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This week’s video of the week is the first episode of “Match Of The Seventies”, the BBC series that filled summers of the 1990s with nostalgia for the football of the past, and this episode focusses on Arsenal’s double season – 1970/71. It provides a reasonably good primer on the subject of English football in the 1970s. Host Dennis Waterman struggles to avoid stating the bleeding obvious at times, but unfettered access to the BBC’s massive football archive and the fact that length of each episode of the programme allowed the producers to touch upon areas of 1970s football that slightly less well remembered rescue it from the trash bin. This episode is the first of the series, and we’ll be putting the rest of them up if there is sufficient interest.
Oh there’s interest all right! I had these on VHS at the time, but the quality of the picture had long become unwatchable. BBC got the balance right on this kind of thing in those days. If they were making these now, they’d fill the screen with contracted BBC rentaquotes interrupting the footage throughout with comments like “and then it went to George” – “and Kenneth Wolstenholme’s voice was just perfect” – “it were magic” -and “what do you mean I wasn’t born at the time?”
You’re thinking Gina Yashere and Stuart Maconie here aren’t you Gerv?
This is a great series for everyone that loves football.
Please keep it up.