That's Life!

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That's Life!
Presented by Esther Rantzen
Broadcast
Original channel BBC 1
Original run 1973 – 1994
External links
IMDb profile

That's Life! was a magazine-style television series on BBC between 1973 and 1994, presented by Esther Rantzen throughout the entire run, with various changes of co-presenters. The show was generally recorded about an hour prior to transmission slot, which was for many years originally on Saturday and then on Sunday nights (In latter days, to try to win back falling ratings, it was moved back to Saturday nights).

Contents

[edit] Format

The original purpose of the programme was consumer protection, particularly safety issues. The importance of wearing seat belts, for example, was illustrated before attitudes supporting their use became widespread. Britain's telephone helpline for children, ChildLine, was developed by Rantzen following items on the programme. Awareness for the need for child organ transplants was increased through the 1985 death of Ben Hardwick, a toddler whose liver disease was followed by the show. In tribute, Marti Webb released a version of Michael Jackson's 'Ben'.

The programme also featured less serious items, which over time grew in number. These included the 'Jobsworth,' exposing companies and authorities who had implemented obscure regulations and policies causing more grievances than they aimed to correct. In another feature, 'Heap of the Week', viewers would write in regarding annoying unreliable domestic appliances and other failed items, which would then be disposed of in destructive ways to the delight of their owners. A regular feature as the final feature of each show was various members of the team disguised as various people or things in locations such as supermarkets and garden centres, suddenly breaking into song and grabbing passers by and getting them to join in. Some of the more light-hearted features tapped into the British seaside postcard-style humour, being cheeky and suggestive but never out and out rude.

The co-presenters added extra personality to the show. They were all men and were popularly nicknamed "Esther's nancies" (as they were mostly young and effeminate — A "nancy" or "nancy boy" being British slang for an effeminate man or homosexual). They would dramatise cases by each reading the dialogue of a 'character.' This resulted in 'hilarity' during less-serious cases when they attempted to imitate foreign accents; Adrian Mills was famously unable to perform in a Spanish accent in an undercover item looking at a crooked money-making scam.

The show was also infamous for showcasing unusually-shaped vegetables, "odd odes" (humorous poems), comical newspaper and advertisement typographical errors, performing pets (memorably, a dog able to "say" "sausages" and "Esther"!), and street interviews with members of the public, including an eager old lady called Annie Mizzen who became a regular on the show after she was discovered at a street market.

There were also musical interludes from performers such as Jake Thackray, Victoria Wood, Doc Cox, and occasionally Grant Baynham. Baynham had several buckets of water thrown over him in several live programmes after Rantzen had apparently objected to him smoking, much to his considerable chagrin; on his final show, he got his own back by doing the same to Esther.

Presenters often left the confines of the studio for various stunts; Esther was arrested during one vox pop for apparently obstructing the pavement. The incident was broadcast in its entirety, along with Esther being driven away in a police van and the crowd's humorously cheering her arrest.

In 1993 Taxi driver Tom Morton who knew over 16,000 telephone numbers in Lancashire beat the British Olympia Telephone Exchange computer with his recall. The interviewer, Adrian Mills, said he had never seen anything like it.[1]

A cartoon strip, drawn by Rod Jordon, featuring items from that edition accompanied the closing credits.

The award winning documentary film maker Adam Curtis, who went on to make The Power of Nightmares and The Century of the Self started his career on the show. According to The Observer he "found dogs that could sing and researched investigative segments. Along the way he learned a lot about comic timing and the ways an audience might be engaged by issues. "The best lesson that Esther taught me was that people who think they are funny rarely are'" he is quoted as saying. [1]

The show was a staple of the post-watershed Sunday night BBC 1 schedules for many years (having originally been broadcast on Saturday nights), and despite its criticisms (see below section), pulled in very high viewing figures, becoming somewhat of a minor national institution in its heyday. However, by the 1990s, times had changed. There were by now other, more hard-hitting consumer investigation programmes on air, and the always slightly uneasy mix of hard-hitting and comical articles of the show was by now seen as very awkward and somewhat dated. In 1992, to try and win back straying viewers, the show was moved from its traditional haunt of Sunday nights, back to Saturdays. There was also a radical revamp of the set (bringing the co-presenters out from behind their desk, and several other tweaks), but the move did not fully rejuvenate the programme as was hoped. The show was generally felt to have run its course, belonging to an era which had now passed. It was finally dropped in 1994, but was given a decent send-off.

The very last edition was named That's Life All Over, and was predominantly a highlight show. Esther had been deliberately given a false finish time, and when she expected the programme to close, she was surprised that a whole extra section of the programme was introduced looking at the work she had done over the years.

[edit] Origins

The BBC conceived the programme as a replacement for the remarkably similar Braden's Week, hosted by Bernard Braden between 1968 and 1972.[2] Rantzen was a reporter on this show, while her future husband, Desmond Wilcox, was an editor. Braden was dismissed when he appeared in an advert on ITV, breaking his contract terms, leading to the introduction of That's Life! a year later.

However, although Braden himself was publicly circumspect about the decision, his wife Barbara Kelly (also a TV presenter) was forthright in condemning it and was plainly hostile towards Rantzen.[3]

Almost thirty years later Kelly told Alice Pitman of The Oldie that she was "very bitter at the time, very, very bitter" and recalled that Braden's producer, Desmond Wilcox, who subsequently married Rantzen, had brought together Kelly, Rantzen and newsreader Angela Rippon for a pilot of an afternoon show, although, in Kelly's view, "it was just a front - he wanted Esther, and Angela and I were sort of left dangling."[4] At the turn of the 21st century Kelly weighed into a spat in the press between Rantzen and her stepdaughter Cassandra Wilcox, as a result of which she received a large number of supportive letters from members of the public who recalled her husband's usurpation by Rantzen. Kelly placed these in a folder marked "Hate Rancid File".[4]

The ITV sketch show End of Part One in 1979, scripted by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, created a spoof of That's Life entitled "That's Bernard Braden's Show Really".

[edit] Criticisms

Throughout the show's life, there was criticism of the format of the typical edition moving abruptly from a deeply serious issue to a comical one (such as the infamous rudely shaped vegetables), and back again. This was always defended by Esther and the crew, who said that the aim was to represent the full spectrum of life, from the sad to the funny, and always tried to end editions on an uplifting, light-hearted and / or humorous item.

Over time the programme increasingly concentrated on sentimental, light and humorous items - particularly after being taken to court by a doctor it tried to discredit and landing the BBC with huge litigation costs (estimated at £1.2 million in a Guardian article) - and featured and appealed to senior citizens. The public hence became increasingly polarized between those who loved the programme, and those who loathed both it and its presenter Esther Rantzen. The latter camp included Victor Lewis-Smith, who made some hoax phone calls to the programme, sometimes referring to Rantzen as 'Teeth' after her most prominent feature.

[edit] Co-presenters

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Exorcist", The Observer, 24 October 2004. 
  2. ^ Evans, Jeff (1995). The Guinness Television Encyclopaedia. Guinness. ISBN 0-85112-744-4. 
  3. ^ "Barbara Kelly Obituary", The Times, 17 January 2007. 
  4. ^ a b The Oldie
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