Grange Hill

[JWG]

But what connection is there in each case between starting school and having formal reading lessons on the one hand,and learning to read?

It's very clear as far as I can see - children in most European countries don't begin learning to read until the age of 6 or 7. The idea that it's somehow necessary for children to arrive at school at age 5 already able to read is a peculiarly British notion that's grown up in the last 20 years or so.

O/T,but I keep seeing this at the top of the page,and remembering that my late wife,born in 1954,was taught to read at home,and was disgusted at being made to use the Initial Teaching Alphabet when she started school.

[lovecraft]

Yeah, although you probably wouldn't pick Adam Ant's Vive Le Rock.

It was atypical, but then so was the Play School edition they picked: no toys, no window, two (relatively) forgotten presenters. You know more about this, Gareth, but do you think that was because loads of the shows are tricky to clear re third-party rights?

The Blue Peter edition had already been shown on BBC4, so I suspect that's why they dug it out again.

Well, he is definitely forgotten, but Carol Leader was a very regular presenter at least to my memory.

[Mike S]

I remember both of them, but you'd think they'd go for a classic Cant episode.

[GarethR]

I wouldn't have thought it was a rights clearance issue, more a case of an episode being pulled more-or-less at random by someone who didn't have the knowledge to know what would make a good, properly-representative choice.

[ctraynor]

All that reminds me of the continual choosing in years gone by of The Girl who was Death episode to show an example of The Prisoner when it came to ITV anniversaries and things. An entertaining episode but again not typical.

[Mike S]

All that reminds me of the continual choosing in years gone by of The Girl who was Death episode to show an example of The Prisoner when it came to ITV anniversaries and things. An entertaining episode but again not typical.

For a while, wasn't TGWWD the only episode that had been cleared for a repeat? I remember somebody saying that was the reason TV Heaven showed it, and that ideally they'd have picked a different one.

[ctraynor]

I hadn't known that but it sounds likely enough.

[Nick Cooper 625]

Apropos The Girl..., obviously there was the ITV anniversary screening in 1980, and then in TV Heaven on C4 in 1992, in between which C4 screened the whole series (after a fashion!). Has it been shown as a one-off at any other time?

[ian b]

1982's World Cup ITV schedules included GIRL as part of its BEST OF BRITISH series of repeats.

[Nick Cooper 625]

1982's World Cup ITV schedules included GIRL as part of its BEST OF BRITISH series of repeats.

Ah, I think that's what I must have mistaken for a 1980 screening. I know I audio recorded it at the time, and I figured it must have been ITV's 25th, as I didn't have a cassette recorder five years previously.

[SgtPepper]

After a gap of several years Series 5 & 6 have been released.

[voyager]

Early days of Zammo and Co and Gripper at his worst