The South Bank Show
is a television arts magazine show, made
by London Weekend
Television, presented by Melvyn
Bragg, broadcast on ITV and seen in over 60
countries worldwide — including Australia,
New
Zealand
, the Netherlands
, Sweden
and the
USA
. Its
stated aim is to bring both
high art and
popular culture to a mass
audience.
In May 2009 ITV announced that the show is to come to an end.
Although it was originally reported that the show was ending due to
Bragg's retirement, Bragg later made it clear that he decided to
leave after they ended the show, and thought ending it was a
mistake; according to him, "they've killed the show, so I thought,
I'll go as well."
History
The programme was a replacement for
Aquarius, LWT's arts series which
had been running since 1970. It first aired on 14 January 1978,
with topics on
Germaine Greer,
Gerald Scarfe and
Paul McCartney.
It is the longest
continuously running arts programme on UK
television.
From the beginning the series' intent was to mix high art and
popular culture. This has remained, and the programme has always
focused predominantly on art of the
twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
Awards
The programme has been awarded more than 110 awards (including 12
BAFTAs, 5
Prix Italia and 4
RTS Award). Pat Gavin's animated
title sequences have won two
BAFTAs.
Subjects
There have been many subjects of the show, including:
Directors
Sir David Lean once said, "The best
directors in Britain are working on
The South Bank Show."
Directors who have made editions of the programme include:
Theme music and visuals
The iconic image of the Hand of God
giving life to Adam, used since the series' inception.
The
theme music is taken from
Andrew Lloyd Webber's
Variations composed in 1977 for his
brother, the cellist
Julian Lloyd
Webber. This is based on the theme from
Paganini's "
24th Caprice". The brand image of
the programme is an animated version of a detail from
Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling painting,
specifically the image of the Hand of God giving life to
Adam. It shows the two hands meeting,
generating a
lightning bolt.
Parody
The comedy series
Dead
Ringers often parodies
The South Bank Show.
It does
this in a series of sketches called South Bank, a cross
between The South Bank Show and the American cartoon
South Park, set in the South Bank
of London
. In
these sketches, Melvyn Bragg is
Stan
Marsh,
Alan Yentob is
Kyle Broflovski,
Mark
Lawson is
Eric Cartman and
Kenneth Branagh is
Kenny McCormick.
A sketch in
The
Smell of Reeves and Mortimer featured
Vic Reeves as Melvyn Bragg (with felt-tip marks
on his face) presenting a feature on fictional folk singers
Mulligan and O'Hare. Reeves' depicts Bragg as an unlikely
A-Team obsessive.
Harry Enfield's TV film
Norbert Smith - a Life is a
parody edition of
The South Bank Show.
Ricky Gervais and
Stephen Merchant's second series of
Extras featured a reference to a
fictional episode of The South Bank Show focused on madcap
children's television presenters
Dick and
Dom.
Private Eye
tends to parody Melvyn Bragg's name, and
Spitting Image would rather
accentuate his nasal accent.
Benny Hill once parodied Bragg in a 1978
episode of
The Benny Hill Show
as Melvyn Dragg. The name of the show was also parodied, and it was
called "The South Blank Show."
Podcast
From 18 September 2006, ITV have begun releasing a
podcast of the interviews from the show, including
extra material not included in the broadcast editions. There are
plans to release past interviews as part of the podcast as
well.
References
- "ITV to axe The South Bank Show when Melvyn Bragg
retires next year", The Guardian, 6 May 2009
External links
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