I made a pot of tea purposefully in preparation to sit down and watch Lovejoy today, such is my sick fascination with my new favourite programme, yet when after the great opening titles ended, I was appalled and sickened to see it was an episode I’ve already seen, only a couple of days ago on the same channel. What are ITV3 trying to pull? Here I am, praising them to the hilt on Tuesday (whilst, admittedly, calling the ITV group as a whole as cancerous, despicable and unwatchable) and now look how they repay me.
What’s distressing is that I still sat and watched it, my enjoyment only tempered slightly by knowing exactly what would happen. What is this new illness I have? This Lovejoy fever? Was it ever shown in America? Are you aware of it there?
What’s annoying about ITV3 showing the same episode of Lovejoy within two days is that there were 38 episodes of Lovejoy made, as well as two Christmas specials. Surely they could go a whole month without showing the same episode twice? It seems there is no depths to which this channel will sink, and therefore all I can do is declare war on them until they start showing Lovejoy in proper rotation (i.e. all the way through series one from start to finish, then all the way through series two, then three, four, five and six, then the Christmas specials, then start again) and stop making a mockery of the greatest detective/rouge antiques dealer based show ever made in the late eighties and early nineties.
It’s not as if Lovejoy’s memory hasn’t been dragged through the mud enough with the rise (and thankfully now fall) of Lovejoy copycat David Dickinson, who has clearly modelled himself as a kind of spiv version of Ian McShane’s character in real life. Dickinson became famous for a daytime TV show called Bargain Hunt, where two teams have a budget to look around a boot fair and buy three objects each before taking them to auction and seeing if they can make a profit. This profit could be anything up to £3, but they normally lost the lot because they bought tat and the antiques community knew it. Now, Lovejoy was always after a bargain, the scamp, but he would never have been reduced to scouring boot sales and certainly would never agree to host a rubbish if strangely addictive daytime TV show. Not Lovejoy’s style.
Anyway, Dickinson’s star was on the rise a few years ago and he became a celebrity on the back of him thinking he was great and the entire British public thinking he was a dick, which is a dubious route to success but there we go. He was famous also for his Lovejoy style hair and flamboyant suits. But today I see him fronting an advert for McDonalds. It was hideous. He’s in a McDonalds and says “The first rule of buying is… always buy quality!� And so that’s why he buys McDonalds products. It’s a shameless cash in on the UK’s love of slightly off-the-wall antiques dealers that began with Lovejoy.
Obviously we’ve loved antiques ever since The Antiques Roadshow came onto our screens in about 1756, but it was only Lovejoy that made the shady world of dark dealerships and high tension auctions cool and ace. Now it seems there is no romance in this world, there can’t be when our most famous antiques dealer is earning a quick buck advertising the poor quality foodstuffs that previously had a disturbing clown called Ronald as their front man. Lovejoy must be spinning in his fictional grave.
Oh, Lovejoy, what a great programme you were from your premier in 1986 to your demise in 1994. It’s good for so many reasons.
1. It’s funny. Lovejoy scripts always had a laugh or two in them for good measure.
2. It had a character called Tinker Dill played by the great Dudley Sutton. Tinker worked for Lovejoy but basically just got wrecked down at the local pub all the time.
3. Lovejoy’s daughter Vicky was a fox. Played by Amelia Shankley, her irregular appearances were always welcome. Strangely, the role was also sometimes played by Amelia Curtis and to be honest I don’t know which one is which, but they are not the same person. But I only like one and would only marry one of Lovejoy’s fictional daughters (although they are the same daughter).
4. Lovejoy is the only programme in the history of the world where breaking the ‘third wall’ and occasionally having him talk to the camera in the middle of a scene didn’t look rubbish.
5. It was educational and well researched when it came to antiques.
6. At 50 minutes per episode, it was the right length.
7. It allows you to laugh at 80’s and 90’s technology and clothes.
8. Lovejoy is an excellent role model. Always living hand-to-mouth, often broke, often with pockets full of cash, he was a Del Boy who never mentioned money thus making him cooler.
9. Regards the above, Lovejoy proved that this lifestyle (and looking like Ian McShane) is what the ladies are really after. He always had women after him, and coolly wasn’t that bothered with any of them. But Lovejoy wasn’t gay.
10. Ian McShane’s father Harry was a professional footballer with Manchester United.
So it’s good for ten reasons. How many reasons can you think of that make David Dickinson good? None. So I think we’ve proved once and for all that Lovejoy is the king of antique dealers and, as I said on Tuesday, if ITV could afford to make a new series with the now globally famous McShane it would be the greatest event in the history of television and I for one would organise a street party for my entire neighbourhood.
I’ve just had a look on Amazon and seen that each series is available on DVD. If can wait that long, I think that might make for a very happy antiques style Christmas. Got that, Mum? Dad? Good.
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