BBC 7 Scheduling: Explained
Gah. Not the best news to start off October with. We've got an answer as to BBC 7's scheduling of Cliché and Son of Cliché. Their transmissions were rather odd: Episode 5 of Cliché was missed out, and only four eps out of the sixteen made of Son of Cliché was broadcast (Series 2 Episode 2, and Series 1 Episodes 1, 4 and 5).
As suspected by certain people, it's an archive problem, not BBC 7 being useless. "We do try and broadcast series in chronological order, and in their entirety, when possible", BBC 7 explained. "However the BBC Archive is far from complete - and programmes are not always catalogued (making them harder to find)." Many thanks to BBC 7 for their reply.
This situation isn't unusual for programmes broadcast in the early eighties; and we also hasten to add that it does not mean the programmes are gone for good. It's likely that (as BBC7 say) the original tapes are languishing around in the archives, just not catalogued. Even if they aren't, we know that copies exist of all the episodes of Son of Cliché in private hands; currently mine, as I'm holding a CD of them. (Cappsy of The White Hole will be hosting them shortly, so you can all get a copy - they are avaliable elsewhere on the net if you search hard enough.) Obviously they aren't nearly as good quality as the original tapes; part of the reason everyone was getting excited about the repeats was to get a really nice copy of them. But they're far better than nothing, and they're not bad at all really, considering the age of the programme.
As for Cliché episode 5, we don't know of any copies out there, although more likely than not it's around somewhere, and will turn up eventually. (Surely at the very least, someone who worked on the programme recorded it.) At least five out of the six exist in the archives. It's all a great shame, but it could be far worse. So many programmes of a certain period are lost for good: wheras at least 21 out of the 22 programmes exist in some form or another...
Comments
I feared this would be the case - damn the BBC and their lax attitude to archiving!
It's quite upsetting, really, knowing that six and a half hours of quality comedy offically doesn't exist anymore (for now, anyway).
Clich� 5 is the biggest casualty really, I suppose, as we don't even have an off-air of it.
Incidentally, 'Wrinkles' is currently being requested on the BBC7 message board - I hope that's not wiped too.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 1, 2003 09:54 PM
I didn't know about Wrinklies (or, at least, I'd forgotten about it; I only very, very vaguely remember something about it ages ago) I'd love to hear that...
What about 'Pushing Up Daisies' - another Grant Naylor penned radio series, which I know nothing about. It's not the same thing, is it? It's mentioned in the RT Sci-Fi book (see review in the books section).
Posted by John Hoare at October 1, 2003 10:02 PM
'Wrinkles' starred David Ross, interestingly. Somebody on the dull BBC7 forum wrote:
"I reckon there were 2 series of Wrinkles totalling 12 editions 1st Series TX 15-04-80 second series 10-11-81"
I don't know how accurate / inaccurate he is but it's the first solid info I've heard on it.
'Pushing Up Daisies' sounds like it could be the same thing - a sequel perhaps? Or maybe it was the title of the pilot? I'm rather curious to find out more about this one - I'm quite surprised that the fans generally don't seem interested in the pre-RD Grant/Naylor stuff.
Whatever it is it'll probably have the 'decimalisation of music' material in it - everything else bloody does!
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 1, 2003 10:27 PM
Hopefully BBC 7 will play it at some point; I'll send them an e-mail thanking them for the SoC info and giving my support for Wrinklies/Pushing up Daisies.
It is a bit odd about people not being interested in the pre-RD stuff so much. It's probably because it's far more effort to hear it, as none of it (AFAIK) has had a commerical release. Same with Spitting Image. (I intend to do a great big section on the Grant Naylor years of that at some point - but it'll have to wait until I have digital so I can record the Granada Plus repeats.)
Posted by John Hoare at October 1, 2003 10:35 PM
A good source of Grant/Naylor Spitting Image stuff is the Virgin 'Spit In Your Ear' CD, which rather conveniently credits the writers of each sketch. Grant/Naylor are credited as at least contributing to 20 out of the 44 tracks, and are the sole writers of 8 of them. It's only about �6.99 from HMV - I recommend it, it's quite well-produced. Obviously it isn't as good without the puppets, but it's good all the same. There are some nice bits of Chris Barrie on it too.
There have been quite a few Spitting Image video releases, although only one ('Is Nothing Sacred?') is currently available, and it's culled from the later, less good series.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 1, 2003 10:46 PM
Come to think of it, Tanya has that SI CD - I'd completely forgotten about it. That'd make a good start. I had no idea about the video releases, though. Ta for that; I'll try and hunt them down.
I do wonder whether the Granada Plus repeats are cut in any way; quite a bit of their stuff is. In Sickness and In Health had a bloody stupid cut recently - a whole scene was taken out at the end which explained the plot, and yet they left in a hugely long scene at the start which added little to the plot at all, and was just an excuse for some dubious taste jokes about a cliched Jewish shopkeeper. It always strikes me as silly when they make cuts like that; surely it costs more to them to get the thing into an editing suite and cut the ep, and also they have to buy more programmes to fill the screentime, instead of just broadcasting the entire thing...
Posted by John Hoare at October 1, 2003 10:56 PM
Apparently they're not edited - although there's no way of telling.
I'm shortly upgrading to a better digital package in order to see these, as well as Kenny Everett of course. And The Brittas Empire too, although they always cut loads out of that.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 1, 2003 11:20 PM
Commercially-released Spitting Image videos I could find out about:-
- 'The Video', containing the TV specials 'Bumbledown' (29/10/88) and 'The Sound of Maggie' (6/5/89).
- 'The Classic Music Video' - an hour of uninterrupted Philip Pope songs (26 in total) from the show. I would sell my mother for a copy of this, as I think Mr. Pope is a genius. Unfortunately it's stupidly rare...
- 'From F.A. To Fairplay', presumably a sport-themed compilation (53 mins)
- 'Spit With Polish', 'A Floppy Mass of Blubber', 'Rubber Thingies' - three general hour-long compilation videos that were part of a collection and also released in a box set at one point.
- 'Having It Off' - Made-for-video 'Lover's Guide' parody.
- 'The Best Of: Is Nothing Sacred' - Recent compilation which tends to favour the more recent, less good stuff. Still available.
Hope that helped. It's intriguing to note that absolutely none of the video releases has a running time longer than an hour. I ought to try and track down some of these, especially the music one.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 2, 2003 03:07 AM
Ooh - just read that a 1986 documentary exists about 'The Writing of Spitting Image'. Now *that* is something that needs to be dug up by somebody.
Perhaps a DVD release (hah, right) could utilise it. Pipe dreams, lad, pipe dreams...
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 2, 2003 03:11 AM
Re ISAIH: the shopkeeper was Asian, and the Jewish bloke was a customer. It doesn't make much difference though. :)
Posted by Tanya Jones at October 2, 2003 08:32 AM
For anyone who gives a flying badgers arse I now have the 5 out of 6 Cliche episodes at http://www.whitehole-reddwarf.co.uk
Go! Run free accross my bandwidth! :D
Posted by Cappsy at October 2, 2003 11:54 AM
Ta, Darrell.
Bollocks, Tanya.
Hooray, Cappsy!
Posted by John Hoare at October 2, 2003 12:57 PM
Well, whaddya know! I received Granada Plus access this morning as a present! Cheers dad (although it's frankly impossible that he's reading this).
Time to get the blank videos out, methinks...
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 2, 2003 05:20 PM
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