Some Lost BBC Programs Found

Garrett

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The best thief you'll never see.
A couple of B&W episodes of Morecambe and Wise have been found in Sierra Leone to be shown on BBC 2 on Boxing Day which will be colourised.
Also Found a Basil Brush Show and Sid James Citizen James
 
Colourised? Oh dear. Sierra Leone - whose holiday was that taken on?!
ITV also found Les Dawson episodes but don't, sadly, have plans to air them.
Makes you wonder what's around.
BOOM, BOOM! And HA-HAH-HA-HAH!
 
Colourised? Oh dear. Sierra Leone - whose holiday was that taken on?!
ITV also found Les Dawson episodes but don't, sadly, have plans to air them.
Makes you wonder what's around.
BOOM, BOOM! And HA-HAH-HA-HAH!
Yes it looks like the BBC are adding that as the clips they showed were in B&W.
 
According to the Radio Times these 60s episodes were originally broadcast in colour. The film prints Philip Morris recovered were b&w. So they appear to be attempting to restore them to their original state. As I understand the films had to be extensively restored to be playable at all. I have experience of watching colourised Dr Who episodes that they only had b&w copies of. The results to restore them back to colour can vary widely. I've seen a few that work really well but most of them vary from terrible to very poor. I think the better looking episodes are those that are sourced from the best quality b&w prints. This would appear not to be the case for Morcambe And Wise.

Also according to the Radio Times Gold will be showing some of their US appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Bri
 
Just look at Peter Jackson's 'They Shall Not Grow Old' to see what can be achieved with 100 year old B&W film.....
 
Just look at Peter Jackson's 'They Shall Not Grow Old' to see what can be achieved with 100 year old B&W film.....

That will have been with lots of money and time. It's unlikely these shows will have anywhere near as much work done on them. I only saw a little of They Shall Not Grow Old. It looked pretty weird to me especially their eyes. I'm afraid I wasn't impressed. I can remember when they colourised an episode of Dads Army. They'd discovered a way of retrieving the original colour information from the b&w print. The way they went on you'd think they'd completely restored it to it's original state. In reality it looked very poor and the b&w version was preferable for me.

Bri
 
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Illustrated using a frame from one of the Morecambe & Wise episodes, the main stages in the Colour Recovery process: 16 mm B&W film scan, measurement of geometric distortion, determination of the signs (+/-) of the U&V chroma, recovered original-colour image. Coded in BBC BASIC!
 
THE LOST SHOWS LIST..
The Morecambe and Wise Show - Series 1 - Ep 5&7
Citizen James-The Day Out
The Rag Trade-Baby Dolls
The Basil Brush Show - Series 1 - Episode 3
Steptoe & Son - My Old Man's a Tory
Harry Worth - Four's a Crush
Harry Worth - Feet First
Harry Worth - Melancholics Anon
 
THE LOST SHOWS LIST..
The Morecambe and Wise Show - Series 1 - Ep 5&7
Citizen James-The Day Out
The Rag Trade-Baby Dolls
The Basil Brush Show - Series 1 - Episode 3
Steptoe & Son - My Old Man's a Tory
Harry Worth - Four's a Crush
Harry Worth - Feet First
Harry Worth - Melancholics Anon
Blimey, that reads like some off my early VHS days of recording this n that on a tape and having trouble finding anything!
 
THE LOST SHOWS LIST..
The Morecambe and Wise Show - Series 1 - Ep 5&7
Citizen James-The Day Out
The Rag Trade-Baby Dolls
The Basil Brush Show - Series 1 - Episode 3
Steptoe & Son - My Old Man's a Tory
Harry Worth - Four's a Crush
Harry Worth - Feet First
Harry Worth - Melancholics Anon
Blimey, that reads like some off my early VHS days of recording this n that on a tape and having trouble finding anything!
 
I've just seen a short clip of Morcambe And Wise. The colour looked very poor from the brief glimpse I got.

Bri
Hopefully it won't distract too much from the comedy - but then they can't be all gold.
 
We watched the first M&W episode last night. It was introduced by Michael Aspel and Philip Morris. They mentioned the recovery of the episodes and they had a look at the unrestored version of this one. Some of it looked in terrible condition which backed up my memory of what I'd heard rather than the Independent's perfect condition story. Sure enough the colour was very bad throughout. It had a general washed out look. Skin tones varied from blue to "I'm about to have a heart attack" bright red. I still wasn't very well yesterday which wouldn't have helped me getting into it but the colour was very distracting. It took me quite a while before I started laughing on a regular basis.

I'm sure I read somewhere that this was the first time these episodes have been repeated but they seemed familiar to me but I don't think we had BBC2 back then. Maybe M&W reused the same material later on. They did that often as I recall.

Bri
 
We watched the first M&W episode last night. It was introduced by Michael Aspel and Philip Morris. They mentioned the recovery of the episodes and they had a look at the unrestored version of this one. Some of it looked in terrible condition which backed up my memory of what I'd heard rather than the Independent's perfect condition story. Sure enough the colour was very bad throughout. It had a general washed out look. Skin tones varied from blue to "I'm about to have a heart attack" bright red. I still wasn't very well yesterday which wouldn't have helped me getting into it but the colour was very distracting. It took me quite a while before I started laughing on a regular basis.

I'm sure I read somewhere that this was the first time these episodes have been repeated but they seemed familiar to me but I don't think we had BBC2 back then. Maybe M&W reused the same material later on. They did that often as I recall.

Bri
I watched the first and would say they varied from Erni looking as he been sucked dry with a vampire to Eric in the same scene who looked as though he realy had sailed round the world and looked badly sunburnt and the red was raped up to almost purple when his supposed wife came on.

Did they say this was first shown on BBC 2?
 
I watched the first and would say they varied from Erni looking as he been sucked dry with a vampire to Eric in the same scene who looked as though he realy had sailed round the world and looked badly sunburnt and the red was raped up to almost purple when his supposed wife came on.

Did they say this was first shown on BBC 2?

Yep these were BBC2 shows.

Bri
 

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