pjclark1 said:
That's not an episode ........ it's the movie.
Just testing!
Actually, I'm going to answer my own question, as my daughter has sent me this information which might be of use to others:
DVD release?
A complete release of the series on DVD may soon come to pass. No complete home video release has yet been undertaken due to the nature of the videotape master materials. Like many television series made before the advent of VHS, master tapes of British television productions were often thought to be worthless and erased to be reused (for such reasons as copyright restrictions allowing only one repeat, black & white series being determined as unrepeatable with the advent of colour, and even a physical lack of the necessary archival storage space). In the case of Up Pompeii! (and many others, including most notably Doctor Who), copies sold internationally were, once their broadcasts had occurred, contractually obliged to be returned to the BBC or destroyed.
In the late 1970s, following a change in the BBC's archival policy and a general search for old BBC material, missing episodes of Up Pompeii! were located in the Canadian CBC archive. Due to the differences in international broadcasting, these copies had been converted to the North American NTSC television videotape standard. Thus, one chunk of the series remained in their native PAL format, and another was found in a poorly-converted (dating long before digital conversion methods) NTSC state. The picture quality of some of the Canadian finds was not up to the exacting standards of the BBC, and so their marketablilty was severely limited. A VHS release was therefore considered to be out of the question.
In 2004/2005, through the success of a group of BBC employees' restoration work on similar NTSC-only episodes of Doctor Who (specifically the Jon Pertwee adventure The Claws of Axos), the BBC decided to convert all their NTSC-only productions (as reclaimed from various international stations) back to their original PAL format using a new computer-controlled process, Reverse Standards Conversion. A PAL-like, higher-quality image resulted in a more stable picture and more enjoyable viewing experience. And so, after 35 years, a complete and restored Up Pompeii! may once again be available.