FALLING, WE’RE FALLING, WE’RE FALLING [295]

"French Kissin,” more often remembered as “French Kissin in the USA,” was the main single from Debbie Harry’s 1986 album “Rockbird,” made while the band Blondie was on hold. It was a success in the US, and Harry’s only top ten single in the UK. 

However, while the song is good, it is not the main reason it is likely to be remembered these days, because the person that wrote it has become very successful in his own right: he had been a touring singer-songwriter for years before Harry recorded one of his songs, and he had since said his songs made sure he was kept out of the limelight, before he turned to writing scripts for television.

Chuck Lorre’s first scripts were for animated shows, meaning that, as I grew up, I would have seen episodes he wrote of “Heathcliff & The Catillac Cats,” “Muppet Babies,” ”Fraggle Rock,” and “Beany and Cecil” – there are other shows, but I don’t think they reached the UK, or I don’t remember them at all. As these shows date from 1984 onwards, either Lorre continued with songwriting without much success, or “French Kissin” was a few years old before Harry recorded it.

This then led to live-action sitcoms, with Lorre on the writing teams for “My Two Dads” and “Roseanne,” before he created his own, “Frannie’s Turn,” which only lasted for 6 episodes in 1992. However, this led to “Cybill,” “Grace Under Fire,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Mike & Molly” and “The Big Bang Theory.” 

These are all shows that have their charms but, especially when Channel 4 or ITV 2 screen episodes of them two or more in a row, they start to feel too much like stereotypical American sitcoms: with at least twenty-two episodes to be made each year, and with ten minutes in every half-hour swallowed by commercials, the plots, characters and jokes can become forced: forced to fit the time left, and forced to make their points quickly, with no breathing space. Chuck Lorre clearly knows the formula to producing a successful TV show, but successful TV show must also hide its workings. Also, I have never found the character or Sheldon Cooper funny, or relatable, and I never will.

“French Kissin” is the only Chuck Lorre composition to have scored in the charts, but it is not his only successful effort in music. With Dennis Challen Brown, Lorre wrote the incidental music, and the horrendously catchy theme song, for the original animated series of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” – “heroes in a half shell,” and so on. And, yes, the spoken parts were by Lorre, which include, “We’re really hip!” and “That's a fact, Jack!” When you also know that the co-writer of the music for “The Real Ghostbusters” and “Inspector Gadget” was Haim Saban, he of the “Power Rangers” franchise, it does appear that the way to make billions of dollars is to start writing music for children’s TV shows.

DANCE YOUR CARES AWAY, WORRY’S FOR ANOTHER DAY [79]

The future of television once lived on my doorstep. In the pre-internet, pre-digital days of the 1980s, Television South (TVS), the local ITV company for the south and south east of England, based in Southampton, the next city along from me. They made programmes that were shown across the UK and the world, and owned two TV studios in the UK - with a third in Hollywood co-owned with CBS - and also owned MTM Enterprises, makers of “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere,” and “Newhart.” Note the past tense – TVS had the kind of ambition that created its own obstacles to overcome, but before they tripped themselves up, they were captivating to watch.

Franchises to run ITV companies in the UK were once run like a beauty contest – with each review, your company could take over a licence if you could prove you could provide a better service. In 1980, a group of TV producers thought they had better ideas for programmes than the existing Southern Television, which had a track record in children’s programmes, opera and local news, but were otherwise safe and conservative, and owned by companies based elsewhere, in London and Scotland. TVS expected a “shotgun marriage” with Southern (as had happened to create Thames Television in London), but won an outright victory - Southern felt they did not need to provide enough detail on their re-application, until they were asked to do it again.

What could have been an independent company became a fully-fledged TV station, buying and building its own studios, selling ad space, and making deals. When there was no space at the same decision-making table as the major ITV companies – Thames, Yorkshire, Granada (north-west England, Central, and London Weekend Television (LWT) – TVS signed a deal with LWT to gain access to their space, putting game shows like “Catch Phrase” (from 1986, and still going) onto screens. Drama series like “C.A.T.S. Eyes” and “The Ruth Rendell Mysteries” were also shown, but they also had form with children’s programmes like “Number 73,” “Art Attack” and “How 2.”

TVS had some firsts – an episode of the 1982 science series “The Real World” became the first TV programme to be shown in 3D, using glasses given away with the “TV Times." TVS also owned the UK’s first TV news helicopter, and made the wraparound live-action scenes seen in the UK for The Jim Henson Company’s “Fraggle Rock,” using a converted cinema in Gillingham, Kent.

However, with so much money coming in from advertising – the south of England was more likely to watch the BBC, so TVS instead pioneered selling UK TV ad space based on the types of people watching - and fewer opportunities to make bigger programmes in the UK, TVS started to look around. We nearly had a situation where a Southampton-based TV company owned either the film division of Thorn EMI, or even the biggest TV station in France, TF1. Instead, MTM Enterprises and other American companies were bought, in anticipation of the revenue from selling programmes worldwide, and TVS became a conglomerate named TVS Entertainment. On screen, they were TVS Television – “Television South Television” – underlining that it was no longer just about the south.

This growth happened just after the “Black Monday” stock market crash of 1987, and ahead of the global recession of the early 1990s. Not making enough money from selling programmes as they had hoped, job losses followed, and the companies they bought were being sized up for sale again.

In 1991, it was the turn of TVS to defend its own ITV franchise. This time, instead of only relying on your track record, or future plans, the Government had introduced a blind bidding process. TVS won the programming round, but they bid £59 million – an amount they would have to pay each year. They won this round too, but they lost their franchise, their business plan having been judged to be unsustainable - they bid more than they could realistically pay. The company that won, Meridian, bid £36 million – now, with the internet and digital TV turning the system upside down, each ITV region pays a token £10,000 each per year.

What remains of TVS is hazy memories, and hazy video recordings posted to YouTube. TVS was bought by IFE, a company owned by the fundamentalist Christian preacher Pat Robertson, launching The Family Channel using the TVS library – this later became the game show channel Challenge, helped out by the repeat showings of “Catch Phrase.” As IFE was bought, TVS was passed through 20^th Century Fox, Saban International (the “Power Rangers” people), and its library is now owned by The Walt Disney Company. Reportedly, the paperwork for the programmes has been mislaid, meaning it is impossible to show them, meaning a whole period of UK TV history is out of reach, for now. The situation may change one day but, for now, I’ll keep with what I have.