From EastEnders to The Muppet Show: The Elstree Centre programmes

Carry On Laughing (ATV)

Thankfully for ITV the bosses of Central Television and their serious gritty mantra hadn’t been put in those positions of power back in the mid-1970s and so ATV was still able and allowed to provide viewers with some slapstick comedy courtesy of the Carry On team.

ATV took many of the personalities of the Carry On movies and placed them in half-hour comedy situations. Famous faces from the films who starred in the production include Sid James, Barbara Windsor, Bernard Bresslaw, Joan Sims, Kenneth Connor, Jack Douglas and Hattie Jacques.

Auf Wiedersehen Pet (Central)

This is what viewers want proclaimed incoming Central Television – who seemingly hated anything ATV had previously produced and either axed it or sabotaged it off the screen as quick as possible. Forget soap operas (Crossroads) forget cheerful children’s shows (Tiswas) forget fantasy (Sapphire and Steel). It was time for gritty, working-class comedy-drama with a group of bricklayers searching for a better way of living in Germany.

Of course Auf Wiedersehen Pet is a great series, it does however represent an era of Central that didn’t quite understand that television companies should be producing all kinds of programming for all kinds of people. It was one of many ‘down to earth’ productions by the company in the early 1980s. Only the first series of the show which starred Tim Healey, Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall was produced at Elstree. In total five series were produced, two for ITV and later the BBC produced a further three.