Be Excellent To Each Other

Last night after MOTD I watched a couple of extra hours TV as I was too tired to play anymore old games and couldn't stay up til 5am again (I'm getting too old).

To my delight I noticed that Dave was showing a couple of episodes of The Young Ones. It's probably been done to death since the advent of free view etc but I wasn't here for all that (still in yankland..).

I watched through 'Boring' before going for a pee. When I came back to my delight 'Interesting' was on (one of my fave eps).

There's a part where a bloke knocks on the door nextdoor because TYO's neighbours have won a 'Ford Tippex'.

The policeman walks up to the bloke from the cornflakes company and says "You're nicked you gay black bastard" and then goes on to say "Sorry John, I thought you was a nigger".

Now from what I could see (even when I was a young child watching it when it first came about) This had nothing *at all* racist about it and was totally a pop at the Thatchered police at the time and all of the nasty racism during the 80's.

Whilst I know it's not totally P.C to leave it in it really didn't make sense with the edits added, especially if you had seen it before.

They've censored the Simpsons too - in the infamous 'Critic' episode, I've not seen the 'I'm a neurotic nerd who likes to sleep with little girls' joke left in for years.

"Go to hell you old bastard" has survived, at least.

I remember saying "Bloody hell !" at work one day and the human resources manager went out of her fucking tree.

When I asked what the hell was so wrong about it she freaked out and went into her office slamming the door shut. I figured I wouldn't bother to follow her in to ask her but someone later told me that she was a total hard core christian who saw the word 'hell' as extremely offensive and considered it as bad as saying fuck or cunt at work.

Is this censorship or the shortened episodes where a few minutes are cut out to make room for adverts? I have a lot of episodes of early Simpsons ripped from TV broadcasts in syndication and they are all 1.5 min or so short compared to the originally broadcast versions -- I sometimes notice a missing joke or two, Similarly, The Young Ones was BBC originally, so I guess Dave must shoten the episodes for ad breaks?

Nah, Dave extend the running times to accommodate ads. Hence 30 min shows become 40 on there. Exceptions being 1 hour ones.

I suspect censorship, as I've seen a lot of butchered Simpsons episodes yet Sky seems a lot better for showing the whole thing than other channels.

The funny thing about the Simpsons censoring, is that Sky censored originally, I noticed the uncut episodes when BBC2 had it, Sky uncensored, then channel4 go and censor when they take over. So now Sky is the only place that doesn't censor. Censor.

The BBC censored the Not The Nine O'clock News 'Constable Savage' in exactly the same fashion. It's a skit about dumb racist policemen, and they censor out the racist bits. Awesome.

Coming up next, To Kill a Mockingbird, a classic story of a deep south lawyer who (has a remarkably pleasant day at his office - Ed), told through the eyes of his young daughter. A timeless exploration of (lovely sunshine - Ed) and (adorable puppies - Ed).

Which is identical to that scene in the Young ones. TBH you would think black people would actually applaud the fact that someone had the balls to stand up and say "hey, the pigs are racist cunts".

Mind you, it probably wasn't black people who had it removed, just some touchy paranoid bloke in the censoring department.

That said, the UKTV channels still appear to use alot of dodgy edited versions prepared years ago for UK Gold et al. It would not surprise me in the least if they were still using tapes of The Young Ones hanging around from the UK Gold days because going back and asking for new versions costs more money on top of the repeat fees.

Dave is basically UK Gold,I thought, except with a stupid name and really irritating "ho ho, everyday blokes, witty banter*" attitude. Cut out those shitty inserts and spend the money on people who know how to cut to adverts without literally cutting people off mid-sentence, please.

*The home of fuck off, more like.

Technically speaking GOLD is UK Gold. But the old UK Gold was pissed up against the wall about 10 years ago when it was noticed it was the second most successful general entertainment channel on Sky so rather that being able to get away with digging out obscure old series nobody else would show, they went all populist.

Up until that point the BBC wouldn't allow the station to show the likes of Black Adder, Red Dwarf, Dads Army or Only Fools. So the had to rely on their wits. Shows like Going Straight (the follow-up to Porridge) were shown with huge success. Doctor Who was on every night at about midnight and old editions of Top Of The Pops were shown in full without Steve Wright blithering all over the intros.

Those were the days. Ironically in these days of multichannel the best you can hope for in terms of decent archive TV is a repeat on BBC 4.

