How The Euros Are Divided For TV

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1:25Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. Hi Marina. Hello Richard. We're not together today. I know, it's disconcerting isn't it? Our least favourite way of recording but we're going to make it work but we're very excited. We have lots of things to discuss with you. We do. I'm in Stratford-upon-Avon. Yes, it's absolutely lovely. I've never been before but I shall come back. Ingrid's Play starts this week, Kyoto. It's going to be absolutely terrific but I'm just here for the day. We're going to talk a bit about dad TV, a genre called dad TV.

1:58What is it? Who's making the most of it? And why is it so wildly successful? We're going to also talk, we spoke a little on the Q &A show about, or the Q show as you call it, about theme tunes. And so we're doing a slightly deeper dive. Fair to say people are interested in that subject. Yeah. And also we are talking about the coverage of the football, the early stages of that, the differences between the channels and the success or otherwise of it. So we mentioned Dad TV, Marina, and I think this came about, we were both talking about Yellowstone. Now Yellowstone, for people who don't know it, and there's still plenty of people who don't know it, is the biggest show in the world, or if not the biggest show in the world, the biggest show in America, which is virtually the same thing.

2:39And you absolutely wouldn't know it from the coverage in the media and what have you. And Yellowstone is a particular type of program that appeals to a particular demographic. And we thought it'd be an interesting way into this whole world of what they call dad TV, but actually slightly more broad and slightly more interesting than that. Shall we start with exactly what Yellowstone is? A family with a sort of patriarch, played by Kevin Costner, who own, I think, the largest kind of ranch in Montana. They constantly say things like, yeah, no, don't worry about the law, this is Montana. They sort of run the law.

3:12There's a big Native American element as a kind of antagonist. The whole governance of the state, which is either in their pocket or could be put into their pocket potentially. But it's a cowboy show. It's a cowboy show. It's about a ranch. And it's fair to say it has a rugged and taciturn masculinity. Yes, it does. If we're talking about what makes dad TV, Richard, I would say it involves a strong male protagonist playing to his own rules. And I'll tell you why. Because the rules of the modern world are screwed, right? He's got a number. Yeah, yeah. He's middle-aged. Now, it's interesting what counts as middle-aged in this category in various ways.

3:49He may actually be in his 30s, but present as middle-aged. He may have sort of middle-aged attitudes. I remember when I used to think that 30s was middle-aged. Do you remember? When you got to like 35, you think, oh my God, I'm middle-aged. And you realise now, of course, you are essentially still nine years old. Yeah. Well, it can go all the way to the top category of middle-aged, where you might put Kevin Costner as John Dutton in Yellowstone. Now, our leading man, he is tough. He is a loner, but he might have sort of access to male camaraderie. Maybe a former SEAL unit. Maybe he likes going to the rodeo.

4:24I don't know. You know, he's got... Access to male camaraderie. Yeah, he's got access to male camaraderie. But if he's out of step with the times, well, that's on the times. Now, there's a distrust of traditional government and authority. He is mostly, but he doesn't have to be a wandering hero. So we talked a little bit like when we talked about theme tunes, We talked about the littlest hobo kind of swinging into town each week to solve a problem. But he doesn't have to be because I would argue that, you know, obviously Kevin Costner, that's located specifically on their ranch in Montana. But above all, he is unapologetic.

4:59I'll tell you that one of some of the lovely things about him is he doesn't have a mortgage, he doesn't have car repayments, and he doesn't have a ton of emotions. He doesn't feel the need to have a ton of emotions. Oh, my God. Finally, finally someone's made TV for me. anger is one of his primary emotions a sense of injustice possible but okay who is this type of tv for it can't obviously just be for dads because otherwise that wouldn't be a big enough market but i have to say that as you will obviously know from writing things it does sort of help to have a ideal viewer in your mind and for me this is a genre where the ideal viewer probably has a specific seat in the tv watching room and if you're in it and he wants to watch tv you need to get out of it he probably thinks there's, I know we've just had Father's Day, but he probably thinks there's no such thing as Father's Day.

5:49There's only Mother's Day. And also, please don't buy him anything for his birthday because he doesn't need anything. And he also thinks there's nothing on TV for him these days. I think the whole point of this item is that there is a huge amount of TV for you. If you subscribe to the right streamer. Now, I saw Jerry Seinfeld on that tour for his Pop Tots movie recently was saying, I miss a dominant masculinity. In which case, Gerry, get Amazon Prime. Get Paramount Plus. Which is weird because Amazon Prime, literally, it should be female dominated because of the name. It couldn't be more. But it's essentially Granada Men and Motors these days.

