The Rest Is Entertainment - How The Euros Are Divided For TV

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Football will dominate our TV screens for the next few weeks, but how are the games chosen between the BBC and ITV, and how important is England's success for ITV's profits? What is the history behind some of your favourite TV theme tunes (which you can enjoy in a handy playlist here)? And Dad TV. Richard and Marina breakdown a much watched, but perhaps little written about genre, which has more familiar shows than you might guess. Sign-up to The Rest Is Entertainment newsletter for more insights and recommendations - www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osborne. Hi Marina. Hello Richard, we're not together today. I know, it's disconcerting isn't it? Our least favourite way of recording but we're going to make it work. We're very excited, we have lots of things to discuss with you. We do, I'm in Stratford-upon-Avon. Yes, it's absolutely lovely, I've never been before but I shall come back. English play starts this week in Kyoto. It's going to be absolutely

terrific. But I'm just here for the day. We're going to talk a bit about dad TV, a genre called dad TV. What is it? Who's making the most of it? And why is it so wildly successful? We're going to also talk, we spoke a little on the Q&A show about some, or the Q show, as you call it, about theme tunes. And so we're doing a slightly deeper dive. I fair to say people are interested in that subject. And also we are talking about the coverage of the football, the early stages of that, the differences between the channels and the success or otherwise of it. So we mentioned Dad TV Marina, and I think this came about, we were both talking about Yellowstone. Now Yellowstone, for people who don't know it,

and there's still plenty of people who don't know it, is the biggest show in the world, or if not the biggest show in the world, the biggest show in America, which is virtually the same thing. And you absolutely wouldn't know it from the coverage in the media and what have you. And Yellowstone is a particular type of program

that appeals to a particular demographic. And we thought it'd be an interesting way into this whole world of what they called Dad TV, but actually slightly more broad and slightly more interesting than that. Should we start with exactly what Yellowstone is? A family with a sort of patriarch paid by Kevin Costner, who own, I think, the largest kind of ranch in Montana. They constantly say things like, yeah, no, don't worry about the law. This is Montana. They sort of run the law. There's a big Native American element as a kind of antagonist, the whole governance of the state, which is either in their pocket or could be put into their pocket potentially.

But it's a cowboy show. It's a cowboy show. It's about a ranch. And it's fair to say it has a rugged and taciturn masculinity. Yes, it does. If we're talking about what makes Dad TV, Richard, I would say it involves a strong male protagonist playing to his own rules. And I'll tell you why, because the rules of the modern world are screwed, right? He's got a non- Yeah, yeah. He's middle-aged. Now it's interesting what counts as middle-aged in this category in various ways. He may actually be in his 30s, but present as middle-aged. He may have sort of middle-aged attitudes. I remember when I used to think that 30s was middle-aged. Do you remember?

Yeah. When you got to like 35, you think, oh my God, I'm middle-aged. And you realize now, of course, you were essentially still nine years old. Yeah. Well, it can go all the way to the top category of middle age, where you might put Kevin Costner, you know, as John Dutton in Yellowstone, okay. Now, our leading man, he is tough. He is a loner, but he might have sort of access to male camaraderie, maybe a former SEAL unit, maybe he likes going to the rodeo, I don't know. He's got access to male camaraderie.

Yeah, he's got access to male camaraderie. but if he's out of step with the times, well, that's on the times. Now, there's a distrust of traditional government and authority. He is mostly, but he doesn't have to be a wandering hero. So a little, we talked a little bit, like when we talked about theme tunes, we talked about the little is hobo kind of swinging into town each week to solve a problem. But he doesn't have to be because I would argue that, you know, someone obviously Kevin Costner that's located specifically on their ranch in Montana. But above all, he is unapologetic. I'll tell you that one of some of the lovely things about him is he doesn't have a mortgage.

He doesn't have car repayments. And he doesn't have a ton of emotions. He doesn't and he doesn't have a ton of emotions. He doesn't feel the need to have a ton of emotions. Oh my god, finally, finally someone's made TV for me. Anger is one of his primary emotions, a sense of injustice possible. But okay, who is this type of TV for? It can't obviously just be for dads because otherwise that wouldn't be a big enough market. But I have to say that, as you will obviously know from writing things it does sort of help to have a ideal viewer in your mind and for me this is a

genre where the ideal viewer probably has a specific seat in the TV watching room and if you're in it and he wants to watch TV you need to get out of it he probably thinks as I know we've just had Father's Day, but he probably thinks there's no such thing as Father's Day. There's only Mother's Day. And also, please don't buy him anything for his birthday because he doesn't need anything. And he also thinks there's nothing on TV for him these days. Well, I think the whole point of this item is that there is a huge amount of TV for you. If you subscribe to to the right streamer, now I saw Jerry Seinfeld on that tour for his Pop Tarts movie recently was saying I miss a

dominant masculinity, in which case Jerry get Amazon Prime, get Paramount Plus because... Which is weird because Amazon Prime literally it should be female-dominated because of the name. It couldn't be more but it's essentially Granada men and motors these days. Yes. We've talked about this before. Amazon is in the business of TV, not entirely, but almost primarily to sell you stuff. You know, lots of these obviously, Reacher is a prime example, but they come from

