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Post by Andy Henderson on Oct 17, 2004 21:05:55 GMT
The audios of these Missing TV editions are fascinating. One very good joke in the 'Horror Serial', involves Hancock (directly in pardody of Quatermas and the Pit) asking neighbour Arthur Mullard if he has ever seen any weird happenings in his house. Mullard replies (in typical slow gait) to the effect that during WW2 he saw a sailors hat appear on the coat rack and then it vanished again. He never could explain that!
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Post by CliveUK on Oct 17, 2004 21:45:31 GMT
Unfortunately, I really do think those are lost forever, simply because they weren't recorded in the first place. The Alpine Holiday was only telerecorded for internal purposes - there was no real idea of selling them abroad or exploiting them in any other way until series 5 in 1959. Which just amazes me more as to why so much Hancock does still survive, in comparison to other tele-recorded BBC shows and programmes from the late 50's.
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Post by lfbarfe on Oct 17, 2004 22:59:37 GMT
Which just amazes me more as to why so much Hancock does still survive, in comparison to other tele-recorded BBC shows and programmes from the late 50's. As far as I can tell, it was one of the Corporation's first big export successes and it continued to be popular, so that's probably why it survived through the various culls. In addition, episodes were being repeated domestically into the 1970s.
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Post by Andrew Doherty on Oct 18, 2004 19:51:34 GMT
The clarity of picture on the Hancock DVD is very good. This is because all the early surviving BBC shows, up to and including the forth series, were 35mm stored field (i.e. all 405 lines recorded, though on 35mm it was 403 lines) telerecordings.
I believe the stored field system of telerecording came to the BBC some time early in 1957. It could be that the engineering department needed to keep a picture quality check on this process. It would require the best film stock to be used. This could be the reason why the recordings are so good, and certainly better than the 16mm telerecordings of the last three series that were used for overseas sales.
The Television Organizations in the USA were shown the five surviving shows of the fourth series (they were kept for this reason). Apparently, the Americans did not think it would work on any of their networks. However, the Canadians were more encouraging and ordered the subsequent fifth series to be followed by the sixth and seventh series. Needless to say other countries eventually followed suit. Which is why all of the fifth, sixth and seventh series of Tony Hancock shows exist on 16mm.
I have been told that there may be a possibility that a few missing (most likely from the fourth series) television Hancock Shows may still exist. Interesting to see early BBC appearances of June Whitfield, Elizabeth Fraser and Anne Reid (Val Barlow, first wife of Ken Barlow in Coronation Street).
It will be noted that the spring 1958 Benny Hill Shows survive by similar reasoning, all the programmes, as well as those of the last three Hancock series, being kept by BBC Enterprises rather than the Archive.
Yours sincerely,
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Post by John Miller on Oct 19, 2004 20:07:16 GMT
Interesting about the early Benny Hill material. It would be nice to see that used commercially at some point like the Tony Hancock. Referring back to the thread, someone noted some time ago there appeared to be a missing Benny Hill (BBC 1960s) on an overseas archive listing around a year ago available on line, possibly a canadian broadcaster.
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Post by Andy Henderson on Oct 20, 2004 19:46:44 GMT
It probably hasn't been used because they aren't in the same style of even the later BBC shows, which you can buy compilations of in the US.
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Post by William Martin on Oct 22, 2004 15:44:03 GMT
i wish they'd released some unsurviving episodes instead. bastards! this isn't me by the way
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