TV has forgotten the little guy
From our UK edition
The late broadcaster and campaigner Esther Rantzen leaves behind a formidable legacy, from establishing Childline to fighting for better end-of-life care. But to many, Rantzen will always be associated with That’s Life!, the long-running magazine programme she hosted for 21 years and which remains the gold standard of the much-missed consumer-rights genre. We haven’t run out of scams, rip-offs or miserable customer-service experiences Regularly attracting audiences of up to 20 million, That’s Life! was a veritable smorgasbord of this, that and the other. Any given episode might feature phallic vegetables, saucy old ladies, performing pets and humorous typos, capped off with a heartrending piece about alpaca trafficking.
