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TV Pop Diaries
Pop Music on British Television 1955 - 1999

TVS's predecessors Southern Television had made the plucky but unlucky Saturday Banana, hosted by the great Bill Oddie, but like so many other ITV channels in the end they gave in and replaced it with the titanic Tiswas, brought in from ATV. Their unwillingness to even consider replacing it with another local production couldn't have endeared them to those charged with awarding the next round of ITV franchises in 1981, and sure enough, Southern was given its marching orders and a much more professional team in the shape of TVS was awarded the contract.


One of their promises was a new Saturday morning kids' show. However, Tiswas' producers ATV had also been shown the door, but instead of being replaced by a new company, a sort of sequel in the form on Central had been awarded the job and they decided to continue with the show, albeit with a new cast. The disappointment of Tiswas' established fans would be to Number 73's benefit.


The Daily Mirror, presumably quoting TVS' own press release, claimed that Number 73 "Is a house lived in by an eccentric old lady who plays host each week to children and famous personalities for music, comedy and competitions." The "old lady" was in fact nothing of the sort. She was Danish actress, writer and presenter Sandi Toksvig, now something of a International Treasure. Toksvig played Ethel as an old lady to begin with but by Benjamin Button-ing it she got younger by the next series. However, trooper that she is, she never used her real name, being credited to Ethel Davis on the end credits.


The show appeared to be performed live every week with cartoons and other filmed clips inserted. It was first broadcast from Southern's old Southampton studios, while the later series were broadcast from Gillingham, and then at TVS's newly built studios in Maidstone in Kent.


The first series had a opening credit sequence which showed kids piling into a house, but thankfully they didn't overwhelm the show itself by getting lost or looking bored. The more well known 'hey you' intro song was brought into the second series, along with a new front door.


The show debuted the same day as Central's OTT, the ill-fated adult take on Tiswas featuring many of the faces that had left. It was ironic that a show like 73 that was not intended as a replacement, but as an alternative would outlive both OTT and Tiswas.


Each show had a plot-line and would on occasion would be given an episode title, like a drama and in amongst the plotlines would be a set of characters. Sandi Toksvig was landlady Ethel, Andrea Arnold was roller-skating lodger Dawn, Nick Staverson was Ethel's nephew Harry, while Patrick Doyle played Ethel's would be paramour, Percy and artist Neil Buchannan, later to have his own series. Many actors, and hence characters, would come and go throughout the show's life-span. Towards the end of each show they would play the frankly bonkers daring, dazzling, death defyingly dull, devastatingly dangerous, delectable, delicatessinable, divinely decadent Sandwich Quiz, which would pit two of that week's guests against each other.


It was TVS' decision to go with faces relatively new to TV which gave the show its initial edge, although some of the new wave comedy actors who would come and go most weeks proved annoying and sometimes amateurish.


The environment was also something new. Existing Saturday morning shows had either been set in a stuffy, tightly controlled studio environment like Swap Shop / Superstore et al or in a studio jungle or playground like Tiswas, but Number 73 was set in its own unique dramatic universe and as such won over many looking at an alternative to the BBC's prescriptive fun or the forced anarchy of the new re-boot of Tiswas. By Spring 1983 the show was now picked up across the whole of the ITV network.


Each week the house would play guests to a pop group who would perform two songs live in the living room, or later, the basement. Iggy Pop had been invited to play in 1987 only to take interest in a large teddy bear who he dance around with and dry humped, leading to a temporary ban from children's TV in the UK.


After Sandi Toksvig's departure in summer 1986 the show lost direction, employing too many characters and trying too many ideas that didn't stick and as a result the public lost interest. A Sunday edition Sunday at No 73 was also broadcast briefly from 5th September to 20th December 1987 with two or three of the characters used to link into He Man & The Masters Of The Universe and The Adventures of Black Beauty.


The show was re-booted as 7T3 from 9th January 1988 when the landlord knocked down all the street's houses, replacing them with an American Wild West theme park. The musical guests played live in the saloon, but the game was up and was it shut down for good in March. The Sunday edition was also renamed 7T3 on Sunday and now included Fraggle Rock.


Toksvig would become a British media regular as a performer, show presenter and writer, Patrick Doyle became a film and TV composer, while Andrea Arnold became a greatly respected and award-winning film director.



NUMBER 73 / 7T3


TVS

2nd January 1982 - 26th March 1988