TVS Archive Fraggle Rock inserts discovered

Announced tonight at Missing Believed Wiped - all TVS Fraggle Rock inserts, previously thought to be missing, have been found.

HOLY MOLY! Missing Believed Wiped just announced all the missing TVS Fraggle Rock inserts from the 1980s have been found! 😲😲😲😲😲

— Cameron Yarde Jnr (@CameronYardeJnr) December 12, 2020

Who had remnants of the TVS archive found on the 2020 sweepstake?

Oh man, you've done it now!
I can't face another long trail about the TVS archive...

Cue Riaz in three, two....


I believe i'm a millionaire right now yes?

IIRC I think I said the archive would be found under a church or something like that. Or was that 2019?

Actually what I said last year on the TVS archive was this:
https://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post1201622#post-1201622

The church thing was a 2019 prediction and lo and behold:
https://www.tvforum.co.uk/forums/post1146895#post-1146895 - "Disney push out Fraggle Rock on DVD with the Fulton Mackay inserts. People everywhere rejoice, and they rejoice more when it emerges Motormouth wasn't actually wiped."

Does that make me half right?

I guess so - you'll get the other half right if aliens land by the end of the year. Still 19 days for that to happen yet - and I really wouldn't rule it out.

I do remember a few years ago the official Jim Henson YouTube posted the Fulton McKay inserts from an episode that was believed to be wiped, in broadcast quality, not from VHS, so maybe someone had known where at least some of them were all along.

The person who made that original tweet claims they were "all missing" until now, which can't be true seeing as 12 of the episodes were released on DVD a while back.

Was disapointing on the CITV 30th birthday weekend we got episodes of the US version, particularly as CITV had never shown that version to begin with.

So am I right in saying the Fulton McKay inserts are the only "unique" parts of our Fraggle Rock version and the rest of it is what we've seen on the US version, they've just replaced basically a few bits of VT (and maybe some other stuff). I suppose in theory they could "remaster" the UK episodes if all the inserts are available (and there are off air references I dare say on YouTube and elsewhere).

Mind you whether that would open the way to an actual release is debatable - Not sure how it works but I presume you would only then have to clear the inserts (I'm sure there's a doctrine for copyrighted material that if somebody wants to use and they can't find who to pay, they can still use it and wait for somebody to contact them?), and not the entire original programme which is unavailable anyway?

I think so, the same for the other international versions of the show there were.

That clip is just a pre-series promo, with very little Fulton Mackay. For those of us who didn't see the live stream, what's the story with the actual bits of the programme?

Yes. The UK version inserts - recorded at the TVS Television Theatre in Gillingham, were the only unique bit to the UK, right upto the 'slow zoom and defocus' onto the Fraggles 'rabbit hole' down into their world.

Every other localised version (although I believe selling it with local produced links weren't as sucessful as the Henson Corporation thought it would be) followed the same script in/out of the Hensons produced 'world feed' main show (if you like) that was produced and recorded on the larger set in Canada.