Tomorrow's World - the Day Before Yesterday.

The world’s longest running science-based TV programme is probably the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, originally billed as ‘a weekly report on the fast changing world of science, technology and medicine’. Originally presented by former RAF pilot Raymond Baxter along with writer and broadcaster James Burke, its enthusiastic approach to all things innovative has been lovingly lampooned on a regular basis (for instance, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie let loose with this parody in their BBC comedy show:

Hugh: How many times have you walked out in front of a bus, been knocked down and killed? Pretty frustrating, isn't it?

Stephen: Well, now there's a solution to that problem. A company down in Truro in Cornwall have started producing these lightweight travelling hats, which can be folded very tightly indeed, but when unpacked can be thrown away almost immediately.

Hugh: Which hopefully should eliminate that bus problem at a stroke.

(You can read more of Fry and Laurie’s work at http://www.geocities.com/mmemym/bits1/fa... )

The series may be gung-ho, but after nearly forty years on the air, it probably has earned the right. Throughout the sixties and seventies, its jazz music theme tune was an icon of modernity (You can hear a Windows Media Player version of the music, played by its composer, Johnny Dankworth, here ).

One of its most unusual features for a magazine programme like this is it has been broadcast live for the vast majority of its time on air. Since the presenters regularly have to make new gadgets work, this is asking for trouble.

As a trainee TV director at the BBC in West London in 1990, I remember spending a day watching the programme being rehearsed and transmitted from Television Centre. (I remember fear was my overwhelming emotion, at the thought that one day I would be expected to be able to do what these people were doing with such apparent ease. In fact, it was the very next day I was told the first live outside broadcast I was to direct was to be transmitted in a little over four weeks from then, so it was just as well I was paying attention.) The potential for disaster in a live programme of this nature is always just around the corner. If a gismo doesn’t work, or it takes too long to warm up, or it goes wrong and blows up (and that’s happened more than once) then the presenters have to be able to keep the show on the rails, and still end it on time. The cardinal sin was to overrun your slot, and make the whole of the rest of the network run late. These people were either seriously professional or seriously bonkers or possibly both.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic