Thames: May 5th 1980

As Justin Timberlake gravely warned us, after April it’s gonna be May. And so it has proved, now as it was in 1980. And that means Bank Holiday time! In 1980 the first Monday of the month was the fifth, and here’s what ITV gave you to look at for the occasion. This is a "national edition" of the TV Times, which means there was a strike so they couldn't afford regional editions and instead the main London edition went out nationwide, and everyone outside the capital had to squint at the tiny "regional variations" panel at the bottom of the page.

Being a Bank Holiday, the television’s actually on in the morning, with children’s shows to the fore. In half an hour. First they have to sit through a documentary about Antarctica. (They really are trapped, too; BBC1 don’t wake up for another hour and a half while BBC2 doesn’t get up early at all). Still, it might be interesting to a parent or two: filmed over two years by Edwin Mickleburgh, which is the kind of name people make up to mock the British, while embedded with the Antarctic Survey. Basically the theme is “why the hell would anyone do this”, combined with a lot of scenic, if monochrome, nature footage and some musing about the Antarctic Treaty. This was signed in 1959 between every nation with an interest in Antarctica at the time - including all the major powers - and basically sets the continent aside as a scientific preserve that no-one’s allowed to fight over. And it’s held ever since, which this film finds quite impressive, and is. Although we all know it’s only because there’s nothing there anyone wants. If oil is ever found under an ice shelf, that thing’s going down and the Treaty with it.

Kids television finally starts at ten with the legendary Chorlton and the Wheelies. The adventures of a round-headed, largely oblivious dragon in a cheerful cardboard wasteland populated by blobs on wheels and plagued (although he doesn’t seem to notice) by a mad green Welsh witch. This week, Chorlton loses his spots. This all makes perfect sense if you watch it and is completely brilliant.

After ten minutes of that, Rainbow! Today’s subject: rain, and the difference between a rainy day and a showery one. The kind of thing British kids need to learn as early as possible, I trust you’ll agree. This is the Rod, Jane and Roger era, but Roger Walker would leave within a few months to return to bit-part acting and the classic trio would finally be completed by the late Freddy Marks. For reference, he’s the one Jane didn’t marry until 2016. Rod’s the one she married first; this is a year after their divorce. Very much the Fleetwood Mac of children’s TV, except they were grown-ups about it.

Your Bank Holiday kids television concludes with Clapperboard with Chris Kelly: the future media studies student’s guide to cinema, television, film-making and the like, with plenty of movie clips strewn in to hold your interest. As it’s Bank Holiday Monday, the subject is holidays, and films about or set during them, so we’ve got clips from Barnacle Bill with Alec Guinness, the original Freaky Friday, and Tony Hancock’s bleak The Punch and Judy Man in order to leave the kids feeling vaguely unsettled and melancholy without quite knowing why.

Movie time! Guns of the Timberland! Nothing to do with cheap sweatshirts or dope beats (not that the producer has had anything to do with those for a while either). No, this is a late period western about lumberjacks. Alan Ladd wants to cut down some trees, the people of the nearby town don’t want them to because it’ll ruin their grazing land, and apparently we’re supposed to be on the shortarse’s side for some reason. Also Frankie Avalon shows up with an incongruous quiff to sing a song called “Gee Whiz Willikins Golly Gee”. Not very good, apparently. Not the song, the film. Well, both, probably.

Once that’s over and done with, One Step Ahead at half past twelve seems to be some sort of careers advice thing for recession-struck teens who just survived the Winter of Discontent only to be faced with the new Tory Government’s open contempt for anyone under 30. Today how 16-year old school leavers can decide between work or further education, and how parents can help. Ordering them at gunpoint, probably.

After that, five minutes of news at one, and then apropos of nothing (except that there’s half an hour to fill in the schedule), a Superstar Profile of Jacqueline Bisset, who everyone seems to forget is British. Hosted, as the rest of this series was, by Catherine Laporte-Coolen, so probably a bit more thoughtful and Cahiers du Cinema than your average Parkinson or Inside the Actor’s Studio. Not that Laporte-Coolen ever wrote for Cahiers, to my knowledge, but you know, French people.

