jeff rawle and ed coleman are steptoe and son for 2016

Is There Life In Those Old Shows?

Is There Life In Those Old Shows?

Part 2: Steptoe and Son

In view of the success of UKTV’s revival of three missing Dad’s Army episodes we’re asking  “is there really a demand to remake lost classics or are they better just missing ?”

In part one we looked at actor Stuart McGugan’s reaction to remaking lost Dad’s Army episodes and the recent remakes of lost radio episodes of Hancock’s Half Hour.

Today we look at Steptoe and Son.  An all time classic that nearly never was.  When writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson created the pilot episode as part of their Comedy Playhouse season it was intended as just that.  A one off sitcom, it took considerable arm twisting from the BBC to get them to to write a full series, the rest as they say is history.

As with many sitcoms of the 1960’s and 70’s some episodes of Steptoe and Son were lost wiped presumed missing from the archives.  However in the early 1990’s writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson unearthed copies of the four missing episodes from archive material they had recorded for their own use.

So when the BBC decided to re-make A Winter’s Tale for their 2014 Lost Sitcoms season it seemed strange.  The original episode, all be it in black and white, still existed.  Would the money spent remaking the episode not have been better spent colourising the original.

On this occasion remaking was certainly a waste.

 

 

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