novels in the old days, they used to be, you know, you might call them an airport novel and they still are airport novels and they make, they do huge business. And so making shows about the things that people are buying elsewhere on your platform is a good idea. Yeah, there's never been a time in TV where someone hasn't said, can we please start making shows for dads? There's nothing for dads to watch. And the truth is, if you read the broadsheets or if you watch the award ceremonies, none of that stuff is really showing up. But they're enormously successful Tulsa Kings I watched

on a plane the other day, the Sylvester Stallone thing. And it's never spoken about particularly, because we speak about succession and happy Valley and quite rightly, by the way, there's a brilliant television programs, but there's a huge industry there. And it's interesting when you talk about novels, because novels are very, very heavily skewed towards female readers. Yeah. And that includes even Weetcher, Lee Child's absolutely brilliant books written by Andrew Child, now his brother. You know, they're wonderful, wonderful books.

And as you can see from the adaptation, there's a certain type of masculinity in them. But again, they have overwhelmingly female readers as most books do. But to put it on camera and to have Adam Richson as Reacher, who might be the single best piece of casting in the history of television. Because they've had the worst casting ever. Tom Cruise, because I'll tell you a lot of things about Jack Reacher. And one of them is he's not five foot six. No he isn't. But when you read it you think well they can't possibly cast this guy because this guy he's kind of a loner, he's enormously fit, he's enormously moral, he's a guy who can take on anyone and anything, can solve any problem. No way you find an actor who can do that

and then you switch on you see Adam Richland you go, oh, oh, there you go. You got him. It is perfect casting. It's unbelievably, it's unbelievably perfect. And I think a lot of the fans of the novels were disappointed by the Tom Cruise thing. I remember actually seeing a Tom Cruise interview about it once where a rare misstep in the interview circuit from Cruise, where he said that he was trying to kick some guy in the crotch when they were filming it and he hurt his toe. I was like, don't say that. I would love to know whose crotch that was, by the way. If you've got a crotch that can injure feet...

Injured Tom Cruise's toe, yeah. Hold on, let's get onto Amazon Prime now. Yeah, we've got a show, it's called... It's a detective, it's called John Steel Crotch. And, you know, essentially, all he does is go around solving crimes and the bad guys constantly try and kick him in the nuts, uh, and, uh, and immediately regret it. I would watch Steelcrotch.

Yes. Let's not gender everyone and everything, but let's aggregate a little bit. And there are certain parts of my male psyche that are underserved by television and there are certain parts of my male psyche that when I watch Reacher kill somebody who was just upset a child, I'm like, finally, finally it's happened. And that really isn't gendered because almost all the women I love also love seeing a man kill somebody.

There is a lot of money to be made in serving an audience, which our media would tell you doesn't need to be served particularly. And every generation comes along and someone goes, no, I'm gonna make what we might call a male television program and it works. And I do think they've changed over the years. I do think that Richard is different to Regan and Carter in the Sweeney. You know, he's doing the exact same job, but actually he's trying to, or what they tried to do in that show, and what they tried to do in lots of these shows, is to have a version of masculinity which retains the toughness and retains the propensity for revenge and justice, but has

a kindness and an empathy at its core as well, which is quite a big thing to do, I would say, and also probably quite a big thing to do, I would say, and also probably quite a good way to undercut toxic masculinity. I think the best way to undercut toxic masculinity is not to ban it or to throw it into the sidelines, is to say, listen, there's some bits about your masculinity that are very dear to you and that actually can be helpful in the world. I wonder if you've thought about toning it down a little bit. This thesis doesn't particularly hold but I think that if our male heroes in the future get more and more empathetic while still remaining violent then it feels like there's something progressive in that, something weirdly progressive. Can I ask you about your

upcoming book, We Solve Murders, which I know you said to me originally, oh, we really wanted to look like those airport thrillers, the cover. Yes. Is the cover enough to quite literally get people picking it up? Is that an explicit choice that your publishers make? Yes, it's interesting. By and large, those are choices I make because the one thing I try and do with everything I ever make is try not to put any obstacles in the way of anybody enjoying it. So, you know, I try not to make it look difficult. I try and remove the barriers of

entry for everybody. With the first books that had that sort of slightly 50s, golden age of crime type look, I knew people would be familiar with it already. And they were very striking. And for me, with very bad eyesight, I could see them. And with this one, I just grew up reading, you know, my mom in the house had all these incredible, you know, Arthur Haley novels and Judith Krantz and all these things. I just, those images are just so absolutely burned into my retinas. And so I wanted, yeah, kind of 80s novel,

but it's a guy called, who has the magnificent name, Richard Bravery is the cover designer. And he's a genius because I literally go in there and say, Yeah, Richard's airport novels and it's this and it's that. And I can see him just nodding away and making the odd note. And then three days later, he sends you this sort of ream of incredible front covers. Again, with Thursday Murder Club, one of the lovely things is it's split almost 50 50 male female, which is incredibly rare in the publishing world. But I'm really, really nice. I do think, listen, we're not a worse society if men read, you know, I just, controversial.

