So Disappointed: Whatever Happened To The Future?

On 7th July 1965, in a fast-cutting trick-lensed blur of ‘computer’ fonts, footage of production lines and office blocks, ‘dolly birds’ rearranging their hair in Bacofoil spacesuits, supersonic engine roars and the syncopated musical stylings of Johnny Dankworth, the BBC’s brand new and excitingly futuristic science and technology magazine show Tomorrow’s World made its debut on BBC1 sandwiched between Welsh mining community-set sitcom Lil and Ted Moult, Kenneth Horne and The Rt. Hon Anthony Wedgwood Benn MP eyeing up the finalists in Miss Interflora-GPO 1965. Sadly, no reliable record exists of who the flower and phone-skewed winner was out of Mrs Sylvia Williams, Miss Mary Grimmond and Miss Valerie Bignell.

On 16th July 2003, in a pale pink and yellow glow of indistinct blobs of light resembling a modish restaurant decor’s take on the original Doctor Who opening titles backed by a wall-demolishing rearrangement of Paul Hart’s mid-eighties theme music, Tomorrow’s World bowed out with a ‘Roadshow’ – the final regular edition on 19th June 2002 had presented a behind-the-scenes feature on the effects underpinning the about-to-be-released Spider-Man, incorporating more importantly an interview with Kirsten Dunst – sandwiched between David Attenborough investigating the ‘assassination’ of a sloth in Wildlife On One and some fly on the wall thing about the science of moving house called Your Life In Their Vans. The freshly vacated Tomorrow’s World-shaped position in the schedules was immediately nabbed like a ‘bagsied’ sunlounger by Holiday Swaps, in which ‘three friends exchange their boozy Mediterranean cruise with conservationists who were bound for Costa Rica’. Let us just say that the chances of anyone expecting Tony Benn admiring an aspirant beauty queen in a swimsuit looking dignified in comparison to something made this century were slim to say the least, but, well, here we are.

It would be both unfair and untrue to suggest that Tomorrow’s World displayed a similar lack of accurate foresight but nonetheless, between 1965 and 2003, the charmingly enthusiastic magazine show and its army of exuberant presenters may well have demonstrated more household items and medical advances that became part of everyday routine than didn’t but they still managed to sell us a positive and aspirant vision of ‘the future’ that never quite arrived. The entire ethos of Tomorrow’s World was that gadgets of all sizes, hues and battery requirements would come along to enhance your life and in some cases quite possibly even save it. Somewhere along the line, however, we all started to be pushed towards one single individual device that a procession of spherical-mirror-on-corner-of-stairwell-faced billionaires keep threatening will do everything for us all at once whether we like it or not. How did we get from excitable talking up of the brand spanking new Compact Disc format with a poorly superimposed still image of Boy George to dreadful tinny barely existent phone speakers continually interrupted by ‘alerts’ from group messages nobody needs to be in? I joined Paul Whitelaw and Wendy Jordan on So Disappointed for a chat about Tomorrow’s World, and the bitter contrast between how much we loved it at the time and how much we resent it for not reflecting reality. What do Jon Pertwee, New Order and Hamble have to do with it though? Find out in So Disappointed here!

Buy A Book!

You can find much more about many other long-lost television shows that were once weekly fixtures in Not On Your Telly, a collection of columns and features with an emphasis on ‘lost’ TV. 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. Not chipped from one of those huge slabs of frozen coffee they demonstrated on Tomorrow’s World once, please.

Further Listening

You can find Paul on Looks Unfamiliar talking about Legal Man by Belle And Sebastian, Spider-Man Strikes Back, The Secret Vampire Soundtrack EP by Bis, The Return Of Bruno and the The Young Ones computer game here, and talking about The Monkees on The Golden Age Of Children’s TV here.

You can also find Paul Abbott’s thoughts on when Tomorrow’s World attempted to demonstrate the Magic Eye phenomenon live on air in Looks Unfamiliar here.