6:28Yes. We've talked about this before. Amazon is in the business of TV, not entirely, but almost primarily to sell you stuff. You know, lots of these, obviously, Reacher is a prime example but they come from novels in the old days they used to be you know you might call them a kind of airport novel um and they still are airport novels and they make they do huge business and so making shows about the things that people are buying elsewhere on your platform is a good idea yeah there's never been a time in tv where someone hasn't said oh can we please start making shows for dads there's nothing for dads to watch and the truth is if you read you know the broadsheets or if you watch the award ceremonies, none of that stuff is really showing up.

7:09But they're enormously successful. Tulsa Kings, I watched on a play the other day, the Sylvester Stallone thing. And it's never spoken about particularly because we speak about succession and Happy Valley. And quite rightly, by the way, those are brilliant television programs. But there's a huge industry there. And it's interesting when you talk about novels because novels are very, very heavily skewed towards female readers. Yeah. And that includes even Reacher, Lee Child's absolutely brilliant books written by Andrew Child, now his brother. You know, they're wonderful, wonderful books. And as you can see from the adaptation, there's a certain type of masculinity in them.

7:46But again, they have overwhelmingly female readers, as most books do. But to put it on camera and to have Alan Richardson as Reacher, who might be the single best piece of casting in the history of television. Because they've had the worst casting ever. Tom Cruise, because I'll tell you a lot of things about Jack Reacher, and one of them is he's not five foot six. No, he isn't. But when you read it, you think, well, they can't possibly cast this guy because this guy, he's kind of a loner. He's enormously fit. He's enormously moral. He's a guy who can take on anyone and anything. He can solve any problem.

8:22No way you find an actor who can do that. Then you switch on, you see Adam Richardson, you go, oh, there you go, you got him. It is perfect casting. It's unbelievably, it's unbelievably perfect. And I think a lot of the fans of the novels were disappointed by the Tom Cruise thing. I remember actually seeing a Tom Cruise interview about it once, where a rare misstep in the interview circuit from Cruise, where he said that he was trying to kick some guy in the crotch when they were filming it, and he hurt his toe. I was like, don't say that. I would love to know whose crotch that was, by the way.

8:53If you've got a crotch that can injure feet. Injure Tom Cruise's toe, yeah. Hold on, let's get on to Amazon Prime now. Yeah. Yeah, we've got a show. So it's a detective, it's called John Steelcrotch. And essentially, all he does is go around solving crimes and the bad guys constantly try and kick him in the nuts and immediately regret it. I would watch Steelcrotch. Yes. Let's not gender everyone and everything, but let's aggregate a little bit. And there are certain parts of my male psyche that are underserved by television. And there are certain parts of my male psyche that when I watch Reacher kill somebody who has just upset a child, With his elbow.

9:32Finally, finally it's happened. And that really isn't gendered because almost all the women I love also love seeing a man kill somebody. There is a lot of money to be made in serving an audience which our media would tell you doesn't need to be served particularly. And every generation comes along and someone goes, no, I'm going to make what we might call a male television program. And it works. And I do think they've changed over the years. I do think that Reacher is different to Regan and Carter in The Sweeney. You know, he's doing the exact same job, but actually he's trying to, what they tried to do in that show, what they tried to do in lots of these shows, is to have a version of masculinity which retains the toughness and retains the, you know, propensity for revenge and justice, but has a kindness and an empathy at its core as well, which is quite a big thing to do, I would say, and also probably quite a good way to undercut toxic masculinity.

10:31I think the best way to undercut toxic masculinity is not to ban it or to throw it into the sidelines, is to say, listen, there's some bits about your masculinity that are very dear to you and that actually can be helpful in the world. I wonder if you've thought about toning it down a little bit. This thesis doesn't particularly hold, but I think that if our male heroes in the future get more and more empathetic while still remaining violent, then it feels like there's something progressive in that, something weirdly progressive. Can I ask you about your upcoming book, We Solve Murders, which I know you said to me originally, oh, we really wanted to look like those airport thrillers, the cover.

