BBC TWO old programmes, old pres?

Also on Friday the announcer introduced the Text Santa edition of The Chase with 'This edition was first shown last Friday' when of course last Friday was Paul O'Grady - obviously she was reading a script that was due for the Christmas Day repeat of The Chase. Isn't ITV con live at 5pm on a Friday - silly mistake!

It seems that Series 5, Episode 4 of Are you Being Served?, "The Old Order Changes" has been missed out from this run. It's a shame that the BBC won't show all episodes of this programme. I have been enjoying them as I have not seen most episodes before. I was looking forward to seeing them all but feared that BBC Two might miss episodes out or edit some of them. This episode doesn't even seem to have a programmes page on bbc.co.uk either, so I don't know when it was last shown. In fact, it is quite telling that some of the 'first broadcast' dates on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00722yk are shown as 2013, which demonstrates how rarely these episodes are shown. I fear we will not see all the Christmas episodes either with only the Series 3 episode Christmas Crackers being shown so far.

I remember seeing this one often on BBC back in the days, your right about the xmas specials

The Father Christmas Affair, and Roots?" people get blacked up.

Would this be related to BBC2's 50th birthday?

Do you mean the whole Afternoon Classic strand? I wouldn't have thought so as most (all?) of the programmes shown didn't start out on BBC Two so it wouldn't be much of a celebration. It's more likely to be part of the BBC's Delivering Quality First. A good part of it in my opinion. It's nice to see some good non-property, non-antique programmes on BBC Two daytime. Hopefully it will continue for a while.

I do hope there's something to mark their 50th birthday. I remember their 40th celebrations and missing most of it.

If you mean in terms of programming then I've heard rumblings of some interesting sounding specials including a one-off quiz show. I can imagine they'll have an ident to go with it all.

Hmm, there are pages on there for seasons 1 to 8 and 10, but not 9. I wonder why?

I'm, guessing that no episodes from Series 9 have been scheduled since the BBC Programmes database came in to existence. The last episode shown before Christmas was series 8, episode 3, Front Page Story which you will notice has a first broadcast date of 20 December 2013 and is the last episode listed for series 8 currently. I imagine when episodes are scheduled they are automatically added to the programmes page and the system makes the assumption that it is the first broadcast. It must be someones job to edit this data later on, probably by adding full or partial schedule information for 23 April 1981.

Some episodes are already listed correctly...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/schedules/south/1975/03/13

I think what has happened here was that this particular episode was already in the system as a manually created page to support the clip of the episode that is available on the website. When repeated in 2013, a new page was automatically
generated, and the content from the old page, including the clip and the original broadcast dates, were manually moved to the new page and the old page deleted.

Whereas with Keeping Up Appearances, it can be seen that Series 1 is listed twice here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006xtbg/episodes/guide - there are manually created pages (with codes with begin with a 'p') which list the earlier broadcasts, but new pages (codes with begin with a 'b') have been automatically created for the 2013 repeats, and the old pages have yet to be merged with the new ones.

This whole system does seem rather clunky, it seems new broadcasts of old programmes cannot be added to manually-created 'p' code pages.

I just watched The Old Order Changes on YouTube. The only things that seem out of place nowadays are the smoking scenes and a Jim'll Fix it badge. Although the Jim'll Fix it badge is not mentioned, it is just part of an amusing costume that Mr [Dick] Lucas wears, I expect this is why the BBC haven't shown this episode. I'd rather they just show it, take the flack from the Daily Mail the first time it is shown and then be able to show it freely in the future. Once something has been withdrawn, it is much harder for it to be shown again.

Watching the episode "The Hero" of Are you Being Served? which was shown on BBC Two a few Fridays ago (I am a little behind), there seemed to be at least one scene missing from the subtitles.

Mr Humphries is dealing with a man who was trying to return some socks which had shrunk after he had washed them. Mr Lucas was watching the exchange. Here is my transcript of the scene, the lines in bold were not subtitled.

Humphries: "What did you wash them in?"
Customer: "In the bath"
"I mean, what did you use to wash them with?"
"Water"
"You can go to coffee if you want, Mr Lucas, this is going to take sometime"
Mr Lucas (doing an impression of Colubo(?) for some reason): "It's ok, this case has my full attention"
"Was it hot water, sir?"
"Of course it was"
"Well, you see. It should have been luke, it says so on the instructions, look"
"I can't read that, it's too small"
"Of course it is, it's shrunk"
"I want my money back"
"Our senior assistant Mr. Goldberg will have to make that decision."
"Mr Goldberg? Are you free?

Doesn't seem too controversial, but it appears that these lines must have been cut out from the version that the subtitler saw. Probably for time. The end result is that the subtitles were out of sync for much of the episode as there was no gap left in the subtitles for the missing lines. Someone must have noticed at about 14 minutes in as the subtitles changed to the live style subtitles.

You can see the scene here, this is how it was broadcast on BBC Two...
http://youtu.be/nG86czWb40s?t=1m28s