Missing Black and White Episodes
Most of the show's 26 episodes from series 1-3 that were videotaped in black and white and broadcast 1965-68 no longer exist; they were wiped by the BBC during the late 1960s and early '70s. Currently, most material from twelve episodes still survive, with one episode on the original tape and the rest on film or domestic formats. The surviving 1960s B&W episodes are: "Arguments, Arguments"; "A House With Love In It"; "Peace & Goodwill"; "In Sickness and In Health"; "State Visit"; "Alf's Dilemma"; "Till Closing Time Do Us Part"; "The Phone"; and "The Blood Donor". Sequences exist from: the pilot episode; "Intolerance"; "Sex Before Marriage"; "The Bulldog Breed"; "A Wapping Mythology (The Workers' King)"; "The Puppy"; and "Aunt Maud".
The public appeal campaign the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt continues to search for lost episodes. In 1997 the long-lost episode, "Alf's Dilemma", was found in a private collection on a 21-minute 16mm telerecording (some sources state that the episode is an edited version, others that it was just a short episode). The episode was rebroadcast in 1998 on UK Gold. In August 2009, two more black and white episodes, "In Sickness and in Health" and "State Visit", were returned by a film collector.
"State Visit" became available for download in both its raw state and a second version, painstakingly restored frame by frame by a user of the UKNova web site which has, due to pressure from FACT, been forced to close, in August 2012 resulting in a major loss of UK vintage television archives.
Read more about this topic: Till Death Us Do Part (British TV Series)
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