11:11Yes. Is the cover enough to quite literally get people picking it up? Is that an explicit choice that your publishers make? Yes, it's interesting. By and large, those are choices I make because the one thing I try and do with everything I ever make is trying not to put any obstacles in the way of anybody enjoying it. So, you know, I try not to make it look difficult. I try and remove the barriers of entry for everybody. With the first books that had that sort of slightly 50s, golden age of crime type look, I knew people would be familiar with it already, and they were very striking. And for me, with very bad eyesight, I could see them.

11:45And with this one, I just grew up reading, you know, and my mum in the house had all these incredible, you know, Arthur Haley novels and Judith Krantz and all these things. I just, those images are just so absolutely burned into my retinas. And so I wanted, yeah, kind of 80s novel. But well, it's a guy called, who has the magnificent name of Richard Bravery, is the cover designer. And he's a genius because I literally, I go in there and say, yeah, but Richard, it's airport novels and it's this and it's that. And I can see him just nodding away and making the odd note. And then three days later, he just sends you this sort of ream of incredible front covers.

12:17again with Thursday Murder Club one of the lovely things is it's split almost 50 50 male female which is incredibly rare in the publishing world but and really really nice I do think listen we're not a worse society if men read you know I just controversial yeah I just you know I think it's I think that's quite a nice thing I believe you have some Thursday Murder Club news for us yes we've got some more casting news. So we've already had Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren and Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie as the four main people. But a few more cast members. I can announce Jonathan Price. The wonderful Jonathan Price is playing Elizabeth's husband.

13:01David Tennant is in it, which I'm very, very excited about. I was on Graham Norton recently with Naomi Ackie, who plays Whitney Houston in the biopic. and she is in it as Donna the Cop. Danny Mays is in it. Henry Hughes Hallett is in it. So there's some great names and some more names coming as well. Chris Columbus, who directs it, was giving me this news. He said, I think this is the greatest British cast assembled since the Potter movies, which he made. He knows his business. No one's turning Chris down, which is really, really lovely. Every time he says he's going after someone, he then rings me and says he's got them.

13:37The dream. The dream. I don't have my cameo yet, but we shall wait and see. You have to have a, I really want you to have a game, you. I just think it's too weird having the guy from Pointless in a Kent police station. Yeah, don't spoil your own film. You know what? Yeah, that's other people's job. Okay, I need to stay out of the way of that. I would say this dad TV thing, which I do think is fascinating. And by the way, I think we're both aware that dad TV doesn't mean anything particularly. It's just a certain genre that goes slightly unnoticed, that is much loved and is as loved by the different genders as well.

14:12So if you've not seen Reacher especially, I would say to anybody, this is great. It's a bit too violent at times. Reacher takes it a little bit far. I guess he's called Reacher. Yellowstone, all of those things. I would say if you haven't seen Yellowstone, if you haven't seen the most popular show on American TV, I really think that it's such a useful way of understanding just a mindset of anything at any one time. And it was interesting when the most popular show on American TV was House with Hugh Laurie. and it's now very interesting that this is the most popular show. And I strongly recommend always trying to sort of tap into, it's such a kind of shortcut into tapping into a national mood in lots of ways.

14:49And I think it's really interesting from that point of view as well. Let's go to an advert. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. At Sierra, discover great deals on top-brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery.

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16:49Okay, welcome back, everybody. We are going to dive right in to a subject that sparked a huge amount of interest when we talked about it just randomly in a top three last week in the Q &A episode. Oh, I said it right. Q &A wow yeah I got it I won't get it later TV theme tunes yeah so we talked about our top three I went with Littlest Hobo as my number one and you went with A-Team as your number one and then I put it I just on Saturday I just put out another tweet I thought maybe we'll talk about it a bit more because people do get exercised by it so I put out a little tweet when the football was on funnily enough just saying what's the best theme tune and it had over 7 ,000 replies and even though it was a football night hill street blues was trending cagney was trending lacy was trending uh the sweeney was trending airwolf was trending people had a lot of opinions so i thought maybe we'd just talk in general about things that people replied the shows that they love a few little stories behind some of the theme tunes as well and see if we can come to any sort of consensus as to what the best theme tune of all time the history of them is quite interesting because they originally started as an advert at the paley center as it used to be called the Museum of TV and Radio in New York, which I really recommend a visit to.

