| That Was the Week That Was | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Also known as | TW3 |
| Genre | Satire |
| Created by |
|
| Presented by | David Frost |
| Theme music composer | Ron Grainer |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 2 |
| No. of episodes | 37 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Ned Sherrin |
| Running time | 50 minutes |
| Production company | BBC |
| Original release | |
| Network | BBC TV |
| Release | 24 November 1962 (1962-11-24) – 28 December 1963 (1963-12-28) |
| Related | |
| Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life (1964–1965) | |
That Was the Week That Was, informallyTWTWTW orTW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that aired onBBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced, and directed byNed Sherrin and Jack (aka John) Duncan, and presented byDavid Frost.
The programme is considered a significant element of thesatire boom in the UK in the early 1960s, as it broke ground in comedy by lampooning political figures. TW3 was broadcast from Saturday, 24 November 1962 to late December 1963. An American version under the same title aired onNBC from 1964 to 1965, also featuring Frost.
Cast members included cartoonistTimothy Birdsall, political commentatorBernard Levin, and actorsLance Percival, who sang topical calypsos, many improvised to suggestions from the audience,Kenneth Cope,Roy Kinnear,Willie Rushton,Al Mancini,Robert Lang,David Kernan andMillicent Martin. The last two were also singers and the programme opened with a song – "That Was The Week That Was" – sung by Martin toRon Grainer'stheme tune and enumerating topics in the news.Frankie Howerd also guested in one episode with stand-up comedy.
Script-writers includedJohn Albery,John Antrobus,John Betjeman,John Bird,Graham Chapman,John Cleese,Peter Cook,Roald Dahl,Robin Grove-White,Richard Ingrams, Lyndon Irving,Gerald Kaufman,Frank Muir,David Nobbs,Denis Norden,Bill Oddie,Dennis Potter,Eric Sykes,Kenneth Tynan, andKeith Waterhouse.[1]
The programme opened with a song ("That was the week that was, It's over, let it go ...") sung byMillicent Martin, backed by the residentDave Lee house band, including guitaristCedric West. The opening song featured new lyrics each week referring to the news of the week just gone.Lance Percival sang a topical calypso each week. Satirical targets, such as Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan andHome SecretaryHenry Brooke were lampooned in sketches, debates and monologues. Some other targets included themonarchy, theBritish Empire,nuclear deterrence, advertising,public relations and propaganda, capital punishment,[2] sexual and social hypocrisy, theclass system, and theBBC itself.[citation needed] Well-remembered sketches include the 12 January 1963 "consumers' guide to religion", which discussed relative merits of faiths in the manner of aWhich? magazine report and led to theChurch of England being described a 'best buy'.[3]
The programme was not party political but did not treat all issues with what the producers considered to be a false level of impartiality and balance; one example of this is the issue of racism and "the evils ofapartheid",[2] following the view of BBC Director-General SirHugh Greene that the BBC should not be bound by its charter to be impartial on issues of racism, which Greene and the producers ofTW3 viewed as "quite simply wrong".[4] Following the 1963 murder of 35-year-old white postal workerWilliam Lewis Moore in Alabama, who was on a protest march against segregation in theAmerican South,TW3's Millicent Martin dressed asUncle Sam sang a parody of "I Wanna Go Back to Mississippi" ("... where the Mississippi mud/kinda mingles with the blood/of theniggers who are hanging from the branches of the tree ...") accompanied byminstrel singers inblackface ("... we hate all thedarkies and theCatholics and the Jews / Where we welcome any man / Who is white and strong and belongs to theKu Klux Klan"), thus parodyingThe Black and White Minstrel Show, which was then being shown on theBBC despite accusations of racism over its use of blackface.[4][5]
On Saturday, 20 October 1962 the award of Nobel prizes toJohn Kendrew andMax Perutz, and toFrancis Crick,James D. Watson, andMaurice Wilkins was satirised in a short sketch with the prizes referred to as the Alfred Nobel Peace Pools; in this sketch Watson was called "Little J. D. Watson" and "Who'd have thought he'd ever get the Nobel Prize? Makes you think, doesn't it". The germ of the joke was that Watson was only 25 when he helped discover the structure of DNA; much younger than the others.