Yeah. I just, you know, I think it's, uh, I think that's quite a nice thing. I believe you have some Thursday Monday club news for us. We've got some more casting news. So we've already had, we've got Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren and Sir Ben Kingsley and Celia Emry as the four main people. But a few more cast members I can announce.

Jonathan Price, the wonderful Jonathan Price is playing Elizabeth's husband. David Tennant is in it, which I'm very, very excited about. I was on Graham Norton recently with Naomi Ackie, who plays Whitney Houston in the biopic, and she is in it as Donna the Cop. Danny Mays is in it, Henry Hughes-Hallett is in it, so there's some great names

and some more names coming as well. Chris Columbus, who directs it, was giving me this news. He said, I think this is the greatest British cast assembled since the Potter movies, which he made. He knows his business. No one's turning Chris down, which is really, really lovely. Every time he says he's going after someone, he then rings me and says he's got them. So this is the dream. I don't have my cameo yet, but we shall wait and see. I really want you to have a cameo.

I just think it's too weird having the guy from pointless in a Kent police station. Yeah. Don't spoil your own film. You know what? Yeah. That's other people's job. Okay.

I need to stay out of the way of that. Um, I would say this dad TV thing, which I do think is fascinating. And by the way, I think we're both aware that dad TV doesn't mean anything particularly, it's just a certain genre that goes slightly unnoticed, that is much loved and is as loved by the different genders as well. So if you've not seen, Reacher especially, I would say to anybody, this is great. If you can, it's a bit too violent at times. Reacher takes it a little bit far. I guess he's called Reacher. Yellowstone, all of those things. I would say if you haven't seen Yellowstone, if you haven't seen the most popular show on American TV,

I really think that it's such a useful way of understanding just a mindset of anything at any one time. And it was interesting when the most popular show on American TV was House with Hugh Laurie. And it's now very interesting that this is the most popular show. And I strongly recommend always trying to tap into, it's such a kind of shortcut into tapping into a national mood in lots of ways and I think it's really interesting from that point of view as well. Let's go to an advert. Okay, welcome back everybody. We are going to dive right into a subject that sparked

a huge amount of interest when we talked about it just randomly in a top three last week in the Q&A episode. Oh, I said it right. Q&A? Wow. Yeah I got it. I won't get it later. TV theme tunes. Yeah so we talked about our top three. I went with them Little's Hobo as my number one and you went with A-Team as your number one and then I put it I just on Saturday I just put out another tweet I thought maybe we'll talk about it a bit more because people do get exercised by it so I put out a little tweet when the football was on, funnily enough, just saying, what's the best theme tune? And it had over 7,000 replies. And even though it was a football night,

Hill Street Blues was trending, Cagney was trending, Lacey was trending, the Sweeney was trending, Airwolf was trending. People had a lot of opinions. So I thought maybe we just talk in general about things that people replied to shows that they love, a few little stories behind some of the theme tunes as well, and see if we can come to any sort of consensus as to what the best theme tune of all time. The history of them is quite interesting because they originally started as an advert at the Paley Center, what used to be called the Museum of TV and Radio in New York, which I really recommend a visit to. I watched a really interesting

film there once about theme tunes and they were purely sponsorship, they were an advert. But once people, more and more people got sets and it was more and more expensive, people couldn't afford it so proper theme tunes came in. But that came from radio. Now radio had always had theme tunes and they were quite long because when you were having to tune your sort of crystal set to the right thing, you weren't on a station particularly, you were having to tune it to the right show, you needed a really quite long burst of music to say all right hang on I'm getting the Lone Ranger that's good or whatever it was. Yeah, people needed that and also they felt that once television became a thing, another medium that they really

wanted you to have on all the time rather like you might have had the radio in the old days. It's a summons you to the sofa or says, Oh, hang on, my show is starting. And so much more care went into them because it was, it was almost like a personalized ringtone. Yes, that's true. You if you're in the kitchen when the theme tune to Only Fools and Horses starts, you've got time to get through. Really should have thought that before. By the way, at the end of this section, I'm going to tell you why Gary Portnoy is the most ironic person in human history. It's Gary Portnoy, so I'm going to tell you that at the end. So yeah, we put out this thing, what are the best ever theme tunes? Funny enough, the first person I asked, a guy called Paul Farah,

who we've talked about before, he does the music for The Chase and he does the wheel, does everything. And there's a genius. And I said to Paul, what are the best three theme tunes? And also what makes a good theme tune? So his top three, number three was The Simpsons. Number two was The Golden Girls. And by the way, Golden Girls, which is Thank You For Being a Friend written by Andrew Gold. His mum's job was a ghost singer. She was the woman who was the voice. She was Audrey Hepburn's singing voice in My Fair Lady. She was Natalie Wood's singing voice in West Side Story. So some of the greatest songs ever written and some of the greatest songs, you know, in the Hall of Fame work was sung by her. By the way, in the in the week that Betty White passed away, that theme tune was

streamed three hundred and forty six million times on Spotify. So that was his number two. And Paul's number one, which actually very few other people have have mentioned, as I asked him why his number one greatest theme tune of all time was Forty Towers. Can I read out his response? Yeah. So I said, Oh, really? Why 40 Towers? And Paul said, maybe the purpose of theme music more than anything else is to invite you into the world with Golden Girls. The effect is warm and

familiar with 40 Towers. I love Dennis Wilson. That's the guy who wrote it, not the guy from the Beach Boys. I love Dennis Wilson slightly fraught wonky English tea shop repressed tension theme tune. The simplicity of the string quartet is about restriction, only monophonic instruments. This reflects the limited sets and the cast, four instruments, four central characters. Also sitcoms are all about characters being trapped.

