I Love 1980's

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.

Following the success of I love 1970s we carry on with the nostalgia craze with a series of 10 x 90 minutes programmes on the 1980s. Each programme examining a year of the 80s

Larry Hagman presented the first programme, I love 1980, a big year for good ol JR. Other's may think he should had dodged a bullet.

The show is in essence looks at the films, TV shows, songs, news and cultural aspects of that year aided by commentary from the people who were there supposedly. I think it was more accurate to say the Z list celebrities were shown a reel beforehand and told to 'reminiscence' about it.

I have to admit the series thrives on nostalgia, its frothy fun, brings back memories and was not always 100 percent accurate. The celebrity comments could be annoying at times and yet strangely enjoyable despite the flaws.

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...

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.

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!