Rose Tinted TV

There were four shows that I particulary loved as a child, that I remember very well, but are now viewed as flops and are too obscure to be even be shown on Bravo. These three shows were also notable because when I got to university and began those oh-so-nostalgic "do you remember..." conversations no-one else had heard of them.

No-one else, that is, except the friends who would later form the Media Lounge with me. This was back in the early-internet days and so they couldn't be looked up and even confirmed as existing, let alone confirmed as being good. Now, through the genius that is YouTube, they can be shown in all their hallowed glory.

First up; Cop Rock - the musical version of Hill Street Blues. I adored this when I was about 8 years old, now I watch it and think that it's remarkable I didn't end up a fan of cabaret.



The second is Simon & Simon, a cop show featuring crime fighting brothers - one is smart and conservative, the other rough and ready. The opening titles below are the ones that I remember, hell me and my sister used to replicate the 'feet up while a car passenger' position as often as possible, but check out these credits too that are remarkable just for how much time they spent looking through binoculars. I wasn't even sure this show was even real until it was mentioned in an episode of South Park.



The third was Automan which was on at 5.15 on BBC1 on a Saturday afternoon. This was another show where I couldn't find anyone else who'd heard of it, until Tom from ML made a flippant Automan joke. In these YouTube days almost anything can be found in an instant, but you have no idea how satisfying it was to find another human to confirm my memories. I recently downloaded the first episode of Automan and watched the whole thing; boy does it suck ass hard.



Finally, there was Whizz Kids. A show featuring kids and computers waaaaaay before even Matthew Broderick narly caused World War Three... my principle memory of this is that the main star slept in his socks, something the 8 year old me found very strange indeed.



I'm not writing this post in a "wasn't kids TV brilliant?" kind of way, nor am I wallowing in nostalgia for the hell of it, and I'm not laughing at how bad it was either... I'm writing this because I find it genuinely incredible that I have a few brief memories of somethings I watched over 20 years ago, and with a few simple keystrokes I can see them all again. The internet is part of everyday life and we've grown accustomed to it mighty easily, but every now and then I'm just blown away by how much it's changed the world. Sure, being able to watch a few credit sequences is hardly changing the world, but I think back to how hard it was convincing myself that what I had seen was even real, and now I see that I have remembered them almost exactly.

Makes me wish I'd learnt French at that age, or maybe the piano, or anything else other than the gaining capacity to remember minute details of shit TV shows.