A View from the Terrace

A View from the Terrace is a Scottish football magazine and factual television series. It is broadcast on BBC Scotland and repeated on BBC One in Scotland.
The show is produced by creative agency Studio Something and is adapted from the long-running podcast The Terrace.

History

The origins of the show stem from The Terrace podcast created by Craig Fowler, Alan Temple, Jen McLean and Niall McNeill, while studying journalism at Napier University in 2007.
The show was launched in March 2019, in the opening week of the new BBC Scotland channel. It is hosted by Craig G. Telfer and features the recurring cast of Craig Fowler, Joel Sked, Shaughan McGuigan and Robert Borthwick, along with regular guest appearances from Amy Canavan, Graham Thewliss and Tony Anderson.
The panel take a loving and scathing look at Scottish football from the top of the leagues to the bottom as well as exploring the culture that surrounds the game in Scotland. Each show is built around studio debate as well as number of outside VTs that further explore the culture of the game. These films take the form of observational documentaries, light-entertainment pastiches, short films, spoken word, animation, music and scripted drama.
The most common features used in the show are "The Boyata Index", "On The Fence", "Time Capsule", "See Ya Later Debater" and "Larsson and Scheidt".
Each episode of the first series closed with a popular Scottish musician or band playing a version of one of their team's most famous songs. Some of the artists to perform have been Admiral Fallow, Fatherson, HYYTS, STPHNX and We Were Promised Jetpacks. This feature was used intermittently in following series. Along with continuing to shine a light on up-and-coming musical talent from Scotland and beyond, the show began to curate archive-based love letters to some of Scottish football's most iconic moments, using fan voices to tell those stories with features including St. Johnstone's famous Scottish Cup win and the Scottish Women National Team's send off at Hampden ahead of the 2019 Women's World Cup.
The original 10-part series was extended to 13 episodes to take the show up to the eve of the 2019 Scottish Cup Final.
The show was recommissioned by BBC for a second season of 20 episodes and returned on 27 September 2019. Following the abrupt end to the 2019–20 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a compilation show entitled The Best of A View from the Terrace was screened. Additionally, the show's team continued to create similar output via their long-running podcast, including a series of shows entitled A View from the Lockdown, where the presenters took popular elements from the television show to discuss non-football-related topics.
The third run of the show launched in October 2020, navigating a UK-wide lockdown to produce 20 episodes of fan-focussed studio and short feature content. The fourth began in October 2021; it included more guest panellists than previous seasons, including podcast regular Graeme Thewliss and comedian Ray Bradshaw.
Following Scotland Men's National Team qualification for the delayed Euro 2020 Championships in 2021, a 3-part spin off titled A View from the Euros was aired to accompany the tournament. Applying the show's trademark humour and style with a continental twist, it celebrated what it meant to be Scottish as the national side returned to major tournament football. During A View from the Euros, famous Scottish football songs were covered in different genres from countries partaking in the Euros competition. For example The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" was played by a Spanish flamenco band.
After the end of Series 4, it was announced that A View From The Terrace would be performing a live end-of-season review show at St. Luke's in Glasgow. The show saw many of the regular features as well as a special edition of the Club Shop where audience members had the chance to win a Peterhead branded bottle of hand sanitiser, a diamanté Raith Rovers shirt claimed by Shaughan, and a Buckie Thistle torch keyring to name but a few of the fantastic prizes on offer. The show saw all the regular contributors to the show bar Bradshaw and Hamilton, as well as two special guests in the form of Marvin Bartley and Dylan Easton.
Series 5 ran for 20 episodes between the 30th September, 2022, and 28th May, 2023, with the show's usual winter break included. This series included a film entitled 'When We Were Famous - Scotland '72', which told the story of the first women's international match between Scotland and England played at Ravenscraig in 1972. The film won an RTS Scotland Award for Best Short Form feature.
The show's sixth series started on 29 September 2023 and included, for the first time on TV, a number of episodes recorded in front of a live studio audience. The show's 100th episode was broadcast on 24 November 2023, with the previous episode having been recorded with a live audience in Greenock and the following one in Edinburgh.
At the end of series 7 in May 2025, it was reported in the media that, despite being 'a beloved fixture for Scottish football fans', the show was yet to be recommissioned by the BBC and its future 'hung in the balance'. Later that year it was announced that the show would indeed return for an eighth series.
Series 8 began on 3 October 2025. The run time was reduced from 58 minutes to 44 minutes, and the number of episodes was cut from 20 to 18. The number of panel members joining Craig G. Telfer was also reduced, from three to two. As part of the overall changes, production moved from West Lothian to Glasgow.
Throughout the program's run they have conducted interviews with some of the most well known faces in Scottish football, like former national team managers Craig Brown, Craig Levein and Shelley Kerr, Scotland internationals like Colin Hendry, Kenny Miller, Duncan Ferguson, Ian Murray, Gemma Fay, Rachel Corsie, John Robertson, Shaun Maloney, Andrew Considine, Stephen O'Donnell, Ryan Porteous, Kevin Thomson and Lee Miller, as well as others like Archie Knox, Brian Graham, Dougie Imrie, Rory Loy, David Martindale, Jack Ross, Tony Watt, Jim Leishman, Scott Allan, Mixu Paatelainen, Arild Stavrum, Keith Lasley, James Grady, Dylan McGeouch, Michael Stewart and Rose Reilly

