Chris Morris' first projected TV appearance, September 1992
Not to be confused with that Ross/Clary/Jupitus shit, It's Only TV was an untransmitted pilot for a never-made mainstream-as-fuck LWT series hosted by Angus Deayton. A sort of cross between Friday Night Armistice, Clive James On TV and A Stab In The Dark, it featured a selection of cosy skits and features about the world of television, performed before a small but sycophantic audience. Behind Deayton were Nick Hancock and a woman called Alison Craig, who sat simpering à la Bussman & Quantick/the Nancy boys from That's Life.
Being a pilot, the 'guests' were just their TalkBack mates - in this case, Tony Hawkes and Clive Anderson. The entire show was written by Deayton and producer Harry Thompson, which is interesting - this being before Angus' whoring days, and before Kevin Cecil and Paul Powell had finished their A-levels. It was OK, comedy-wise: about as good as HIGNFY was in the same period. Quite sluggish, and with some horrendous edits/laugh-washes...but more likeable than it had any right to be.
Morris' section was remarkably low-key. He interviewed a woman called Samantha Talbot, simply on the basis that she appeared on Kilroy once, moaning about standards on TV. In a piece called 'What Is Wrong With Television?' he interrogated her, Feedback Report-style (albeit in a studio, with him out of shot), about 'the public swivel'. Very strange - not only does it remain (award ceremonies aside) the only Morris material to be played to a studio audience, it also came introduced by Deayton in a Here's-a-young-guy-from-the-West-Country type way (disturbingly similar to the way Iain Lee introduces Ali G on The Eleven O'Clock Show). It also seemed to be recorded on a camcorder, suggesting it was a typically independent venture.
DEAYTON Well, it's all very easy to be flippant about the week's television, which is why we're here, but broadcasting is a serious business and so, for that matter, are your opinions which is why each week we give viewers everywhere, from Lands End to Penzance the opportunity to sound off on the state of British television. In the Video Box this week - Samantha Talbot from Crawley, a veteran campaigner whose views have already been aired on Kilroy. But unlike the Video boxes on other programmes, our viewers won't go unchallenged. Testing their convictions to the full with his searching questions is our man Chris Morris. And Chris's question�
CAPTION: WHAT IS WRONG WITH TELEVISION?
TALBOT I think that if we get to the stage where what we want to do, or what television wants to do, to gain an audience or to maintain its balance is to excite people or to�or to hold them totally and absorb them into something that we, the general public I think, start to see as reality and is not reality at all.
MORRIS It's the public swivel.
TALBOT Yes.
MORRIS Going faster and faster.
TALBOT Yes.
MORRIS Do you think the effect on the public swivel is deliberate or accidental?
TALBOT (Long pause, considering response) Largely I think it's accidental.
MORRIS How far do these accidental factors affect the public swivel?
TALBOT I think vastly. I think the fact that�that television in general doesn't take a much more general view�
MORRIS So it's a particular view forced on one particular area of the public swivel that produces the effect.
TALBOT Overall I think it does, I mean�
MORRIS At least in this country the pressure points on the public swivel are visible, for the time being.
TALBOT Yes, but I think we're very close�
MORRIS They're just about�
TALBOT �to that�to that�I mean with�you know, with�with, um, the TV now that's coming in from� the dish, satellite TV.
MORRIS So how far is the pressure point on the public swivel above the ground at the moment?
TALBOT Oh, I think it's very close.
MORRIS Off the ground?
TALBOT Yes, I think very very close.
MORRIS In feet or inches?
TALBOT I think inches.
MORRIS Really? Well that's serious isn't it.
TALBOT Yes. Very serious, and I think the danger is that we're all likely to just throw our arms up and say well we expected it, there's nothing much we can do about it and it's here.
MORRIS At that point we all fly off on independent directions, each on our own axis and there is no public swivel anymore.
TALBOT Yes, that's true.
MORRIS How many rotations can the public swivel take per year before this cataclysm happens?
TALBOT I think we should be down to one to five.
MORRIS So keep the rotation of the public swivel to five or less, maybe?
TALBOT Yes, I think so.
"Chris wanted to remain out of vision, so you can only hear his voice,'
explains Harry Thompson. "It [the programme] was never shown because, although ITV commissioned a series from this pilot, the main presenter Angus Deayton immediately signed a three-year exclusive deal with the BBC, and ITV didn't want to go ahead without him."It is possible that further Morris 'Video Box' sequences were prepared - the sofa/potted plant set-up also features in a Day Today 'Mininews' in which a participant is asked 'Is it worse if they're looking, or if they're looking looking looking?'. Somewhere in the vaults of Talkback are more of these little sequences and one day an army of fans pretending to be on work experience will smuggle them all out�
Anything else to mention? The opening titles were very similar to the Who Dares Wins titles, but recorded very unpleasantly on video. You got to see Tony Hawkes having a piss at one stage - a shot that displayed at least 20% of his scrotum.
Hancock's piece about reacting sarcastically to TV programmes was quite funny (one of them involved him sitting on the edge of his seat hardly daring to look, followed by an expression of suicidal disappointment and despair...before and the caption eventually reveals he is watching Going For Gold), as was a sketch about a Grand Prix driver fumbling for a Chris de Burgh cassette in his glove compartment (yes, that kind of joke).
There was also a substantial feature all about how television edits films to make them suitable for family viewing, and a whole section mocking Tomorrow's World predictions from yesteryear, an idea later given an entire show of its own, introduced by Griff Rhys Jones.
IT'S ONLY TV
Running Time: 32:13 (also 'extra item' separated from main show: 4:40)
STARRED: Angus Deayton; Nick Hancock; Alison Craig and Clive Anderson; Tony Hawks
WRITTEN BY: Angus Deayton; Harry Thompson
CAMERAS: Mike Whitcutt
SOUND: Roy Drysdale
LIGHTING: Teddy Fader
MAKE UP: Sunetra Sastry; Kim Dewar
WARDROBE: Billy Kimberley
GRAPHICS: Steve Bellinger
RESEARCHERS: Margaret Frank; Franny Moyle
VISION CONTROL: Sean Moon
VISION MIXER: Barbara Hicks
PRODUCTION BUYER: Cathy Cosgrove
STAGE MANAGER: Jane Denholm
FLOOR MANAGER: Iain McClean
PRODUCTION SECRETARY: Kendall Anderson
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Rebecca Havers
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Julian Scott
EDITING FACILITIES: Remote Films
DESIGNER: Andrew Howe-Davies
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Peter Fincham
DIRECTOR: Patti Marr
PRODUCER: Harry Thompson
A TALKBACK PRODUCTION FOR LONDON WEEKEND TELEVISION
