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1982 in British television

This is a list of British television related events from 1982.

Events

January

February

  • 3 February – The British television premiere of John Carpenter's 1978 slasher Halloween on ITV, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence.
  • February – The first ever 3D broadcast in the UK is shown by TVS. The programme includes excerpts of test footage shot by Philips in the Netherlands. Red/green 3D glasses are given away free with copies of TV Times, but the 3D sections of the programme are shown in monochrome.

March

April

  • 2 April – The Falklands War begins as Argentina invades the Falkland Islands. Both the BBC and ITV broadcast additional and extended news bulletins throughout the conflict.
  • 3 April
  • The final edition of the children's Saturday morning series Tiswas is broadcast on ITV. It has been shown, albeit originally as a regional show made by ATV, since 1974.
  • The network television premiere of Michael Crichton's 1979 heist comedy The First Great Train Robbery on ITV, starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down.
  • 6 April – ITV debuts The Human Race, a six-part series produced for Thames Television and presented by English anthropologist Desmond Morris, as he travels all over the world and rifles film archives to show the vast diversity of human culture and behaviour. The series ends on 11 May.
  • 14 April – Actor Arthur Lowe gives a live interview on BBC's Pebble Mill at One. He collapses in the evening and dies the following day.
  • 15 April – BBC2's start time moves to the later time of 5:10pm with transmissions beginning with a single Open University programme with regular programmes now beginning at 5:40pm. For the past six months, BBC2 has been starting its weekday broadcasts at the earlier time of 3:55pm.
  • 16 April – Debut of game show Odd One Out on BBC1, presented by Paul Daniels.
  • 17 April – The BBC launches its first Summer Saturday morning magazine show, Get Set. However, unlike its winter counterpart, the summer shows air for the first half of the morning only. This allows for an earlier start to Grandstand to accommodate live test cricket and on the weeks that cricket is not being shown, a feature film is broadcast from around 11am until the start of Grandstand at 12:30pm.
  • 24 April – The 27th Eurovision Song Contest is held in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. The contest is presented by Jan Leeming and won by Germany's Nicole with "Ein bißchen Frieden".
  • 26 April – The Satellite Channel launches, but to be able to view the channel in the UK a satellite dish approximately 10 feet (3 meters) wide is required due to the satellite on which the channel is broadcast.

May

  • 1 May – The US soap opera Dynasty makes its UK debut on BBC1.
  • 4 May – The long-running live evening chat show Wogan makes its debut on BBC1, presented by Terry Wogan. It will be shown three times a week from 1985 and will continue until July 1992.
  • 9 May – BBC1 airs live coverage of the London Marathon for the first time. It had aired highlights of the event under the International Athletics strand the previous year.
  • 26 May – The network television premiere of Don Taylor's 1978 horror sequel ' on ITV, starring William Holden.
  • 28 May–2 June – The BBC and ITV provide extensive live coverage of Pope John Paul II's visit to the UK.

June

July

August

  • 2 August – Test broadcasts commence for Channel 4 and S4C. These mainly consist of showing the IBA's testcard ETP-1 between 9am and 8pm.

September

October

  • 1 October – BBC2’s weekday daytime four-hour transmitter shutdown is suspended for the next four months. This is to assist riggers adjust aerials during the lead up to, and the launch of, Channel 4.
  • 2 October – The first edition of Saturday morning children's show Saturday Superstore is broadcast on BBC1. Hosted by Mike Read, Sarah Greene and Keith Chegwin, it adopts a similar format to its predecessor, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.
  • 3–9 October – As part of its coverage of the 1982 Commonwealth Games, the BBC airs a two-hour breakfast programme called Breakfast with Brisbane. It includes regular news summaries and is the first time the BBC has broadcast a scheduled news bulletin at breakfast and comes three months ahead of the launch of their own breakfast television programme Breakfast Time. Other coverage of the Games consists of highlights programmes aired at lunchtime and early evening.
  • 6 October – BBC1 starts airing season 6 of the US drama series Dallas.
  • 10 October – Alan Bleasdale's hard-hitting Liverpool-set drama Boys from the Blackstuff makes its debut on BBC2, starring Bernard Hill as the downtrodden character Yosser Hughes. The final episode is shown on 7 November.
  • 17 October – The network television premiere of Peter Brook's 1963 adventure Lord of the Flies on BBC2.
  • 23 October – ITV begins showing the Japanese science-fiction marionette series Star Fleet, with the theme tune written and performed by Paul Bliss.
  • 24 October – The network television premiere of George Lucas' epic 1977 science-fiction blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope on ITV, starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Alec Guinness. At the time it is the most money ITV has spent on a single film, $4 million for three showings over seven years; however they go on to show Star Wars a total of five times (October 1982, September 1983, December 1984, January 1987 and January 1988). The debut 1982 showing draws in an estimated audience of over 16.8 million viewers.
  • 25 October – ITV debuts Harry's Game, a three-part drama miniseries made by Yorkshire Television closely based on Gerald Seymour's 1975 novel of the same name starring Ray Lonnen, Derek Thompson and Benjamin Whitrow. The drama is noted for its haunting theme song by the Irish musical group Clannad reaching top five of the UK Singles Chart, bringing the band its first major international exposure. The serial continues on 27 October.
  • 31 October – Programmes in Welsh are broadcast both on the BBC and HTV for the final time.