TW3 was broadcast on Saturday night and attracted an audience of 12 million. It often under- or overran as cast and crew worked through material as they saw fit. At the beginning of the second season in the autumn of 1963, in an attempt to assert control over the programme, the BBC scheduled repeats ofThe Third Man television series after the end ofTW3. Frost suggested a means of sabotaging this tactic to Sherrin, and he agreed. For three weeks, at the end of each episode Frost read out a brief summary of the plot of the episode ofThe Third Man that was due to follow the show, spoiling its twists, until the repeats were abandoned following the direct intervention of Greene.[6]
Frost often ended a satirical attack with the remark "But seriously, he's doing a grand job".[7] At the end of each episode, Frost usually signed off with: "Thatwas the week, that was." At the end of the final programme he announced: "Thatwas‘That Was The Week That Was’ …that was."
TW3 produced a shortened 20-minute programme with no satire for the edition on Saturday, 23 November 1963, the day after theassassination of President John F. Kennedy. It featured a contribution from DameSybil Thorndike and Millicent Martin performing the tribute song "In the Summer of His Years" byHerbert Kretzmer. This was screened onNBC the following day, and the soundtrack was released byDecca Records. A clip featuringRoy Kinnear was shown in theDavid L. Wolper documentary filmFour Days in November and on the History Channel 2009 documentaryJFK: 3 Shots that Changed America. BBC presenterRichard Dimbleby broadcast thepresident's funeral from Washington, and he said that the programme was a good expression of the sorrow felt in Britain.[8]
Prime MinisterHarold Macmillan was initially supportive of the programme, chastising Postmaster GeneralReginald Bevins for threatening to "do something about it".[9] However, the BBC received many complaints from organisations and establishment figures.Lord Aldington, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, wrote to BBC director-generalHugh Greene that Frost had a hatred of the prime minister which "he finds impossible to control". The programme also attracted complaints from theBoy Scout Association about an item questioning the sexuality of its founderLord Baden-Powell, and from the government of Cyprus which claimed that a joke about their rulerArchbishop Makarios was a "gross violation of internationally accepted ethics".[10]
Historians have identifiedTW3 as breaking ground in comedy and broadcasting. Graham McCann said that it challenged the "convention that television should not acknowledge that it is television; the show made no attempt to hide its cameras, allowed the microphone boom to intrude, and often revealed other nuts and bolts of studio technology."[11] This was unusual in the 1960s and gave the programme a modern feel.[12]TW3 also flouted conventions by adopting "a relaxed attitude to its running time", and "it seemed to last just as long as it wanted".[11]
The programme was taken off the air at short notice in December 1963 with the explanation that "1964 is a General Election year".
TW3 was broadcast live, but it was normally recorded for legal reasons; only the pilot episode was not recorded.[13] A compilation of material was shown onBBC Four to celebrate the 40th anniversary. The series placed 29th in the100 Greatest British Television Programmes in 2000.
An American version was on NBC from 10 November 1963 to May 1965.[14] The pilot featuredHenry Fonda andHenry Morgan, withMike Nichols andElaine May as guests, and supporting performers includingGene Hackman. The recurring cast included Frost, Morgan,Buck Henry,Tom Bosley,[15] andAlan Alda,[15] withNancy Ames singing an opening news-satire-song[15] and Stanley Grover and Ames performing solos and duets. Regularly contributing writers includedGloria Steinem,William F. Brown,Tom Lehrer, andCalvin Trillin.[16][17]Norman Paris was the musical director.[18] The announcer wasJerry Damon. A running gag was a mock feud withJack Paar, whose own program followedTW3 on the NBC Friday schedule; Paar repeatedly referred toTW3 as "Henry Morgan's Amateur Hour".
