Dad's Army: The Lost Episodes

[baronbeeza]

Dave will know but I understand that there were a few episodes of Dad's Army that have been lost. I think some may have had sound tracks, or possibly just the script, that survived.

I have just discovered three of the episodes have been remade.


www.imdb.com/title/tt10181132/episodes?ref_=tt_eps_sm

I have just watched one episode and it does the job, better than reading a book. It is all very theatrical and slapstick however.

[Dave Homewood]

Yes, in fact loads of the episodes were wiped back in the late 1970's, or so. After two screenings on BBC TV, a television programme would require the signature of the director or someone senior to ensure it was permanently archived. If they were not archived, the very expensive large video tape they were made on would be wiped and reused, back then.

And it so happens that when one batch were up for this decision, producer David Croft - who always tried to ensure his work was archived - was away and the signatures never happened, so around a dozen episodes were wiped. Luckily in the 1980's he was working in Sydney on a job, and he was in his hotel room and turned the TV one and saw one of his Dad's Army episodes playing that he knew had been wiped. He raced down to ABC-TV who had screened it and using his contacts there he got into the archive. He was able to recover about seven episodes on BBC Transcription film that he knew were wiped at home. These film versions were what were sent out by the BBC to other overseas networks, like BCNZ and later TVNZ. They were only meant to be screened once or twice depending on the contract, and either then sent on to the next broadcaster who'd ordered it, or destroyed. These ones David discovered had not been destroyed due to some omission, and ABC-TV was sneaking in another screening, probably not telling the BBC.... So among them David saved Mum's Army, The Big Parade, Room At The Bottom, Sgt Wilson's Little Secret, and he thought three or four others, but he could not recall all the titles by the time he spoke to me about it.

That left five episodes of the main TV series still lost, all from Series Two (aired 1966), plus two mini-episodes that were part of the Christmas Night With The Stars specials from 1968 and 1970.

When I ran the Dad's Army Appreciation Society New Zealand Branch I ran a campaign to let people know these shows were missing and to see if anyone had copies. With huge pleasure I had the audio soundtrack of the 1970 Christmas Night With the Stars episode sent to me by a guy in the UK who's recorded it off his TV during the 25 Dec 1970 broadcast. So while we do not have the visuals, we have the audio of that lost episode. I was able to make copies for David Croft and Jimmy Perry and it is now in wider circulation.

Then, 20 years ago, the BBC started an appeal they called the Treasure Hunt, trying to find any lost programmes that the public might have. And during that a lady contacted them who had two reels of Dad's Army that her Dad had been storing in his garden shed for donkey's years. He'd got them from another old bloke, who'd pulled them out of the trash in the 1970's. They were Operation Kilt, and The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage. When Jimmy and David had originally wanted to make a feature film version of the series they were hawking the idea around cinema studios, and on this occasion Jimmy Perry had taken these two films to - from memory - Boulting Brothers studio and left them with the execs so they could get an idea of what the TV series was about. They'd not been interested and eventually they had binned the reels, but a bloke who worked there decided to pinch them and take them home, thank goodness!

And another chance happening was a radio presenter called Ed Doolan interviewed David Croft on his BBC regional radio show, and David happened to mention the hunt for the missing episodes. Ed said he used to record all sorts back in the day, and he'd look through his collection. Well when he got home he discovered he had actually recorded audio from broadcast on the main Series 2 episode A Stripe For Frazer, and also the 1968 Christmas Night episode. So that was two more recovered in audio form but missing their visuals.

So there remain three missing main series episodes:
- A Stripe For Frazer (there is the soundtrack existing, and the BBC made a cartoon version to go with it)
- The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker
- Under Fire

And a couple of years back the Gold channel in the UK decided to recast new actors and recreate the three missing Series 2 episodes, using the original scripts.

They are quite watchable but they're sadly not a patch on the original shows, but you cannot ever hope to equal the genius of the original cast though.

[ZacYates]

Aug 16, 2021 23:48:20 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

When I ran the Dad's Army Appreciation Society New Zealand Branch

An now, after so many years of knowing each other, your email address FINALLY makes sense to me!