A new era in historic factual television, Yesterday promises to challenge traditional beliefs of what makes a history channel. Immediate, accessible and most of all entertaining TV across all of the major platforms (including Freeview); it features programming including classic favourites such as Antiques Roadshow to contemporary shows like Rome and Seven Ages Of Rock. Whatever your age, this is the way to discover the past.
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July Highlights
The Rolling Stones: Truth and Lies
The apparent hounding of Pete Doherty by today’s gutter press is a kissogram compared to the onslaught of moral superiority the Stones had to endure in their prime. Truth & Lies collects together reams of archive footage of the group’s legal woes and other skirmishes with the establishment, from mob-like crushes on the steps of court buildings to the feeding frenzy of Jagger’s wedding to Bianca in St Tropez.
Original Pathe newsreels, complete with public school plummy-voiced narration, help identify the battle lines. This was truly an us-versus-them conflict, with the band demonised as the most shocking menaces to society imaginable. The laughable �5 fines doled out for public urination in a garage forecourt are reported with as much outrage as Keith Richards’ heroin bust in Canada a decade later.
Yet the Stones emerge with their dignity intact, Jagger especially coming across as a level-headed and articulate man merely bemused by the perceived threat of a bunch of pop stars.
Pop Goes The Sixties
It’s an archive programme that shows pop acts from the 60’s
Time Shifts: Fantasy Sixties
The launch of the first Soviet Sputnik satellite in the 1950s captured the public’s imagination and prompted TV writers in the Sixties to experiment with fantastical storylines.
A new and groundbreaking science fiction series hit British TV screens in 1961: A for Andromeda. Destined to become a classic, only a few clips of the series survive. Similarly adventurous programmes followed, including Adam Adamant Lives! Doctor Who, The Avengers and The Prisoner – the latter taking fantasy television to a place which surprised, and at times enraged, the audience.
The Avengers ended with Steed and Tara King blasting off into space in a rocket. Not far behind them was the real Apollo 11 mission. On 20 July 1969 both BBC and ITV were broadcasting the same drama; the world watched men walking on the moon and sat through a real life cliff-hanger about getting the crew back to earth alive. Setting a story somewhere in space was never going to be pure fantasy ever again.
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For more information please go to www.visityesterday.co.uk
