TIME SHIFT: THE BRITISH SEASIDE
Saturday 22 October 2005 8.10pm-10.55pm; 2.55am-3.40am
Time Shift presents a bank holiday celebration of the British seaside holiday experience from its Victorian origins and heyday in the 1950s through its slow decline and attempts at reinvention today. Interviewees including Jonathan Meades, Martin Parr and Bill Pertwee explain the way that the seaside has always been the place we all go to lose our inhibitions and reveal a different side to ourselves.
We look at how our different experiences of the seaside - end of the pier shows, fearsome landladies and holiday camps - have given rise to different traditions and a nostalgia, both working class and middle class, for a time when life's pleasures were simpler and foreign holidays were the preserve of the very rich.
EAST OF IPSWICH
Mon 5; rpt Thurs 8 May
Michael Palin's 1987 coastal comedy drama
WATCH THE CLIP
East of Ipswich and fights on Brighton Beach
(2 min 43)
BBC Links
Seaside Stories
Pictures and reports on four English beaches from bbc.co.uk/news
The Victorian Seaside
Explore the traditional British holiday with bbc.co.uk/history