Regular features

Throughout the run of programme there have been many sections that have appeared throughout every series and often several episodes in the same series. These include:

Social Media Section: For the first three series of the programme the four hosts were joined by Robert Borthwick who guided the boys through a whistle-stop tour of the best parts of Scottish football social media from the past week. After the decision to rotate the cast on an episode to episode basis, Telfer and the co-hosts would go through the social media section together as a group. During the festive period, this section often included a look into what a selection of Scottish clubs were selling as Christmas gifts such as a St Mirren F.C. lip balm, an Aberdeen F.C. cat flap or the notorious Raith Rovers F.C. Roaring Back mugs from their doomed attempt to escape from League 1.
Put A Shift In: Documentary filmmaker Duncan Cowles is not a fan of football. But Duncan McKay is and wants to try out as many different roles related to football as possible. Throughout the run of the programme, Duncan and Duncan travel the length and breadth of the country trying out lots of different jobs at all levels of football. Some of the highlights include dressing up as Roary the Lion at Stark's Park, being a ballboy at Hampden Park, co-commentator and lead commentator for an Airdrieonians F.C. game and taking up the mantle of being assistant manager at Caledonian Braves F.C. for one game only.
The Boyata Index: A section where the boys would, based upon the hypothetical valuation set on at the time Celtic defender Dedryck Boyata by pundit John Hartson of £50million, speculate as to how much players throughout the SPFL would cost using the same barometer. These included that Stephen Dobbie was worth £150million and that Oliver Burke was worth a bag of balls.
The Gaffer: Shining the spotlight on the lesser-known managers throughout Scotland who have fascinating stories to tell, like Shadab Iftikhar who is the first South-Asian to manage any Scottish football club, former Albion Rovers F.C. manager Kevin Harper, University of Stirling head coach Chris Geddes, or Bailey Hanlon, manager of Kilsyth Athletic and youngest manager of a football club in Scotland at 22 years old.
Scottish Passport: Interviews with Scottish players who are currently playing in leagues outside of Britain such as Lana Clelland and Steven Lennon.
Home: Taking a closer look at some of the smaller football clubs in Scotland that have interesting stories to share like Eriskay F.C., Orkney Women's F.C. and Campbeltown A.F.C.
Player Spotlights : as well as speaking to managers about their careers, there are often interviews with current and former players about all sorts of things. These include an interview with Rachael Boyle after she took time out of the game after giving birth, Chris Cadden being very open about his mental health, Ryan Stevenson talking about his tattoos and why they mean so much to him, Christian Nadé talking about what it is like to have played for so many different teams in different countries throughout his career and an interview with Zander Murray, Scotland and one of the world's first current footballers to come out as gay.
The Banker : The panellists choose two games from the upcoming weekends fixtures that they are absolutely sure of what the outcome will be and another where it is just too tight to call. This section was a competition format, the panellist gaining points if their banker came out correctly with the player with the most points at the end of the series taking home the Eamonn Brophy Lone Wolf Trophy. Series 4 took the format of Telfer vs all other panellists. Additional rules are occasionally thrown in to gain bonus points or make the game a little more challenging, for example You must predict a team that lost last weekend will win this weekend or Bonus points if you predict an away win. Joel Sked is notoriously bad at the game, picking a draw almost every week, while Telfer is known to go for the safe bet of whoever is top of the league playing someone lower down such as Celtic F.C., Rangers F.C., Cove Rangers F.C., Kelty Hearts F.C. or Queen's Park F.C. playing the likes of anyone else in the Premiership or anybody particularly struggling or languishing at the bottom of the Championship and Leagues One and Two.
Last Minute Winner: For the opening few series this began as songs associated with specific football teams being played by fans of those clubs, such as Hibs fan Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow performing Sunshine on Leith or Dunfermline-based band The Skids performing Into the Valley. Later on, this feature began to include fan stories from memorable moments in Scottish football history such as St Johnstone F.C. winning their first ever piece of silverware in 2014 or Queen of the South F.C. reaching the Scottish Cup semi-final in 2008, and also short interviews with club legends about past glories such as Colin Hendry on what it was like to captain his country or Jim Leishman talking about his playing career and then his managerial career with Dunfermline.

