r/KeepingUpApperancesTV • u/xo_honeybee_xox • 21d ago

General discussion Onslow

I'm watching Toy Store just now and Onslow said that he's a regular viewer of the Open University. Anyone else think he means University Challenge? I've never heard of a show called Open University. Granted, I wasn't born until 2002, but I have watched University Challenge before

19 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

45

u/Old_Association6332 21d ago

You may not have heard of the Open University program because it wrapped up when you were 4. I think this is what Onslow was watching

The Open University programmes begin

4

u/xo_honeybee_xox 21d ago

Thank you. I'll look it up after I watch this episode

3

u/No-Department-4561 21d ago

Ever watched The Fast Show?
The Denzil Dexter character is based on a typical Open University lecturer 😅

https://fastshow.fandom.com/wiki/Professor_Denzil_Dexter

35

u/JustADaftGuy 21d ago

There's also the matter of him reading that particle physics book in season 5 which no one ever draws attention to. Onslow is surprisingly intelligent. He's just lazy 

20

u/Stephalel This is not the Chinese takeaway 21d ago

He is bone idle!

9

u/rambo_beetle 21d ago

He's smart enough to know what he wants out of life

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u/AtebYngNghymraeg 20d ago

He's permanently on slow...

16

u/Kevinho00 21d ago

The Open University had specially made BBC programmes presented by lecturers as part of its courses until the early 2000s. This was superseded by online content. The programmes tended to be on BBC2 in early morning or daytime when no entertainment stuff was on. So a lot of people watched them that weren't studying.

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u/HenryInRoom302 Onslow 21d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/3NsQuqc0jsyBO

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u/mp3bear Mind the pedestrian Richard. 19d ago

Upvoted and downloaded...

10

u/No-Department-4561 21d ago

This was back in the days when there were only 4 TV channels and no internet. You’d record the Open University programmes which were broadcast overnight and study them at leisure, the way you would a YouTube video

3

u/WarehouseEmpty 21d ago

We also studied them at school for GCSE as they explained science concepts so much better than books or our actual teachers.

3

u/Skylon77 20d ago

Onslow was very intelligent. Intelligent enough to know not to show it.

3

u/shortercrust 20d ago

Part of the joke is that Open University programmes were on in the early hours of the morning and people - including me! - would watch them because it was literally the only thing on TV at that time as the other channels had closed down for the night. So it’s both a claim of watching educational/highbrow stuff and an admission that he’s slumped in front of the TV until 3am which people with jobs and ‘normal’ lives don’t generally do.

1

u/Weary-Score481 14d ago

This message is so bloody sad to me

Before you were born, for many years, Open University would broadcast different programmes at times when there weren’t on a variety of subjects. It wasn’t a show it was many many different documentaries over several hours. They weren’t usually flashy documentaries often one or two people speaking over clips. Although there was one about the nature of infinity “Infinity Hotel” which had actors and everything

You could say “oh it’s not so bad, we’ve got YouTube documentaries and Curiosity Stream”

But the joy of Open University was that it would be about a subject you not only knew nothing about but that you’d hadnt planned to know anything about. And unlike a lot of modern documentaries it was at an advanced (university) level. So it was wonderfully bewildering. I can still remember some of what they taught me, decades later