Saturday Night Clive

Australian journalist Clive James has made a career out of humorous commentary. Originally a songwriter and poet, Clive first drew attention on television as a movie reviewer. Later on he expanded his reviews to include television and the media in general. He also presented travel programmes. When Clive James moved from ITV to the BBC, he kept on doing exactly the same shows as before, only under a different title. What they came up with for his comical look at the media and entertainment news was `Saturday Night Clive'.

Sitting behind a desk in front of a giant TV screen, Clive would show strange news clips, bits of foreign TV shows and commercials and proceed to make fun of them. Then he would interview some famous person via satellite and at the end there was a special guest (usually a comedian) who would join Clive in commenting on all the clips that had gone before. On New Years eve he would look back at all the craziest news stories of the year (although this was not called Saturday Night Clive, it was in essence the same thing).

For a while this cheaply produced programme was very popular in England and Australia, but finally the audience grew tired of the repetitive humour and Clive's contract with the BBC was not renewed. Maybe Saturday Night Clive had been made fun of on somebody else's show? He went back to ITV to present, you guessed it, `Sunday Night Clive' and `Monday Night Clive'.

6 out of 10