Braden's Week (1968)

On 1968 TV presenter Bernard Braden began a remarkable project. Imagining a time capsule of television archive, he booked a Mayfair Hotel suite hired a camera crew and started to interview 60s stars like Sean Connery, Cilla Black, Sammy Davis Jnr, Tom Jones, Davy Jones and Lulu and other people caught up in the day's headlines. For nine months, his guests talked about what made the Sixties special: music, movies and fashion, sex, permissiveness and drugs, politics and protest. They also talked about themselves and their hopes for the future. By June 1968 Braden had spent $76,865 and filmed nearly 400 interviews. He planned to return to his interviewees after three years to find out how they, their views and the times had changed. Braden was then TV's brightest star. He'd just finished five years of hosting ATV's award-winning On the Braden Beat and with huge self confidence, he believed his archive idea would make him money and be great TV. But no broadcaster agreed and Braden was soon to lose his TV clout and he never reached the heights again but continued to pitch ideas based on his archive. A pilot was planned but it was never made. In 1980 Thames recorded Tonight with Bernard Braden featuring celebrities watching and reacting to their 60s interviews but the show was never broadcast. Braden died aged 76 in 1993, still enthusing about his big idea to the last. Finally his work can be seen in this three-part series. Episode one revisits stars such as the Liverpudlian singer Cilla Black. After her interview with Braden, she became the first female singer to get her own TV series. Singers Lulu, Tom Jones, Davey Jones, pop music DJ Simon Dee, fashion luminaries of the era Felicity Green and Ossie Clark also feature.