This Week (ITV TV series)
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This Week was the name of a weekly current affairs series screened on the ITV network in the United Kingdom, produced for the network by Thames Television. Its most famous edition was "Death on the Rock", a 1988 documentary so controversial that many believe it was responsible for Thames losing their London weekday ITV broadcasting franchise in 1992. However, its most influential episode was its expose on the National Front in 1974, which led to the party's members firing their Chairman John Tyndall and National Activities Organiser Martin Webster two weeks later as a result of the revelations on the show from former NF Chairman John O'Brien of their neo-nazi paramilitary pasts & continued links.
The programme was first produced for ITV in January 1956 by Thames's predecessor company, Associated-Rediffusion (later Rediffusion London), and ran until 1978, when it was replaced by TV Eye. In 1986 the latter was axed and This Week returned, lasting until the end of Thames's ITV franchise in 1992.
Its presenters read like a Who’s Who of British broadcasting: they included Ludovic Kennedy, James Cameron, Jonathan Dimbleby, Robert Kee, Dan Farson, Jeremy Thorpe (who became leader of the Liberal Party), Kenneth Harris, Desmond Wilcox, Llew Gardner, Bryan Magee, Peter Taylor (noted for his coverage of Northern Ireland), Denis Tuohy, John Morgan, Peter Williams and John Edwards.
[edit] References
- For a definitive history of the programme, read The Angry Buzz by Patricia Holland (I.B.Taurus, 2005) ISBN 1-84511-051-X