BBC I have a problem with blackface and yellowface, generally when there are more than capable actors who could have taken the role, but I make exceptions in some situations. Take, for example, the news that Little Britain and Come Fly with Me are being removed from streaming services because of what are now […]
Tag: 1970s
A concert that takes you home
One bonus of the lockdown was the live Easter Day concert held by Hong Kong’s own Sam Hui (許冠傑), perhaps fairly described as the king of Cantopop. I had no idea this was even on if it weren’t for the fire at the Baxter’s Knob transmitter that took out television transmission in our […]
Roger Nichols performs the original Hart to Hart theme
In 2013, I wrote a small note on my Tumblog about Roger Nichols’ theme to the TV series Hart to Hart. The music was played as the opening and closing themes in the pilot, and as an incidental theme to many episodes later, but few remember it. I’ve even seen websites proclaim that the Mark […]
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The 1970s: when TV shows were New
As a child of the 1970s, I was exposed to this English word: new. Now, before you say that that isn’t anything special, for some reason, in the ’70s, there was an obsession with newness. It wasn’t like the news (by this I mean the plural of new) of Amsterdam or Zealand, but an adjective […]
First night
Forty-three years ago (September 16, 1976), we arrived in this country. As we flew from Sydney and into Wellington, my Dad pointed out the houses below to me. ‘See, those are the sorts of houses New Zealanders live in,’ he said. I thought it was odd they lived in two-storey homes and not apartment […]
Reflections about Lee Iacocca—unfortunately, not all of it is positive
The car Lee Iacocca will be remembered for, the 1965 Ford Mustang on the right. Before I found out about Lee Iacocca’s passing, on the same day I Tweeted about one of the cars he was behind when he was president of Ford: the 1975 US Granada. Basically, Iacocca understood that Americans wanted style. That […]
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There must be a different metric system on our roads these days
The new metric system: I’m following the car in front at the correct distance. Cf. the drivers in the other lanes. Now that I live in the northern suburbs, I have to go on the motorway far more frequently. It’s become apparent that New Zealand has had a complete change of measurement system and I […]
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Remakes: Widows joins other Euston Films series
I see British filmmaker Steve McQueen has remade Lynda La Plante’s Widows. I was younger than he was when it aired, and didn’t appreciate the storylines to the same extent, though I have recollections of it. What I did recall was a Smith and Jones sketch, which had a voiceover along these lines: […]
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Just another Christmas for a staff nurse
My late mother was a nurse. Before she was a midwife at Wellington Women’s Hospital, she was a staff nurse in wards 21 and 26 at Wellington Hospital. From what I remember, ward 21 was first, which meant she was working there some time between 1976 and 1978. This is a letter that she […]
Forced to take prime-time nostalgia trips
‘There’s an old Polish proverb …’ I believe it’s ‘Reality television can’t stop the motorways in Warsaw from getting icy.’ I’ve always known what sort of telly I liked, and often that was at odds with what broadcasters put on. In the 1970s, my tastes weren’t too dissimilar from the general public’s, but as […]