Living and Growing: Series 2 (1970)
Series 2 (1970) of the ITV Schools series Living and Growing from the 1970s, covering sex education for primary, secondary school pupils.
A sex education series based on the family unit and the cycle of life. Friendly gynaecologist Dr K. John Dennis introduces children to the vocabulary of the sex organs and human fertilisation as part of a loving relationship, as well as the menstrual cycle and development of a baby.
The Living and Growing series had originally been made two years earlier as a local production for children in the north of Scotland, but won widespread recognition and a presitgious award and so it was re-made in the same structure but with somewhat higher production values for screening in much of the UK from 1970. This new series was successful and was repeated through demand of local teachers in many regions for the next five years, until another remake in 1975.
The Programmes
Dr Dennis speaks directly to camera from a studio throughout the episodes, and his topics are illustrated by very basic animations - for example a still drawing of a fallopian tube with a still drawing of sperm passing along it. There are also large diagrams on the studio wall. The birth of a baby is covered in the 6th episode through diagrams, but then when the topic is revisited in the final episode the actual birth is shown on film.
Dr Dennis, a senior lecturer in gynaecology, wrote and presented the programmes and was at the heart of making them work. He is seen at work at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital as the gynaecologist treating Mrs MacDonald, whose baby is born and family life followed through the series. Dr Dennis's own children feature in the programmes, notably in the 2nd episode to demonstrate physical traits in members of the same family (more than two decades later, the presenter of the BBC's 1990 Sex Education series would also demonstrate the family unit by showing their own children).
He gave several in-person talks on the subject of 'Living and Growing' to local teachers' and parents' groups while the series was on-air, and participated in all of the preview discussion programmes produced to introduce the series, including the ones made by Harlech and London Weekend Television, as well as Grampian's follow-up series Talk About Sex (see below).
However, after moving from Aberdeen to Southampton in 1971 Dr Dennis appears to have had no further involvement with television and his place as Grampian Television's writer and presenter on schools health issues was taken over from 1972 by Stanley Mitchell.
Presenter Dr John Dennis
Illustrating the life cycle in the studio
Previews
Grampian, 1970
Grampian Television produced a new series of 30 minute preview programmes for parents and teachers, containing the relevant schools episode accompanied by a studio discussion of the topics. Journalist and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy hosted the preview series alongside John Dennis and an additional guest who was, for several weeks, Stanley Mitchell of the Scottish Health Education Unit - and who would go on to from Grampian Television's schools series Your Health himself and then return as the writer and/or presenter of subsequent series of Living and Growing for the next 20 years.
The preview series was generally billed as simply Living and Growing, and Grampian Television broadcast them on the Monday night immediately prior to the Tuesday broadcast for schools, from Monday 12th January 1970. However, the various regional ITV companies scheduled the series to suit their own local audiences, and almost all of the other companies who had arranged to show Living and Growing in spring 1970 screened the preview series before Grampian. Anglia Television showed the preview series on the previous Thursday night before their Tuesday broadcasts to schools, but Scottish, Border, Yorkshire, Westward and Channel Television all showed the previews on Tuesday nights a week before their schools broadcasts, starting from Tuesday 6th January 1970 and with Westward & Channel technically showing it first of all, from 11:15pm. Only ATV in the Midlands joined Grampian in showing the previews on the Monday night before the schools broadcast.
Anglia Television continued to use the preview broadcasts in subsequent years, and so did Border Television for a couple more years, but Grampian Television alone persisted in showing preview programmes prior to schools broadcasts of Living and Growing every year (in fact every relevant year until 1995!)
Harlech, 1970
When Harlech Television, broadcasting to Wales and the West of England, first took Living and Growing in autumn 1970 they did not use Grampian Television's preview series but instead produced their own. This was a one-off, half hour programme shown before the series began and using extracts from throughout, including the film of child birth from the final episode, followed by a studio discussion. It was presented by Bruce Hockin with a panel of experts, and John Dennis travelled to take part in it too, which seems to have been his final involvement wth Living and Growing.
This programme was shown by HTV on Wednesday 16th September 1970, and repeated the following year.
