Hancock's Half Hour - Commercial Releases

Commercial Releases

Four episodes of the TV series were re-recorded and released on LP format, two by Pye on the 1961 album Hancock ("The Blood Donor" and "The Radio Ham") and two by Decca Records on the 1965 album It's Hancock ("The Missing Page" and "The Reunion Party"), which was reissued as The World of Tony Hancock in 1975. BBC Records released an LP titled Hancock featuring the original TV soundtracks of two episodes, "The Lift" and "Twelve Angry Men." The episode "The Lift" was taken from the separate magnetic soundtrack of the telerecording, with the opening non-dialogue sequence omitted and one extra line of dialogue added: "Watch that door button... Oh my God!" as recorded by Hugh Lloyd on 24/08/76 and edited in. "Twelve Angry Men" was from the optical soundtrack of the telerecording, with theme and incidental music omitted, a few lines of dialogue edited out and pauses shortened.

The LP credits the theme music to Angela Morley, even though the music was omitted and the episodes were recorded when she was Wally Stott.

There have been six LPs released of substantially complete radio episodes. The first was by Pye Records in 1960 entitled This is Hancock containing "The Wild Man of The Woods" and "Sunday Afternoon At Home." The other five were by BBC Records, released as Hancock's Half Hour: "The Poetry Society" and "Sid's Mystery Tours", released in 1980; "The Americans Hit Town" and "The Unexploded Bomb" in 1981; "The Scandal Magazine" and "The Last of the McHancocks" in 1982; "The Sleepless Night" and "Fred's Pie Stall" in 1983; and finally "Hancocks War" and "The Christmas Club" in 1984. These five LPs were also released on audio cassette at the same time. Also, a number of comedy themed LPs, EPs and 7-inch singles have been released over the years which have featured short extracts from various radio episodes.

The radio series of Hancock's Half Hour was first released on cassette by the BBC as part of their Radio Collection series of audio cassettes in the late 1980s. The first three volumes were re-issues of the five LPs from the 1980s plus the LP of television soundtracks from 1976. Because only 10 volumes were made with four episodes each, and because a number of episodes were later returned from homemade off-air recordings by listeners, a release of the radio series was never completed on cassette. In 2000, the episodes still remaining from Series 1 of the radio series were released as a box set on CD. Series 2–6 followed throughout the next three years. The series has also been given three compilation CDs.

The television series of Hancock's Half Hour was first released on VHS/Betamax in 1985 under BBC Enterprises (now Worldwide) in an incomplete form. A Laserdisc of Volume One was also issued under catalogue number BBCL 7004. Six videos were released, each containing three episodes and were mainly drawn from the last three series. The next video release was not to be for another nine years, and that was "The Very Best of Hancock," a compilation including all episodes from the final series but excluding the last, "The Succession: Son and Heir." In 1996, a video was released containing the first three remaining episodes. Two later videos were released in 1997, and another featuring "The Train Journey" was released in 1999. In 1992 "Hancock: The Australian TV Series in Colour" was released, compiled from the three or so episodes of the 1968 Australian series completed before Hancock's death. This was released on VHS in the both UK and Australia.

The first DVD to be released was in 2001, which was a re-release of "The Very Best of Hancock" video. The next DVD was to be released in 2004, containing the first five episodes and the rarely seen "Hancock's Forty-Three Minutes." However, 2entertain released a box set in 2007 called The Tony Hancock Collection, containing every existing episode and new bonus features, including the Hancock interview from the Face to Face in 1960.

In June and August 2009, six off-air audio recordings of wiped/lost TV episodes from Series 4 were unearthed, though they had been knocking around the bootleg market for some time; however, two of them are very poor quality. The six episodes were: "Underpaid or Grandad's S.O.S.", "The Flight of the Red Shadow", "The Horror Serial", "Matrimony - Almost", "The Beauty Contest" and "The Wrong Man".

In 2009, the surviving radio episodes were repeated weekly on the digital network BBC Radio 7, chronologically sequenced.