ITV Granada - Programmes

Programmes

In 1958, Granada Television broadcast coverage of the Rochdale by-election, 1958 – the first election to be covered on television in Britain. Granada's coverage was broad in scope and it also broadcast two candidate debates. Over 50 years later, Granada Studios hosted the first General Election debate between the leaders of the three main political parties.

Granada's boldness was seen in ambitious documentaries such as Seven Up! which premièred in 1964. The programme was a social experiment which followed the lives of 14 British children aged seven. It tracked their lives at seven-year intervals to discover whether their hopes and aspirations had been achieved. The documentary was voted the greatest ever by esteemed film-makers and its next installment, 56 Up, is due for premiere in May 2012. Seven Up was part of the World in Action documentary series between 1963 and 1998 which won awards but was controversial. It garnered a reputation for hard-hitting investigative journalism and its producer Gus Macdonald commented that the programme was 'born brash' and Paul Greengrass stated that David Plowright told him, "don't forget, your job's to make trouble." World in Action demonstrated hard-hitting investigative journalism and explored issues such as police corruption at the Metropolitan Police in 1985 and revealed the Royal Family's tax loophole in 1991. The programme led a campaign to prove the innocence of the Birmingham Six in 1985 when researcher Chris Mullin questioned the convictions and by 1991 the men had been released.

The classic northern working-class soap opera Coronation Street started a 13-week, two-episodes-a-week regional run on 9 December 1960. It is still produced at the rate of five peak-viewing episodes a week after 50 years, and is the longest-running soap opera in the world. The company produced gritty dramas such as A Family at War (1970–72).

Granada produced The Stars Look Down (1975), Laurence Olivier Presents (1976–78), Brideshead Revisited (1981), the multi-award-winning Disappearing World series (between 1969 and 1993) and, from 1984, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Jewel in the Crown for an international audience. These shows were sold overseas by Granada Television International.

Another flagship programme, the long-running quiz show, University Challenge was originally aired between 1962 and 1987 and revived by the BBC in 1994 (produced by Granada). The company produced the Krypton Factor, between 1977 and 1995 (revived by ITV in 2009). One of Granada's longest-running programmes, What The Papers Say, was broadcast by Granada in 1956, was taken over by the BBC in the early 1990s, and was shown by Channel Four. The programme introduced the idea of discussing what the newspapers were reporting, continued by Sunday Supplement and The Wright Stuff. In the 1970s, Granada produced situation comedies, often based around life in the north west including Nearest and Dearest, The Lovers and The Cuckoo Waltz followed by Brothers McGregor and Watching in the 1980s.

Granada drew on 1970s pop music with shows such as Lift Off with Ayshea and the Bay City Rollers show, Shang-a-lang. The station produced Marc, presented by glam rock star Marc Bolan. The show was in production when Bolan was killed in a car accident in 1977. Granada produced Allsorts from 1989 to 1995 for CITV, featuring Wayne Jackman, Andrew Wightman (who later produced Granada's talent show Stars In Their Eyes), Virginia Radcliffe, Jane Cox and Julie Westwood.