Good point. As far as my own viewing habits are concerned, it can't be the coincidence that the more time goes on, and the more channels there are on Sky, the more time I spend watching the 'core' channels that are on Freeview and the like, particularly BBC4. Can't put my finger on when it happened*, but multichannel TV really became really homogenised and shit and interchangeable and worthless at one point in the noughties.

* 2002, by my current, spontaneously generated estimate.

Can't recall this being shown on terrestrial while Porridge is always being wheeled out:

Its not just Young Ones.


Ive noticed that Top Gear, The Apprentice, One Foot in the Grave and other programmes all get bleeped out recently with the odd mild expletive on UK Tv Gold and Dave.

New policy I suppose.

You've changed your Avatar? I was just building up the courage to ask you who it was as well...

It's for our own good.

I think I've got some old recordings of the Young Ones from the first time they were on UK Gold. They were edited slightly for time reasons (they had a group on every week and this is cut out, maybe some other stuff too), but the racist policeman sketch is there in all its glory. I was a bit surprised when I watched it about 10 years ago in a "they wouldn't show this nowadays" kind of way.

I know. Yes, it's HILARIOUS how all the channels now have funny names that don't give you any sort of hint what they show and just sound crap (you can picture Nathan Barley et al in the boardroom slapping each other on the back about how witty they are). It doesn't help that stations are changing their names even more often than Sky One changes its look.



I don't remember it being that offensive... he's nicked the guy for stuff like 'possession of curly hair and thick lips' and the inspector just asks 'is this gentleman black?'

I already asked him that, but I forget the answer. I do remember that, when you see the full photo, she's doing exactly what you think she's doing.

What's the new one, though?

The old one was Julia Bond, if it helps.

EDIT: It's in the fucking sig. Doh!

I always thought it was a promo shot for a cinema. It looked like she was enjoying some popcorn and a drink to me! Don't ask me why I thought of this though..

It's extra annoying that before the days of Sky Digital, UK Gold was prepared to put on shows like The Innes Book of Records, Morning Sarge, Comrade Dad and the like, whereas now the stupidly-named relaunched UKTV channels are petrified of surprising anyone. Back in the 1990s, when relatively few people had non-terrestrial TV, you may have expected a mad rush to pick up as many UK viewers as possible by getting the most from their most popular shows, while now pretty much everyone has got digital telly, they could afford to throw out a few curveballs now and then. But no: a video iPod containing the top ten from Britain's Favourite Sitcoms on perpetual shuffle, alongside anything with May, Hammond and Clarkson in it, and a random smattering of BBC Two shows from the last couple of years. You could be going for, say, Alexei Sayle's Stuff, but you think we'd rather watch Mock The fucking Week.

As for edited The Young Ones, it is a shame. While cramming each episode into an ad-friendly 24 minutes was a daft move when (old) UK Gold did it (that meant losing eight minutes of the original 34-minute run times - bye bye, Lise Mayer's brilliant cutaway gags, and you don't get any royalties from Family Guy for nicking your idea, either), it's possible some performances of songs had to be lost due to PRS issues. The Beeb have an all encompassing deal with the Performing Rights Society (as mentioned on an early episode of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe), but that doesn't carry over to other channels.

Also, this: Comedy Central (nee Paramount) really, really should show the original episodes of Not The Nine O'Clock News instead of the same few 'best of' compilation shows. Mind you, with Chris Langham seemingly being airbrushed from the history of broadcasting - I wonder if repeats of The Smith & Jones Sketchbook will include their tribute to his work - that's possibly not very likely.

God yes, bring back Alexei Sayle's Stuff.

I'd also love to see repeats of Either/Or and Attention Scum! maybe in the early hours.

I have a feeling that the run I saw had them put out in 35 minute slots late at night with Who afterwards. Late night running times never seemed to be an issue with UK Gold as they shut down at different times every night. Certainly Who was never on at the same time.

UK Gold had a few people behind the scenes who cared. They had live continuity announcers who would give you facts about the shows, not like that shit you get on Dave where some bloke pretends to be funny.

When UKTV launched all the live continuity announcements were axed and all you then got was pre-recorded stuff played off a playout system. They had massive teething problems with continuity announcements going out in the middle of shows! And as if to prove a point I was just looking for UK Gold idents on Youtube and turned up a post 1997 one where they introduce Crossroads as an episode of Dallas!

And lets not forget their loving treatment of Who. Promos for the episodes, specific continuity, repeating the old black and white episodes. They also showed Blakes 7 as well (making for a great Sunday morning). They even showed Starcops (hands up who remembers that?).

