Punch “Golden Sands” into your map app of choice, and you’ll get a handful of results in the contiguous United States: A few beachside destinations up and down the East Coast; a public golf course and events space in the middle of what Midwesterners earnestly call Michigan’s West Coast. But the Golden Sands where Rachel Lichtman set her “feature-length ‘broadcast’ from the Botany 500 age of television,” Programme 4, is nowhere to be seen. It exists only in the Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate’s imagination—though there was a motel by that name in Michigan City, IN, within signal range of the childhood home where Lichtman watched Son Of Svengoolie and had the low-pitched sonic calling card of Bouchelle, The Cleaning People (“Hudson 3-2-700!”) drilled into her brain. These and other regionally specific sights and sounds would plant the seeds for the 92 minutes of mock theme songs, commercials, and station identifications that make up Programme 4.
“Growing up in the ’70s and ’80s as a child, you’ve existed in a world where typography, design, interiors, architecture, jingles, logos—they were done with a certain type of intention,” Lichtman tells The A.V. Club of the project’s inspirations. “And there was an aspirational quality to so much of it: ‘We’re the shittiest steakhouse in town, but our logo tells you otherwise.’”
That disparity—the gulf between, say, how poorly the food at Buddy Rich’s Fucking Clams photographs and the care Lichtman took in crafting the branding for a fictional business whose name alludes to actual audio of drumming legend Rich blowing his top—is where you’ll find much of the comedy in this alternate reality of browns and oranges, shag carpeting, and indoor smoking. But like any broadcaster worth its salt, Programme 4 is more than comedy. It’s music, in videos for the likes of Aimee Mann and Joe Pernice bearing Lichtman’s signature retro-cool flair. It’s variety, be it the…