And while the theme is so pretty and genteel as a paper doily, there's also something tightly wound and gritted teeth about it all. So for me, it's a really subtle reflection of the world we are being asked to join, which ticks all my boxes for job done. Oh, that's fantastic. I love that. Yeah. He goes on to say, I should write for the fucking Guardian or something. That's what Paul says. You should do. They would know and love you. But I thought that was fascinating from someone whose job it is to do that sort of thing and

to introduce what a show is. So yeah, his number one was 40 Towers, but lots of people mentioned Golden Girls. Well, that's one which is a song and the ones that are an actual song and sometimes they end up charting and people really love the... The Friends song is an interesting one. The Rembrandts, they had that made especially for the show. They wanted to have four really tight little cuts, fast cuts in the titles and the producers suddenly said, well hang on there's no real drum fill which would really help them to do that. And so those claps that became so sort of iconic, that

part of the music, some production assistants did those claps in order that they could cut the titles in that way. And it became sort of a, you know, it's such a huge part of the song. The interplay between the visual and the aural is, I always think, very interesting on those things. An even better story about theme tunes with words. So Suicide is Painless, which is the theme tune to MASH, which, let us not forget, was another of the biggest shows on American TV when it came out. And Suicide is Painless was originally written for the movie of MASH, the Robert Altman movie. And the music was written by Johnny Mandel.

Robert Altman said, I'm going to write the lyrics. I know two things. It's going to be called Suicide is Painless and it's going to have the dumbest lyrics I can possibly think of. Right. It was what Robert Altman said he's going to do. So Mandel sends him over that song, which is beautiful, Suicide is Painless. And by the way, the Manic Street Preachers do a very good cover version of it.

So he sends him over the music. Robert Altman sits down to write the worst lyrics he can think of. And he said, I couldn't, I absolutely could not do it. He said, it just wasn't something I could do. So he gave it to his 16 year old son, Mike Altman, and said, could you write me some lyrics? He said his son came back 15 minutes later with the lyrics to Suicide is Painless. Wow. Robert Altman said, I made out of mash, I made about $70,000. He said, my son made over a

million dollars because he wrote the lyrics to the song. Oh, that's fantastic. Isn't that amazing? So many people talked about Ski Sunday and Grandstand. Ski Sunday is one of my favorites because first of all, it's quite hard to explain to people nowadays that people who had never been and would never in their entire lives go skiing sat down to watch a show about skiing. Yeah. I mean, it's, it was, and also it's that Sunday evening, you know, we're at school tomorrow, but it was before Last of the Summer Wine. So the Ski Sunday theme tune still is a happy one. The Last of the Summer Wine theme tune is a sad one for most people because

you were at school the next day. But Ski Sunday is written by a guy called Sam Fontaine and it's library music. Composers write you a sort of 10, 15, 20 second piece of music, sometimes longer. They're on library discs and you literally go through them again and again and again and you can find your theme music. And whenever you do a pilot, whenever you do most entertainment shows, you use these library discs. In fact, I think the little burst of music at the very beginning of our podcast is from a library disc. And some of the people doing this library songs were incredible composers. It's just a, it's a nice gig for a composer. You know, it's good money if your stuff gets chosen.

And, you know, all the best composers of their time, you know, lots of these people do it. But Sam Fontaine, who did Ski Sunday, which is called Pop Goes Bark, is the name of that song for whatever reason. But he is also, any fans of Family Guy. They have that Fordville act on Family Guy, who sometimes come on and there's that rinky-dink piano that plays when they're played off. And that's by Sam Fontaine as well. That's another one of his. He's done stuff for SpongeBob SquarePants. Well, he didn't do it for SpongeBob SquarePants. They chose his music. Seinfeld as well. So the stuff that he was writing, that he was

just sort of knocking off in 10 minutes in an afternoon to put on a library disc, you know, is still being played now. So he did Ski Sunday. There's a wonderful musician called Rodri Marsden who's played with everybody. Oh, he's wonderful. He's a wonderful person. He had a band for a long time called Dream Themes. And what they would do, they would, they would, incredibly tight, incredibly talented band who would play TV theme songs. You know, that's the that's what they would do and people go crazy. And he said, when I said, what's the best theme tune? He said, Well, I can tell you in terms of audience reaction, it

is either ski Sunday, which is San Fontaine, or it's grand stand. So people get absolutely nuts for grandstand. And grand stands a guy called Keith Mansfield, who also, by the way, wrote the Wimbledon music, which hasn't changed for kind of years and years and years and is iconic. But he has also been sampled so many times. Fatboy Slim has used him, Danger Mouse, it's on the Kill Bill soundtrack.

