Body and Coat and Condition: ITV (Carlton) adverts, Wednesday 19th May 1993

From Andy Benham, a commercial break from a showing of Short Circuit 2 at some unidentifiable* point in Carlton's first year. Possibly second. Probably first. This is all I have from this broadcast, incidentally. (*except that Stuart Kenny identified it for me) We start with Tesco, and a reminder of a time when supermarket adverts were whimsical and formalist. Well, this one is, anyway, featuring a bunch of tableaux so carefully arranged as to approach ballet, with the occasional optical illusion thrown in. Also a cameo as a menacing West Indian fast bowler from Ainsley Harriott, who was still a jobbing comedian and actor at the time (he played Lister's Kinitawowi father in law that same year). Plus the soothing voice of Richard Briers. And now: a brief interlude with blues guitar and lots of closeups of lager and sweaty bottles and things. It's only Budweiser, with one of their 90s attempts at promoting themselves by being hyper-American as if that's a selling point. We really were obsessed with the USA in the early 90s, though. Our fascination with their stat-heavy, incident-light sports was starting to ebb, with actual football back in the ascendency, but we couldn't still get enough of the aesthetic until Britpop and Tony Blair came along in 1994. Outlaw. Lover. Hero. Belgian. Twat. It's Van Damnation on two wheels in the extraordinarily generically titled Nowhere to Run, at cinemas from Friday, but probably not for too long to be honest. Written by Joe Eszterhas, but he disowned the final movie. Make of that what you will. BATTLE OF THE DIAPHANOUS GOWNS. A blonde in a floaty white effort meets a brunette in a dark brown one to determine the fate of the universe, or alternatively make up a sexy female-objectifying metaphor for a Dove Bar. Or Galaxy Dove Bar as they're called here. Basically a Magnum with specifically Mars chocolate, which sounds good to me. More ice-creams should be advertised with subtle sapphic romance undertones. Tetley! The tea, not the beer, that has an apostrophe-s. By 1993, the Tea Folk have officially been around long enough that they've inevitably been infected with a cute kid character who's the unexplained nephew of one of the main ones. This one's called Archie, this might well be his introductory advert, and as you can see he has little or nothing to contribute other than basic setups. Which is all an advert needs, so it works out fine. This one starts out as a back garden conversation and then inexplicably takes a culturally appropriating turn. Now, for the good of your dog, Pedigree Chum relaunches in a prettier yellow can with a new logo and just generally cleaner design. Oh, and the recipe's supposedly changed as well, but if your dog cares I'd be astonished. If it can even tell the difference it's a genius. What hasn't changed is the whole "top breeders recommend it" shtick; here's one now. Oh, and another. And Martin Jarvis doing his most serious of voices. DOG. "Last stop on the round was old Ma Pegarty's place." It's that bread boy climbing that unfeasibly steep hill in Shaftesbury! That advert, famously made by Ridley Scott, set Hovis' image pretty much for the rest of time, complete with the Dvorak largo. In 1993 it was 20 years old, so it (and some of the others from that 1973 batch) was either remastered or remade shot-for-shot with remarkable fidelity, with new voiceovers and closing shots to reflect the products of 1993. And this turn-of-the-century Northern nostalgia (despite actually being set in Dorset, the North appropriated it, because working class = Northern) continued to dominate the image of Hovis for years to come right up to the present day. Before we return to the film, have a trailer for a worse one! And bearing in mind that the film we're returning to is Short Circuit 2, that's an interesting statement, but look at this mess: an attempt at a quasi-spinoff from Police Academy called Combat Academy, from the original film's co-creator and comedy seal-of-quality Neal Israel. Starring Richard Moll, Jamie Farr, Robert Culp and an unknown, impossibly young George Clooney. And he still thinks Return of the Killer Tomatoes was his worst film. Combat Academy went straight to VHS even in America, which no Police Academy movie ever did. Not even Mission to Moscow. Which is why it's on Saturday evening right after the football results - pretty much a ratings dead zone at the time. Notice that Carlton are keeping the tradition alive of promoting things broadcast at the weekend - and therefore on LWT - solely with the ITV logo.