Popular Nostalgia

T.V. shows we remember fondly. A Popular Nostalgia staple.

Count Duckula was another cartoon that I grew up watching in the late 1980s and early 1990s – enjoy the episode above – I hadn’t remembered the intro was quite so long! This was one of my favourites, probably because it was pretty dark and macabre. Count Duckula was made for four series and there [...]

The Muppets were the biggest sewn people for a decade or so in the 1980s and early 90s – and there isn’t a much more nostalgic show than “A Christmas Carol” when it comes to feeling christmassy, so it isn’t really that amazing that the “Muppet Christmas Carol” evokes in me all kinds of twinkly, [...]

Saturday (or was it Sunday??) mornings never were the same once we lost the Orange Organics front-man Pugwall (Peter Unwin George Wall) and his epic series of the same name. In the UK, we used to watch these glorious moments of Aussie stardom on Channel 4. Pugwall was played by a chap called Jason Torrens. [...]

Airwolf ran from 1984 through 1987. The supersonic military helicopter with hidden weapons and stealth capabilities flew along the thin line of the Cold War standoff. Its test pilot, Stringfellow Hawke, was played by Jan-Michael Vincent. When Airwolf is stolen by its twisted creator, Doctor Charles Henry Moffet, “the FIRM” asks Hawke to go to [...]

Hands up who remembers the Really Wild show that used to be on BBC TV during (I think) the early 90s and possibly the late 80s too. This show features Michaela Strachan, who was the first woman most young boys fancied, and Terry Nutkins, who certainly was  not her male counterpart in the fanciability respect, [...]

Ricki Lake was a hugely popular talk show in the nineties. The titles were by far the funniest part. Contentious from the off, guests were never given much chance to be reasonable. The Ricki Lake show gave British viewers an insight into American attitudes different from their own. Things such as “I’m proud to be [...]

Friday nights at 6pm were where everyone knew – “The Weekend Starts Here”. The BBC’s flagship youth programme opened to the tune of The Sufaris’ track: “Wipe Out,” which was later replaced by Manfred Mann’s “5-4-3-2-1″ and finally Them’s “Baby Please Don’t Go”. Cathy McGowan cemented her place at th forefront of Mod fashion after [...]

In the 1970′s Wonder Woman hit US television in the shape of Lynda Carter. The series started with Major Steve Trevor crash landing in the Bermuda Triangle onto Paradise Island. He finds a society of Amazon women who compete for the opportunity to take him back to the US. Wonder Woman wins and dresses up [...]

Happy Days was nostalgic in its own right, being set in the 1950′s but first aired in the 1970′s. Howard, Marion, Richie, Joanie, and Chuck are the Cunningham family. Richie gets up to tricks with his friends Potsie and Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli. The Fonz was originally a dropout but became a huge hit with viewers. [...]

Robin Williams was Mork, an alien who came to Earth from the planet Ork in a large egg-shaped space ship, and Pam Dawber was Mindy McConnell, his human friend, roommate, and wife after they married in the final season. The series was a spinoff of the sitcom Happy Days. The character of Mork first appeared [...]

Mike Brady (Robert Reed), has three sons; Greg (Barry Williams), Peter (Christopher Knight) and Bobby (Mike Lookinland). He marries Carol Martin (Florence Henderson), who has daughters; Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (Susan Olsen). Carols daughters take the Brady surname like their mum. Mike brings a live-in housekeeper Alice (Ann B. Davis) to [...]

I can’t believe we haven’t had The Raccoons featured in this Popular Nostalgia website, I mean it was Saturday morning gold when I were a wee laddie. BBC One mornings, before your mums and dads got out of bed were made all the more enjoyable/tolerable by The Raccons while we waited for Going Live to [...]

The X Files were, and still are, great. It was the ultimate treat to be allowed to stay up late enough to watch it. Thousands of conspiracy theorists were inspired and galvanised by the FBI cover-up sub-plot. Each episode, however, was a crush fest for young teenagers. David Duchovny became a pin-up off the back [...]

Two pretty blonde twins go to school. One is nice, one is nasty. All sorts of high-jinx ensue as they pretend to be one another. Very similar to Saved by the Bell and Clarissa Explains It All, this was just another fairly poor American teenager series. Jessica and Elizabeth engage in some surprisingly adult humour.

Ahhh the old days of Top Gear, when they actually used to review cars. Nowadays it’s just races, celebrities and silliness. However, at least they recognise that most of the audience are never really going to go out and buy a car. They just like to dream about buying a supercar. So that’s what they [...]