So all of these people, we think of this music as very sort of gentle, blinky, blinky, blink. And these are unbelievable musicians who are sort of respected everywhere and you know samples of use of this stuff everywhere. I find that whole world fascinating. I like the ones that are all the ones that have been that were either ahead of their time or really odd. I know you said you weren't at school on Sunday evening. I was at school on Sunday evening. We were allowed to watch television on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You would have hated it. Oh my God. All right, Richard Tice. And

my friend Delia and another friend of ours, we used to have to steal an extension cord because we were obsessed with Twin Peaks, which was such an ahead of it, obviously like an incredibly ahead of its time TV show. And the music for that, which actually ended up charting Julie Cruz falling, which I absolutely love. That was much more of something that would come in the golden age of TV that we're in now. And we absolutely adored that theme. I think it's so weird and such an odd mood. And another one in a weird way that reminds me of that, although it's obviously completely different kind of vibe in general, is the Sopranos, the Alabama Three. Alabama Three are actually a British band, despite sounding like they are American.

Sarah Thornton, who was a real person who killed her abusive husband, and she became a sort of core celeb for Women's Group. Alabama Three wrote that song based on having read a sort of big big news article about her and then it strangely becomes this You know the anthem to what lots of people think is a hymn to male violence, but isn't In the form of the Sopranos But that was an interesting kind of journey to where that one ended up the trim peaks thing is interesting because you had Succession in your top three and again it has that similar and it's what Paul Farah was just talking about, which is even before the show has started, you're already being put in a certain frame of mind and in a certain mood and you need to get

that with only fools and horses that just just something where you go, okay, I understand the rhythm of where I am. Ronnie Hazlehurst is another great one of the great theme tune composers. So he did Are You Being Served, which by the way, listen to it now it sounds exactly like an Elastica song. Yeah. I mean, exactly. Could actually, it could be on the first Elastica album.

Um, he did last to the summer wine, the, the, the call to a million people to do their French homework. Um, but he did two Ronnies, which a lot of people mentioned as their favorite theme tune, he did blankety blank. Uh, so, you know, it's like these things that are forever seared into our consciousness. He did Generation Game, he did Wogan. He did some others do have them. Which his daughter, his daughter was at our school on Sunday nights as well.

Emma. No way. Really? Yeah. She's very, very musical, as you can imagine. She was, she was wonderful. People, people sometimes talk about Barrington Feelong, who did the Morse theme tune. They say the clever thing about the Morse theme tune is it would have Morse code

words spelled out in it. But you know what? Ronnie Hazlehurst did that first with Some Others Do Have Them. That spelled out Some Others Do Have Them in Morse code. No, it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't know that. The other great from that time is Alan Hawkshaw. He did the Grange Hill theme tune. Yeah. It's called Chicken Man, which was used for two shows at the same time. We should almost be talking about the titles as well, because Bob Kovalskow's, those comic book titles of those are really terrific, you know, with obviously

the iconic sausage going in. The iconic sausage. Good name for a band. The Grange Hill theme tune is interesting one because, and I think this is fairly unique, it was used for two different shows at the same time. So it was the Grange Hill theme tune, but it was also the Give Us a Clue theme tune. The same song was used for both shows, which is very, very peculiar. And Alan Hawkshaw then went on to do the Countdown theme music as well. And he weirdly now shares a credit with my brother because my brother did the 8-10-10 Katz theme tune, Alan Hawkshaw

did Countdown. So Katz Countdown is essentially a 10 cats theme tune. Alan Hawkshaw did Countdown. So cats countdown is essentially a co composition between Alan Hawkshaw and and Matt Osmond, which, you know, is seems to be, you know, that's that's that's a nice echo down the ages. I funny enough when it was a God, it was a previous election. I can't remember the Guardian did some sort of political coloring book. I can't even remember why. And they said, can everyone customize their pictures? And I was like, I need to get the cover of G2 for this. I need to have the cover for my picture. So I did the one of the Bullingdon Club picture

of like Osborne and Cameron and Boris Johnson. And then I superimposed on it and drew it that the sausage going in on the fork. And did my apologies to, yeah. Are you bouncy? Oh, you found it. You've actually found it. Our producer, Joey, has just literally found it. It's terrific. I have actually done it.

He's holding it up to my screen. We can put it in our newsletter, which we now have a newsletter. And by the way, I'm also gonna put a Spotify playlist of all the theme tunes that we're talking about today. That'd be so good. Embed that. There was a lot of love, Richard, for Game of Thrones, I have to say.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot of people, House of the Dragon, which I went to the premiere of on Monday, last Monday, they retained, because it was so iconic, that music. They've got different visuals. And in fact, they've even got different visuals for season two of House of the Dragon. But the music was judged as so completely unchangeable and just something that kind of drew everyone into the universe, they stuck with that. Can I say who the greatest theme tune composer of all time is though?

You can, most certainly. And again, this person's show has been mentioned time and time and time again by so many people. You had, what was your number one? The A-Team. The A-Team, written by Mike Post. Mike Post? He also did LA Law, he did Hill Street Blues, he did the Rockford Files. Oh my God.

