Father, Dear Father

[David C Taylor]

I gather they found some missing B & W episodes of the Thames Television sitcom "Father, Dear Father", which have been released on DVD in Australia. Does anyone know the story behind this, please?

[Brian Fretwell]

I'm sure it was mentioned on this forum some years back, too far for me to remember the details. I think they had been kept in Australia from the last showing there but others will correct me/add to this, I am sure.

[john234]

try e bay for dvd's
i've got the first two series that way

[Matthew K Sharp]

Brian said:

I'm sure it was mentioned on this forum some years back, too far for me to remember the details. I think they had been kept in Australia from the last showing there but others will correct me/add to this, I am sure.

That sounds about right. Previously, all but one of the b/w episodes were thought missing. The first time most people knew of the existance of the rest of them was when the UKTV channel on Foxtel broadcast them. (It surprised the heck out of me!)

As I recall, the episodes weren't held in the main Thames archive, but the tapes had been retained by the sales department (either in the UK or Oz, the details were a little fuzzy on this point).

There was a shady character who recorded the UKTV screenings, then re-recorded them by pointing a video camera at his TV (zoomed in to remove the UKTV logo) and tried to pass them off as very rare telerecordings of lost FDF episodes. I understand he found quite a few suckers who paid high prices for them before it was confirmed that the episodes did all survive on 2" VT.

So yes, all the b/w FDF episodes exist, and the DVDs are well worth picking up - especially because, IMHO, the b/w episodes are far superior to the colour ones.