Talk About Sex
Grampian TV capitalised on the success of their late-night presenting partnership to produce a completely separate series for a general audience of adults and teenagers, called Talk About Sex. For four weeks from 30th November to 21st December 1970, Ludovic Kennedy and Dr K. John Dennis discussed sex education with parents and families in a late-night series. Ludovic Kennedy also regularly presented the late-night series 24 Hours on BBC1, which meant that for those four Monday nights at 11pm viewers in the north of Scotland had a choice of viewing between Ludovic Kennedy discussing current affairs on BBC1 or Ludovic Kennedy discussing sex education on ITV! It was reported that Grampian hoped to sell the Talk About Sex series to other ITV companies[1], as they had successfully with Living and Growing for Adults, but no further broadcasts followed.
Episode List
All of the complete episodes have been digitised by the National Library of Scotland (NLS), with links in the Archive column below - but these recordings are only available to view on-site at the NLS.
Short clips from three of the episodes are available to view online at the STV Footage Sales website.
| # | Title | Broadcast | Archive | Clip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | He's About 100 - A Very Old Man | 13 Jan 1970 | ||
| 2. | Granny Has Brown Eyes - So Have I | 20 Jan 1970* | ||
| 3. | I Think It's a Boy** | 27 Jan 1970 | ||
| 4. | Growing Up Is… | 3 Feb 1970 | ||
| 5. | Where New Life Begins… | 10 Feb 1970 | ||
| 6. | Ten Fingers and Ten Toes | 17 Feb 1970 | ||
| 7. | Can I Ask a Question...? | 24 Feb 1970 | ||
| 8. | So Life Goes On… | 3 Mar 1970 |
* - Episode 2 was first shown in a Out of School preview programme, in those regions due to screen the series in spring 1970, on Tuesday 30th December 1969 at 12:03pm.
** - Episode 3 was consistently listed as Is It a Boy or a Girl? in the TV Times for television broadcasts during the 1970s. However, sources which have access to the actual films including STV, the National Library of Scotland and the New Zealand National Film Library, all use the title I Think It's a Boy instead. So it seems evident that the title was changed after publicity material was issued.
Broadcasts
The following table lists broadcasts in the Grampian Television region, where the series originated.
| Year | Term | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Channel | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969-70 | Spring 1970 | Tuesday, 2:35pm | Thursday, 11:40am | Grampian | ||||
| 1970-71 | Spring 1971 | Tuesday, 11:19am | Thursday, 2:00pm | Grampian | ||||
| 1971-72 | Spring 1972 | Wed | Friday, 2:35pm | Grampian | ||||
| 1972-73 | Spring 1973 | Monday, 11:38am | Tuesday, 2:17pm | Grampian |
In 1970 when this unit was first shown, the independent television channel - ITV - was split into 14 regions, each with its own broadcasting company organising its own schedules and programmes, but often sharing them. Schools programmes were commonly shared, but not so Living and Growing which was taken by different companies at different times, or not at all.
This particular unit of sex education programmes was taken by 8 of those 14 regional companies when it began in Spring 1970 - the producing company Grampian Television, plus Scottish, Border, Yorkshire, Anglia, Westward, Channel, and ATV in the English Midlands. Most of those companies screened the series at 2:35pm on Tuesdays and repeated it around 11:40am on Thursdays, except for Scottish Television who showed it around 3pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Border Television who showed it on Fridays at 2:40pm. All of those eight companies also broadcast Grampian's late-night preview programmes for parents and teachers presented by Ludovic Kennedy (see above) in the first year.
In Summer 1970 the series was taken by Ulster Television in Northern Ireland, on Mondays at 2pm, repeated on Thursdays at 11am, and also including Grampian's preview series on the previous Friday nights.
For the next academic year, in Autumn 1970 the series was picked up by Harlech Television, HTV, for Wales and the West of England, on Tuesdays at 2:40pm repeated on Fridays at 2:35pm, with a specially-produced introductory programme for adults at the start of term (see above).
Living and Growing was not typically an autumn term series, as broadcasters tended to allow teachers a term or two to get to know their classes and introduce work on health education before coming to the topic of sex education, but Harlech launched straight into the programmes on 22nd September, and maintained the autumn term scheduling in the following year. Later units of Living and Growing did make occasional appearances in the autumn term, in 1976 in the Border and Tyne Tees areas and in 1980 in London, but it was always an exception.
