EastEnders

Didn't they also keep the BBC Three logo until the end of the year when that changed?

Possibly true, there was a period around 1996-98 (as I've seen a few examples with the pre-1997 BBC logo) where the BBC logo appeared at the end of BBC shows on UK Gold (and for several years after on repeats of shows they acquired around that time) I'm guessing that was BBC Worldwide trying to do similar to many other distribution companies.

Though if it appeared at the end of those EastEnders edits, maybe it implies that it was BBC Worldwide replacing the credits with that, not UK Gold themselves?

Looks like UK Gold did tack the credits onto the end of their omnibus edition, making their own end credits for it (and the first example does end with the full screen pre-1997 BBC logo! The second one has a strange abrupt end to the theme tune)

The Virgin Media EPG is showing EE resetting to 31/10/85 onwards from the 11th March, I'm guessing it's a blip with the EPG that will be corrected closer to broadcast, and the listings on the UKTV website go up to the 21st March are showing them continuing with 1988 episodes. But thinking of The Bill debacle I almost wouldn't put anything past them, although skipping backwards over 2 years to a seemingly random point seems illogical.

I do hope it’s just a blip. I’ve noticed the original TX dates on Virgin’s EPG info is often incorrect. 31st October 1985 is such a random date to loop back to, so my gut feeling is that it’s a error.

For those who are interested, Brookside actor Paul Usher (who played Barry Grant) is reported to be joining the cast of EastEnders, though it appears to be a short-term guest role:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz-tv/hot-tv/763071/eastenders-brookside-legend-paul-usher-to-join-bbc-one-soap

Earlier in the week their ITV3 listings were showing Emmerdale from March 1991 for a couple of days before correcting themselves to August 1990. Also, their Emmerdale dates are wrong from next Wednesday, as there wasn't an episode on 3/7/90 (I presume world cup related), but they're listing the 5/7/90 synopsis with the 3rd July date, so all the dates after that are one episode out. Sp yes, Virgin's EPG does mess up.

Also earlier in the week Gold showed the Only Fools episode "Ashes To Ashes", but somehow the Virgin EPG were listing it as the corresponding episode (Series 2, Episode 2) of Ashes To Ashes (the Life On Mars follow up).

Also, until Saturday morning, the listings for Drama on the 11th-15th were just "To Be Announced", so I'm thinking Virgin seem to be having issues with Drama's listings anyway, and they may just have grabbed some random EE listings to fill the gap.

As I said, 31/10/85 seems an illogical place to jump to even if Drama were planning on skipping. Surely the main reason they'd skip would be to revive ratings, and that would surely involve skipping to a well remembered storyline where they could try and hook viewers in, not skip back to a bunch of seemingly random, uneventful episodes they only showed back in October anyway.

Of course it could be the case that they're skipping back 27 months to a random point in 1985, which would mean someone at Drama has totally lost the plot. At least the point they skipped The Bill to had logic, as it was the start of the hour episides and where they started before (so would have already had the rights to), even if I still don't entirely believe their reasons for the skipping.

As no other TV listings are showing this, I'm going to assume it's a blip, but seeing as Drama pulled the 1989 episodes of The Bill less than a week before they were due to be shown (after putting out schedules showing the first 2 weeks- 20 episodes- of 1989), to the point the printed TV guides still went out showing them, I still can't entirely put it past them.

One of tomorrow’s Drama repeats is the episode originally shown on New Years Eve 1987, and was scheduled 23:30-00:05. The live chimes of Big Ben and a BBC1 continuity announcer saying Happy New Year were incorporated into the episode, as seen here:



I assume the master copy of the episode was in two parts - the first part ending when Den turned on the TV (after which the BBC switched to a feed of the live chimes) and the second part showing the characters singing Auld Lang Syne and the end credits. Presumably there was a period of black on the tape and a countdown clock into “part two”, and the BBC switched back to the EastEnders tape after the chimes/announcement.

I haven’t seen any repeats of this episode, but I doubt they will include the live chimes and BBC “Happy New Year” announcement as this wasn’t really part of the episode. It’s possible the whole tx was recorded and archived, but I don’t think a minute of chimes etc would really be appropriate for repeat broadcasts. Maybe two versions of the episode were post produced, the latter having a more appropriate transition between the two “parts”, and this version was used for archive/repeats and overseas sales.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow on the Drama episode!

BTW, I’m told that the Big Ben chimes that ended up being shown that night weren’t actually live as some technical fault meant the feed was lost, and the BBC showed a back-up recording. This still involved switching between the sources of course. And the public were none the wiser. The whole idea was quite progressive for 1987, I would say, and was pretty effective on air.

We're only a little over 2 weeks away from ITV3 showing the Corrie episode that incorporated the Queen's speech as well. When Granada Plus showed it they swapped round a couple of the scenes and put End of Part One/Part Two captions to cover the gap- possibly that was an edit made for overseas showings, wouldn't be suprised if ITV3 show the same version.

Actually wondering if that EastEnders episode has a 1987 or 1988 copyright date considering it straddled midnight and part of it was technically live, or should have been anyway (the credits are missing from that video).

On a similar vain one thing I remember on New year's eve 1997, the last programme shown before the new year show (which was a documentry on Dave Allen) had a 1998 copyright even though there was still an hour left of 1997 when it ended. I wonder if its broadcast was brought forward?

Yes, this was mentioned on one of the websites for former Beeb employees, not that I can find it now - I seem to recall they said presentation uncovered some kind of technical reason why it wouldn't have worked to do it live, so they actually recorded it a few days earlier, and didn't tell anyone. Happier pre-complicance days, Though of course in the fifties and sixties they had a model of Big Ben in the pres studio they sometimes used instead of the real one.



Probably, this was the first episode of a series of Dave Allen compilations, the rest of which were in January 1998, so presumably the whole series was intended to be shown then and they brought the first one forward.

For some reason, Jim Davidson’s Generation Game had a load of (C) MM episodes transmitted towards the end of 1999. Maybe the tx order changed? Although that show always seemed quite traditional in record/transmit rather than banking loads in one go.

Back to EE - is it possible the episode simply continues with a Big Ben, perhaps on the tv? It’s one way of ensuring it all lined up - ensure a fixed start time, then come back without any risk of an issue with the second bit. I’m guessing there was also an omnibus to think of. Anyone know what happened on the UK Gold repeats?

I do love the addition of the announcer VO - as if to say “no it really is 1988” 😀

Up to about 2004 (with the obvious exception of 1999) there were barely any fireworks of note anyway so you could get away with a shot of Big Ben from any night. They were inserting it into pre-recorded Clive James/Angus Deayton/Jonathan Ross vehicles right up to 2002.

I've tried searching for the original broadcast version of this but Granada plus repeats keep showing up in my results. I'm assuming it's somewhere on youtube?