BONG! Good Evening, Here Are The Olds...

The new Newcastle manager is not the only old stager to have made a re-appearance this week, though admittedly King Kev’s unexpected return did reach the top of the scale for dramatic impact.

Sir Trevor McDonald OBE, the whimsical joys of his ‘And Finally’ stories and Big Ben’s ‘Bongs’ returned to our television screens, as ITV resurrected News At Ten in an attempt to boost its late evening ratings.

Judging by the first viewing figures, Sir Trevor’s return did not make as big an impact as his employers would have hoped, with the BBC’s Ten O’Clock bulletin more than two million viewers ahead (4.7m versus 2.6m) of its new rival by the third evening of direct competition.

Putting aside the relief of Sir Trevor finding himself back in a role that suits him infinitely more than the tabloid horror that is The Tonight Show or his recent “comedy� news review show, the return of News At Ten provides a reminder of just how much there is in the current TV schedules that has a more than familiar look to it.

One of the biggest light entertainment hits of the last few years has been a revamp of the 1970s staple Come Dancing, hosted by a septuagenarian song & dance man, whilst the BBC’s successful new weeknight early evening news magazine programme, The One Show, is an almost carbon copy of Nationwide.

Throw in the 45 year-old Doctor Who, the only very recently-retired Parky and all the X Factor-style programme that are essentially reruns of Opportunity Knocks (with added heartless sarcasm), and you begin to get a very strong sense of déjà vu.

Even Jonathan Ross, who maintains his reputation as being at the cutting edge of light entertainment, has been presenting variations of the same chat show for more than 20 years.

Yet the irony is that, at the same time as all these old or restyled programmes are top of the tree, the race to find ever more technologically advanced ways of watching them could not be going much faster.

The list of media options - HD-TV channel, mobile phone, computer, digital tortoise, Apple iPhone, BBC iPlayer - seems always endless (though I did make one of those up…).

And perhaps a small part of these older programmes’ success is down to a contrasting comfort factor for those of us who can (just about, in my case) remember when you could watch a new Morecambe & Wise Show every Christmas.

In a world where so much is changing in so many ways so quickly, knowing that, somewhere out there, Bruce Forsyth is still doing what’s he done for the last several decades, and doing it with style, makes the universe seem like a slightly more ordered place than it probably really is.

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