Wiped episodes tracked down and restored

A series of previously lost episodes of The Morecambe and Wise Show is to be released on DVD for the first time.

The series was one of the earliest British comedy shows to be broadcast in colour when it aired on BBC Two in autumn 1968.

However, all eight episodes were lost in the 1970s when the BBC cleared out its tapes to make space in the archives.

Following years of research and restoration, film copies have been found for four of the eight episodes, plus audio recordings for the other four. Two of the episodes were aired on BBC Two on Boxing Day 2018.

All the footage will be released on DVD from BBC Studios on June 6, together with a previously lost one-off Morecambe and Wise special from October 1970. This was found in the attic of Eric’s family home and aired on ITV last year.

All episodes have undergone extensive sound and picture restoration, with 'colour recovery' software having been used to restore three of the episodes to their original full colour.

One episode, the very first Morecambe and Wise recorded for the BBC,  only survives as a badly decomposed film print, rediscovered in a film vault in West Africa.

Groundbreaking new technology was developed to scan this film with X-ray and recover the images locked inside the badly decayed film, as Chortle reported in 2018. This was part of a world-first seven-year long restoration project by the BBC and Queen Mary University, London. 

The full content of the new release, entitled Morecambe and Wise: The Lost Tapes is:

• Four previously unreleased full colour episodes, including a one-off special from October 1970.
• A special reconstruction of an otherwise lost early episode from series 1.
• Four audio-only recordings of otherwise lost episodes from series 1.
• Two short documentaries about the lost episodes of The Morecambe and Wise Show.
• A 1968 BBC 2 interview with Eric Morecambe featuring Marty Feldman.
• An original 1974 BBC Two trailer for The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.
• Surviving footage from an otherwise lost episode of series 1.
• Deleted scenes from series 1.
• A raw studio recording from December 1972.
• A BBC radio interview with Morecambe and Wise from October 1963.
• A collection of original production paperwork, including scripts and Radio Times cuttings.

Some of the footage will be screened at a British Film Institute event on May 21 at the Southbank in London.  

Published: 3 May 2022