18:01I watched a really interesting film there once about theme tunes and they were purely sponsorship. They were an advert. But once more and more people got sets and it was more and more expensive, people couldn't afford it. So proper theme tunes came in. But that came from radio. Now, radio had always had theme tunes and they were quite long because when you were having to tune your sort of crystal set to the right thing, you weren't on a station particularly, you were having to tune it to the right show, So you needed a really quite long burst of music to say, all right, hang on, I'm getting the Lone Ranger, that's good, or whatever it was.

18:32People needed that. And also they felt that once television became a thing, another medium that they really wanted you to have on all the time, rather like you might have had the radio in the old days, it summons you to the sofa or says, oh, hang on, my show is starting. And so much more care went into them because it was almost like a personalised ringtone. Yes, that's true. If you're in the kitchen when the theme tune to Only Fools and Horses starts, you've got time to get in before. Really should have thought of that before. By the way, at the end of this section, I'm going to tell you why Gary Portnoy is the most ironic person in human history.

19:08It's Gary Portnoy. So I'm going to tell you that at the end. So we put out this thing, what are the best ever theme tunes? Funnily enough, the first person I asked, a guy called Paul Farah, who we've talked about before. He does the music for The Chase. I mean, he does The Wheel, just everything. And he's a genius. And I said to Paul, what are the best three theme tunes? And also, what makes a good theme tune? So his top three, number three was The Simpsons. Number two was The Golden Girls. And by the way, Golden Girls, which is, thank you for being a friend, written by Andrew Gold, his mum's job was a ghost singer.

19:46She was the woman who was the voice. She was Audrey Hepburn's singing voice in My Fair Lady. she was Natalie Wood's singing voice in West Side Story. So his mum and, you know, so some of the greatest songs ever written and some of the greatest songs, you know, in the Hall of Fame were sung by her. By the way, in the week that Betty White passed away, that theme tune was streamed 346 million times on Spotify. So that was his number two. And Paul's number one, which actually very few other people have mentioned as I asked him why, his number one greatest theme tune of all time was 40 Towers. can I can I read out his response yeah so I said oh really why 40 towers uh and Paul said maybe the purpose of theme music more than anything else is to invite you into the world with golden girls the effect is warm and familiar with 40 towers I love Dennis Wilson that's the the guy who wrote it not the guy from the Beach Boys I love Dennis Wilson slightly fraught wonky English tea shop repressed tension theme tune the simplicity of the string quartet is about restriction only monophonic instruments this reflects the limited sets and the cast four instruments four central characters also sitcoms are all about characters being trapped and while the theme is so pretty and genteel as a paper doily there's also something tightly wound and gritted teeth about it all so for me it's a really subtle reflection of the world we are being asked to join which ticks all my boxes for job done oh that's fantastic i love that yeah he then goes on to say i should write for the fucking guardian or something that's what paul says you should do yeah they would love you but I thought that was fascinating from someone whose job it is to to do that sort of thing and to introduce what a show is so yeah his number one was uh was was 40 Towers but lots of people mentioned Golden Girls well that's one which is a song and the ones that are an actual song and sometimes they end up charting and people really love the the Friends song is an interesting one the Rembrandt they had that made especially for the show they wanted to have four really tight little cuts, fast cuts in the titles.

21:44And the producers suddenly said, well, hang on, there's no real drum fill which would really help them to do that. And so those claps that became so sort of iconic, that part of the music, some production assistants did those claps in order that they could cut the titles in that way. And it became sort of, you know, such a huge part of the song. The interplay between the visual and the oral is, I always think, very interesting on those things. An even better story about theme tunes with words. So Suicide is Painless, which is the theme tune to MASH, which let us not forget was another of the biggest shows on American TV when it came out.

22:20And Suicide is Painless was originally written for the movie of MASH, the Robert Altman movie. And the music was written by Johnny Mandel. Robert Altman said, I'm going to write the lyrics. I know two things. It's going to be called Suicide is Painless, and it's going to have the dumbest lyrics I can possibly think of, right, was what Robert Altman said he's going to do. So Mandel sends him over that song, which is beautiful, Suicide is Painless. And by the way, the Manic Street Preachers do a very good cover version of it. So he sends him over the music. Robert Altman sits down to write the worst lyrics he can think of.

22:50He said, I absolutely could not do it. He said, it just wasn't something I could do. So he gave it to his 16-year-old son, Mike Altman, and said, could you write me some lyrics? He said, his son came back 15 minutes later with the lyrics to Suicide is Painless. Wow. Robert Altman said, I made out of MASH, I made about$70 ,000. He said, my son made over a million dollars because he wrote the lyrics to the song. Oh, that's fantastic. Isn't that amazing? So many people talked about Ski Sunday and Grandstand. Ski Sunday is one of my favourites because, first of all, it's quite hard to explain to people nowadays that people who had never been and would never in their entire lives go skiing sat down to watch a show about skiing.

