I Love 1980's

I think that this show suffered because the BBC was so determined to re-write the 1970s as a wonderful continuation of the 1960s and literally POURED IN 1960s and 1980s fads to the "I Love 1970s" series to make that decade sparkle.

In consequence, the 1980s were left looking very threadbare, robbed of at least eight of their fads (No, BBC, CB radio was a craze of the early 1980s in Britain when it was legal and widely available - not 1976!).

The BBC also chucked tacky 90s fads into the 80s series like Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - sure they were invented in the 1980s, but actually a part of widespread pop culture in Britain in 1990. In "I Love 1988", the animated Turtles stated that was the year they "ruled the world". Huh! The Chopper bike was invented in the 1960s, but the BBC had no trouble in slotting it into the 70s where it rightly belonged - remember the series was supposed to be about POP CULTURE! The things that were thrilling us all, year-by-year.

There was a resurgence of the spirit of protest in Britain in the 1980s as controversial legislation was passed by the government, and environmental concerns rocketed. Why wasn't that reflected? Because the BBC decided that the 1980s were a very bad thing, totally greedy, and rewrote the decade as an absolutely dross era (having already rewritten the 70s as WONDERFUL!) The 1980s series was total rubbish, a fitting companion for its 70s counterpart.

Look through the local newspaper archives at your local library. Advertisements and articles on happening fads make fascinating reading. You can discover for yourself that the Space Hopper was actually a late 1960s trend, not from 1971, and find out that the personal stereo really became pop culture in the early 1980s, not 1979. There's much else to bring back memories. It's not being an anorak. It's fun.

It's far more nostalgic to get an accurate picture.

Then write to the BBC and demand better research for your licence money.

Sadly, "I Love 1980s" was spoilt by poor research and the poor research on the "I Love 1970s" series also affected this series badly.

Several items of 1980s pop culture had wrongly been included in the 70s programmes, and in consequence the early 80s looked curiously empty without the CB radio craze, the release of the Rubik's Cube (based on the Hungarian Magic Cube and named and released in 1980), the personal stereo (invented in Japan in 1979, released in Britain in 1980) or the impact of Space Invaders. Indeed, Pac-Man was included in "I Love 1980" but was not actually available to play.

The show also seemed to have an agenda of portraying the decade as greedy - although for the first few years we were knee deep in recession. Many of us were struggling financially, and there were thriving environmental and charitable movements to counter balance the "yuppie" ethos later in the decade.

I found "I Love the 1980s" to be as poorly researched as "I Love the 1970s" and in this case the people working on the series did not actually appear to have any affection for the era.

Or a great deal of reliable knowledge about it.

Following the success of "I Love 1970's," BBC2 did it again with "I Love 1980's," which replicated the formula with much the same success. But as pointed out, it suffered from some poor research (among other things, is it fair to mention "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a TV success when it's best known in its radio version? And as for having the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [hosts of the 1988 edition] singing along to Bros' "When Will I Be Famous?"... which they never were in the US - plus the Turtles didn't take off until the following year), and the same recurring talking heads being fatuous...

That said, it was great to see Stephen J. Cannell, Donald P. Bellisario, Glen A. Larson and Alan Oppenheimer (the voice of Skeletor) in front of the cameras for once; and for an idea of how bad this could have been, look no further than Sky One's ripoff "TV Years." Followed by "I Love 1990's," but I refuse to watch that - how can you be nostalgic for the 1990s?

Not to be confused with VH-1's "I Love The 1980s," the US version of th show - which I would love to see. Not even the Bush administration can halt my life-long love affair with American pop culture...

Do you remember Rubik's Cubes? Jason Donovan? Rick Astley? Trans-Formers? He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe? A-Ha? Adam & The Ants? Boxer shorts? Knight Rider? Spandau Ballet? Nik Kershaw? Bros?

This is a ten-part series, each hour-long part covering a year at a time, from 1980 to 1989 inclusive. Stars and stars-to-be of that era reminisce about fads, fashions, toy ranges, merchandise and developments that occurred in this decade in a humorous and entertaining fashion.

Definitely worth a laugh or two, particularly for people that were children and/or teenagers in that decade.

Unfortunately there are countless anachronisms present in this series which detracted from it, plus one wonders if some of the minor celebrity contributors were old enough to really have lived through the decade and experienced much of what they commented on!