Looks Unfamiliar: Ben Baker – Historical Sitcom Man

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish in Adam And Joe's Fourmative Years (Channel 4, 1997) - listen to Tim Worthington and Ben Baker talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

Joining Tim this time is writer and broadcaster Ben Baker, who’s putting a big circle round the listings in TV Times so he doesn’t miss Mr T’s Christmas Dream, Kid Creole And The Coconuts musical There’s Something Wrong In Paradise, Adam Buxton’s Christian Rave documentary God In The House, Christian Metal tour movie To Hell With The Devil, Highway, The Flint Street Nativity, the 1990 Bullseye Christmas Special, Adam And Joe’s Fourmative Years and – uh oh – TFI 1998. Along the way we’ll be discussing whether Jesus could have improved This Life +10, setting the video for Michael Moore’s TV Mayhem and Paul Shane Infinity War, questioning what would happen if an edition of Bullseye simply refused to stop, and studiously avoiding going to see One Love In The Sky – A Stone Roses Musical.

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There's Something Wrong In Paradise by Kid Creole And The Coconuts (Island, 1983) - listen to Ben Baker and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Mr T's Christmas Dream (NBC, 1984) - listen to Ben Baker and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Christmas Bullseye (ITV/Central, 1990) - listen to Ben Baker and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

About Ben

Ben Baker is a writer and broadcaster. You can find his website here and follow him on Bluesky at @benbakerbsky.social. Ben Baker’s Christmas Box, Ben’s book about the festive television schedules looking at forty years of the best, worst and weirdest Christmas TV, is available from here. Ben also presents ALFsplaining, a podcast looking at every single episode of eighties sitcom ALF in more detail than anyone actually realised that they needed; you can find it here.

Buy A Book!

You can find much more about many more oddities from the weirder corners of the television schedules in Tim’s book Not On Your Telly, a collection of columns and features on the theme of ‘lost’ television. Not On Your Telly is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. Festive Lattes are very much accepted. Especially in a ‘Red Triangle’ mug.

Further Listening

If you’re looking for more Looks Unfamiliar with a Christmas twist, you can find Ben talking about Bernard And The Genie here and the unsurprisingly long-forgotten original version of Now – The Christmas Album here and The Goodies: Snow White 2, Roland’s Yuletide Binge and Grange Hill For Christmas here, and chatting with me about the Nativity module of BBC Schools show Watch here. You can also find Ben on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV talking about Round The Bend here.

Ben has also appeared on Tim’s Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Ant-Man here, Cloak And Dagger here, I Am Groot here and Avengers: Endgame – featuring Chris Evans (Not That One) – here.

Ben also appears in The Best Of Looks Unfamiliar alongside Grace Dent on a mysterious clown that leaned into the television screen and waved, Deborah Tracey on Five To Eleven, Joanne Sheppard on Matchbox Fighting Furies, Lucy Pope on Barcode Battler and Mitch Benn on O.T.T., which you can find here.