TV Classic Buses on BBC Four

As far as I can tell, it really is Series 1 Episode 1 that was shown. But it hasn't been seen since first broadcast.

I suspect what's happened is that they never bothered repeating the first two series, as they were black and white. Once colour came in, nobody wanted to know about the early episodes.

Not exactly true, G-plus did show black & white episodes of "On the Buses" all the time as I should know as I watched them.

Ah, so presumably they meant not repeated *terrestrially*?

Unless it really is a pilot - but then the first episode would have to be a reshot version of the same story. I can't see any mention of a pilot anywhere, though.

Summer Holiday was good - as was the early On The Buses episode. For me, though, the highlight was "Sykes and a Following" which was the original B/W version of "Sykes and a Bus" shown on BBC2 some years ago. Eric Sykes may have written it for laughs, but a lot of the observations he made (such as adorning buses with fripperies, dedicated crews etc) have come to reality in today's privatised, deregulated, bus-operating environment - even the "walking bus" idea at the end, which is now used by various councils to get kids to school safely.

The buses used in that episode were indeed Routemasters, which had just been delivered and were yet to enter service in London when it was made - of interest is that these had Leyland engines fitted instead of the standard AECs. Not that anyone other than a bus enthusiast will have noticed that, of course...

A fitting tribute to one of the greatest buses ever built.

I enjoyed it, it was pretty good, they don't make sitcoms like this these days, ok so the quality of the production was dodgy, but the sitcom itself wasn't

I found it entertaining to watch - but only from a TV enthusiasts point of view. When it came to the actual quality of the show, it had everything - good characters, interesting situation... everything apart from the actual comedy. There just weren't enough good jokes.

I've not watched many of the shows, but I think I'd probably enjoy the later ones far more - if only because I find innuendo amusing.

The Sykes ep was fab, though. As was TYO, obviously.

Trust me, that was a common thing in old TV, wobbles everywhere, especially on keyed-on captions that are stuck on wobbly stands, and zoomed in on.

I noticed that at times, it looked like they'd filmicised (is that a word?) it. There didn't seem to be that live sparkly feel of old VT I'm familiar with, and the motion was jerky. Is it possible that the tape got damaged, and this was the result of a repair?

Different 'Mum' !

Ciecley Courtniege(forgive the spelling!) was in the first series, then Doris Hare (the more familiar version) took from the B&W series 2 onwards.

(There is an 'On The Buses' site knocking about somewhere, if you use a search engine! Can't remember the address offhand!)

By the way did LWT ever officially animate their first ident before programmes, because I've seen that ident on the likes of TV Ark zoom in with a little jingle, but when I've seen repeats of very early LWT stuff like 'Buses' & 'Please Sir' (which was repeated on TV Heaven), it's always been a static caption card?

Try this: http://www.onthebusesfanclub.co.uk/
Worth checking out.

Most recordings in the 1960 were archived on film using a camera pointing at a flat screen high quality monitor. This was because film was a much more flexible medium than video tape in those days. The original videotapes were usually wiped and reused.

Yes, but this episode of On The Busses was clearly not a telerecording, no film scratches or any artifacts other than a few tape drop-outs. It just looked filmic in places. Obviously, if there were any outdoor scenes, then they'd be shot of film probably, but this was on indoor scenes.