It Was Alright in the...

Matt Lucas narrates a look back at the decade's TV shows, meeting people who appeared in them, those who watched them and their creators. The first of two programmes focuses on pleasure and leisure on 1970s television, with featured clips including outrageous adult jokes in pre-watershed sitcoms, smoking cigarettes on prime-time panel shows, a surprising history lesson aimed at children, and St Bernard dogs being offered for prizes. The footage is also seen through the eyes of people who missed the decade altogether and who find the moral values exhibited to be a real eye-opener.

With attitudes to feminism, foreigners and family values being somewhat different 40 years ago, the second of two programmes narrated by Matt Lucas focuses on `good old-fashioned Britishness' on TV in the 1970s. From blacking-up in popular pre-watershed programmes, through to homophobia and xenophobia, the decade seems to have had a different set of manners and morals, and took a casual approach to sexism and racism. Looking back on a selection of surprising clips are the people who made the shows, those who watched them at the time, and younger viewers providing a fresh perspective.