"Look-in": The Best of the Seventies [Hardcover]

The classic weekly read compressed into hardback form for a new generation; where else would you find those ITV region logos? A cracking stocking filler with a Proustian rush on every page.

There is a character in The League of Gentlemen called Les McQueen, a clapped-out glam rocker forever trapped in the seventies like an insect in amber. Well, why not? To those of us of a (cough!) certain age, the seventies were a magical decade - just look at how everyone lapped up Life on Mars!

And few things bring back the seventies more vividly than this wonderful collection from Look-In magazine. Yes, it was 'the junior TV Times', but that doesn't really do it justice: it was quite simply the decade in magazine form. The editors have been deliberately playful with their choices of material, picking things that have endured and things that obviously haven't (Our Kid, Flintlock). But it's all there: the music; the fashions; the telly. The comic strips are actually pretty compelling, too: I particularly liked The Bionic Woman and The Adventures of Black Beauty.

Cracking stuff!

I'm quite heavily into nostalgia at the moment.

LOOK-IN: THE BEST OF THE SEVENTIES is a lovely reminder of a time when children's tv (and children's culture in general) wasn't obsessed with or dicated by the phenomenon of the Short Attention Span. The programmes were just there and were all the more special because you only got to see them once - or maybe twice, if they were repeated. THE TOMORROW PEOPLE and SPACE 1999, in particular, were personal highlights but there were many others as you'll discover all over again.

A mirror to its elder sibling (peak-time ITV), some really quite awful stuff was commissioned in the name of the young throughout the decade that taste forgot (see final paragraph) but, for all that, much of it remains memorable. Why? Well, it may not have seemed like it at the time, but there was a reassuring discipline to children's viewing habits then which doesn't exist now. And I, for one, am glad there was.

In complete contrast to virtually the entire spectrum of its dismal output today, ITV in the early to mid-70's really had the upper hand over the BBC when it came to classic family-oriented television - the good stuff was good indeed. ACE OF WANDS, FOLLYFOOT, MAGPIE, HOW, TIMESLIP, MARC, ROBERT'S ROBOTS, ARTHUR OF THE BRITONS, CATWEAZLE, UFO...without realising it, we were very lucky. And so to this book...

Articles, interviews and comic strips are all perfectly reproduced, as are many of the classic covers - bright, cheerful and exciting and responsible for attracting me and thousands of other children to regularly part with our limited funds. Maybe at the expense of a pack of Spangles or Treats (Minstrels), or a couple of Totem Poles or a Zoom, it was always worth it though. Known as the 'Junior TV Times', LOOK-IN (along with COUNTDOWN and TV ACTION) was an essential part of this boy's boyhood and may explain many things - especially to my wife. Having said that, for those few wonderful years between 1971 and 1976, I wouldn't have done without it.

You could argue that it's precisely BECAUSE we've moved on technology-wise that the archive material celebrated here is now easily researchable online and need gather dust no longer. Fine. And scary too (did I mention PAULINE'S QUIRKES or 'pop sensations' THE ARROWS?). Whatever the case, take a good look back through these pages first - if you're in your early to mid-forties, LOOK-IN: THE BEST OF THE SEVENTIES, will evoke many happy childhood memories and, for that reason alone, it comes-

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED