Stuart Millard posts
Posts: 334
Files: 300
Treasure Hunt
In my gigantic list of horrible stuff to cover on here, I'd always planned on hitting 3-2-1, but I snoozed and losed, and Limmy beat me to it. So instead, let's get into the era's other weird as shit riddle-me-ree gameshow. Like Crystal Maze and Fort Boyard, Treasure Hunt is an adaptatio...
The Accursed 90s – Endurance UK
Before British television became uniformly embarrassing, home audiences had to ring second-hand cringe-laughs from the clip shows of Clive James and Chris Tarrant, shrieking at pre-watershed cereal ads from Europe which casually featured bare breasts, and game shows that tormented their contestants ...
The Larry Grayson Show
Larry Grayson is another performer who exists in my mind, and perhaps in modern pop culture, more defined by other people's impressions of him than his actual self; an entire historic essence boiled down into the catchphrases “shut that door” and “what a gay day!” Mike Yarwood and co dra...
Jim Davidson’s Adult Pantos: Closing the Cursed Trilogy
As this is the final post of 2020, without wishing to come across all 'Bill Murray at the end of Scrooged,' I'm afraid I must drop some unironic earnesty, and sincerely thank you all for sticking with me through this Hell-year. I hope i've been able to provide a little distraction fr...
An Accursed 90's Christmas
It somehow feels dirty letting the horrible 90s get their lager and spunk-covered hands on Christmas, but I regret to inform you there were at least ten of them held in that decade. To get a sense of what a 90's Christmas was truly like, I'm afraid we must return to some of our previous haun...
You Are Haunted - Episode 5
Christmas special.---Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
The Mike Yarwood Christmas Show
In the history books of light entertainment, the name Mike Yarwood is invoked almost entirely as an example of being massively famous and successful before suddenly disappearing, never to be seen again. I've only the vaguest memories of watching at the time, aware of his work mostly through retr...
Noel's Christmas Presents
With my distressing fixation on Edmonds, Noel's Christmas Presents is one of those suggestions that comes up a lot, and I almost went there last year, only to decide against it at the last moment. How could I possibly write about the cultural byword for kind-hearted event television which left i...
Runaround at Christmas
As a little behind the curtain goss, I had intended to cover Mike Reid's adult panto, Pussy in Boots this year, but then something else came along, which I simply couldn't refuse (to be posted just before Christmas). But Reid's such an iconically bizarre figure, I still needed to see wha...
Bad Influence!
I simply couldn't cover GamesMaster without looking at its opposite number, CITV's Bad Influence! “I have observed, Millard,” you sniff, “the exclamation point denoting your wild excitement. I'd venture we're in for quite the thrill ride?” Please be aware, you idiot, that thi...
Uri Geller's Cursed
Ah, Uri Geller. For a man so spectacularly up my alley, at the exact convergence point of naff paranormalism and television kooks, it was inevitable we'd meet on these pages for a deep dive. I have touched on Geller before, briefly in my book Smoke & Mirrors and Steven Seagal, and in his appeara...
Michael Jackson's Ghosts
A recent story in the Hollywood Reporter about Bryan Singer's toxic sets on the X-Men movies opened with a brief anecdote, meant to demonstrate the general disarray of production. In it, Michael Jackson showed up at the studio, to pitch himself for the role of Professor X; an old, bald white man...
The Dukes of Hazzard & CHiPS - Science Fiction Double Feature
Is it Halloween already? Like your most annoying Facebook friend from school's birthday, our greatest festival now takes up a full month. It seems to get earlier every year, although it only starts to feel like Halloween when you see the Coca-Cola hearse. October is the perfect time to march thr...
And There's More...
In digging around weird old shit off the telly, I spend half my time falling off the end of the pier down various light entertainment wormholes. One minute, it's the height of summer and you're watching the Krankies Christmas special, then you realise it's been uploaded by Jimmy Cricket ...
Bonus Post: The Time I Didn't Meet a Gnome
This is about a teacher I had at the age of eight, but as he's not consented to be written about on here, to protect his privacy, I'm going to call him Mr. Diarrhea. Hm, on second thoughts, that's a bit too... diarrhea-y. Let's call him Mr. Monk, because the young me believed his bal...
Dream Stuffing
Shitcoms #11
Our Show
Lasting two series from 1976-77, ITV's Our Show was the Bugsy Malone of television, the very Our of the title a metaphorical 'NO ADULTS ALLOWED!' sign swinging from the door handle. Surely intended to be a proto Why Don't You?, using a team of child presenters the same age as its aud...
The Accursed 90s: The Girlie Show
As a frequent stablemate on lists of Britain's worst ever television, The Girlie Show was essentially sold as The Word, except instead of Terry Christian, there were a trio of female hosts talking about boozin' and shaggin'. Wait, that can't be right?! That's exclusively men stuf...
Owt Good On, Mam? – The Three L's
In trawling through the worst of pop culture, I always want to give my beloved Patrons their money's worth, but often come across something which is fully on-brand yet too short or singular for a deep dive. So, I figured I'd start a series bundling some of these orphans together, like Hell&#...
Wacaday
Wacaday's something which crops up a lot in suggestions, but like much of the stuff I cover, very little footage has survived. In this case, that's not surprising, given even even The Upper Hand would slink off defeated at Wacaday's genuinely incredible tally of 455 episodes. Barring all...
You Are Haunted - Episode 4
Travellers and guests.---Theme is Comascape - Chant, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. The rest of the music and SFX are via freesound.org.
Bill & Ted: The Series
As 1990 was the era of the animated spin-off, it's a given that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure landed a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. More surprising is the original cast reprising their roles, with Keanu, Alex Winter and George Carlin all returning as voice actors. Season two of Bill & Ted's...
The Cannon and Ball Project: Episode I
A few quick notes:- I've been wanting to get into video essays as $3 content for a while, and this felt like a good way in.- I know you're specifically paying for written work, so some of you may not be super into yet another site pivoting to video. Eventually, these will be more of a thing,...
The Mystery of The Upper Hand
If you've been reading my work regularly over the last few years, you'll recall I've a specific bar for things which ran a really long time while simultaneously leaving no cultural mark. Remember 90's ITV sitcom The Upper Hand? You should, having racked up 94 episodes. Go on, quote a...
Naked Jungle
Without question, Channel 5's nude gameshow, Naked Jungle, is one of the most infamous programs ever broadcast. You'll find it cited at or near the top of every article or clip show about Britain's Worst Television, but like a lot of things on those lists, outside of brief snippets, few ...
GamesMaster II: The Wrestling
Growing up a wrestling fan in early 90's Britain, you had to take what you could get. Nowadays, you'd have to retire to free up enough hours for the endless dreck they're pumping out, but back then, everyone had to wait their turn for the VHS tape off the one kid in their class who had S...
O.T.T.
All the best Saturday morning children's TV had elements which appealed to the adults lounging around on their days off, be it Trevor and Simon on Going Live, pretty much all of Dick 'n Dom in Da Bungalow, or female presenters the dads fancied. ITV's Tiswas straddled that generational li...
