RETRO! What Happened Next?, BBC Four, 9.00pm
Ever wondered what happened to all those people you so avidly watched on documentaries and reality shows? (And I’m not talking Big Brother, seeing as we have a catch-up with former contestants most years) Well, BBC Four’s new series, What Happened Next aims to fill you in, as it revisits stars of several documentary/reality type shows from the past forty years.
The series is a very good concept, with plenty of mileage for loads and loads of episodes (and series) – so why they have begun with a run of just four episodes is beyond me. The four documentaries revisited will be: Living in the Past, a 1978 reality type show where a bunch of volunteers were sent back to the Iron Age, a precursor for the glut of back-to-the-past shows we saw in the late ’90s and early ’00s; The Lawyer, about a female legal-aid solicitor, which I don’t remember at all, despite it being shown in 1996; At the Edge of the Union, a 1985 documentary about politics in Northern Ireland and, tonight’s offering, Global Village Trucking Co., a Spinal Tap-esque fly on the wall doc about a Norfolk-based, commune dwelling, rock band. A slight complaint: it would perhaps be better if they showed an episode (or a spliced-together- best bits episode) of each series beforehand for those of us who weren’t born, were too young, or simply missed these the first time round. I expect there will be clips from the shows in the series anyway, so it won’t be too alienating, but still….
Anyway, here’s hoping for more to come. And BBC, if you’re reading, I’d like to revisit the stars of Castaway 2000, Driving School and discover whether Charlie managed to protect his boy owner from stranger danger after all…
