Dad's Army: Something Nasty in the Vault b/w repeat 1982

[Ben Rigsby]

I recently come across some BBC2 repeats of Dads Army from 1982 amongst a lot of other 80s recordings. I was quite surprised to see one episode: "Something Nasty in the Vault" being shown in b/w. Did the colour copy not exist at this point?

[Jeff Leach]

This may shed some light on the history of the episode (from Dad's Army forum)

It seems, but is not conclusively known, that the black and white film version of Something Nasty In The Vault which had done the rounds of the Aussie and NZ networks was probably returned to the BBC at that time. but this episode was never lost or thought to be lost by the BBC. Only the broadcasters here were of the understanding that it was only available in b&w. So do not count it as a lost and found episode, it wasn't.

David(Croft) told me he returned around eight films to the BBC, coloured and black and white films, he found at an Australian film archive. He was only alerted because he was there working on a programme and returned to his hotel room, say down and put the tele on and on comes a lost episode. So he got onto a contact he had at that broadcaster and arranged to go raid their vaults.

Now be aware he was aware it was missing in Britain but the public were not aware because a) the British public had hardly seen anything of Dad's Army since 1977, it was so seldom repeated in the UK through the 1980's and b) the Aussie and NZ public had seen these episodes broadcast several times in repeat runs through the 1980's so there was no suggestion they were 'lost'. It was all down to poor management in the UK and luck on David's part really.

Source : walmington.proboards.com/thread/1085/lost-episodes

[Deleted]

I love hearing stories like this. Especially when they have a happy ending as regards recovery!