Windmill

Country: United Kingdom

The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A British series that aired on Sunday lunchtimes, it presented television clips from past decades grouped around a theme. The host showed comedy classics, homemade films, and brought in a guest to choose their personal favorites from the archives.

nostalgiclightheartedcuratedleisurelywhimsicalinformalplayfulreminiscent

What happens

Windmill was a British television series, usually shown on Sunday lunchtimes on BBC2, which ran from 26 August 1985 to 3 April 1988, presented by Chris Serle, its name taken from the BBC television archives being housed at Windmill Road in West London at the time. It was one of the first shows fully to exploit the potential of the BBC's archive, showing during its run hundreds of television clips from the 1940s to the 1980s, always based around a specific theme. Among the many shows represented were The Morecambe and Wise Show, Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Sky at Night, Whicker's World, Nationwide, Doctor Who, Steptoe and Son, Blue Peter, and the original 1950s Watch with Mother series. A number of clips were also shown from the television newsreels of the late 1940s. Weekly features included a regular "Comedy Classic", always fitting with each episode's theme, and "All Your Own Work", which featured films made in the past by members of the public (often those included in earlier BBC series such as Caught in Time and Everybody's Doing It). Each edition also featured a studio guest, who would pick their favourites from the archives and whose own appearances would usually also be shown; Richard Stilgoe, for example, chose a clip from Jack Rosenthal's play The Evacuees, fitting in with the episode's "Childhood" theme, and a clip from his own series And Now the Good News was shown. From 4 December 1988 the series was replaced by Boxpops, another archive-based series but much faster-paced and pop-orientated with no studio presenter. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.