At 4.44pm on Tuesday November 2 1982, the now-iconic multicoloured “4” logo materialised on our screens for the first time. With palpable excitement in his voice, presenter Paul Coia announced: “Good afternoon. It’s a pleasure to be able to say to you: welcome to Channel 4.”
Since then, the free-to-air broadcaster has gone on to pioneer a groundbreaking new world of broadcasting, breaking social taboos, providing cutting-edge investigative journalism and revolutionising the landscape of British television and culture.
Created to stimulate independent production beyond the BBC and ITV and reflect the full diversity of Britain’s talent, Channel 4 has a stellar record of achieving precisely that objective.
From the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss in Brookside, the birth of reality TV with Big Brother, iconically iconoclastic British comedies including Peep Show, The Inbetweeners and Derry Girls, and trailblazing shows such as It’s A Sin, the broadcaster has a long-standing record of capturing younger audiences and producing edgy shows often rejected by the BBC.
In its 40 years on air, it has played a pivotal role in nurturing new British talent, providing a training ground for writers and actors, and has supported independent film production with its Film4 branch.
Channel 4’s news branch has also attracted adulation and outrage for its controversial coverage, notably for replacing Boris Johnson with a melting ice sculpture after he failed to turn up to a climate change debate in the run up to the 2019 election.
Now, in a move that has been branded as “cultural vandalism”, the Government is pushing ahead with long-discussed plans to privatise the public service broadcaster. Despite bitter resistance from the Channel 4 board, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has said that it risks becoming outgunned and irrelevant in the face of competition from the US streaming giants such as Neflix and Amazon.
Alex Mahon, the chief executive of Channel 4, has argued there is little need for privatisation given the broadcaster’s strong financial performance in the wake of the pandemic.
The move has also been criticised by Labour, with Lucy Powell, the Shadow Secretary for Digital, Culture Media and Sport tweeting: “Nothing screams a rudderless government more than this. Selling off Channel 4, which doesn’t cost the tax-payer a penny anyway, to what is likely to be a foreign company, makes absolutely no sense. It will cost jobs & opportunities in Yorkshire and hit our creative economy.”
From Gogglebox and Big Brother, to It’s A Sin and Naked Attraction, here are some of the best moments of Britain’s besieged and beloved broadcaster.
A fourth channel emerges in 1982
After Paul Coia’s voice was the first heard on the fledgling channel in 1982, there followed a clip montage set to Fourscore, the channel’s theme music for the next decade.
The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the UK in addition to the licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and the single commercial broadcasting network ITV.
In a taste of what was to come, the first show aired on the channel was Countdown, soon to become a beloved British staple. Richard Whiteley greeted viewers with: “As the countdown to a brand new channel ends, a brand new countdown begins.”
Channel 4 Dispatches: a new age of investigative journalism
On October 30 1987, Channel 4 debuted its now-acclaimed current affairs documentary series, Channel 4 Dispatches. Featuring exclusive undercover reporting and investigating issues from mass surveillance and child labour to the truth about where your local council spends its money, the series has won a host of awards and earned a fixed place in the broadcast journalism hall of fame.
One notable episode from 2004 which featured an investigation into the campaign against the MMR vaccine by British surgeon Andrew Wakefield is definitely one to rewatch in the Covid anti-vax age.
Channel 4 Banned seasons
The first flavour of Channel 4’s penchant for provocation was the airing of Channel 4 Banned Season. Debuting in April 1991, for three weeks the channel broadcast a number of films and documentaries which had previously been banned from British television or cinema.
The series returned in 2004, and consisted of a series of documentaries concerning the history of explicit and controversial material on British television.
Breaking taboos with Brookside: the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss
Running for 21 years from Channel 4’s 1982 launch night, Phil Redmond was never one to shy away from controversy with Scouse soap opera Brookside, airing storylines about drugs, domestic abuse and bodies buried under patios.
It sent shockwaves around the UK in 1994 when it broadcast TV’s first ever pre-watershed lesbian kiss, a 19-second smooch between Beth Jordache (Anna Friel) and Margaret Clemence (Nicola Stephenson). The episode raked in nine million viewers, had conservative activist Mary Whitehouse clutching at her pearls, launched Friel to fame, and was confirmed as part of Britain’s cultural legacy when it was included in a montage at the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony.
Soap opera Hollyoaks was broadcast for the first time
Redmond’s Midas touch illuminated Channel 4’s airwaves again in 1995, with the first episode of Hollyoaks, the beloved and ongoing Chester-based soap. Another show unafraid to cover various taboo subjects rarely seen on British TV, such as eating disorders and incest, it quickly became a staple in the British soap opera landscape.
Indie films get a boost with Film4
1998 saw the launch of Film4, Channel 4’s film branch. In its earlier years, the Channel often aired risqué art-house films (dubbed by many critics at the time as being pornographic) with a red triangle digital on-screen graphic in the upper right of the screen.
