BAFTA and RTS award-winning It Was Alright In The 70s returns for a third series to Channel 4

Matt Lucas returns to navigate the politically incorrect minefield of the television that entertained the nation before 21st century morals and attitudes took hold. Delving head first back into the 70s, the new 3x60’ series from Second Star, Objective Media Group’s factual entertainment label, will once again be rifling through the archives to find more nuggets of naughtiness and moments of madness as the people who made and starred in TV that taste forgot are asked what they think of it now.

Amongst those reviewing their screen heydays are Melvyn Hayes, Robin Askwith, Barry Cryer, Liza Goddard and Bill Oddie, who recount the mood of the decade and how the era of public information films managed to push the boundaries.

This fresh batch of ever increasingly jaw-dropping clips from the sort of programmes which would cause an immediate Twitter storm today, begs the question, does what we watched then demonstrate how far attitudes have moved on?

It Was Alright In The 70s will also be looking to the celebrities who not only watched the programmes at the time but also those who are too young to have seen them the first time round. Joel Dommett, Dame Oona King, Ellie Taylor, Benjamin Zephaniah, Janet Street-Porter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Clive Anderson, Matthew Sweet, Mark Watson, David Morgan, Grace Dent, and Samira Ahmed are amongst those who offer their bemused and amused reactions to the telly of the time.

The series will be made by Second Star, with Objective Media Group Scotland’s Toby Stevens executive producing alongside Deborah Sargeant for Second Star.

Toby Stevens said: “As our previous series have shown, the 70s was a decade of outrageous sex jokes, rampant homophobia, shameless xenophobia and smoking fags on prime-time panel shows so we’re delighted to be getting to grips with some more extraordinary moments from the nation’s screen archive. It’s staggering how much there is to learn about life in the 70s from the TV of the era – it’s a window onto who we were, what we thought back then, what’s changed and, most surprisingly, how much has remained exactly the same – although not the smoking!”

The first series of It Was Alright in the 70s, which aired in November 2014, was awarded Best Features/Factual Entertainment Show by BAFTA Scotland in 2015. It was named Best Factual and Entertainment Features programme by RTS Scotland the same year and was described as “A counterintuitive, fresh take on archive list shows, breathing in new depth and meaning by reminding us all how deeply sexist the decade was.”