Big Daddy dropped out so close to transmission; no settlement was ever reached between him and Central.
The second season of the show featured a regular technology spot called 'Interface'. Presented by IT journalist Chris Palmer, it featured a couple of notable TV firsts. It broadcast a computer programme live which viewers could record from their TV and upload to a Spectrum. The initial attempt failed due to interference on the feed from the studio floor, but it was re-broadcast the following week and many viewers successfully recorded and loaded the programme. The second 'first' for the show was the game 'Up for Grabs' which was a game played live in the studio by a player in their own home via a computer and a modem. The contestant had to steer a robotic arm and pick up prizes from a rotating turntable. This proved incredibly difficult as the contestants found it difficult to gauge the depth of the arm and also the response time of the robot arm was slow. Still, this predated many other interactive game shows by many years.
The programme was shown on all ITV regions except TSW (and Channel Television), which made its own Saturday morning programme, also called "The Saturday Show". TSW's show was later renamed "Freeze Frame".
Read more about The Saturday Show (ITV TV Series): Series Guide
Famous quotes containing the words saturday and/or show:
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,—an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)