Look In was branded the Junior TV Times. Yet it was more than a listings magazine covering the kids shows shown across the UK’s many independent broadcasting companies. In truth, Look In was a curate’s egg, containing so many different kinds of features that it rarely felt like a satisfying read. There were strip cartoons based on ITV programmes which, even if not specifically for children, could be considered to be of interest to kids. Hence the presence of a two page cartoon story given over to the primetime sitcom Doctor In Charge, this issue’s cover feature, which, while never a children’s show, could hardly be accused of demanding too much from its many millions of viewers. (And that was as true for the episodes co-written by members of Monty Python and The Goodies as it was for any of the others.) Alongside a handful of such strips were editorial features about sport and music, film and TV, alongside celebrity columns and a number of pin-ups. It made for a dislocated and even enervating read.
For some fans of the fantastical, this left the comic – or was it actually a magazine? – as a constantly tempting and yet constantly disappointing purchase. For here could be found, yes, fantasy strips based on television shows whose art was typically of admirable quality. Take the Catweazle two-pager below, which was based on the half-hour TV shows about a time-displaced medieval wizard. It’s an example of Look–In at its best. The script, by, I believe, Angus P. Allen, is imaginative and incident-packed, while Garry Embleton’s art is a joy. (The leaping cat in the final panel is an absolute hoot.) Yet a two-page strip is by its very nature a snack rather than a meal, and when the likes of this were the best thing in an issue, the comic as a whole could feel insubstantial.
Less impressive, but still an example of the fantastical, is Timeslip, where the presence on-page of an amusing super-strong robot in no way compensates for the unfortunate stereotypes of “Darkest Africa” .
But for our purposes, the TV listings at the back of Look-In tell a truth about how varied and at times flat-out confusing the 14 different ITV schedules could be. Since this is this blog’s entry for August 1st, we might take a glance at the Tuesday column below for this date in 1972, where it can be seen how fantastical-free the schedules typically were.
A few lucky viewers living in the borderlands between one franchise’s transmitters and another could, or so rumour had it, pick up the shows from two different companies. If true, such fortunate viewers could make good use of the above. It would certainly be cheaper than buying two different copies of the TV Times, one for each separate schedule. But then, it appears that neighbouring franchises did sometimes show the same programmes, with Grampian and STV, for example, both showing Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s UFO on Thursday evening more or less simultaneously. So perhaps the borderlands offered fewer advantages than some of us enviously imagined …
The Almanac Of The Fantastical will return tomorrow …
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 