He did Magnum, he did Quantum Leap. Well, he did a lot of Glenn A. Larson shows in that case, because... Exactly. Yeah. He then went on to produce Van Halen 3, the Van Halen album. So he's had a hell of a hinterland, Mike Post. And fans of the Socially Distant Sports Bar podcast will know this already, but Mike Bubbins,

the Welsh comedian that's got a series on BBC at the moment called Mammoth about a PE teacher who gets frozen in time and then then floored out in 2024. And it's great. And weirdly years ago, Mike had interviewed ago, Mike had interviewed Mike, Mike Bovens had interviewed Mike Post for something and they'd stayed in touch. And Mike Bovens has said, I'm doing this TV show. Mike said, I'll do the theme music for you. Mike Bovens said, you can't, it's BBC money that he goes, I don't care, send me the script. So Mike Post gets the

script, loves it. So Mike Post, the greatest theme tune writer of all time, writes the theme tune for Mammoth, which you can see on BBC iPlayer right now. Oh, that's fantastic. I love knowing that. I'm going to have to go on to you about Big Brother because obviously you were part of that. I thought that was really interesting. That was Andy Gray and Paul Oakenfold. I know from having read interviews with them over the years that when it first came up people were like yeah that's not what theme tune is. It's obviously like this kind of really kind of kicking progressive house thing but actually and there people saying no that wasn't a theme tune but it sounded

so modern and weird and like you didn't know what was going to happen. That's something that really announced itself as a completely different type of show because there was that just wasn't to any theme tune that there was like that one at the time, I think. And again, that's the thing, if you do have a show that, you know, we talked and reading out Paul Farah stuff as well, that idea that it's a shortcut to putting audiences where you want them to be. And whenever you make any TV show, the first couple of minutes is you saying to the audience, this is where I need you to be to enjoy this next hour.

And if you've got something like Big Brother, which was completely new at the audience, this is where I need you to be to enjoy this next hour. And if you've got something like Big Brother, which was completely new at the time, essentially, that's what that theme tune does, which is to say, wait, something you haven't seen before is about to happen. So that's where I need you to be. I need you to absolutely keep every eyes and ears open, because something nuts is about to happen. And that's why, you know, the good the great theme tunes work, I was reading about the who wants to be a millionaire, guys, Keith

Strachan and Matthew Strachan, and every they did 95 different bits of music for millionaire, all the different stings. And they raised each and every single one of semitone for the next question up. They said we've had so much work for ourselves, because every single time just to ratchet the tension up the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest bit. And it's all those tiny little thoughts that musicians and composers understand, that they understand how to make us feel. That if you put that on the right show, then we can see from this list and we can see from those 7,000 replies that these things are incredibly important to us. And

these things stay with us forever and ever and ever and it's not just the song it's how they make us feel it's where they place us in time often on the sofa next to you know the parent is no longer with us or just in a situation or a house where we were unhappy or a house where we were happy and these things just bring it back absolutely instantly can i tell you why why Gary Portnoy is the most ironic person in history? Please tell me. Because he wrote the theme tune, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, for Cheers, and nobody knows his.

So I'm putting it out there, Gary Portnoy. Oh, that's incredible. Speaking about moods, that was one of the ones I was going to mention because it became so iconic, that Cheers theme tune,, do you remember even in the episode of Friends where they come to, or the episodes of Friends where they come to London because Ross is getting married, Joey is in the hotel room crying in front of the Cheers theme tune because he's so homesick. Yeah.

There's a little, something worth saying is that aside from those ones that completely put you in the mood in slightly more I don't know Left-field way are the ones that had to be on for an American Network television award ever that was so kind of had to be so Expositional doesn't matter if you haven't watched the show before Here's how come Will Smith is living in this house in Beverly Hills Or you know, here's why these two guys live with this guy in Different Strokes. And they have to explain the entire thing really, really quickly. So it doesn't matter if you haven't seen them before, you're going to get it from the titles and you can just join the train.

Different Strokes is an amazing version of that. Yeah. I mean, that's really Route One stuff of almost the trope-namer. This is what's happening. We will put all of those on our Spotify playlist. Beverly Hillbillies is not a good one. I was just about to say that, yeah. How do these people have this much money? The Brady Bunch, how come there's so many of them? Oh, it's a blended family, I see, although we didn't call it that in those days.

But yes, you have to explain. Listen, we draw no great conclusions, but it's an absolute joy to speak about. It was lovely interacting with people on Twitter about it as well, and we will put every single one of those in a Spotify playlist. And I suspect at some point we'll return to this subject. Oh my god, I mean, it could be a breakaway podcast of its own. Everyone is obsessed by it. Now, I'll tell you something that is rating very badly at the moment is the general election. The first debate, which I think was on ITV, did okay, but as always, it really tails off. The worst rating are the one-to-one

interviews which are just falling through the floor. But not doing badly at all, in fact doing amazingly, is the football, the Euros. The Euros. I mean, people said, oh, how are we going to deal with the general election and the Euros at the same time? We think, well, really easily, because everyone's going to watch the Euros, and no one's going to watch the election. And that seems to be what's happening. And obviously, the thing about the Euros is that nobody, unlike the election, nobody knows who's going to win.

