(Wed 18th / 8pm / £5/4)

Here we take a look at the future as envisaged from the past, in this fascinating selection of shorts, salvaged from the archives by Jack Stevenson and presented tonight for your very own bemusement. Marvel at the advances we never made, the developments we never wanted, and the foresight we never had…
The programme begins with the Orson Welles hosted and narrated ‘Future Shock’ (1972), in which amazing advances in science and technology are excitedly predicted… and feared!

This is followed by ‘Year 1999 A.D.’ (1967) – a corporate prediction of family life at the end of the millennium, which focuses on the home technologies of the future that would conspire to make home life effortless (as well as mindless). The family portrayed in this film is seemingly controlled
by computers, and one can’t help but get the sense that this particular prophesy came true. By turns fascinating as well as a little creepy, the film is a product of a lost era of optimism, when we all believed machines alone would make our lives richer.

Finally, in ‘Christmas 2025’ (1977) we see a Christ-like figure named George seeking to introduce spontaneity and love into a future society oppressed by a soulless big brother government, which sentences death to anyone foolish enough to utter the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ out loud.