Tyne Tees Television, which had been the first company to pick up the original Living and Growing series from Grampian in 1969, also took this new series was was screening it by Spring 1972, but I'm not absolutely sure if that was the company's first broadcast of these programmes.
I believe that Southern Television also took these programmes but I don't know when they began to show them.
Thames Television in London and Granada Television in north-west England did not show these programmes at all, they were never seen in those parts of the country[2]. The very first Living and Growing programmes had been screened in London but not by Thames Television, rather by London Weekend Television (which TV Times magazine called "the equivalent of not showing it at all"[3]) while Granada was working on their own sex education programmes for much older children including the contemporary The Facts Are These.
Here is an incomplete list of regional broadcasts of these programmes by year. If you can fill in any incomplete details, especially for Tyne Tees, Southern, Westward or Channel regions, please get in touch by email.
- 1969-70
- Spring 1970 - Grampian, Scottish, Border, Yorkshire, Anglia, ATV, Westward, Channel
- Summer 1970 - Ulster
- unknown - Southern
- 1970-71
- Autumn 1970 - Harlech
- Spring 1971 - Grampian, Border, Anglia, ATV
- Summer 1971 - Ulster
- unknown - Tyne Tees, Southern, Westward, Channel
- 1971-72
- Autumn 1971 - Harlech, Westward
- Spring 1972 - Grampian, Border, Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Anglia, ATV
- unknown - Scottish, Ulster, Southern, Channel
- 1972-73
- Spring 1973 - Grampian, Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Anglia, ATV
- unknown - Border, Ulster, Southern, Harlech, Westward, Channel
- 1973-74
- Spring 1974 - Border, Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Anglia, ATV - only.
Credits
| Presenter | Dr K. John Dennis |
| Graphics | Sandy Massie Douglas Hammersley |
| Design | Eric Mollart |
| Writers | Dr K. John Dennis Peter Webb |
| Director | Alan Wallis |
| Editor | Elizabeth Garrett |
Resources
There were teacher's notes available, for 2 shillings, in the term before transmssion to help teachers to prepare.
Links
- Scotland On-Air: Living and GrowingA detailed guide to the first and second series.
Related programmes
- Merry Go Round: Sex Education (1970)A parallel series for slightly younger children from the BBC.
Sources & References
- Davis, Anthony (1969) 'So Ends the Year of the Great Experiment' in TV Times (London and Anglia regions seen) 26 July 1969 p.11
- Horsburgh, Frances (1970) 'The Man Behind TV Sex Series That Has Grown on Us' in Press and Journal 5 March 1970. p.8
- ITV Schools Annual Programme Guides.
- New Zealand National Film Library (1978) 16mm Film Catalogue 1978. (available online)
- Nixon, Ken (1970) 'UTV chooses 'mature' sex programme' in News Letter 25 March 1970. p.4
- TES (1969) 'Sex education' in Times Educational Supplement 6 June 1969. p.1878
- TES (1971) 'Scottish Diary: Success story' in Times Educational Supplement 5 February 1971. p.72
- TV Times listings.
- Young, Sheena (1982) 'Factors influencing development of long-running television series for schools' in Journal of Educational Television vol. 8, no. 3. Taylor & Francis. DOI 10.1080/0260741820080303 pp.181-185
- ↑ TES (1971) says of Talk About Sex (without naming it) that "This series in turn was so well received that Gramptan are thinking of repeating it, and may sell it to other companies."
- ↑ Horsburgh (1970) notes that Dr Dennis "is sorry that his programmes (...) have not been bought in the Manchester and Liverpool area," covering Granada Television. London region listings are available in full thanks to TV Times Project database and confirm no broadcasts of Living and Growing in London between 1970 and 1975.
- ↑ Davis (1969) says "Grampian TV's Living and Growing was the first serious attempt at sex education for children on television. It was part-networked. And even where it was shown it was perhaps regarded as ahead of its time. It was screened in London after midnight on Fridays, and before lunch on Sundays, almost the equivalent of not showing it at all."
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- did Scottish Television broadcast the series in 1971-72 (I know they didn't in any other year after 1969-70)
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- at what time on a Wednesday morning did Grampian show these programmes in Spring 1972?
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