Exactly. Once you switch on Stammer, Stammer versus Sunak, you kind of go, I don't know why, I know how this ends. And the dominance of the football is such an extraordinary thing. I think it's probably very useful for Starmer to have this on at the same time. His chat with Nick Robinson the other day, which is up against the first match of the Euros, I mean, it completely disappeared. And honestly, if I'm Starmer, I think he'd be quite happy with that. Oh, all my chats to disappear. I want my election interviews to be like

Snapchat just to evaporate for 15 seconds later. Yeah, he just wants to fast forward to the moment where everyone can vote and just get on with things. So the more people watching the football, the better. But the ratings for the football are huge. The first match got 10 million, which is sort of unimaginable amount of people these days for TV and the England match on Sunday. In fact, I think our lovely friend, Gary Lineker has got some details of how the England match did. So shall we cross to Berlin for a second and hear the ratings?

Absolutely. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. Gary Lineker in Berlin reporting for the Restes Entertainment. I've been handed the stats for Serbia vs England and it's quite the result. A combined audience of BBC One and online saw 18.3 million viewers, a 73% share so 3 in 4 people who were watching TV were watching football. Big numbers for England's Euro 2024 opener and that will no doubt get bigger as England go deeper, if

they go deeper of course, into the competition. Back to you in the studio. Here's the interesting thing about the football ratings. We know we live in a world where fewer and fewer people are watching linear TV. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 million is a huge amount of people. But in 1980, I was looking at the ratings from 1980, and so many shows are getting over 10 million there. So Starskin Hutch is over 10 million, Mike Yarwood, Are You Being Served, theme tune by Elast Hutch is over 10 million, Mike Yarwood, Are You Being Served, theme tune by Elastica, was over 10 million. Shows you would never have heard of getting 10 million.

The European Championships, England v Italy, 1980, 15 million, which is pretty much exactly what it gets now. So everything has receded in television apart from football, which has stayed exactly where it always was. And it's gone from being something. And Royal weddings. And Royal weddings. These things stay where they are. So they're like islands, which suddenly appear as the, as, as the water recedes. And match of the day is the same thing. Match of the day, which used to get a lovely sort of two and a half, three

million on a Saturday evening. And, you know, would be somewhere down the bottom of the ratings, still gets a lovely two and a half, three million every Saturday evening, and now is at the top of the ratings. So football weirdly has, it's the one thing that people's behaviour has not changed at all. So we've abandoned everything else, but not that. And when you consider that in general, apart from things like the FA Cup and things like this, it is a paywalled sport. So it's really wonderful when you get moments like this where it is not paywalled and everybody converges. And I actually think it's really wonderful when you get moments like this where it is not paywalled and everybody converges.

And I actually think it's pretty important to have those national TV moments and obviously that all the home nations I'm speaking about. I mean, the Scotland game got absolutely masses of viewers. I mean, huge, huge, huge. Far more than the opening of the last tournament, which I think was Turkey-Italy. And it got far more than that because obviously it last tournament, which I think was Turkey-Italy, and it got far more than that because obviously it's a home nations game. There was some criticism they thought got too much England in the build up to that game, but you've sort of got to fill a very, very long slot. And the slot has to be so long because it was something

like four hours and fifteen that first broadcast, because it is the primo advertising of the year this tournament It's like far more than anything else bigger than the I'm a celeb final twice as big more than twice as big how much you're Going to pay for those slots Sometimes it's worked out retrospective you on how many people were actually watching but you've and you've got partners who are sponsoring but it's the Absolute the biggest real estate in terms of advertising of the year. It's a bonanza. And if you ever wonder as a football fan, why these tournaments have more teams in that they used to and go on for longer, it's that ITV genuinely, it will have in the same way that, you know, Taylor Swift's tour makes an appreciable difference to the GDP of America. The success or failure of England and Scotland in this tournament

will have an appreciable effect on the end of year results of ITV and very, very few things will. And that definitely will. So X factor used to before that sort of collapsed. People used to say during the Philip Schofield thing, will it affect ITV share price? It's like, I'm sorry, what? Will something something that happens on this morning, a fair to high TV share price. No, no, it won't. No, it won't. But this, it matters. Yeah. Harry Kane pulling a hamstring in a quarterfinal would genuinely mean that ITV had a bad year. And, you know, England, Scotland getting out of their group will be huge news to ITV. England getting to the final would be just beyond immense news. And you just have to watch the adverts in there and

that they all feature footballers, you know, Jude Benningham's in it. Hellman's hilariously have got Jack Grealish on the adverts. And that's a deal I would like to look at. I'd like to look at the fine print of the Jack Grealish Hellman's deal, just to see if there was you know, like footballers have to, you know, they have a relegation clause in their contracts in case they go down where they get this money. I wonder if Hellmans put something in there saying, just in case Adam Wharton gets chosen ahead of you, I wonder if we can pay you less money, Jack.

For the final, where it will be on both channels, it's really interesting that five times as many people always watch those things on the BBC. No matter what the BBC's detractors will say about it, and as we know, they will say a lot, you can't really explain that that gets by far and away like five times as much. ITV almost don't know quite why they do it because the BBC get all the viewers for finals. Same with the general election, of course. And it's a shame because the ITV lineup this year I think is brilliant. The presenting is brilliant.

