The BFI’s annual ‘Missing Believed Wiped’ event returns to BFI Southbank next Saturday 7 December to celebrate some of the long thought lost classic television titles rediscovered in the last year. Full details on both sessions have just been announced and are now available here
As part of the small screen rediscoveries back on the big screen Sir Michael Palin will introduce the screening of an episode from The Complete and Utter History of Britain. The featured episode, Episode 6: James the McFirst to Oliver Cromwell which was first broadcast on LWT on February 16, 1969.
Michael Palin will discuss his memories of making the series, its significance then as the immediate precursor to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and what he thinks now of the rediscovery over 50 years later and being able to share the work with new audiences.
Long thought missing for many years, the show, written by and starred Michael Palin and Terry Jones, ran for one series on LWT in 1969 and led to the formation of Monty Python. The series was rediscovered in the ITV Archive. Following an internal catalogue audit it was found that the missing episodes had all been logged in as Ep 2. The films were cleaned and restored from the 16mm telerecordings by R3:STORE Studios. They all needed a considerable amount of manual work due to damage and film and tape faults throughout due to the nature of telerecording. The films were scanned, graded, images stabilised and flicker removed as well as repairs/removal of scratches and dirt and present them to new audiences in pristine condition for the first time since they were originally broadcast.
The Complete and Utter History of Britain, Episode 6: James the McFirst to Oliver Cromwell screens at BFI Southbank on 7 December. The full series of The Complete and Utter History of Britain is available to watch on BritBox UK via ITVX Premium.
On the rediscovery Dick Fiddy, the BFI’s Archive TV programmer and founder of the Missing Believed Wiped initiative says: “The Complete and Utter History of Britain is a key title in the story of British television comedy and one of the most important links in the chain that leads from The Goon Show to Monty Python. The rediscovery of the entire series as broadcast is a significant (not to mention hilarious) find that has delighted an army of fans!”
Buy tickets for the December 7 screening here.
Picture: ITVX
