That was the week that was.

[jellyhedge]

Are any of "That was the week that was",missing or wiped out from the bbc archives?

[phantom emailer]

yes and yes to both.

[John Sewell]

Roger Wilmut's From Fringe To Flying Circus has a brief note at the back which says that "most" of them exist on 16mm. One which he identifies as being missing is the edition from 8/12/62, which caused a fuss by re-editing film of a Harold MacMillan speech to make it look like he was talking nonsense.

ISTR also reading somewhere that the shows were recorded so that BBC bosses had something to refer to if there were any complaints, and a lot of the surviving telerecordings are quite poor in quality, as they weren't meant for repeating, so less care was taken with the process. Sorry not to be of more help. Anyone else got any specific dates for missing editions, or other info?

[andrew martin]

The edition from 8/12/62 does still exist in fact - the very first edition tx'd 24/11/62 is missing its first reel, and there is one other edition where the recording started late so it is incomplete, but apart from that the only completely missing episode is the first, untx'd pilot.

[Paul Hayes]

I can personally vouch for the 8/12/62 edition existing, as I saw a screening of a BFI print of it here at the University of East Anglia back in December, back-to-back with the Kennedy edition from 23/11/63.

[John Sewell]

Seems I'm (thankfully) wrong then!

In mitigation, the book dates from 1980, so maybe there were still some mislaid editions then, which might have turned up since? Fascinating that TW3's archive status is more or less complete, seeing as it was a topical, live show with no overseas sales potential, I would imagine. A good deal of shows from the same time have been decimated!

[dubs]

Would it not have retained for legal reasons?

Or is this a recent development?

Certainly I think news programmes have to be retained for a certain length of time nowadays in case of BCC queries or legal actions.

[Steve Burstein]

Back in the '70s in America, somebody insisted to me that he had seen the British TW3 and that it was "Exactly like Monty Python". But what do you expect. Americans thought BENNY HILL was like Monty Python!

[lfbarfe]

John said:

ISTR also reading somewhere that the shows were recorded so that BBC bosses had something to refer to if there were any complaints, and a lot of the surviving telerecordings are quite poor in quality, as they weren't meant for repeating, so less care was taken with the process.

I believe that the system used for making one-off reference recordings was called direct positive telerecording. The monitor would put out a negative image, which would be recorded on negative film stock, resulting in a single, positive copy.

[J Richards]

I can't believe that virtually all of this survives yet hardly anything of Not Only But Also. Bet that got up Peter Cook's nose considering how much he disliked David Frost.

[Laurence Piper]

andrew said:

The edition from 8/12/62 does still exist in fact - the very first edition tx'd 24/11/62 is missing its first reel, and there is one other edition where the recording started late so it is incomplete, but apart from that the only completely missing episode is the first, untx'd pilot.

Just to clarify, Andrew. Are you referring to just the first series of TW3 as existing almost complete or to the whole run? My Kal guide from the mid '90s lists series 2 as missing a lot of episodes. Good news if untrue.

[andrew martin]

No, I was referring to the whole run. The next edition of the Kaleidscope guide will be corrected!

Regarding the existence of this series compared to NOBA - TW3 was made by the current affairs department, which has always tended to keep much more of its material.

[Laurence Piper]

Ah, that's good news Andrew.