You know, Pugac is great. I'll watch anything with Roy Keane on. They've got who I think is going to be the undisputed star of the tournament. He's Christina Unkle, who is the American referee and lawyer who does their VAR. And do you know what takes zero nonsense? She's hardcore. She ain't going to showbiz it up for anyone. No. They're kind of going, you know what takes zero nonsense? She's hardcore. She ain't going to show biz it up for anyone. No.

Then they kind of go, Christina, what do we think? Cause she's not kind of, she's not going to go, yeah, this, this, and this is going to be a real tough one. What's the ref going to do? She just goes contact there with left foot, left foot on right leg. That's a penalty. And that's actually just leave it there. I think this is brilliant.

She's almost like AI, but in a great way. Yes, people be really quickly calling for her to run the country, as always happens in any tournament where we do anything about anyone who's associated to does work well with it will be like, could they be the prime minister? Could we draft them in? We're constantly looking for prime ministers from any other format, other than politics. Yeah, it's bringing a huge amount of people together. It's going to make an awful lot of money.

And obviously, if you've got a home nations team involved, or you've got, you know, Germany or some of the bigger teams, you get bigger ratings. And that leads to an awful lot of competition between the two main channels for who gets which games. And I think there's a system by which that happens, which is fairly opaque. But can you talk us through it? Oh, yeah, it's like some really extreme form of broadcasting game theory that they have. ITV and the BBC share out games at the Euros and in fact, all

tournaments. But anyway, they take it in turns to pick matches. But this time round, it was ITV's turn to pick first. So they thought, okay, we'll do semi-final pick one, because we think England will do well in this tournament. We're sort of reflecting it. So when this line up with the semi-finals is finally decided, ITV will get to choose the first choice of that, hopefully with England in it. So the BBC then countered their next thing. This is what happened in the room for this particular Euros. We're giving the inside track here. The BBC then countered with quarter final pick one. You see, so they're thinking, okay, then ITV, right, what next? It's honestly like game theory. It's like extreme cold war. They're thinking, okay, we're going to do the round of 16 first pick because that's not a risky choice because England's group's

manageable, they're going to get out, so this is worth it. The BBC then go, right, England, Serbia. That is 8pm Sunday night. It is the maximum possible audience will have that. ITV next, England, Slovenia. Okay, that's also a peat time game, but it's the third match in the group. So if England have already qualified, it could be dead, but people will always be watching England games. But it could really be a knockout if they haven't done well. So that you've got to have that.

Then the BBC took the one remaining England game. That's 5pm on a Thursday. It's not too bad. We've had tournaments obviously where you've had to watch football at 7am in the morning, which is terrible. But then the big dilemma, okay, ITV could have had the second semi-final at this stage and they're sitting there thinking, what do we do? And then the BBC will be sort of shut out for the final week of the tournament until the actual final. But if England have already gone, then you might be stuck with a bit of a level of interest is gone. So ITV then said, right, we'll have game one of the whole tournament.

We'll have Germany, which by the way, the data shows that people, English people love to watch Germany for whatever reason, not necessarily sympathetically, but they love to watch them. And against Scotland, obviously a home nation thing and it's peak time on a Friday night. Now that has paid off brilliantly for them because so many people watch that. So you've got these mad mental gymnastics and you've just got to think what is the best course of action at every point and it totally matters what your opponent just chose.

I was going to say, I wonder how far down the list the game I watched on Saturday, Hungry for Switzerland, I wonder how far, I mean, that's, you've got to assume that that's fairly low down the list. 2pm Saturday, yeah, I watched that. But funnily enough, it's the second day and it's Saturday afternoon and you'll be surprised, I think a lot of people nonetheless think, I'm just going to, I'm going to have it on. So the answer to the question how the games are portioned literally people sit in a room and horse trade and they're one by one by one by one by one until you get to the last

game of the tournament that is actually the fact I would like to know I wonder what the very very last game chosen was. I'd like to know that and also to see the all turn once we know how the tournaments played out to see the alternative branches of history if they've gone because you'd be kicking yourself so many times like, because obviously at any point your decision impacts the entire rest of the cascade. So I wonder if there'll be a moment where you think, oh I should have got that. I think that about wraps us up for today. I think it does as well. Can I just give a internal recommendation? I say it's independent bookshop week this week. Please, please, please, if

you do have a good local independent bookshop, go and visit it and buy books, bookshop.org as well. You can get stuff from, if you don't have a local independent bookshop, you can get stuff through there. But yeah, do go and support your local bookshop if you can, or your local library. They're both such incredible facilities. I absolutely second that emotion. And other than that, we will see you on Thursday for the questions and answers edition, which I will most certainly mess up at the start. By the way, I texted someone who would know what was the very, very last game to be chosen for the Euros. I just had a reply, that's just in time, Slovakia v Ukraine on the 21st

was the very, very last game to be chosen. So let's all in time. Slovakia v Ukraine on the 21st was the very, very last game to be chosen. So let's all watch that. OK then, everyone. Bye-bye. Bye.