And the in-vision continuity they did for the 6 months before the station was ruined. Utterly fab and totally inspired to get Liz Sladen, Nicolas Courtney and Paul Darrow in to do some links for Who and Blakes 7 respectively.

And the thing was, it was popular. They had a great archive TV station. Yes they were populist on-peak (with endless repeats of The Two Fucking Ronnies) but off peak they took risks. You could even write to them via their Teletext service "Goldtext" to request shows. People wrote to them asking for them to show Love Thy Neighbour (Laugh free racially dodgy 70's sitcom) so they could see what the fuss was about. UK Gold broadcast it (with dire warnings beforehand) so that indeed people could see it was a laugh free pile of old shite. Frankly I don't think many other TV stations would have taken that risk but UK Gold did.

It was a great station that let me see lots of shows that would otherwise be stuck on a shelf at the BBC or at Thames. Ironic really that during that period from 1992-97 when the BBC witheld certain shows from the station (Only Fools, Last Of The Summer Wine etc) they had their best output. Everyone has seen Only Fools & Horses 10 billion times. Dads Army has ceased to be funny. Yet Going Straight and It Ain't Half Hot Mum were fresh to me and I laughed like a drain.

Fuck you TV executives and how dare you presume what I, or anyone else, wants to see. There's only one TV station that had something on every day that I wanted to see and that was UK Gold before you ruined it in 1997.

I now suggest we all stand for the UK Gold anthem and remember better times:



[goes misty eyed at the sight of analogue speckles and the edge of the videocrypt gubbins on the right]

"Are you aware, Savage, that Mr Kodogo is of African origin?"

"Is he, Sir? I fort 'e was a nig-nog, sir."

The "God Moving In A Mysterious Way" gag is my favourite joke in the history of television.

Is that the "true" version, then? On the NTNOCN Best Of DVDs, that bit goes like:

"Would I be correct in assuming that Mr Kodogo... is a coloured gentleman?"

"I can't say I've ever noticed, sir."

'Coloured gentlemen' could be there in place of 'of African origin' - I paraphrased that bit because I couldn't remember precisely. Savage's line is definitely as it appears on my vinyl copy, I think it's Hedgehog Sandwich.

Anyway, in the BBC radio edit, it's "I fort 'e wos a beepbeep".

I can understand why they have edited it, you have 2 outcomes:
1) leave it in - someone may/may not be offended
2) take it out - no one (apart from JC) gets offended.

Why would you risk option 1, if someone writes in complaining, then the poor sucker who leaves it in gets fired.

As for TV, it constantly amazes me how little there is to watch on. Film 4 was showing Clueless the other day, I couldn't agree more. There are SO many films out there, yeah some of them are pap, but FFS I would rather watch a new film than a tired old repeat of Clueless, AGAIN!

Clueless? I get stick and you watch FUCKING CLUELESS?

I wasn't offended. I just thought that.

A. It ruined the sketch as it made no sense (if you hadn't seen it before, like).
B. It wasn't offensive, it was a (bloody rightly so) shame up for the at the time racist 'bullyboys'.

Yes it contained some offensive words, but it's not the words it's the context in which they're used. It's the age old "if a black person refers to his homey as a nigger is it racist?" compared to "toothless trashy shitbag from alabama declares that black people are niggers".

While we're talking about television.

My biggest wish for TV:

If we have them, I want continuity announcers who just tell me what's coming up next. I don't want them telling me the fucking plot of the show I'm just about to watch, I don't want them to be all faux-fucking-matey with me, I don't want them to make some brainless fucking comment about the show I just saw as if [A] they were watching it with me and [B] I give fuck what they think of it.

Also:

Get rid of the solid fucking channel logos - some with fucking colours! - up in the middle of the screen. Put them on the left - who gives a fuck about fitting them into a 4:3 frame these days? - and make them transparent. And don't, for fuck's sake, have a big animated COMING UP NEXT: WORLD'S STUPIDEST FUCKWITS banner scroll across the screen during the tense conclusion to the show I'm watching.

Also:

Documentary channels. Go back to having proper documentaries, like BBC4 still does. Don't rely on big expensive "The TRUTH about the BIBLE" programmes that appear to have been funded by American fundamentalists and rely on a chain of "possibilies" and "maybes" and "perhapses" to come to some insane fucking conclusion about the pyramids being build by Martians from plans drawn up by angels. And even if your topic is interesting and reasonably sane, don't bother with huge CGI reconstructions, just tell us what the fuck happened and why. It's possible to be interesting without flashing colours into our eyes until we drool. And for pity's sake, don't try to make everything DRAMATIC and AMAZING and WORLD-CHANGING by TALKING IN CAPS and pretending that what you're talking about was POTENTIALLY the DEADLIEST event EVER only SAVED by quick-thinking SCIENTISTS and SOLDIERS, when quite clearly it was nothing of the sort. This used to be the preserve of American documentary channels, but the last couple of documentaries I tried watching on Channel 4 were exactly the same.

