Rediscovered Crossroads seen for the first time in over 40 years
EyeSpy: This weekend fans of archive television will be gathering in the Midlands to celebrate recent discoveries, including some long lost moments from ATV soap opera Crossroads.
Crossroads was at its peak in the mid-1970s with up to 18 million viewers watching nightly.
As ATV Today reported earlier, Crossroads is to be one of the programmes featured at a archive screening event this coming weekend. And in this EyeSpy we’ve got a look at a segment of a recently rediscovered partial episode from 1975 when the show was at its most popular with ITV audiences.
Set in the fictitious King’s Oak Crossroads Motel near Birmingham, and focusing on the relationships between the staff, the programme ran for 24 years from 1964, finally closing its doors in 1988 after 4,510 episodes. The series was revived in 2001, by Carlton Television in Nottingham, but the new version only lasted two years.
On Saturday 2nd September, the found footage will be screened at Birmingham City University as part of Kaleidoscope’s K-2.9.17 event. ‘Crossroads’ fans will also get to enjoy a specially arranged version of the soap opera’s theme by Paul McCartney and Wings, which was used on the show from the late 1970s, usually when an episode ended with a dramatic event, as seen in the clip provided by KAL/ITV below. So lets head back to simpler times with classic characters such as hairdresser Vera Downend, waitress Rita Witton, porter Sam ‘Carney’ Carne and chef Shughie McFee.
