The reason the 1987 repeat is at the forefront is because it was one of the first series I recorded on VHS. We'd recently been given a VHS recorder and I knew I wanted to have this on tape. But I was late home on the evening of the first episode broadcast, 15th May, so missed off the first fifteen minutes with the recording beginning just as the bulldozer is in the process of demolishing Arthur's house. Not until I was able to afford a copy of the sell-thru release (the one in the double box) did I see Mr Prosser, Ford's introduction, the guide entry about alcohol and the initial arrival of the Vogons.
It's impossible for me to really explain why I latched on to Hitchhikers in particular, especially in a period when I was more of Transformers and Star Trek fan and only casually watched Doctor Who. I think it's because everything Douglas was satirising - bureaucracy, home county values and academia - were nevertheless fairly aspirational for a teenager brought up in Speke but somehow going to a grammar school despite not being particularly academic (and struggling at that). It opened me up intellectually at an impressionable age, offering access to huge ideas and Sandra Dickinson's Trillian.
The guide entries really left their mark and I remember spending hours playing those backwards and forwards and freezeframing (as best you could on VHS) looking through all of the little details. Around this time I side-graded from an Acorn Electron to a Commodore 64 and the graphics, which I'd later discover were cell animations, seemed like they were straight from the latter. That's why the recent blu-ray release was disappointing. Having scanned the surviving animations and other footage in high definition, why weren't they edited back into the programme rather than simply added to the third disc in one chunk lacking context?
Tomorrow I turn 49, the same age Douglas Adams was when he left us and his death still hurts because he didn't live long enough to see so many of his ideas and predictions become more than the props on display in the television series. Even at the age of 71, he would most certainly still have been at the forefront of publicising and discovering new innovations and might even have written some more books and failed to make the deadline for the revival of Doctor Who. But his legacy is all still there and now that the new television version announce in 2019 doesn't seem to be going forward, the 1981 version is still the purest and most watchable of the screen versions ...
The Hitchhiker's Guide
"Kieran Prendiville exposes the animatronic workings of Zaphod Beeblebrox's prosthetic head."
[BBC Archive]
"John Lloyd unearths the private papers of his friend and colleague Douglas Adams, and discovers more about the agonies he went through to write The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
BBC Sounds]
"Patrick Moore, Julie Welch and Alan Plater join Ludovic Kennedy to review the television adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
[BBC Archive]
"Life, the universe and everything - just three of the topics that author Douglas Adams fails to adequately explain in this Newsnight interview about life, the universe and everything."
[BBC Archive]
"Douglas Adams chats to Terry Wogan about comedy, science-fiction and lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck."
[BBC Archive]
Absolute gold. Features Simon Jones and David Dixon over a decade after their original TV appearance discussing the nature of their existence.
[Tim Drury]
"Ape descended Islington rate payer Douglas Adams explains why he feels that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a natural fit for computer game adaptation, and why he is especially looking forward to the days when voice recognition and compact disc technology combine to make a truly interactive radio drama."
[BBC Archive]
""It is the first game that moves beyond being user-friendly... it's user-mendacious." Douglas Adams tells Micro Live about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game."
[BBC Archive]
"You wake up. The room is spinning very gently around your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't."
[BBC Programme Pages]
"Jon Canter shared a flat with Douglas Adams while the latter struggled for success."
[BBC Sounds]
"In a special edition of Bookclub, James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to author Douglas Adams about his classic worldwide bestseller The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
[BBC Sounds]
Archive
"This series aimed primarily at small businesses and further education colleges was fronted by the much respected Radio 4 'Today' presenter Brian Redhead. It showed examples of what can be done by looking at companies which had embraced the new technology in manufacturing or services. A typical example was the new use of bar codes in Tesco's supermarkets."
[BBC Computer Literacy Project Archive]
"Documentary profile of the life and career of Norfolk-raised footballer Justin Fashanu, just the second black player to represent Norwich City Football Club."
[East Anglian Film Archive][BBC Programme Archive]
"Yet another gem from the BBC Arena documentary series, this time on the French film director, René Clair. Features archival interviews with Clair and more recent interviews for the programme with Claude Autant-Lara, Gina Lollobrigida, Claude Chabrol, Leslie Caron and Jean-Pierre Cassel."
[UBUweb][BBC Programme Index]
People
"Text of an interview held at ‘Television Drama: The Forgotten, the Lost and the Neglected’ at Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham on Friday 24 April 2015."
[Forgotten Television Drama]
"Today, we welcome the writer of one of my absolute favourite Tolkien adaptations - the 1981 BBC Radio Dramatization of The Lord of the Rings - Brian Sibley!"
[The Nerd of the Rings]
Places
Residents of Tweedsmuir, Scotland, have clubbed together to buy a new TV mast to improve reception, in time for Prince Charles' wedding.
[BBC Clips]
Programmes
"Language translators for TV stations across the globe gather in the BBC studio to prepare their coverage for Charles and Diana's wedding."
[BBC News]
"Greendale was the perfect village. It had a beaming vicar and smiling children. Then John Cunliffe created Postman Pat."
[The Guardian]
"Kate O’Mara lies, topless on a grey ferry deck."
[Off The Telly]
"Interview by Eric Waugh with James Hawthorne, BBC Northern Ireland controller, regarding series of Irish language programmes that are to begin in October on Radio Ulster."
[BBC Rewind]
"The need to redress the balance in terms of political and social representation has informed some of the most powerful and influential television dramas screened on British television over the past 20 years."
[Off The Telly]
"Duttine on the BBC's acclaimed adaptation of the classic science-fiction story, the collapse of society... and the secret of Triffid power!"
[Radio Times]
"Although only a handful of stage adaptations for British television were ever made on location on outside broadcast (OB), the technologies and working practices could also be used inside, as well as away from, the studio. This unusual method of production was utilized in a BBC version of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard broadcast on 12 October 1981."
[Spaces of Television]
"Whilst comedies of the 1980s such as Never The Twain can be marked out as being successful yet little remembered, there are a whole class of situation comedies from the same period which were also hugely popular and still well remembered – indeed often fondly so – but which never quite claw their way into that mystical élite whose denizens remain the byword for sitcom quality."
[Off The Telly]
"What was it like growing up when your dad just happened to be writing one of the greatest sitcoms of all time? We spoke to John Sullivan's son, Jim, about his father, the show and his own involvement in the Only Fools legacy."
[Gold]
Politics
"The public looks to the BBC for programmes of range and quality. It expects both variety and excellent from the BBC and we believe that in the last year these expectation have not been disappointed. The next year will be a difficult one but we see the maintenance of out standards across all out output as the Board of Governors' prime aim for 1982."
[World Radio History]
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