Television scheduling is a lost art. These days, you just marathon Breaking Bad till your eyes bleed on Netflix. But back in the day, you had to watch whatever programmes were put in front of you. And it wasn’t just what was on, it was when it was on. Once you got away from primetime, there were the special slots where they put all the cool stuff.
During the 90s and early 00s, weekdays at 6pm on BBC2 was that slot. It mixed up cartoons, US sitcoms, classic sci-fi and home grown shows that were too cool to brush shoulders with Eastenders. Back then, American shows were still sneered at by British TV audiences, sci-fi was still for nerds, and animation was still thought of as kids stuff. BBC2 6pm was like a cool mixtape of shows that gave us The Simpsons, The Fresh Prince, Buffy, and loads of other weird and wonderful programmes which might not have made the same impact but are still fondly remembered. These were our favourites…