To ask what shite tv you used to watch

[botswanabanana]

back in the days when there were only 4 channels to choose from and kids' tv was from 4-6 on weeknights and on Saturday morning.
Eg. Bonanza reruns, Snooker championships..... the very bottom of the barrel was horse racing for me!

some god-awful dirge called Charles in Charge about a young man who was a childminder

we used to love that. My best friend was totally in love with Scott Baio.

We always used to watch The Monkees in the summer holidays. And a sitcom called Step By Step with - I think - Patrick Duffy (aka Bobby Ewing) in the lead role.

Oh and Saved By The Bell.

Now listen, I will not hear a word said against Rentaghost (or at least the first couple of seasons before it got really silly) or Knott's Landing! I'd forgotten that one but I was hooked on it too, despite never having watched Dallas. My mum and I used to watch Dynasty but I never liked any of the characters that much, but I loved the main character in Knott's Landing, was she called Karen? And I seem to remember liking the main guy too.

My favourite shows in the 70s were:

Doctor Who (Tom Baker rules!)
Batman (1960s version re-runs)
The Bionic Woman
Logan's Run (tv version, very different from the film)
The Invisible Man
Any other vaguely sci-fi thing, which is weird because I can't stand sci-fi now

Cartoons/ animated shows like Tom & Jerry, Wacky Races, Noah & Nelly, Yogi Bear, The Wombles!! And the lovely lovely Clangers of course.

All the 'classic' British sitcoms, which I watched with my parents; I guess the rude humour just went over my head - same with the Carry On films (I preferred the 'historical' ones though!) and the Pink Panther movies which my dad LOVED

Lots of comedy / variety shows like those mentioned above, plus The Two Ronnies which ALWAYS seemed to be on in our house!

My dad watched a lot of sport (cricket, horse racing & rugby mostly) so I sat through a lot of all of those and wow, snooker was a big deal in the 80s wasn't it? The world snooker championship final brought the country to a standstill!

(Actually I don't think this is shite) My parents liked historical drama series and let me watch them with them, so I saw (and loved) all or most of:
Secret Army (Allo Allo started out as a direct parody of this show)
The Duchess of Duke Street
Edward VII (starring Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria and Timothy West as Edward)
Lillie
Edward & Mrs Simpson
The Devil's Crown (mid 70s series about the Plantagenet kings starring Brian Cox!) and many others.

Later, in the early-mid 80s we watched Brideshead Revisited, and all of the series based on the novels of RF Delderfield who had been a friend of my dad's - A Horseman Riding By (with Nigel Havers in his breakout role), To Serve Them All My Days (ditto Belinda Lang), Diana (Jenny Seagrove) - a lot of future well-known actors' careers were launched by these series!

Oh and Tenko. TENKO. And OMG bloody 'Nanny' with Wendy Craig - both the subject of breathless weekly schoolgirl discussions throughout my teens in the 80s.

Also I secretly watched 'The Cleopatras' aged about 14/15 out of sight of my parents as there was a lot of shagging in it, IIRC!

(Late teens / early 20s)
Moonlighting
Lovejoy (still like it tbh)
CAGNEY AND LACEY. I can't believe I’m the only one! Loved the theme tune!

Good times!

We used to watch 'That's Life' with Esther Rantzen on Sundays. Some of the consumer watchdog features terrified me - there was a long running one about people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from a particular design of boiler. But goodness, looking back, what a bag of shite most of it was - 'get Britain singing' - people sending in carrots that looked like a cock and balls - Esther getting arrested for causing a disturbance in some town centre - really, it was the ultimate cringefest!

I remember when Esther Rantzen was arrested for doing interviews in the street on ' that's life!'
They always had a man and a woman on who would do poetry or the sillier bits and laughing competitions ' who has the best laugh in Britain !' Or talking dogs that said ' sausages' !
I also remember the boiler deaths : to be fair , That's life did manage to change a lot of legislation around such things to make it safer. She was a tireless campaigner for lots of things.