Moviewatch [17/01/93]
A film show for the multiplex era, Moviewatch brought together reviews, interviews and celebrity gossip with a regional flavour.
When the programme started in 1993, each episode of Moviewatch was filmed at a different UK multiplex cinema, with hosts Johnny Vaughan, Tania Guha and Philip (father of Daisy) Edgar-Jones presenting the programme among popcorn concession stands and box office queues.
Far from the luxurious picture palaces or grotty fleapits of the past, Moviewatch projects a distinctly Americanised form of suburban moviegoing, complete with sticky floors and sickly-sweet cinema snacks.
For this edition, the first of the series, the team visits the 12-screen Warner Bros. cinema in Bury, Greater Manchester, and brings together a panel of Mancunian cinemagoers to review the week's new releases, including Singles, Man Trouble, Midnight Sting and Deep Cover.
Handing over the critical reins to members of the public may have seemed like a neat gimmick in 1993, but in retrospect it points the way to today's 'democratised' era of social media cinephiles sharing their views on Letterboxd and TikTok.
With its playful attitude and contributors in their late teens and early twenties, Moviewatch attempted to court the youth culture movements of the moment. Change was in the air, and this generational shift was also played out on screen in films such as Cameron Crowe's grunge-romcom Singles and Quentin Tarantino's stylish deconstruction of the heist flick, Reservoir Dogs - which appears in this episode as a preview, featuring interviews with actor Tim Roth and the young upstart director himself.
Elsewhere, the programme joins the dots between the young people watching the programme in the UK and their peers across the pond, interviewing some of the newest (and lowest-on-the-rung) employees at Hollywood agency WME. Some of them, including Gaby Morgerman, went on to become highly successful agents.
The nation-spanning gimmick was dropped in later episodes, but the regional reviewers remained through six series of the show, until it wrapped up in 1998.
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That Was the 1990s
Revisit the end of the 20th Century, as we knew it...
The 1990s had a lot to live up to. At the tail end of the 1980s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, thawing of Cold War tensions, and symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall gave the following decade the charge of a new era – or at least the end of an old one. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama went one further, declaring what he saw to be the definitive victory of liberal democracy to be 'the end of history' itself.
Rather than closing the book on history, though, the 1990s passed the baton between the centuries, seeding themes still relevant today across politics, technology, culture and society at large, from the blanket, up-to-the-minute coverage of the Gulf War, to a growing concern for the environment, to revolutions in science that transformed the food we eat.
In Westminster, almost two decades of Conservative rule gave way to the charismatic optimism of New Labour, which was buoyed by the pop cultural moment of “Cool Britannia” on screen, in galleries, and on the airwaves. Yet, even during this period of puffed-up national pride, the union itself was a topic of debate, with devolution processes underway in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – where the historic Good Friday agreement to put an end to the Troubles was signed.
Elsewhere, the perfect marriage of consumerism and technology continued, as our lives became increasingly digital and connected. The boxy desktop PCs, snail’s-pace dial-up modems and Y2K ‘Millennium bug’ hysteria may now seem quaint, but they pointed towards our current, always-online era. History, as ever, marched on.
46 videos in this collection
1
2
Digital World
3
National Minimum Wage: Journey
4
New Years Eve 2000 on London Underground
5
COI: Welsh Referendum - A Voice For Wales - COI/WOFF465/020
6
Scotland Today Scottish Parliamentary Special
7
Our Friends in the South
8
First Cabinet Meeting
9
Action 2000: Booklet As Hero
10
Y2K Fever!
11
Business of Tomorrow
12
Meat Crazy!
13
Tomorrow's Lunch
14
Birds in Crisis
15
Meridian Tonight (11.8.99)
16
Gamesmaster [07/01/92]
17
Go Wild! [19/12/91]
18
Reeves & Mortimer / Nirvana (Tonight with Jonathon Ross)
19
Moviewatch [17/01/93]
20
Girl Power
21
Future Rail
22
Opening of Waterloo International and Channel Tunnel Inauguration
23
How They Built the Channel Tunnel
24
Tony Blair's Handwritten Pledges
25
Toying with the Future
26
An English Estate
27
The Trouble with Art
28
The Gulf between Us
29
Enter the Dragon
30
Coverage of the Gulf War
31
Review of the Year
32
This Is 5!
33
Schoolgirl's Peace Letter to Tony Blair
34
Platform Referendum Special
35
Relatives of Gulf Servicemen
36
News 25.1.91 8.00 P.M. ITV (Gulf War Report)
37
Channel 5 Test Transmission [12/03/97]
38
COI: Modern Apprenticeships - Chicken & Egg - Revised - COI/DFEE418/040
39
Princess Diana
40
Princess Diana Memorial Coin
41
The Mending of Manchester
42
A Day in Our Lives
43
Sundial
44
The United Kingdom
45
President Clinton and John Major at Downing Street
46