Appearances

After the successful appearance of Graeme Thewliss during A View From The Euros, more regular contributors and friends of the show were invited to contribute. To date, host Craig G. Telfer has appeared in all but one of the studio shows due to a positive COVID-19 test. However he did appear briefly via video call. In Series 2 and 3, there were a total of 3 Best Of episodes, as Telfer introduced the best clips from the previous series alone in the studio. As of Series 5, Episode 7:

Presenter Name	Club supported	Series 1	Series 2	Series 3	A View From The Euros	Series 4	AVFTT Live	Series 5	Series 6	Total Appearances
Craig G Telfer	Stenhousemuir	13	19	21	2	20	1	20	20	83
Craig Fowler	Hearts	13	17	20	3	13	1	4		71
Joel Sked	Hearts	13	17	20	2	13	1	4		70
Shaughan McGuigan	Raith Rovers	13	17	20	3	14	1	7		74
Robert Borthwick	Hearts	13	17	20	3	13	1	2		69
Duncan McKay and Duncan Cowles	Hibs and N/A	6	3	2	1	3	1	1		17
Graeme Thewliss	Motherwell	1	1	0	1	3	1	1		8
Ray Bradshaw	Partick Thistle	0	0	0	0	2	0	0		2
Sean Hamilton	St Johnstone	0	0	0	0	1	0	0		1
Tony Anderson	Hibs	0	0	0	0	1	1	1		3
Gary Cocker	Dundee	2	1	0	0	0	0	0		3
Amy Canavan	Celtic and Bonnyrigg Rose	0	0	0	0	0	0	1		1

Robert Borthwick only appeared in the regular ″Social Media Review″ section for the first three series, until he became a more regular panellist from Episode 3 of A View From The Euros onwards.
Before becoming a more regular contributor, Graeme Thewliss made two appearances in the earlier series of the show, in a section called ″Come Consi-Dine With Me″ where a famous footballer taught him to cook their speciality. These were making sushi with former Heart of Midlothian F.C. and Dundee United F.C. player Ryan McGowan and baking empire biscuits with Motherwell F.C. player Stephen O'Donnell.
Podcast contributor Gary Cocker has made three appearances in the early series interviewing two players in informal setting, called ″First Mates″. These were former Hamilton Academical F.C. and Partick Thistle F.C. player Ziggy Gordon, a former child chess champion, over a chess board, former Heart of Midlothian player Oliver Bozanic at Gorgie City Farm, and former Hamilton Academical F.C. player Steve Davies in an escape room.
Throughout the program's run there have been many guest appearances from various people involved in Scottish football, including but not limited to:

Controversies

In 2024, Lowland League side Albion Rovers announced that they would allow a Hibernian F.C. fan, Duncan Mckay, to replace Sandy Clark as manager for one match, as part of a feature to be filmed for A View From The Terrace. The announcement was met with a widespread backlash from supporters and just days later Rovers announced that they were scrapping the idea. A View From The Terrace aired the film in any case, with Mckay arriving at the ground on match day to discover he had been 'sacked', and instead watching the game from the stands with supporters.
In 2025, the show aired a short film featuring historian Ged O'Brien and a team of archaeologists from Archaeology Scotland, claiming to have discovered the site of the oldest known football pitch in the world, in Anwoth, Dumfries and Galloway. The discovery, if true, had the potential to rewrite the accepted origin story of football, suggesting that the game may have originated in Scotland, rather than England, as often claimed. The film made headlines worldwide, causing significant discussion and controversy.

Reception

The show has been described as "quietly but bravely pushing boundaries" and "injecting the fun back into football on the TV for the first time since Baddiel and Skinner's Fantasy Football League". Kevin McKenna in The Observer described it as "the best football show on UK television by far". Football periodical Mundial described it as "the reason why you should give a shit about Scottish football" and BBC Scotland credited it as being a part of the "new wave of fan led football content".
The show has been nominated for several awards during its run, including a Broadcast 2020 Award for Best Sports Programme and a RTS Scotland Award for Sports Programme in 2025. In 2023, a film about the first women's international match between Scotland and England in 1972 won Best Short Form feature at the RTS Scotland Awards.