That takes us to twenty to two and time for a special Bank Holiday edition of World of Sport, in all but name. The cup final on Saturday is previewed - actually both of them, because the Scottish one was on the same day that year. England’s was Division Two West Ham against top-flight Arsenal - West Ham won - and Scotland’s was an Old Firm derby won by Celtic. Both 1-0. There’s racing from Kempton and Doncaster and what apparently constitutes the first ever live coverage of gymnastics being performed in Britain. Albeit it’s the Chinese team, visiting Britain essentially to show off. Fair enough. And of course the obligatory wrestling.

That brings us all the way up to five in the evening and some more news, followed by Charlie’s Angels. Who knows what episode, though; the TV Times apparently didn’t - again, "national edition", they're to some extent winging it here - instead providing a generic, nonchalantly sexist write-up about “the three delectable detectives” and “Charlie, the boss they never see”.

At five past six, Crossroads! Hooray! Victor Lee goes to prison! Good! Maybe. I dunno. Who cares. Of course, he could probably escape easily enough: just push gently on the prison wall and it’ll fall down (copyright 1980 all comedians).

At half six, Young at Heart - a sitcom vehicle for John Mills, of all things. Sir John plays a 65 year old potter who’s retired against his will and now doesn’t know what to do with himself. Bit of a bleak setup, but it could have worked. Vince Powell, though. Not a great sign. Still, it got three seasons, and look, it’s Play School’s Carol Leader!

At seven, Coronation Street arrives to show Crossroads how it’s done. Today, Gail and Brian have money problems and Deirdre - whose surname for the moment is Langton - plays gravel-voiced matchmaker to Ernest Bishop’s widow. This is what got the biggest ratings of the week back in those days.

After that, Bank Holiday TV movie hell! Detour to Terror, with OJ Simpson. Nothing more need be said, surely? Except that it seems to be a sort of proto-Speed on a tiny budget, crossed with an inverted Duel: instead of having a bomb on board, OJ (in the Keanu role) is chased into the desert by menacing dune buggies.

That takes us to 9:15, past the watershed, and don’t we just know it. It’s Trevor Preston’s Fox - perhaps the last hurrah of a particular kind of drama I associate with the seventies - all granite-hard, washed out violence occurring under overpasses or near brutalist tower blocks. Trevor Preston was one of the grandmasters of this style, with episodes of The Sweeney, Callan and Special Branch on his CV, along with his previous miniseries Out - in which a gangster gets out of jail and hunts down whoever grassed him up. Mind you, he also created Ace of Wands and wrote an adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, so whatever. Anyway, Fox is about a criminal family of that name, headed by Peter Vaughan. Should have been called Grout, then.

After some more news at 10:15, an AFI Salute to Jimmy Stewart. When they did this for John Wayne he died two years later, but Jimmy has another fifteen to go so that’s okay. Basically a great big toast to a great actor and a genuinely decent man, despite voting Republican. Which is a lifetime achievement in itself.

That takes us all the way to five to midnight and at this point they might as well just go to bed, but instead they stay up to show one more item: a short film - technically a Francis Searle “Screen Miniature" starring Bill Maynard and Arthur Lowe as old army colleagues who form a vaudeville double act and that’s it, really. Seems like the kind of thing you’d save for a half-hour gap during a strike or when the cricket’s rained off. Here ITV consider it preferable to going to bed early.

Closedown follows immediately afterwards, of course, with readings today and all week from tiny comedy giant Denise Coffey. Tonight: To The Virgins by Robert Herrick. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” and all that. Something to ponder on your pillow.

Images used for the purposes of review and education only. No attempt at superceding or cricumventing existing copyright has been made or should be inferred.