CITV’s ‘Old Skool’ Weekend TV nostalgia-fest

January 5, 2013

CITV's 'Old Skool' Weekend - Fun House and KnightmareLike so many people of a *cough* certain age, I’m absolutely loving the complete nostalgia-fest that is the CITV ‘Old Skool’ Weekend, two days of 80’s, 90’s and 00’s kids TV programmes shown to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the children’s channel.

There’s a veritable treasure trove of retro programming – everything from Fraggle Rock to Finders Keepers, Fun House, Knightmare, Sooty, Art Attack and Press Gang, the show that launched a thousand careers and made everyone want to be a journalist. It’s always brilliant to wallow in the warm mists of childhood memories, especially with all of Twitter for company.

As ever, things seemed so much more innocent back in the day. ‘Drama and chocolate’ were the hobbies of one of the Fun House contestants, not ‘using my new iPad to look at some porn’ which is probably more popular with the youth of today. Game show prizes were properly old-school – a stencil set! Mouth organs for your class! A Sega Megadrive! And did parents really look at their tiny newborn baby and think ‘oh, he looks just like a Derek’? (one of the Knightmare contestants – there was also a Barry on the team).

No-one questioned why children were lose in the Knightmare dungeon, for what seemed like months on end, with a load of people in leather outfits. Or pointed out that the real reason they had to wear the helmet was the bad blue-screen graphics. You always suspended belief with Knightmare though, and it’s still pretty dark and scary – apart from when you had to shout at the screen because they couldn’t understand simple ‘move left quickly!’ instructions.

Anyway, there’s a whole other day of it tomorrow (CITV channel 621 on Sky). Which programme was your favourite? I must have watched a lot of after-school TV as a child, tell me I wasn’t the only one?!

3 Comments

  • Chris Stillwell

    January 17, 2013 at 12:04 pm

    I remember watching Knightmare in the common room at school whilst waiting for my parents to pick me up. My favourite was finders keepers with Neil Buchanan that or Woof! which was just a little bizarre (a boy turning into a dog).

  • Questions about children’s TV that no-one ever asks |

    April 22, 2014 at 9:07 am

    […] ‘serious’ BBC channel ended up being a children’s one. Almost as much as I loved kids TV growing up (everyone did! It was the top topic among my friends. And after school, me and my […]

  • The lost relics of an end-of-the-century childhood |

    May 20, 2014 at 7:05 am

    […] Only two hours of children’s TV in the evening, sandwiched in between gameshows and […]

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Prev Post Next Post