Of 50 episodes, only a few survive in video form, yet audio episodes survive onacetate disc.[15] The first-season black-and-white episodes were preserved onkinescope film; the surviving colour episodes of the second and final season were recorded in the then-standard two-inch colourquadruplex videotape format. ThePaley Center has copies of some seven episodes, including the hour-long pilot. Also, scripts of all shows survive, both in the NBC Collection at theLibrary of Congress and in the papers of executive producerLeland Hayward at the New York Public Library. Amateur audio recordings of all or nearly all episodes also survive,[19] and an hour-long recording,That Was That Was The Week That Was, a compilation of bits from various shows, was issued on LP and, in 1992, reissued on CD. After the series' cancellation, Lehrer, who did not appear on the show, recorded a collection of his songs used on the show onThat Was The Year That Was, released byReprise Records in September 1965.
ABC aired aThat Was The Week That Was special on 21 April 1985, hosted by David Frost andAnne Bancroft and featuring futureSaturday Night Live cast membersJan Hooks andA. Whitney Brown and puppetry fromSpitting Image.[20]
 | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "That Was the Week That Was" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(November 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
A Canadian show,This Hour Has Seven Days, aired from 1964 to 1966 onCBC. Although partially inspired byThat Was The Week That Was, the Canadian show mixed satirical aspects with more serious journalism. It proved controversial and was cancelled after two seasons amid allegations of political interference.This Hour Has 22 Minutes, created byNewfoundland comicMary Walsh, has been running since 1992 although the two are not related.
An Australian show,The Mavis Bramston Show, aired from 1964 to 1968 on theSeven Network. It grew out of the recent local theatrical tradition of topical satirical revue—most notably the popular revues staged at Sydney'sPhillip Street Theatre in the 1950s and 1960s—but it was also strongly influenced by the British satire boom and especiallyTW3 andNot Only... But Also.
The New Zealand showA Week Of It ran from 1977 to 1979, hosted by Ken Ellis, and featuring comediansDavid McPhail,Peter Rowley and Chris McVeigh and comedian/musiciansJon Gadsby andAnnie Whittle. The series lampooned news and politics and featured songs, usually by McPhail and Gadsby, who continued with their own show,McPhail and Gadsby in similar vein.
A Dutch version,Zo is het toevallig ook nog 's een keer (It Just So Happens Once Again), aired from November 1963 to 1966. It became controversial after the fourth edition, which included a parody of theLord's Prayer ("Give us this day our daily television"). Angry viewers directed their protests especially against the most popular cast member:Mies Bouwman. After receiving several threats to her life she decided to quit the show. The show was praised as well: in 1966 it received the Gouden Televizier-ring, a prestigious audience award—though it turned out afterward that the election was rigged.[21]
An Indian version titledThe Week That Wasn't was launched and hosted byCyrus Broacha.
In 2004, ABC News revived the iconic TW3 theme song as a closing segment on its weekly magazine program,Primetime Live. Several two-minute episodes aired, but never caught on with the audience.
Cleveland, Ohio, local personalityGhoulardi (played by Ernie Anderson),host ofWJW-TV'sShock Theater in the 1960s, ran clips of local celebrities and politicians and satirised them in aShock Theater segment entitledThat Was Weak Wasn't It?[22]
Beginning in 2006, 1812 Productions, an all comedy theatre company inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, has annually performed a stage show calledThis Is the Week That Is. The variety show style play is written by its small cast with a script that changes nightly over several weeks of performances, and includes improvised comedy, musical parodies, and a versatile cast of performers. The show focuses on politics and news from the preceding year, often taking on local Philadelphia stories as well. In 2019, a documentary,In the Field; Conceiving Satire: The Making of This Is The Week That Is, about the creation of the long-running show was commissioned by theAmerican Theatre Wing and nominated for aMid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Arts Program/Special.[23]