Tommy Cooper Retrospective Drama: ITV April 21st

Surprised there's been no comments about the drama, is everyone in here too busy worrying about London Live and Good Morning Britain ?

A few random observations relating to the TV recreations.

1967. Teddington Studios with a Thames sign on the building, and EMI 203 b/w studio cameras ?
Surely still ABC at that point ?

The recreation of the live LWT OB at Her Majesty's Theatre. Shows the production crew
and director deciding what to do when he collapses, and going into an ad break quickly.
I was amused by the 1970s style banking style clock/calendar in the middle of the OB truck's monitor stack !!

One of itv Outstanding dramas this year.

It also seems to have the first ad break the one from the vidoe which was deleted from you tube, as shown on tv screens.

error with thames is very clear. When it was comes to ob truck 70s clock etc it would be correct. Stv still used its 1985 logo for such uses until late 90s.

It was an older version of one of these:-

http://www.wharton.co.uk/analogue-clocks/analogue-calendar-clock.htm

I've been in a few 1980s OB trucks and galleries, and never seen anything like that !

The theatres he appeared to perform in were equipped with modern facility panels. I could make out DMX outlets which didn't exist until a couple of years after he passed away. I also noticed the lights on the bars which were flown out were Parcans - probably the only luminaires which were around in '84 and still exist in the same form today. They'd stuck a couple of old 5kW fresnels on C stands in the wings as set dressing.

Aside from those observations I thought the performances were stellar.

Nice piece of telly.

How realistic is going to an ad break early in the era when each ITV region would have been playing out their breaks manually?

Going back to the thread years ago, not easily with a few areas having black screens

Don't know, though by 1984 it was reasonably automated, cart machines (notably the ACR 25 or 225s) were
in use in all? regions, so assuming they were loaded up with the relevant tapes ?

How early was the break ?

They were all going to manually play a break anyway, only real issue would have been that the VT machines wouldn't have been 'stood up' ready to run (the tape would have been lined up ready to go but with the tape heads not running so not to wear out the tape). Unless the break was imminent they'd have been run from this state which takes a tiny bit longer, but then there's the reaction time of the operators and directors involved.

I have seen other discussions on the subject and at least one region did take a while to get the break on air

Saw it last night and thought it was excellent. I don't think ITV get enough praise for some of the high quality dramas they produce.

On the 'technical side', don't forget what you were seeing was a mock up of what the interior of LWT's Unit 1 would/might have looked like and not the actual thing. In fact, to the casual viewer it wasn't really made apparent that the control room was even inside an OB vehicle (People on this forum may be more aware of such points, but I don't think the average viewer would be).

Given the period there would also have been an OB VTR van on site (it was about the size of a large transit van). I can't remember what the inside of Unit 1's production gallery looked like, I didn't actually work on OB's but was around them, but I'd be surprised if it had a clock like that. There are still plenty of people around who did work in the truck who would know. Given the era, the cameras would have been the IVC7000's, they look very similar to Marconi Mk7's. During the panic scene, the 'Alan' being referred to - to make a decision - would have been Alan Boyd. I don't know who the director was but I suspect the www would easily reveal the name (I notice that Hamish Hamilton was credited as providing the directors 'voice' !!).

As to panic references to 'get hold of presentation etc', I think that was a bit 'rubbish' to be honest, the OB would certainly have had a direct keyed talkback facility to the Transmission Controller at LWT in front of the OB director, and he or she back at LWT, being the TC for the nominated contractor, would have simply lifted the 'red phone' and instantly conveyed to the rest of the ITV network that there was some sort of panic/crises happening and that an early break was very likely. It only takes seconds. Of course, if the break was occurring very early there would have been the possibility that the other ITV stations might not have been prepared to 'take a break' and delay would have been inevitable. An ACR25 only took a second or so to cue up.

Alasdair Macmillan, a familiar name on LWT credits, was directing that show in 1984.

I had a feeling it would have been him given the era. A very safe and experienced pair of hands.

So how accurate was the final performance from Cooper as presented in the drama as opposed to what happened in reality? Was that how it happened?