Class of ’83

No one remembers this now but there really was a period, not so long ago, when the Eighties were universally reviled as the ‘decade that style forgot’.

For a time it got so bad that none of us survivors could even bear to look at old photos of ourselves: mullets, feather cuts, Limahl-style bleaching, pastels, legwarmers, unflattering suits so boxy they made you look broader than you were tall…

But try telling this to the kids today and they won’t believe you. The Eighties, as far as they’re concerned, are so achingly, incredibly, bleeding-edge cool that there’s no way their parents could possibly have lived through them and, ‘Oh, by the way, Dad, do you mind if I take that old jacket of yours back to school?’ (That last quote is a lie by the way. They never ask. They just assume.)

So it’s no wonder that Deutschland 83 (Channel 4) has established itself as such a seductive Sunday night TV rival to War and Peace.