Previously, on the history of television....

[tzikeh]

What was the first show to use "Previously on" openers? Did Hill Street Blues use them? (At some point in my life in fandom, I remember being told that Wiseguy was the first show to do so, but I think it must have been used on Hill Street and St. Elsewhere, no?) What about before that? My sense is that this opener would have come about with the advent of story arcs on television, and Hill Street is often pointed to as the watershed moment for that, but does anyone know, or know how to find out, when it first appeared on television?

(The sad thing is discovering that many people on the internet think that the answer is Lost.)

Comments

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

According to TV Tropes, the BBC first started doing still-photo versions of 'Previously on' back in the 1970s.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

:nod: checked that -- I should have been more clear. I want the ones with quick scenes, including dialogs, that remind the viewers who said what, where, when, and why, in such a way that they will be primed for the upcoming episode.

[principia-coh.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive I remember the original V doing them. That was in 1984, and I would virtually guarantee they weren't the first to do them. And they probably happened well before that for any shows where two-parters were frequent enough that they started doing recaps for the front of the second part (thinking stuff like The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Charlie's Angels, et al.).

[xebgoc.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive that there was something in the 60s, like F.B.I. - I can hear in my head the voice of the guy who did the opening announcement saying "Previously on" or "Last week on" - maybe just for 2 parters that had cliffhangers ?

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that, too. I vaguley remember that from 2 parters on the Fugitive.

I wonder if movie serials did anything like that.

[megastoat.livejournal.com]

I know Soap (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHQT3Omqtw) did it (albeit in a pretty silly fashion) and that started in 1977. No idea if it was the first, but it's earlier than Hill Street or Wiseguy.

[carbonel]

I suspect it started with two-part episodes. I seem to recall it being done with "The Menagerie" on Star Trek, and a couple of times on Starsky & Hutch.

For a regular basis, I don't know if Hill Street Blues was the first, but there is a mention of them in the Wikipedia entry for HSB.

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

Does daytime count? Because I'm reasonably certain that daytime soaps did it before any nighttime drama.

(The sad thing is discovering that many people on the internet think that the answer is Lost.)

::cries::

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure Man From UNCLE used them for two-part episodes.

[mirandir.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the farther back it goes. I'd actually overshot television entirely and was thinking about Republic-era serials which could logically have used it, then went back another technical generation to radio dramas...

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to mention serials. I could have sworn that I've seen serials with recaps from the prior episodes.

On television, Doctor Who stories were doing it in the 1970s - we have Fourth Doctor stories that aired as sequential episodes, and the very beginning does a mini-catchup from the previous installment.

[mirandir.livejournal.com]

Was it actually a recap though? I remember those as being the last minute or two of the previous episode, just the run-up to the cliffhanger as opposed to an edited montage-thingie.

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

With Doctor Who? Actually, I think you're right. I think it was the last minute or two rather than an edited montage.

*Packs his bags for his trip to Fail Falls* :D

[mirandir.livejournal.com]

With those icons you need never go to the Fail Falls. :-)

Actually, I suspect if I actually go back and LOOK at Republic Serials, they'll use the same technique and not actually montage... which (since I suggested it) would put me over the Fail Falls as well. *grin*

[dorinda.livejournal.com]

Definitely not Wiseguy. It was already being parodied by the time of Moonlighting (1982). This NYT article credits it to Bochco with Hill Street Blues (1981): http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/arts/television-radio-how-tv-tells-us-what-went-before.html?pagewanted=all , but the first TV scholar I could collar in the hallway says he has also often seen it on episodes of Dallas (1979) (as well as Cagney and Lacey [1982] FWIW).

Other scholars in my hallway (the place swarms with them!) also pointed out that the technique comes directly from the history of the soap opera (which makes sense, since that was a serialized-like-woah dramatic format at least 50 years before Hill St. was a twinkle in anyone's eye): they came up with specific examples from early radio soaps like Ma Perkins and Mary Noble, Backstage Wife (I love the title of that show. *g*).

I'll also say that while Hill Street does often get pointed to as the appearance of story-arc TV drama (and Bochco gets lionized in particular as an auteur), there was a British show that appeared precisely contemporaneously with it, called The Chinese Detective (1981). I recently watched season 1 of that, and DAMN IS THAT ARCY. More arcy than Hill Street, I'd even argue. Shorter-lived, though, and not from the US, so of course it doesn't get written into the Great Man Makes Singular Invention narrative of TV history that people usually rely on. (I'll have to ask klia to take another look sometime and let me know what language it used for any recapping it did at the beginnings.)

[zephiey.livejournal.com]

If I am not mistaken Guiding Light used to use "previosuly on" before anyone else. I know that One Live to Live and General Hospital used it almost from the beginning.

Dark Shadows used a voice over but no recap, although The Fugitive used something like a recap when talking about Richard Kimble's actions.

[theta-g.livejournal.com]

Batman '66 was mostly two-parters and every second half had one. The show was cut down so much for commercials that Sci-Fi used to have scenes in the recap that they'd cut from part one.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to go digging around in soap opera history to find out which one was the first, but it was definitely soap operas.

[jkush]

Thanks for this. I've been racking my brains trying to remember if there was anything prior to Twin Peaks that actually use that exact phrase "previously on". But being that Twin Peaks premiered in 1989 I guess it was not the first to use that expression.

[tzikeh]

Twin Peaks premiered in April of 1990. :)