RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARCHIVE

13 January, 2007 by The_Boss

ITV1 Tuesday 16th January 2007 10:00pm to 10:30pm

Having launched the biggest ever search for missing-presumed-lost TV show classics, the new four-part series Raiders of the Lost Archive promises a wealth of extraordinary television footage that for many years has never seen the light of day - footage which the stars themselves thought was lost forever.

Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere star PADDY MCGUINNESS reunites some of the best loved stars in the history of television – including Rolf Harris, Bruce Forsyth, Michael Parkinson and Bill Oddie – with early television material they thought they would never see again.

For the emotional stars as well as the viewers, this will be the first ever glimpse of many of these television jewels since they were originally transmitted all those years ago.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s many shows were transmitted live and not thought to have been recorded – or if they were the tapes were reused and the original footage lost forever. In other cases, classic shows that were recorded simply went missing – whether labelled incorrectly or ‘lost’ on dusty shelves among hundreds of reels of unopened film.

Raiders of the Lost Archive turned detective for 12 months and appealed to the public, private collectors and industry archive departments to help find the missing TV gold. Working in conjunction with the BFI and the classic TV experts Kaleidoscope, the search proved highly fruitful and will enable some wonderful gems in television history to be seen once again and handed back to the stars that featured in them.

Just a few of the gems to be seen over the four-part series:

• ROLF HARRIS has been in show business for 50 years yet reveals that many of his early television and film appearances have either been wiped or have become lost in early, primitive archive systems. So, Rolf’s more than delighted and a little emotional when Paddy presents him with a number of missing-presumed-lost clips, including an appearance he made on The David Frost Show in 1970, an early 1967 appearance on a BBC Arts show, and his first film appearance in 1955 at the age of 25 – a film that Rolf’s been trying to track down himself for many decades.

• ERIC MORECAMBE’S family thought they had much of the late, great entertainer’s material yet are delighted and moved when Paddy shows some wonderful footage of Eric and Ernie that, it’s believed, has never been shown since its original airing.

• King of Chat MICHAEL PARKINSON has a back catalogue of television interviews and appearances that he’s never seen. Hardly anything of the Granada show Scene at 6.30 appeared to have survived but Paddy presents the great interviewer with some rather hilarious clips of a young Parky being tattooed and discussing liquorish and quoits from newly found 1962 editions. Plus, there’s a rare glimpse of Parkinson the War Correspondent from the mid 60s and newly discovered footage of one of his first ever celebrity interviews in 1962 for the Cinema series with Sir Laurence Olivier, which again Parkinson has not seen before.

Plus… Material from The Goodies that no longer exists in English but which has turned up in Germany … Cliff Richard’s only straight TV acting role in the 1968 drama A Matter of Diamonds,… and from a private collector who filmed off the television before the original was then wiped, Bruce on Tarbuck’s Back from 1968.

Raiders of the Lost Archive is produced and directed by John Piper and Executive Produced by Mark Robinson for ITV Productions.