Late Night Line-Up

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Late Night Line-Up was a pioneering British television discussion programme broadcast on BBC2 between 1964 and 1972. Late Night Line-Up returned for a special one-off edition on BBC Parliament in 2008.

Contents

[edit] Background

From its launch in April 1964, BBC2 began each evening's transmission with a programme called Line-Up, a ten-minute collection of reviews and previews of the channel's output, presented initially by Denis Tuohy. Although intended to draw attention to the considerable variety of original programming on BBC2, Line-Up was perceived as little more than a self-promotion exercise by the newspapers and the viewing public alike. Later in the same year, it was decided that Line-Up be replaced by something of a similar intention but with a more intellectual edge. Instead of a guided tour of BBC2's output, the new programme would be an open and candid discussion among invited guests, transmitted live after the 9.00 p.m. watershed. The new programme was named Late Night Line-Up and took over from Line-Up in September 1964.

[edit] Content

Denis Tuohy carried over his presenter's role from Line-Up but the new programme also brought Joan Bakewell to prominence as a broadcaster. An innovative feature of Late Night Line-Up was that it was deliberately scheduled as the last programme of the evening before closedown. This meant that the discussion need not be constrained by time; topics could be explored as far as the participants' were willing to talk about them. (Another open-ended discussion programme, After Dark, began on Channel 4 fifteen years after Late Night Line-Up had ceased production.)

Participating in the discussion were TV personalities, subject experts and members of the public with relevant experience. For example, a real-life single mother might be invited to discuss a drama themed around single parenthood. Some panelists were deliberately chosen to talk about something outside their usual sphere of expertise. In one edition, the playwright Harold Pinter held his own on the subject of cricket, even when his fellow panelists were a distinguished cricketer and a cricket journalist.

Late Night Line-Up eventually went well beyond its initial remit of examining BBC2's output and came to incorporate interviews, live music and poetry performances and discussions of other TV channels (which meant ITV to all intents and purposes) and even current affairs issues. However, television criticism was always seen as the main focus, a fact which did not exactly endear the programme to the BBC's senior executives. Indeed, presenter Denis Tuohy quotes the then Head of Light Entertainment, Tom Sloan, as saying "We now employ two kinds of broadcaster: those who make programmes and those who knock them... Don't ask me why we do it."

On 26 May 2008 Late Night Line-Up returned for a special one-off edition as part of BBC Parliament's Permissive Night.[1] Presented by Joan Bakewell Late Night Line-Up returned for an open and candid discussion of the themes and programmes shown over the course of the evening. Permissive Night examined the liberalising legislation passed by Parliament in the late 1960s which made Britain a more tolerant and permissive place to live. Archive programmes shown included editions of Man Alive, Panorama, Twenty-Four Hours and Late Night Line-Up.

[edit] Crew of Late Night Line-Up

[edit] Episode guide

As with many shows of its time, a lot of Late Night Line-Up doesn't exist any longer. This was due to not only tapes being wiped, but as the programme often went out live, they simply weren't recorded by the BBC in the first place. Luckily some records do survive containing many dates and details of these shows. [1]

[edit] 1964

  • Interview With Miss Foyle - Foyle’s Bookstore / Interview With Mr *Tompkins – Bookseller/ Screaming Lord Sutch Interview 27/8/64
  • History Of The Radio Times 23/9/64

[edit] 1965

[edit] 1966

[edit] 1967

[edit] 1968

[edit] 1969

[edit] 1970

[edit] 1971

[edit] 1972

  • Dutch Television 14/1/72
  • Up Sunday 16/01/72
  • James Moffatt Interview 21/1/72
  • Up Sunday 23/01/72
  • Discussion On Edward Albee 7/2/72
  • International Guitar Competition 23/2/72
  • Malcolm Macdonald 15/03/72
  • Up Sunday - Animation 26/03/72
  • Women’s Edition of Punch – Discussion 27/3/72
  • Up Sunday – Events Of The Week 09/04/72
  • The Comedians – Discussion 12/4/72
  • Everybody Likes Little Bit Xtr 14/04/72
  • Ecology - The Club Of Rome 17/04/72
  • Hetty King 19/4/72
  • Welcome Little Kangaroo - Eight Years of BBC2 21/04/72
  • Up Sunday 23/04/72
  • Steven Scheuer Interview 5/5/72
  • Up Sunday – Events Of The Week 07/05/72
  • Sculpture 8/5/72
  • James Joyce 11/5/72
  • Harold Evans Interview 17/5/72
  • Working men's clubs 24/5/72
  • Up Sunday 04/06/72
  • Ecology - So Far So Good 12/06/72
  • World Ecology Conference 16/06/72
  • An Element In This Country Which I Need 12/07/72
  • General Vo Nguyen Giap Interview 28/7/72
  • Lady Betjeman 01/08/72
  • All Our Own Work 02/08/72
  • Little Richard Interview / Francis Fuchs Interview 4/8/72
  • Cable Vision 9/8/72
  • Claud Cockburn Interview 15/8/72
  • Robert Maxwell Interview 22/08/72
  • Bill Tidy Interview - The Forsdyke Saga 11/9/72
  • A Profile Of Johnny Speight 15/09/72
  • Pornography, Sex And Freedom 29/09/72
  • John Houston 9/10/72
  • Sir Hugh Carleton Greene - Granada Lecture 18/10/72
  • Vietnam Veterans 19/10/72
  • Cecil Lewis 6/11/72
  • Wole Soyinka Interview 20/11/72
  • World Speed Trials 23/11/72
  • Black September 7/12/72
  • Press Photography 13/12/72
  • Last Edition (of original run) – BBC2 Discussion With Micheal Dean, Tony Bilbow, Sheridan Morley And David Attenborough 14/12/72

[edit] 2008

[edit] References

  1. ^ BBC NEWS | Programmes | BBC Parliament | Bank Holiday means 'Permissive Night'

[edit] External links