TV Cream
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TV Cream is a British television nostalgia site which originally appeared as The Arkhive in 1997, before adopting its current name the following year. The site, founded by Phil Norman, mainly consists of highly opinionated reviews of hundreds of programmes shown on British television (but not necessarily made in the UK), mainly during the 1970s and 1980s, though some earlier and later shows are also featured. In addition, the site features a selection of nostalgia-based articles relating to other areas of popular culture, such as pop music, film, comics, and so on. It also runs occasional polls, but openly admits that the votes cast are largely ignored with the "results" being made up by the site writers. The site expands upon the scope of TV nostalgia shows such as I Love The 70s and Channel 4's Top 100, tackling the more obscure aspects of past popular culture, while casting a critical eye over more familiar programmes and phenomena.
The site is a collaborative effort, with the main writers including Steve Williams, Steve Berry, Chris Diamond, TJ Worthington, Ian Tomkinson, Simon Tyers, Jill Phythian, Graham and Jack Kibble-White, Ian Jones, Chris Hughes and Matthew Rudd. Many of the site's major and minor contributors are also involved with "Off the Telly" [1], a more academic television review and analysis site.
TV Cream also operates two email lists. "Creamguide" provides subscribers with three weekly mailings listing upcoming TV programmes of interest: "TV Cream Times" covers terrestrial television, "Digi-Cream Times" satellite, cable and radio, and "TV Cream Films" films of interest being screened on terrestrial and satellite channels. The second email list is the monthly "TV Cream Update" (usually referred to as "Creamup"), a well-researched magazine-type mailing examining nostalgic subjects in some depth.
TV Cream is sufficiently well-known to have spawned a number of parody sites, including "TV Dregs" which "reviews" non-existent shows in a precise copy of TV Cream house style.
The website has produced three spin-off books to date:
TV Cream: The Ultimate Guide To 70's and 80's Pop Culture (ISBN 0-7535-1080-4) was published by Virgin Books in June 2005.
TV Cream's Anatomy of Cinema (ISBN 190554846X) will be published by The Friday Project Ltd. in April 2007.
TV Cream Toys (ISBN 1-905548-27-3) will be published by The Friday Project Ltd. in November 2007.