WHAT IF THE PYRAMIDS WERE BUILT BY TEMPLARS - AND HOLD A DEADLY SECRET THAT COULD MEAN THE END OF THE WORLD?

Also:

Don't cut bits out of shows to fit commercials into them, please. If an hour-long show on BBC4 becomes an hour long on your channel with commercials I will know something is up. And then FOR FUCK'S SAKE, DO NOT release the fucking short versions on the DVD, YOU IDIOTS.

Because you have integrity, and mary whitehouse can go fuck herself with a loaded rifle.

The amount of times I've tried to watch a documentary and there's always some pointless reconstruction sequence repeated a dozen times. Horizon used to be a decent science programme as well as QED, but now they seem geared up for those demographic that has short attention spans and require an explanation every five minutes.

Also I wouldn't mind a rerun of Alexei Sayles stuff. I wouldn't mind a rerun of Staggering Stories also and maybe some classic kids TV such as Simon and the Witch, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men or Dizzy Heights. Hell, I'd even take Happy Families which was absolute rubbish.

I also agree a hundredfold with the documentaries thing. There was a programme about Cleopatra's sister a month or two ago that had some really interesting facts and stories, but the presentation was so fucking awful it utterly ruined it. JUST IMAGINE HOW SHE MUST HAVE FELT!!!1

"Here we are in the CAAAVE WOW OMG BODY FOUND HERE. It's a tiny dusty room with nothing in it. Here's the woman WHO WAS REALLY THERE WOW OH MY GOSH GOLLY EXCITEING. You were REALLY HERE is that right?"

Confused and unimpressed German archaeologist: "... Yes."

"IT MUST HAVE BEEN INCREDIBLE. WHAT WAS IT LIKE"

"Uh... it was exactly the same as it is now, except there was an extra stone."

"WOW. DRAMATISATION NOW PLEASE. WITH PLASTIC COSTUMES, YES. ALSO CAN WE GET A MUSIC STING. THANK YOU."

Fucking embarassing. And it does nobody any good - they clearly don't trust their audience. People who are interested in the subject are going to hate that shit, and people who aren't are never going to watch it however many reconstructions and over-the-top presenters you get on.

The body of a woman who is quite possibly Cleopatra's sister has been discovered, and it appears she died suddenly and suspiciously. The story surrounding her life and death is an inherently interesting one - she nearly killed Julius Caesar, for fuck's sake. But apparently that's not enough. You also have to repeatedly show a fabricated murder scene preceded by scenes of her walking around a temple all nervously with shadows flitting about like it's a scene from Slash Kill 4: The Revengening. Cunts.

It's the repeated dramatisations or shitty CGI reconstructions that spin the programme out for another 15 minutes though. I remember thinking about watching a quite interesting "Machines of Death" documentary about the horrible devices that were made for executions, when I actually watched it there was probably 2 facts revealed that anyone could've got off Wikipedia, along with 20 minutes of spinning the same CGI sequence out again and again.

Fair enough, but I don't think this is a MW issue, this is about wanting to keep a job. Personally I think it sucks monkey balls to have to do this, as JC says, context is important, although not justification. Having said that, this is 20+ year old political humour, there are a lot of people who mayn't understand and may well take offence (and a gate and small potting shed).

Be fair, in the context of a BBC-1 sitcom, going out pre-watershed, it was fucking fantastic, not to mention astonishingly daring (cf. the cocaine gags in the ' Cassie' episode, not to mention lines like "That's very kind of you Sister Joyce, but there's no need to call me a prick", delivered by Una Stubbs playing a nun, no less). The sheer volume of talent involved (Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmondson, Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Rik Mayall, Robbie Coltrane, Ben Elton et al) means that it's a minor crime that the series isn't even available on DVD, not even from Network who usually pounce on things like this. (I've left a bit of an open goal for you to reply with "all those people in it, and it's still not available on DVD? Crikey, it must be rubbish! In addition, your mamma's so fat (etc.)" here. However, I'm only going to counter with "this is a universe where Johnny Vaughan's 'Orrible is available to buy on DVD, so what has quality got to do with anything?", so a very pre-emptive, but polite, 'ner' to you, sir.)