November

  • 1 November – S4C, the first Welsh language TV service, is launched.
  • 2 November – Channel 4, the fourth UK television service, starts broadcasting outside Wales at 4:40pm as a free-to-air public broadcast channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, publicly owned but funded entirely from commercial activities, with continuity announcer Paul Coia.
  • At 4:45pm, the first programme shown is the game show Countdown, presented by Richard Whiteley, which, barring the news, is the only programme from the launch night which will still be running over forty years later.
  • At 7:00pm, the first edition of Channel 4 News, the UK's first hour-long news programme, is broadcast.
  • At 8:00pm, the first ever episode of the soap opera Brookside is broadcast. It is shown on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8pm and will run until 2003. Phil Redmond's production company Mersey Television has acquired a real street of new houses in Liverpool for the filming.
  • At 10:15pm is the debut of comedy The Comic Strip Presents... Five Go Mad in Dorset, first of six comedies parodying The Famous Five (including dog) doing some detective work while on holiday in the West Country, featuring early TV appearances from Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It captures the Broadcasting Press Guild prize for 'best comedy'.
  • Also debuting this evening in the UK is Australian comedy The Paul Hogan Show.
  • 3 November – Debut of the nostalgic coming-of-age film P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang on Channel 4, written by Jack Rosenthal, produced by David Puttnam and directed by Michael Apted as part of the First Love series.
  • 4 November – The first of six episodes of Tom Keating on Painters is broadcast. Channel 4 entices viewers to their pioneering instructional programme with an ad in The Times that invites them to: "Watch the great 16th century Italian painter Tom Keating [who] believes the spirits of the Old Masters sometimes enter him as he works on a canvas. Tonight, in the first of a series, watch Titian paint Tarquin and Lucretia through Keating." The art restorer and notorious art forger secures for Channel 4 one of two Broadcasting Press Guild awards for its very first season: ‘Best on-screen performance in a non-acting role’ for Keating. A Times television critic writes, "Tom Keating does more than just break new ground in art appreciation... Instruction by example: that is the Keating approach."
  • 5 November
  • Debut of Channel 4's innovative music show The Tube, presented by Jools Holland and Paula Yates.
  • The network television premiere of Woodstock on Channel 4, Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary about the counterculture 1969 festival which took place near Bethel, New York and was a great commercial and critical success. The opening and closing acts are the same in the film as they appeared on stage with Richie Havens opening the show and Jimi Hendrix closing it.
  • 6 November – Channel 4 airs its first terrestrial television showing of Sidney Lumet's 1976 American satirical drama Network, starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Ned Beatty. The film was shown during the launch of S4C six days earlier.
  • 7 November – Coverage of American football is first shown on Channel 4 at 5:30pm, beginning the channel's association with the sport. The programme is initially presented by Nicky Horne and Miles Aiken, but due to an NFL players strike over pay negotiation rules, it is forced to show matches played earlier in the season. In spite of this and of the British viewing public's limited knowledge of American football, coverage of the sport proves to be popular. The players have ended their action by January 1983, enabling Channel 4 to air live coverage of that year's Super Bowl.
  • 7–28 November – The London Weekend Television epic production The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is aired by Channel 4 over its first four Sunday evenings on the air.
  • 8 November – Channel 4 begins airing basketball coverage, presented by Simon Reed and Miles Aiken. Each week sees coverage of a match from Division One of the National Basketball League with highlights of the first half of the game and live coverage of the second half. The first match to be shown is a game between the Birmingham Bullets and Crystal Palace.
  • 9 November – The first episode of the anarchic sitcom The Young Ones is broadcast on BBC2, starring Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan and Alexei Sayle and written by Mayall, Ben Elton and Lise Mayer.
  • 14 November – The viewer complaints programme Right to Reply is first broadcast on Channel 4.
  • 16 November – A dispute over new technology forces Border to close for around a month.
  • 20 November – BBC1 begins showing the five-part historical Japanese-set drama Shōgun, based on James Clavell's acclaimed novel and starring Richard Chamberlain.
  • 29 November – ITV conducts a national 3D experiment with red/blue glasses allowing colour 3D to be shown for the first time. The programme, an episode of the weekly science magazine The Real World produced by TVS is shown on a weekday evening and repeated that weekend on Sunday afternoon, followed by a rare showing of the Western Fort Ti on 5 December, starring George Montgomery and Joan Vohs.

December

Debuts

BBC1

BBC2

ITV

Channel 4

S4C

New channels

Television shows

Changes of network affiliation

Continuing television shows

1920s

  • BBC Wimbledon (1927–1939, 1946–2019, 2021–present)

1930s

  • Trooping the Colour (1937–1939, 1946–2019, 2023–present)
  • The Boat Race (1938–1939, 1946–2019, 2021–present)
  • BBC Cricket (1939, 1946–1999, 2020–2024)

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

Ending this year

Births

  • 3 January – Amanda Robbins, model
  • 20 January – Joe Swash, actor
  • 9 March – Paul 'Des' Ballard, television presenter
  • 22 March – Pete Bennett, reality show contestant
  • 2 April – Jenny Ryan, game show contestant and Chaser on The Chase
  • 24 April – Laura Hamilton, television presenter
  • 28 April – Nikki Grahame, model, dancer and television personality (died 2021)
  • 7 June – Amy Nuttall, actress and opera singer
  • 13 June – Davood Ghadami, actor
  • 6 August – Karl Davies, actor
  • 22 September – Billie Piper, singer and actress
  • 28 October – Matt Smith, actor
  • 29 November – Imogen Thomas, reality show contestant
  • 21 December – Tom Payne, soap actor

Deaths

See also

References

External links