23:36Yeah, I mean, it's, and also it's that Sunday evening, you know, we're at school tomorrow, but it was before Last of the Summer Wine. So the Ski Sunday theme tune still is a happy one. The Last of the Summer Wine theme tune is a sad one for most people because you were at school the next day. But Ski Sunday is written by a guy called Sam Fontaine, and it's library music. Composers write you a sort of 10, 15, 20 second piece of music, sometimes longer. They're on library discs, and you literally go through them again and again and again, and you can find your theme music. And whenever you do a pilot, whenever you do most entertainment shows, you use these library discs.

24:09In fact, I think the little burst of music at the very beginning of our podcast is from a library disc. And some of the people doing this library songs were incredible composers. It's a nice gig for a composer. You know, it's good money if your stuff gets chosen. And, you know, all the best composers of the time, you know, lots of these people do it. But Sam Fontaine, who did Ski Sunday, which is called Pop Goes Bark, is the name of that song for whatever reason. But he is also, any fans of Family Guy, they have that Fordville act on Family Guy who sometimes come on and there's that rinky-dink piano that plays when they're played off.

24:45And that's by Sam Fontaine as well. That's another one of his. He's done stuff for SpongeBob SquarePants. Well, he didn't do it for SpongeBob SquarePants. They chose his music. Seinfeld as well. So the stuff that he was writing, that he was just sort of knocking off in 10 minutes in an afternoon to put on a library disc, you know, is still being played now. So he did Ski Sunday. there's a wonderful musician called rodney marsden who's played with everybody's wonderful he's a wonderful person a band for a long time called dream themes and what they would do they would they would incredibly tight incredibly talented band who would play tv theme songs you know that's the that's what they would do and people would go crazy and he said when i said what's the best theme tune he said well i can tell you in terms of audience reaction it is either ski Sunday which is Sam Fontaine or it's Grandstand so people go absolutely nuts for Grandstand and Grandstand's a guy called Keith Mansfield who also by the way wrote the Wimbledon music yeah which hasn't changed for kind of years and years and years and it's iconic but he has also been sampled so many times Fatboy Slim has used him um Danger Mouse it's on the Kill Bill soundtrack so all of these people we think of this music as very sort of gentle blinky blinky blink and And these are unbelievable musicians who are sort of respected everywhere and, you know, samples of use of this stuff everywhere.

26:05I find that whole world fascinating. I like the ones that were either ahead of their time or were really odd. I know you said you weren't at school on Sunday evening. I was at school on Sunday evenings. Wow. We were allowed to watch television on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You would have hated it. Oh, my God. All right, Richard Tice. And my friend Delia and another friend of ours, we used to have to steal an extension cord because we were obsessed with Twin Peaks, which was such an ahead of its time TV show. And the music for that, which actually ended up charting Julie Cruz, Falling, which I absolutely love.

26:43That was much more of something that would come in the golden age of TV that we're in now. And we absolutely adored that theme. I think it's so weird and such an odd mood. And another one in a weird way that reminds me of that, although it's obviously a completely different kind of vibe in general, is the Sopranos, the Alabama Three. Alabama Three are actually a British band, despite sounding like they are American. Sarah Thornton, who was a real person who killed her abusive husband and she became a sort of core celeb for women's group. Alabama Three wrote that song based on having read a sort of big, big sort of news article about her.

27:19and then it strangely becomes this you know the anthem to what lots of people think is a hymn to male violence but isn't uh in the form of the sopranos but that was an interesting kind of journey to where that one ended up the trim peaks thing is interesting because you had succession in your top three and again it has that similar and it's what paul farrow was just talking about which is even before the show has started you're already being put in a certain frame of mind yeah and in a certain mood and you didn't get that with only falls and horses that just just something where you go oh okay i understand the rhythm of where i am ronnie hazelhurst is another great one of the great um theme tune composers so he did uh are you being served which by the way listen to it now it sounds exactly like an elastica song yeah i mean exactly could absolutely could be on the first elastica album um he did last of the summer wine the the the call to a million people to do their french homework um but he did two ronnie's which a lot of people mentioned as their favourite theme tune.