American remake of Up Pompeii! to be seen for the first time in 50 years

Frankie Howerd reprised his role

The US remake of Frankie Howerd’s Up Pompeii! is to be screened publicly for the first time, more than 50 years after it was made.

Howerd reprised his role for an unbroadcast pilot episode of the Ancient Roman comedy, which was retitled Up The Toga, for the ABC network .

His character Lurcio was renamed Fracas, and he co-starred with US actors Jeanne Arnold, Foster Brooks and Paul Hartman, using a script by Jeff Harris and Bernie Kukoff.

Up The Toga

For decades, its very existence was unknown as the tapes were destroyed or wiped, and there was no evidence of the script. Even the comprehensive IMDB describes the show as ‘probably the obscurest of all obscure pilots; it isn't mentioned in handbooks or listings’.

Then some photographs from the recording, under the alternate title The Pompeii Way, were spotted in photo libraries, piquing fans’ interest – and scripts were unearthed in Howerd’s personal archive at the University Of York.

In 2022, a 16mm film copy ‘with some scratching’ was put up for sale on eBay – with the Hampshire-based seller asking forg £799 – and was snapped up by an enthusiast.

It has now been fully restored and colour graded by archive experts Kaleidoscope and will be screened at the BFI in London next month, as part of a celebration of the Missing Believed Wiped initiative to track down lost film and TV shows.

The two-day event will also include a screening of the pilot Holding The Fort, a comedy written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran before they went on to create The New Statesman, Birds of a Feather and Goodnight Sweetheart.

Although the 1979 pilot did not air, it was picked up and ran for three series on ITV. The premise was that The situation was that Russell Milburn (Peter Davison) becomes a house-husband to raise his baby daughter while his wife, Penny (Patricia Hodge) goes out to work. Matthew Kelly played Russell’s best friend.

The Long Lost Show runs over two sessions on August 5 at the BFI, also including and Marks and Gran discussing heir careers.

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Published: 17 Jul 2023