Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/bbc-archives--gone-but-not-forgotten-1778128.html

BBC archives - Gone but not forgotten

The BBC is archiving online some of the great TV shows in their history. 
But what about the ones they wiped – and the ones they should have 
wiped? Andrew Roberts reports

Friday, 28 August 2009

The BBC is trumpeting its BBC Online Archive, but it does continue to 
raise awkward questions concerning the amount of material that does not 
survive. Some of the wiped programmes such as Peter Cook and Dudley 
Moore's Not Only... But Also and early Dr Who episodes are already 
notorious but somewhat less outcry appears to have greeted the news that 
only two editions of ITV's The Saturday Banana are believed to exist. 
For any reader of a certain age who spent their formative years in the 
Southern Television region, The Saturday Banana is a vague but 
disquieting memory of a partially networked children's magazine show 
that always seemed to have Bill Oddie supervising zany stunts in the 
studio car park. A rare tape of the programme reveals that this is 
indeed the case, along with the unforgettable sight of a 25ft-high 
banana statue dominating the grounds of Southern Television.

Programmes such as The Saturday Banana rarely feature in lists of great 
shows that are "Missing, Believed Wiped". The National Film Archive 
holds no editions of a 1965 football drama United, and almost an entire 
BBC soap opera of the late 1960s, The Newcomers, has vanished together 
with Accident – a 1970s drama series based on the concept of disparate 
characters meeting in a mass car crash. By the standards of the day they 
may have been regarded as competent, and attracted reasonable viewing 
figures, but they are also prime example of the days when popular meant 
highly dispensable. Why, runs the popular argument, should any 
broadcasting company have paid to store the likes of Compact, an early 
1960s BBC soap opera that was critically loathed in its heyday or any 
other material of little or no repeat value?

One obvious reason is that sheer historical importance demands their 
inclusion. The massively popular ITV police show No Hiding Place ran for 
400 episodes between 1961 and 1967, only 10% of which survived a mass 
culling of the Associated Redifusion archives. The world it depicted may 
have been dated even then, with gentlemanly Superintendents arriving in 
their Humber Super Snipes to arrest cockney ne'er-do-wells, but its 
viewing figures show that this image of the police was easily as popular 
as the BBC's far more hard-hitting and critically acclaimed Z-Cars. 
Indeed, the fact that BBC1 was still making Dixon of Dock Green at the 
same time as Euston Films were shooting The Sweeney speaks volumes for 
the public's mixed view of the police circa 1976 – even if poor old 
Station Sergeant, George Dixon, was now aged 81 and having to read his 
cue cards from his prop desk.

Another reason for the retention of such programmes is as a 
counterbalance to the more corrosive effects of nostalgia. The Challenge 
TV station used to re-run editions of 321 during the evening, leaving 
the sensitive viewer in stunned horror at what passed for ITV Saturday 
night entertainment in the 1980s; namely a mobile dustbin, Ted Rogers 
and Frank Thornton dressed as a giant owl. Earlier ITV quiz-shows, one 
of the most notorious outward manifestations of the nascent consumer 
society, were rarely recorded and those that taped were usually wiped. 
In some respects this is a relief, sparing the world from as much Hughie 
Greene as was possible, but in terms of British popular history the few 
existing editions of ITV's Double Your Money show are invaluable 
reminders of the reality of the Macmillan era; nervous couples in badly 
cut clothes being patronised by a large and very sinister Canadian 
quiz-master in exchange for nylon stockings.

Popular television could, and did, contain as many memorable moments as 
a more critically acclaimed show; little of the BBC's Dee Time survives 
but the limited existing footage does have Sammy Davis Jnr giving a live 
performance. The few recorded episodes of Crackerjack showcase Eammon 
Andrews hosting the show with all of the ease and verve of a man who 
looked as though he was about to be arrested at any moment, but they 
also contain musical gems from the original line-up of The Shadows to 
Don Maclean and Peter Glaze's cover of David Bowie's "Golden Years".

Occasionally, there are gems to be found in the programmes that escaped 
the wrath of the archive wiping police – the opening credits of the 1966 
ITV series The Ratcatchers are just too groovy for mere words, while 
Gerald Harper's delightful performance as the BBC's Edwardian superhero 
Adam Adamant makes it a real tragedy that half of the programmes were 
wiped – but often the quality of the repeats of no importance to the 
viewer, for the real reason in their watching is to recapture a 
particular time in their lives.

To re-watch a former favourite can be a grave error as your memories are 
all too often more elaborate than the harshly lit and slow-paced 
reality. To see The Goodies at the age of seven was almost as good as 
television comedy could be; to watch the show as an adult is all too 
often to experience bitter disappointment. But those who recall such 
gems as BBC TV's 1970s drama The Brothers, the over-dramatic acting and 
the glamorous setting of a haulage yard is an essential part of the 
experience.

Today, in an era of digital television, the idea of wiping a programme 
is a truly arcane concept. Shows such as The Suite Life of Zack and Cody 
and Zoey 101, American children's sitcoms that were surprisingly not 
mentioned in Dante's Inferno, seemingly plague satellite TV stations 
morning, noon and night. It indeed is a cruel world when such 
entertainments survive and Dud and Pete were wiped, where the ennobling 
sound of the Great British Public baying at a middle-aged spinster can 
be sent around the world in an instant, while Bob Dylan's BBC TV debut 
remains lost. So, if even your offspring force you to watch Zack and 
Cody – a "comedy" that bears an eerie similarity to Village of the 
Damned – it is the price we pay for ensuring that future historians can 
learn of the depths to which television in the early 21st century could 
sink. And to prevent any more of the medium's heritage from vanishing 
into the ether.