Golden Oldies

I do remember, back in the old days, skimming through the Radio Times, making a chart in columns so we could make sure that each member of the family saw or recorded each programme they wanted to watch…Those were the days.

There’s hardly anything actually being transmitted over Christmas that attracts me. Instead, I bathed in nostalgia, rooting around in iplayer for stuff I’d seen before, but which defied the ravages of time. The Crow Road and Wolf Hall were very different from each other, made at very different times, but provided four and six hours respectively of satisfying viewing, and that doesn’t happen very often.

So it’s a real disappointtment to report that Tutti Frutti has not aged well. Its best moments remain magical- some of the musical numbers, the electric double of act of Thompson and Coltrane. It was way ahead of its time on domestic violence and gender politics, but there’s still far too much of shouty male arguments, tedious comedy unnecessarily prolonged. Like the rest of us, it’s showing its age.