Tapes Safe and Well
Right. Remember our article on the BBC 7 scheduling of Cliché and Son of Cliché - where we mentioned that tapes had been lost in the archive? Time to do a big retraction; we got an e-mail from the BBC today explaining the situation. Part of this is our fault; and part of it isn't.
First of all, there were apparently only five episodes of Cliché produced, rather than six. We know from Andrew Pixley's article about Series 1 of Red Dwarf in TV Zone #158 that the series was originally transmitted between 16th March - 20th April 1981. This gives space for 6 episodes (which is what we had assumed); but presumably an episode wasn't transmitted one week. I'll do some research in some old Radio Times issues in a few weeks; until then, I suspect we should trust what the BBC have to say rather than our rather dodgy suppositions. Ahem. Sorry about that.
As regarding Son of Cliché, however, it's not us that is at fault. We were told before simply that the archive was not complete regarding old shows. We now suspect that this was simply a stock answer, as we are now told that "Only 4 episodes of the available Son of Clich� eps were broadcast because we did not have enough room in the schedule at the time to broadcast all of them. The decision was made to air just a selection of them instead." This is obviously fabulous - presumably no tapes are lost at all, although we will clarify this.
However, the best news is still to come: "We do hope to be able to broadcast all the available episodes of Son of Cliché at a later date." We couldn't hope for anything better. We'll keep you updated.
Comments
Thank FUCK for that.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 9, 2003 11:56 PM
Indeed. I'm annoyed about my assumption of there being six eps of Cliche rather than five; that was a really dodgy bit of research. I should have known better to assume anything with transmission dates.
Obviously, the e-mail doesn't state that all 16 eps of SoC are in the archives; but I've e-mailed them to clarify this. At least more than four do, and I suspect when it says all avaliable, they do mean all 16.
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 12:05 AM
Hang on, though - where did the "not episode 5 but episode 6" of Cliche come from? Was it Digiguide at the time?
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 12:13 AM
It was BBC7 who listed that they would be playing the 5 episodes which corresponded with the Radio Times' dates for 1-4 and *6*.
I'm sure I could have seen a "1 of 6" somewhere, though. This seems more confusing than it probably is.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 10, 2003 01:09 AM
It's not surprising things are confusing, really; we're talking about a radio series dated from 1981 which hardly anything had been written about. (There's not much on SoC, let along Cliche...)
I'll look over the Radio Times listings for the period in few weeks; that'll clear it up once and for all.
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 01:17 AM
I know for certain that there were 6 episodes of Cliche as I have the missing episode 5 which starts with a sketch about speaking backwards.
The equivalent of 1 or 2 episodes from the first series of Son of Cliche have been junked because that series of SOC was re-edited to produce less than the original 8 episodes for a repeat run (not sure how many but probably 6) and it appears to be these versions that have survived.
e.g. The first episode on BBC7 (s1e2 The Weird Dimension) was not as originally broadcast, it had about 5 mins of material removed and about 4 mins of material from series 1 episode 1 inserted. (Your episode guide for Weird Dimension is based on this chopped up repeat as it has two sketches from the first episode (Macho Patrol and Twenty Golden Indian Restaurant Tracks). In the original version, there was a song "This War" and the Dave Hollins sketch was slightly longer plus several other differences.
It looks like series 2 has survived reasonably intact without edits but the last episode may be missing.
Posted by Zenith at October 10, 2003 05:45 AM
Many thanks for that, Zenith. That all makes a hell of a lot of sense. I did know that some of the eps of Series 1 of SoC that we have is the repeat; it mentions so at the end of some of the recordings I have here. Stupidly, though, I never noticed the repeat material (although Ian must have done, as he was the one who compiled the episode guide) - if I had, I might have guessed something was amiss, and they had been re-edited...
Moral of this story: don't trust anything.
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 08:02 AM
I've just had a mail from the BBC - they say that it looks like all Son of Cliche episodes *do* exist in the archives - but the quality would have to be checked before they go out on air.
I'm not going to bug them any more; they've been extremely helpful. I'll do the Radio Times thing in the next two weeks (I've just this minute got a job, so I can afford to travel there!), and if neccessary ask Radio 4 for more information.
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 01:13 PM
Actually - I'm doing the Radio Times thing tomorrow - that should clear up most bits of confusion. I'll post an article about it tomorrow night, along with a site update containing Radio Times listings for all eps of Cliche and Son of Cliche. I'll investigate repeats, too.
Sorry about the confusion with these news stories; obviously researching radio shows from 1981 is rather hard, and we probably shouldn't have been quite so eager to publish stuff on it the moment we get an e-mail.
Posted by John Hoare at October 10, 2003 07:03 PM
Zenith, you are an excellent.
Posted by Darrell Jones at October 10, 2003 10:29 PM
I got quite a lot of research done, incidentally - but there's still quite a few more bits to do in various ways, and I don't want to put a half-complete article out there, seeing as the confusion there as been with the last two.
I can confirm Zenith is correct about there being six episodes of Cliché (not that I ever really doubted anyone who is sitting there with six episodes in front of them, but it's nice to have the RT listings in front of you). Six episodes, broadcast on Mondays at 12:27pm (with repeats the next day on Tuesdays at 10:30pm) between 16th March and 20th April 1981. Gah the BBC for getting it wrong; I'll get in touch with them about the archive situation again.
Posted by John Hoare at October 12, 2003 07:16 PM
Right then. I will update mydownloads page. Sorry to anyone trying to download after this weekend. My server is being an arse :)
Posted by Cappsy at October 12, 2003 09:44 PM
Zenith: mp3-me-do?
Posted by Nik at October 13, 2003 07:52 PM
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