Lets have a bit of fun with this one this week and look back at our favourite TV shows over the years!
As a kid I loved TV! My early days were spent watching Bod, Mr Benn, Jamie and the Magic Torch, Chorlton and the Wheelies, Rhubard and Custard, The Trapdoor, Scooby Doo, The New Schmoo, Wacky Races, Button Moon, The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Runaround, Grange Hill, Fraggle Rock, Sesame Street, Captain Caveman, Hong Kong Phooey, Around the World with Willy Fogg, Count Duckula, Play School, Rainbow, The Wombles, Emu's World, The Muppet Show...ah the memories! Who remembers some of these classics??!
Back in the days when there were only three/four channels on our TV in the 1970/80's, everyone I knew at school watched things like Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Blake's Seven, Doctor Who, Hart to Hart, Wonder Woman, Sapphire and Steel, Columbo, Cagney & Lacey, TJ Hooker, Juliet Bravo, Fawlty Towers, The Muppet Show, Miami Vice, Knots Landing, Diff'rent Strokes, Van der Valk, Crimewatch, The Fall Guy, Bionic Woman...ah the endless hours in front of great TV! I loved each of these at the time but some aged better than others! Some I can barely remember anything about like Sapphire and Steel, others like Wonder Woman weren't so good watching years later. I still enjoy looking at Dallas, Miami Vice, Blake's Seven and Columbo on dvd boxsets. Which shows from your childhood did you buy boxsets of?
My friends used to have many happy days re-enacting the plots of these shows in the school plaground. Charlie's Angels games usually resulted in a big fight as we all wanted to be Kelly! Sometimes I would relent and be Jill who I also liked! Mainly our combinations has Kelly, Kris and Sabrina. We also used to act out the stories at home on rainy days with our Sindy and Barbie collections! Funny how these were the only dolls I ever played with. When friends had prams with baby dolls, I used to have my stuffed monkeys in the pram instead...guess I never was very maternal!
My parents gave me permission to watch a horror film at a friends house when I was about 11. It was The Hills Have Eyes and we loved it! Gail and I then raced upstairs to act that out...barbies were being dragged by their hair out of the big yellow Barbie Camper Van to be murdered to the horror of Gail's mum! Her dad found it pretty funny! It was at their house that I first saw Jaws 2 on the day when I'd been to the dentist. Great timing...My dad was letting me watch horror films from when I was 9 and I loved them! The first two I really remember were The Thing and The Burning which I still love to this day. He knew I wouldn't be bothered by nightmares or anything and I just fell in love with horror then! The Thing is still one of my all time favourite films. Were you allowed to watch scary films at a young age or did you always avoid that kind of thing?
It looks like I was forever in front of the tv but I wasn't really. I loved playing with my friends, making up games indoors and outdoors depending on the weather. We didn't have social media or games consoles and we made our own fun. We were never bored or lacking in imagination. I think games consoles do have ther place to entertain kids but these days young kids don't seem to play outside like we did, spending endless hours on social media instead which is a bit of a shame. I wouldn't trade my summer games for any gadgets! I wouldn't trade my Barbie games or being an Angel for worrying over how many likes I got or being paranoid that I look too fat in my photos! Young kids seem obsessed by how others see them rather than being carefree like we were. Our biggest worries were was it going to rain...
Do you think kids are losing out by not exploring their imagination like we used to? What did you do and watch as a kid?
I'm all for technology but I do believe kids are missing out on some things today and don't use their imaginations enough. You've brought back so many memories. We also acted out Charlie's Angels on the playground? Isn't that crazy that on a while 'nother continent we were doing the same thing. I always wanted to be Kris (One Jill left). I remember being upset as a kid because we didn't have cable yet and I couldn't watch Fraggle Rock. I used to be obsessed with a show called H.R. Pufnstuf. I loved the zaniness of it. I also loved Miami Vice, Little House on the Prairie, The Bionic Woman (didn't like the bionic man). Even after I went to college, I remember trying not to scheduled any classes on Fridays so I could come home and watch The Simpsons with my Dad - it was one of our things. My mom hated that show, which we thought made it all the better.
ReplyDeleteYou are SO my kind of person. I rarely played with dolls and when I did, they were barbies. I much preferred my stuffed animals and had names and stories for all of them. It's awesome you acted out horror movies with barbies and your friend.
Thanks for the trip back to the past - it's been fun!