It's a good point.

I'm also annoyed that the DVD release of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer isn't the nice extended version found on the VHSses.

Different masters, possibly assembled by another company for the home video release. Wasn't uncommon, still isn't uncommon. They probably exist but nobody probably knew of them and they'd need to be cleared again.

The "extended" edits of some of the Sylvester McCoy Doctor Who stories now available on DVD don't find their way back into the BBC archive. In fact none of the remastered versions do unless the BBC specifically ask for them.

[edit] Dimrill, forgot to say. When I worked for (not ITV) I found a TX tape of an episode of The Smell in our stack of tapes. By the looks of it, it was the actual tape the show was first broadcast from (judging from the paperwork). Dunno how it ended up with us, but I chuckled when (properly using corporation resources during the course of my work - Ed).

To be fair to The Powers That Be (at least in the pre-Sachsgate era, which is when these Young Ones edits originate from), you're likely to get frothing lunatics complaining about pretty much anything put out on television, as any trawls through the Ofcom website, the BBC's Have Your Say fora or (when leaked) the BBC Duty Log will prove. Problem is, while some broadcasters are willing to use more common sense on such matters - if a dozen idiots complain about something you've broadcast, fuck 'em, they're idiots - channels churning out this stuff without giving much of a stuff are likely to think "has this show got any Bad Words in it? REMOVE THEM ALL, sod the context, we haven't got the time to go into all that. Now, how can we promote our latest clip show as if it were a completely new episode of Fawlty Towers?".

(The following is not directed at Bobbyaro, it's more of a general rant. Feel free to move onto the next reply.)

As gentleman forumgoer Chinnyhill pointed out, this wasn't always the case with UK Gold, as they'd be willing to put out shows like Love Thy Neighbour, even if they did feel the need to explain the context of the show beforehand. It's not even that such shows are only likely to interest a (man, if only there were a better word to use here) minority; a few years ago I peeked at BTVision's Top Ten most watched VOD shows. Three entire episodes of Love Thy Neighbour were in the top ten, hopefully for reasons of curiosity and not just viewings from "too bloody right, mate" BNP cockheads - surely not, otherwise the BNP would be registering as higher than "absolutely comical" in the opinion polls. But I digress. I suspect that it's the fear of pandering to far-right spunkforbrains that prevents a lot of good telly being shown today. A perfect show for ITV3 would be 1979 LWT show 'End Of Part One', the first television offering from the pens of Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, which is basically them setting their attack dogs on the lazy generic programming of the decade (much as the same writing duo did with their later work, Alexei Sayle's Stuff). Because it took no prisoners, when it had a go at shows like Mind Your Language, it used terms like "paki" to highlight the lazy xenophobia employed by the programmes it was targeting, However, due to the language employed, I don't think the show has ever been repeated, despite it first going out at - get this - 5.30pm on Sundays, on ITV. Fer-rigging hell.

Even now, mixed messages are being sent out. The Paramount/ITV4 edits of The Larry Sanders Show kept in several uses of the word "cunt" from Larry and Hank, but the Nike swoosh on Larry's sweat top was (badly) pixellated out, whereas the More4 edits of The Daily Show keep in references to "dickishness" and such, but hamfistedly edit out references to the existence of The Daily Show's own website. But that's a rant I'd better save for my own blog, as I suspect no-one is left listening to my ill-considered ramblings at this point.

Man that does indeed seem awesome, especially that its got Ade Edmonson in it. Sounds a bit like the comic strip presents on Channel 4.
Although what I actually going on about was, deep breath... This

Edit. Vaguely remember it now from the opening credits actually. Yeah its a shame this isn't on DVD, and stuff like 'Orrible is. Anyway heres a clip of Edith

Sky have been the only channel that i've noticed to play the original line from Homer when he says "having a row with the Wanker" when talking about the british show "do shut up" (or a show called something like that)

It's OK, Sky have no problem with "having a row with the wanker". It's just Viacom that wants to sue.

ZING!

Boh. Maybe that's the reason. Loads of inattentive parents would buy the DVD for their kids, hoping their offspring would take the same valuable CBBC-sanctioned life lessons from it that they did, only to be confronted with Ade Edmondson reminiscing about sitting on the toilet with his quadruplet sisters. Also, there were only a few years between 'grown-up' Happy Families and 'Children's BBC' Happy Families - the buffoons. Now, is there a Childrens' ITV programme coincidentally called 'Filthy, Rich and Carflap' I don't know about?