The Beeb had high hopes for its youth channel but its output often proved controversial. As it retires from our screens, we relive the service’s chequered past

In 2001, Stuart Murphy told a room of TV producers that he was on the hunt for “screwy and fucked-up” programme ideas. It was to fill the schedules of his new channel, BBC3, which was envisaged by the corporation as a way to win over the elusive 16-34-year-old demographic. A decade and a half later, the Beeb announced that budget cuts were forcing it to take the service off the air; and, as soon became apparent, not even high-profile disgruntlement from Richard Bacon and an indignant petition would be able to stop it. Although BBC3 will remain in a shrunken capacity online, from Tuesday, Freeview channel 7 will be a static memorial to the service that brought us Little Britain, Gavin & Stacey, a series called Fat Men Can’t Hunt and up to seven episodes of Family Guy per evening. But should the nation really be mourning the demise of BBC3, and did the channel do more harm than good?

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In 2002, culture secretary Tessa Jowell set out a specific remit for the channel. It needed to reflect and stimulate the diversity of the UK, should cover a range of subjects, including science and international affairs, and was required to make shows of a “consistently innovative and risk-taking character”. But looking back, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that BBC3’s major innovation was forcing the public to fund actively damaging dross on an unprecedented scale. Its most distinctive strand of programming tirelessly documented the most feckless examples of its target demographic, as they took part in a series of cack-handed social experiments: Snog Marry Avoid?; Young, Dumb And Living Off Mum; Sun, Sex And Suspicious Parents; Don’t Tell The Bride; The World’s Strictest Parents; Invasion Of The Job Snatchers; Are You Fitter Than A Pensioner? – the list goes on.

Ostensibly educational, these programmes were actually more concerned with turning young people into unappealing caricatures in order to create a story arc. By the end of the episode or series they would finally be rehumanised to provide a sensational climax (Matt from Manchester revealed to be marginally less of a pig-headed layabout than the last 45 minutes would have had you believe – that sort of thing).

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It wasn’t the most obvious way to spend licence fee payers’ money, but from its inception BBC3 seemed determined to throw into question what it meant to be broadcasting in the public interest. Prior to the feckless youth genre it would later specialise in, an early show called Celebdaq aimed to get viewers up to speed about economics by allowing them to buy shares in famous people. Players were then rewarded depending on the column inches generated by goings-on in the celebrity’s private and professional lives. BBC3 had wanted to engage young people, but by harnessing the era’s taste for tasteless celebrity gossip, and at the same time painting young people as self-indulgent and ignorant, it appeared to be pursuing that aim at any cost.

Just as problematic as its engagement with young people was the channel’s portrayal of women. In 2010, it began broadcasting Hotter Than My Daughter, in which ex-Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon schlepped giant cardboard cutouts of mothers and daughters around Britain to ask the public who was most attractive (to be fair, they did say they were looking for “fucked-up” programming). Combined with the stalwart Snog Marry Avoid?, in which women and girls were reduced to their constituent cosmetic adornments and then told they looked terrible by random blokes on the street, and the deluge of dress-related crying that was Don’t Tell The Bride, BBC3 let young women down by presenting them almost exclusively in those reductive terms.

While a tapestry of trash TV always bulked out the BBC3 schedules, one thing BBC3 did do consistently well was provide a platform for new comedic talent. It gave birth to Little Britain, Gavin & Stacey, Nighty Night, Pulling, The Mighty Boosh (kick-starting the careers of David Walliams, James Corden, Julia Davis, Sharon Horgan and Noel Fielding) and, more recently, gave us Him & Her and People Just Do Nothing. Yet the channel’s more explicitly youth-orientated comedies – Coming Of Age, Trexx And Flipside, Some Girls and Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps – were among its more questionable output, often mean-spirited and crude as well as spectacularly unfunny. It had mixed fortunes with its dramas, too. Many felt its smattering of cult hits such as Being Human, Torchwood and In The Flesh were prematurely cancelled, contributing to accusations that the channel was by turns fostering and stunting development of home-grown shows.

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Yet in its latter years it felt as if the channel was finally starting to counteract its tawdry legacy. The quality of its documentary output may not have been particularly consistent, but for every half-arsed chat about feminism with Charli XCX or clumsy intrusion into an ongoing police investigation with Stacey “I repeat statistics back to people in an incredulous voice” Dooley, there was something progressive and valuable. Professor Green’s programme on male suicide and Reggie Yates’s series exploring the recesses of life in South Africa, Russia and the UK, are a few examples of when BBC3 got it right.

These more serious programmes also fed a new generation’s appetite for films about identity politics and life on society’s sidelines; briefly, BBC3 was legitimately able to rival the output of zeitgeisty media outlets such as Vice. Leaving behind the days when a doc on lowering the voting age had to be fronted by a member of the Eastenders cast, the channel not only developed talent like Yates but asked young journalists to make shows. Its documentaries covered a huge range of issues and experience – facial disfigurement, racism, autism, agoraphobia – and it felt as if BBC3 had finally learned how to produce them sensitively.

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Although BBC3 will never darken an EPG menu again, it will continue to exist online. The remaining service will constitute two parts: a showcase for original programming, which it will produce on a much smaller scale (projects in the pipeline include Dane Baptiste sitcom Sunny D; a Serial-style true-crime series called The Boy Who Disappeared; and Doctor Who spin-off Class), as well as an endless scroll of clickbait called the Daily Drop, which will include short videos and other content. The latter seems a strange way to serve young people – who have more than enough to click on as it is – but BBC3 has always chased youth audiences without really considering whether it has anything to say once it’s caught up with them.

For his part, the BBC’s director general Tony Hall described the channel’s new incarnation as “energetic and mischievous” and “like a start-up”. Perhaps there’s a hint of recognition there that the channel didn’t quite manage to be the creative force it was originally intended as, but it’s certainly proof that, once again, the Corporation sees BBC3 as its opportunity to position itself at the bleeding edge of broadcasting. Let’s hope it does a more convincing job this time.

BBC3 goes online only from Tuesday 16 February