Sounds like we would have been doing the same stuff in the playground! Finally someone who didn't want to be Kelly! Jeez we had such great fun with all these games. Now kids are more interesting in 'likes'! Oh no, being deprived of Fraggle Rock is inhumane! I loved Red and Wembley. "Dance your cares away...*clap clap*.."
DeleteOoh I've been looking to find someone who watched that Pufnstuf series or film! You see I've been trying to remember a kids thing that featured a scene where a dragon gets put on a spit by a witch and I think it might be this film or series I saw it in. Can you confirm that at all?
I think I watched all those bionic things at the time but I don't remember much about them. I LOVED Miami Vice and couldn't wait to buy the box sets. The scenery, the music, the hot detectives...! I forgot about Little House on the Prairie. That stuck up snobby girl and her snotty mother!
Those days were so much fun!
I think that rings a bell, but I really can't confirm that scene happening. It's been so long and unfortunately, this show never really blew up in syndication so it's not want I get to rewatch much - which is a shame. I hear they are doing a reboot of Miami Vice for TV. I wonder how it will turn out. I kind of wish they would stop messing with classics.
DeleteI think it sounds like the thing I was thinking of. That solves a puzzle that has been bugging me for the best part of 25 years!!! Ugh another reboot? The film they did was so bad. Why not leave it alone and come up with a new show???!!! Ugh I bet this reboot will have rap music in it! Hate that!
DeleteWe did some of the same reenactments and such when we were kids in our neighborhood. Even went so far as to hang blankets for curtains on our clothesline and act out plays. My dad got us a huge roll of old theatre tickets and we would hand them out all week, putting on the play over the weekend. So many fun times!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you really got into the spirit of it with the plays! It was so much about making your own entertainment and we never got bored. I had my barbies in Jaws re-enactments in the bath. I didn't have a plastic shark so it was a killer rubber duck...
DeleteThe other day a few friends and I were reminscing about Futurama and our favorite episodes and the ones that made us cry. Man, that was a good show and so underrated. They don't make tv like that anymore!
ReplyDelete~Mogsy @ BiblioSanctum
I never actually watched Futurama but I have seen bits of it when it was on. Looking back at that TV as kids is such fun. Now it seems to be all these American shows about high school kids where everyone screams OMG every five seconds!
DeleteI remember Scooby Doo and Fraggle Rock. I don't have amy boxsets of old TV but I do remember Miami Vice kinda fondly, and my parents watched Columbo. I agree about social media now, it has its place but man when I was growing up we were out all day sometimes. And no cellphones so no one could reach us ha ha.
ReplyDeleteAfter we got cable I had a TV in my room and would stay up late watching HBO- Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fright Night, all that shit. They'd play em over and over. Good times...
I liked Scooby Doo until Scrappy came into it. I hated that annoying mutt! Miami Vice was one of my favourites and I still enjoy watching it today. Not everything ages so well! I always felt sorry for Columbo as he solves all those cases but never gets promoted!
DeleteThe only shows I've heard of on your list are Scooby Doo, Sesame Street, and Muppets, and I'm vaguely aware of Fraggle Rock though I don't really know what it is. But I grew up in a different country and a different time, so it makes sense we watched different shows lol. I was very much a 90s Nick Toons kid. But I also always loved the show Becker, even as a kid, and I do have Season 1 of that lol.
ReplyDeleteHahaha I love your story about murdering Barbies. I was never and am still not a horror movie person. I could count on my fingers the number of horror movies I've seen, and some of them are more thriller than horror. The first I really remember specifically setting out to watch with a friend was The Sixth Sense, if that even counts. I also have this memory of when I wanted to watch 28 Days Later as a teen, but it was rated R and my parents wouldn't let me, so I saw it was coming on TV in the middle of the night and made my friend stay up with me online because I was scared. Then when the movie started, I chickened out, and my friend had stayed up for nothing, haha. I did eventually watch it some other time.
I don't know, I honestly don't think too much about whether kids nowadays are missing out, but maybe they are.
Now I feel old! A lot of these were American shows but certainly were before your time! I never saw any of the Nick Toons stuff as I was already at college in the 90's.
DeleteI was a sick and twisted child, I admit it! I didn't think much of 28 days later even though I'm a zombie fan. I guess I expected more from it or something.
Man, my parents loved Blake's 7. That, Doctor Who, Star Trek and Due South were the main things we watched, other than cartoons. I was mostly a reader even as a kid, though!
ReplyDeleteI was addicted to Blakes Seven as a kid and still watch the boxsets! It's weird how I loved sci-fi on tv and films but I rarely read any books in the genre!
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