Now, at a time when independent films are being squeezed by streaming giants, Film4 has provided endurance and reassurance to UK filmmakers. And in its 39-year history, Film4 films have produced 144 Oscar nominations and 37 wins. Recent films include Rebecca Hall’s directing debut Passing and Sundance 2022 title Living, the literary adaptation starring Bill Nighy and directed by Olivier Hermanus.
Queer as Folk
Five years after Brookside’s lesbian kiss came Queer as Folk in 1999, Russell T Davies’s career-launching drama about three gay men living in Manchester. In line with Channel 4’s boundary-breaking propensities, the first episode shocked viewers with an explicit bedroom scene between Stuart (Aiden Gillen) and 15-year-old schoolboy Nathan (Charlie Hunnam).
Despite a Daily Mail commentator calling for its censorship, the series was a hit and was remade by US network Showtime, Gillan and Hunnam became Hollywood stars, and Davies of course went on to reboot Doctor Who for the BBC.
Big Brother and the birth of reality TV
Initially fronted as a social experiment rather than entertainment show, (perhaps arguably still true), Big Brother crept rather than burst onto the TV scene in 2000. That was until stockbroker Nicholas Bateman decided to spice things up in the house, lying to his housemates and manipulating their nominations with secret handwritten notes.
Millions tuned in on a Thursday lunchtime to watch his housemates confront him around the dining table on day 35. After being evicted for breaking the rules, Bateman was branded “Nasty Nick” and “the most hated man in Britain”.
For better or for worse, our obsession with reality TV was born.
Peep Show, The Inbetweeners, Ali G: comedy in the Noughties
Outside of investigative journalism and destroying social taboos, one of Channel 4’s greatest successes has been in the arena of British comedy. Many of the biggest comedies of the past 20 years have been thanks to the broadcaster: think Peep Show, Father Ted, The Armando Iannucci Show, Ali G, The Inbetweeners, Derry Girls, Friday Night Dinner, The IT Crowd - the list goes on.
Such is the esteem in which Channel 4’s programming commissions are held, that many of its hits are snapped by the American streamers once they have aired on British screens: Irish comedy Derry Girls and the reality show The Circle have both been on Netflix.
Skins and British teen indie sleaze
If you’ve recently found yourself slipping back into the grungy sartorial tones of the Noughties, you might have Channel 4 to thank for that too. In January 2007 the broadcaster aired the first episode of Skins, the teen-comedy drama following the lives of Bristolian teenagers which quickly developed a cult following and firmly cemented ‘indie sleaze’ as the defining aesthetic of the British adolescent population.
It also launched the careers of a host of British actors and writers, including Dev Patel, Daniel Kaluuya, Jack Thorne, Jack O’Connell, Kaya Scodalario, Joe Dempsie, Freya Mavor and Hannah Murray.
First live coverage of Winter Paralympics
Channel 4 became a champion of disability in 2014, when it decided to syphon off a tranche of its programming spending for live broadcasting rights to the Paralympics. This was the first time that the Winter Paralympic Games had ever been seen on British television.
In February 2022, it announced an all-star disabled presenting team for the Beijing 2022 Paralympic Winter Games, presenting on the ground in China.
Gogglebox: a new way to watch TV
“What, so it’s people watching other people watch television?” could be heard ricocheting around the UK in 2013 when Gogglebox first hit our screens.
Nine years later, with iconic memes and families we sometimes love even more than our own, a once ridiculous idea is now a TV classic. The show has won a BAFTA and an NTA, and even seen Australian, American, Canadian, Polish, Russian and Finnish spin-off versions.
Turning up the heat with Naked Attraction
Like all of life’s seminal moments, you will remember where you were when you first discovered Channel 4’s dating show Naked Attraction. Perhaps you were flicking through the TV guide, eyes-half closed, only to be jolted awake by a row of penises.
The show, in which a clothed contestant picks a potential partner out of six naked people, whose bodies and then faces are slowly revealed through successive rounds, perhaps represents the essence of Channel 4: cutting the bulls*** and getting to the good stuff.
It is vaguely reminiscent of the short-lived Wank Week, a season of TV programmes about masturbation set to launch by Channel 4 in 2007. It was pulled before the launch of the first episode about a Masturbate-a-thon, a public mass masturbation event.
It’s a Sin
Perhaps the greatest testament to the value of Channel 4, Russell T Davies’s 2021 miniseries overcame broadcaster pushback to offer a fresh, uniquely British and widely acclaimed take on the 1980s HIV and Aids crisis.
Despite its overwhelmingly positive audience reception, the show’s subject matter made it difficult to sell to broadcasters: BBC One and ITV declined to develop the series and Channel 4 only took it on after their commissioning editor of drama, Lee Mason, fought for it.
After a few weeks, it was viewed in its entirety more than 6.5 million times, making it the most binge-watched show to stream on Channel 4. Its impact also included a surge in HIV testing after the show aired during National HIV Testing Week. On the first day of the campaign, British HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust saw a record-breaking 8,207 test orders, with the previous daily record being 2,709.
